Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

But of course, unlike those good wholesome boys who dropped bombs on cities, she did not have the luxury of distance.

She turned away from the window, walked to a couch, sat down. She crossed her legs at the knees and settled in, waiting for her turn to speak to Daddy.

She was obviously called here for a job. She wondered what it was.

4

It was six years ago, when she turned twenty-one, that she demanded her first meeting with Daddy, and two days later she was summoned from their Shrewsbury house to his office in lower Manhattan. She’d never before seen him in that context. He had forever been Daddy and that was how she perceived him. Daddy took her to Coney Island and bought her Foster Grant sunglasses, cotton candy, and hotdogs from Nathan’s Famous. Daddy watched her ride the Ferris wheel and waved at her. Daddy brought home presents from his trips to Chicago and Las Vegas.

But in his office he was no longer Daddy.

He was the Man.

She realized it as soon as she pushed through the door. The weather was different here. It was colder.

‘What is it you want, Ev?’

‘I want a job.’

He nodded but for a long time said nothing. His bulbous face like over-yeasted bread dough was still and expressionless, his eyes vacant. Finally he blinked once and said, ‘A job.’

She nodded.

He simply stared, and after some time she realized he wanted her to make her case. She cleared her throat and sat up nervously. She looked down at her skirt and flattened it against her legs with the palms of her hands, pushing it down to make certain her knees were covered.

‘Well, see,’ she said, ‘you don’t have a son and I thought-’

‘I have a son.’

‘George is dead, Daddy.’

He nodded once, minutely. ‘I have a dead son.’

‘Someday you’ll want to retire. Even if George was alive he couldn’t take over the business. He was too innocent, like Mom. I’m like you.’

‘And you think you can take over my business?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

A smile shone behind Daddy’s eyes but did not reach his wide, moist mouth.

‘You have no idea what happens here.’

‘I have some idea,’ she said. ‘I hear talk. But I know I don’t know enough. That’s why I want a job. To learn.’

‘If I give you a job there’s three conditions.’

‘Okay.’

‘First, I might ask you to do some unpleasant things. You do what I say as an employee and don’t question it. When it comes to work, I’m not your daddy. You get no special treatment. You’re told to do a job, you do it and that’s it. You got that?’

She nodded. ‘Of course, Daddy. Sir. Of course.’

‘Good. Second, you talk about business to no one on the outside. Not even your mother. Especially not your mother. You might do some things weigh on you. You might think about confessing to Father Byrne or someone else. Don’t. You can have God in your personal life — in fact, I insist on it — but there’s no room for Him in this business. He’s too big, He’d crowd us out. The business is what it is and it won’t be soft on you because you’re a girl. This ain’t the typing pool. It’s a man’s business and a tough one, and you’re starting out at a disadvantage, which means you gotta be even tougher than the men you’re working with. You’re gonna have to prove yourself. You got that?’

She nodded.

‘Third, you ain’t gonna play the moll. I know you’re a woman now, I see it clear as Waterford, and the boys will too. Not one of them is to touch you. That’s part of being respected. You want a man in your life, you find that man outside the business. None of these sons of bitches is good enough for you, anyways. Scoundrels all.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You start tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, Daddy. Sir.’

5

He wasn’t lying when he told her the business got ugly. In the years since she first began working for Daddy she has gone from an innocent-if-spoiled Jersey girl to. . to something else altogether.

Good wholesome boys might be able to drop bombs from a thousand feet above the human suffering, but she can’t afford to be good or wholesome.

She doesn’t have the luxury of distance.

Before you do certain things you think you have mental boundaries, places you would never go, but those boundaries are like smoke, only thinner, and as you approach them they vanish on the air.

When she began working for Daddy his boys considered her something of a joke. They thought she was a little girl playing at being grown-up. They thought she would dip her toe into the waters of this business and find them much too cold. They don’t think that any longer. They know now she’s colder still than the waters in which she’s expected to swim. When she has to be she’s much colder.

6

She picked up a newspaper from the table and flipped through it, looking for something of interest. On page three she found a piece on Alvin M. Johnston, a pilot for Boeing who, according to the paper, was preparing for his first test flight of a new bomber called the Stratofortress. It was designed to carry 70,000 pounds of nuclear weapons, nine times what was dropped on Hiroshima. According to the article, it would take only one round trip to Moscow to turn the city into a mere divot.

After reading that piece, she flipped the page again and came across a news item out of Los Angeles. Her brow furrowed as she read and a frown touched the corners of her mouth. But before she could finish the article, Daddy’s office door swung open, and she looked up. Louis Lynch stepped out. He wore a black pinstriped suit that accentuated his thinness and stood with his back very straight. To Evelyn he always looked like he should be standing near a casket.

‘The Man will see you now.’

Evelyn got to her feet.

‘Will I be taking a trip to the West Coast?’

Lou cocked an eyebrow at her.

‘Something in the paper.’

‘We have to be at Idlewild Airport in two hours.’

‘We’re flying?’

‘Time is of the essence,’ Daddy said from the office. ‘Come in.’

She walked past Lou into Daddy’s office.

‘Close the door behind you.’

She did.

7

‘You have an accent yourself,’ she says.

‘I do.’

‘Where’s it from?’

‘Kentucky.’

‘I like it,’ she says, ‘you sound kind of like a cowboy.’

They talk for another hour and half, and throughout it all Eugene can see she’s trouble. It’s in the sensual way she touches herself when speaking — her own earlobe, her neck, her thigh — and in the way she purses her lips, and in the way she looks at you with eyes behind which there are no nos. But mostly it’s in her beautiful-ugly reptilian features. He wouldn’t be surprised by a forked tongue. And she’s not the kind that’ll shake her rattle before striking either. One minute she’ll be coiled up beside you, the next her teeth will be gum-deep in your throat.

Yet Eugene finds that attractive. There’s something in him drawn to trouble, always has been. He likes fire in the eyes and a knowing smile. He wants to grab onto something wild and hold on as long as possible.

He finishes his seventh or eighth drink, more than he’d planned on having tonight, and sets his tumbler on the bar. He smiles at Evelyn.

‘How’d you like a dinner companion tomorrow night?’

‘Why, do you know someone less annoying than yourself?’

‘Ouch.’

She laughs and says, ‘That sounded meaner than I thought it would. I’d love dinner.’

‘There’s a place on 8th Street I think you’ll like,’ he says. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘At the Fairmont across the street.’

‘And you didn’t go to the Palm Frond?’