Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

Thud, thud, thud.

The entire room shakes.

Eugene sits up in bed. There’s someone beside him, but he doesn’t know who. Then he remembers. He can feel her skin smooth and warm against his skin.

Thud, thud, thud.

Suddenly he knows what the pounding is. He crawls out of bed, walks to his closet, grabs a.38 Smith amp; Wesson revolver from the top shelf. It’s been months since he last touched it, perhaps years, and he’s surprised by its weight, but also comforted by it. He checks the cylinder that it’s loaded.

Then, with it gripped in his fist, thumb on the hammer spur, he walks to the front door and yanks it open. No one there, but he hears feet pounding down the stairs. He follows, taking the steps two at a time, the wood cool against the soles of his bare feet. Then out into the chill night where he sees a figure heading toward a car with the engine running, smoke wafting up from its tailpipe. The figure pulls open the driver’s-side door, jumps inside, slams the door shut. The taillights glow red. The car pulls away.

Eugene stands in the wet grass, feet cold, body covered in gooseflesh.

He turns around, heads back up the stairs. His door stands open.

There’s an envelope nailed to it, yet another paper moth. He tears the envelope from the door, leaving the nail in place, and walks into the apartment. He closes the door behind him. He sets the gun down on the dining table beside his typewriter.

He stares at the envelope.

‘What is it?’

He jumps, startled, and looks up.

Evelyn stands in the hallway with a sheet wrapped loosely around her otherwise nude body, revealing a hint of breast he would under normal circumstances find very sexy, but right now he’s too disoriented, too distracted, to find anything sexy. Moments ago he was pulled from dream sleep and now holds in his hands an answer he isn’t sure he wants. This morning he read that newspaper clipping and knew it implied a threat, I will tell unless, and knows he now holds the rest of that sentence in his hands. Unless what? Just look inside.

‘What is it?’ Evelyn says again.

‘I don’t know.’

He tears the envelope open.

STUPID HEART

1

Eugene, wearing only a pair of wrinkled slacks, walks Evelyn to the front door. She looks at him with her large eyes, purse clutched in her hands. Once more she is wearing the dress she wore last night, though it seems strange in the early morning, out of place, and it’s wrinkled from having spent the night on the floor. Most of her makeup has been rubbed away and her pin-curled hair is a frizzy mess. Her chin is pink and raw from kissing him, from rubbing against his sandpaper-rough five o’clock shadow.

She looks beautiful.

He touches her arm as he pulls open the door.

‘Sorry about this,’ he says.

She smiles. ‘It’s probably better this way. I can sneak into my room without anybody seeing at this hour.’

‘I’m glad you’re not upset.’

‘Will you call me?’

‘When I get this resolved.’

‘What are you gonna do?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Call me.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want a cab?’

‘It’s only a few blocks.’

She turns and walks down the stairs. He watches her go. When she’s out of the building he closes the apartment door and sets the deadbolt. He puts his forehead against the wood and stays there a moment before turning to face the room. He walks to the dining table and picks up the note, unfolds it and looks at the gray lettering on the white page. It was typed on a typewriter in need of ribbon replacement. The ‘t’ is cocked to the right, making it look a bit like a malformed ‘x’. The ‘h’ sits higher than the other letters. The note says:

$1000

1:30 p.m.

535 Sou t h Grand Ave.

645

He unless was. Unless you give me money. It almost always comes down to money, doesn’t it? Money or love. But there was never any chance this would be about love. What he can’t figure out is, why the paper moths? Why the coyness? Why not simply brace him? Is it someone he knows? He thinks it must be. It must be someone he knows. He worked with a lot of people when he was doing comics, writers and artists, and it could be any one of them. That could be the reason for the paper moths. The man behind this maybe doesn’t want to reveal his identity. Maybe if he did reveal his identity the threat would vanish on the air, like a lover’s promise.

And he still finds it difficult to believe the district attorney will actually come after him for negligent homicide. He might try to pin something like that on James Manning, but Manning runs the whole publishing enterprise. Eugene’s a nobody. He isn’t worth going after. Except for this — he wrote and drew the story in question. If his name came out he could very well end up a codefendant, couldn’t he? Of course he could.

Of course he could.

These are strange times. Living in the shadow of the atomic bomb. Politicians pointing in every direction and shouting communist. Baseball desegregating despite Baton Rouge and other southern cities banning Negro players from their fields; fights over race down at Wrigley Field when the Los Angeles Angels play the Hollywood Stars. Church groups all over the country burning comic books and blaming them for juvenile delinquency. Psychologists claiming they incite violence. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine still only a hope while kids continue to die. Flying saucers being spotted in the sky across the country while the military denies any responsibility. The world is as frightening as it’s ever been and only getting worse.

And when people are scared, anything might happen.

So Eugene has no answers to his dozens of questions and having no answers he knows not what to do. There are too many unknowns.

You don’t stand on a ledge and leap into darkness. You shine a light into the shadows to see what’s below you.

Could he simply ignore the note? Crumple it up and throw it into the trash and pretend he never received it?

And then what? Wait for something to happen? Wait for the police to come pounding on his door with their guns drawn?

Or maybe he’ll throw the note away and simply go on with his life. Maybe a month from now he’ll stop expecting something terrible to happen; he’ll stop waiting for gray clouds to blow in. Thoughts of the threat will fade into the background, like a radio heard from three blocks away, and he’ll eventually be deaf to them. Five years from now he’ll have forgotten about it altogether.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He looks at the clock. He has to leave for work in twenty minutes.

He tosses the note onto the table.

He tells himself he needs to get dressed and out the door, but for a long time he can’t do anything but stand there and look at that piece of paper.

Then he finds he can move. He turns and heads down the hallway.

2

Evelyn walks down the third-floor corridor. It’s lined with freshly polished shoes, a pair outside nearly every room. She feels a great urge to scuff them all, to walk by and drag her heel across their shining leather tops. That would kink a few mornings. The thought puts a sour smile on her face, but she doesn’t do it. Instead she walks to Lou’s room and knocks.

Cursing, the creak of a bed, a grunt that means what or who is it.

She tells Lou, open the door.

She’s glad she woke him. She hopes he just got to sleep after nailing that envelope to Eugene’s front door. Hopes he was having a good dream and she pulled him out of it. She feels awful about what she’s doing to Eugene. She’s done worse to other men, but she liked none of them the way she likes him. She knew she shouldn’t get attached to the man — he was a mark, nothing more, and from the beginning he was going down — but maybe you can’t help who you get attached to. It doesn’t matter. It won’t stop her from doing her job. Just makes it unpleasant, that’s all.