Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

1

Seymour Markley, in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, pads barefoot across his hardwood floor, down the wide book-lined hallway, through the tastefully decorated living room, to the thick, hand-carved maple front door. He grabs the glass doorknob and pulls, wondering who could be knocking at this hour on a Sunday morning.

At first he doesn’t recognize her. There’s a part of his brain that knows he should — the short brunette hair; the vacant blue eyes; the full, soft-looking lips — but the context is wrong, and at first he has no idea who she is. He blinks at her through his wire-framed spectacles, lips parted but soundless. He’s about to say something, yes, can I help you, I think perhaps you’re at the wrong house, when recognition comes. It comes all at once, like a fist to the gut.

He glances over his shoulder to make sure Margaret is still in bed, to make sure she isn’t standing in the hallway watching this, then looks back to the woman standing on the other side of the threshold. He believes her name is Vivian. That’s what she calls herself at work, anyway. She works as a B-girl, and sometimes more, at a place called the Sugar Cube. Out on the street behind her, in a green Chevrolet coupe, sits another woman. He recognizes her as well, but has never heard her name spoken aloud. Or if he has he’s forgotten. The woman in the car appears to have been crying very recently. She looks at them, at Seymour and Vivian, through the passenger’s-side window. She has blonde hair. Her face is pale. She looks like a ghost.

Or maybe Seymour’s simply been unnerved by seeing these women out of context. He feels slightly dizzy.

‘What are you doing here? How did you find my house?’

‘I’m sorry to bother you at home,’ Vivian says, touching his arm briefly, ‘but we need help.’

‘You can’t be here,’ he says, glancing over his shoulder a second time, ‘you simply cannot be here.’

‘But I am here, and I’m not leaving until you agree to help.’

‘With what?’

‘Candice’s boy is in some trouble.’

‘Who’s Candice?’

‘The woman in the car. She works with me.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Legal trouble. Why else would I bother you on a Sunday morning?’

‘What did he do?’

Vivian pauses, looks hesitant.

‘What did he do? You didn’t come here to not tell me.’

‘He killed a man.’

‘What?’

‘I know. But you’re gonna help us.’

‘Or what,’ Seymour says, feeling anger start to swell within him, ‘you’ll tell my wife? Do you really think she’ll believe you? You’re just a whore. I can claim it’s nothing but an attempt at blackmail. Why don’t you get the hell out of here?’

‘Nobody has to believe me, Seymour,’ Vivian says. ‘I have pictures.’

‘You have. .’ He blinks at her. His eyes feel dry, itchy.

She mimes the taking of a photograph, says, ‘Click.’

Seymour cannot think. There’s a hitch in his mind. All the gears have locked up. Then, after a moment, after that strange mental hang-up has resolved itself, his brain starts working again and thought returns to him.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But we can’t talk here. I’ll meet you and your friend-’

‘Candice.’

‘I’ll meet you and Candice at nine o’clock. There’s a diner called Fred’s not far from here. We’ll talk there.’

‘Nine o’clock?’

Seymour nods.

‘You better show up.’

‘I will,’ Seymour says, and pushes the door closed.

He turns around and puts his back to it. He looks down the length of the hallway, toward the room where his wife still lies in bed. He knew better than to do what he did. He always knows better, every time. But something in him, some base part of him, thrives on that knowledge, and rather than stopping him it pushes him forward. Into places where a man can buy anything so long as he has enough money folded into his wallet. He lets the women lead him upstairs, or to the back room. He watches them undress. He lets them come to him, not at all assertive himself, lets himself pretend he didn’t know what would happen, what it would lead to. That’s part of the game. Most of the time he has to be so much in control that he likes giving it up on these occasions. But it also makes him feel disgusting to do what he does. After it’s over he feels sick. He fears syphilis. He fears gonorrhea. He comes home and scrubs his body in scalding water and tells himself he will never do that again. It’s filthy and he’s filthy for doing it. He avoids his wife for a week, sometimes two, to make sure he hasn’t contracted anything that he might give her, though it’s less out of concern for her wellbeing than out of fear that he’ll have to explain to her why she must get penicillin shots. But despite the way it makes him feel, despite the guilt, a couple months later he’s in his car again, driving, telling himself he’s not going where he knows damn well he is.

Sometimes he manages to restrain the urge for as long as six months, but never more. He hates himself for it. Immediately afterwards he hates himself, but the mind is a strange thing, and when the venereal diseases do not arrive, when it’s clear that God hasn’t punished him for his transgressions, the guilt and shame fade away.

But it looks like God’s punished him after all, doesn’t it? He’s certain he never told Vivian his last name, nor would he ever have told her his job. So how did she find him? How does she know who he is, what he does?

Don’t be a fool, Seymour. Your name and photograph are in the newspaper on a regular basis. You were elected to office. You’re a public figure who failed to keep his private vices private.

God didn’t do this; you’ve brought it upon yourself.

He walks down the hallway and pushes into his bedroom. Margaret, in bed, opens her eyes and smiles at him sleepily.

‘Who was it?’

‘Barry. Looks like I’ll have to go into work for a few hours.’

‘But it’s Sunday.’

‘I know. You’ll have to go to church without me.’

2

Candice sits in a diner with a mug of coffee cupped in her palms. Outside she hears cars rolling by, horns honking. Back on Bunker Hill her next-door neighbors keep chickens in their backyard for eggs, and usually by this time of morning she’s spent the last hour or two listening to their rooster greet the sunrise. Neil hated it, swore he would poison the goddamn thing, but she’s always liked the rural images it put in her mind: farmhouses and green tractors parked in fields. It reminds her of her youth.

Right now she misses that sound. She misses the comfort of it.

She looks down at the black liquid in her cup. She can’t believe her son did what she knows he did. The coffee is thick as crude oil. She thought she understood the relationship Sandy had with his stepfather but she had no idea. Steam rises from the surface of the liquid. What kind of mother misses that much hatred, that much pain? If she’d known, if Sandy had told her, she would have changed things. She would have made Neil move out. She bought the house with her ex-husband, Lyle, but she hasn’t seen him in seven years, and though his name is still on the papers at the bank, she’s made the last eighty-five payments herself. It’s her house. It never belonged to Neil. If she’d known how bad it was for Sandy she would have done it, she would have made Neil pack his bags and leave.

She tells herself that, but it isn’t true, is it? Sandy did tell you. Maybe he didn’t tell you in so many words, but he’s only a boy, and in a dozen other ways he let you know what was happening, and you ignored it. You told yourself it would work out. You were selfish, you wanted Neil around, you needed someone to lie beside you in the dark, so you ignored what you knew was happening. You pretended what was happening wasn’t.