Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

7

Once it’s finished Sandy tucks the gun into his pants. He turns and looks at the detention facility in the distance. He doesn’t ever want to go back there. He won’t go back there. The deputy’s dead. This man who was trying to kill him, for reasons he doesn’t even understand, is also dead. Nothing is keeping him here. There’s no reason to stay, but there are reasons not to. If he stays he’s in danger. Someone knew he was here and tried to kill him. They might try to kill him again. But if he’s going to get out of here he needs to get out of here now. Another car is bound to come along soon.

He glances once more at the wreck on the side of the road, at the killer lying beside it, then turns and starts walking. He walks faster and faster until the walk becomes a run. Away from the detention facility. Away from all of this. He knows the city is miles from here. He knows he’ll have to hitch a ride to get there. But he knows too that first he needs to get some distance between himself and this wreckage. He needs to get some distance and he needs to get out of these clothes.

It feels good to run.

It feels good to draw great breaths of air.

It feels good to get away from the detention facility.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do once he gets back to the city. He wants to go home. He wants to tell his mother he loves her and sleep beside her. But those are baby thoughts, and he can’t afford to be a baby anymore. He knows he can’t go home, no matter how much he wants to.

He’s on his own now.

1

Carl stands naked over the bed for a moment and looks down at the sleeping woman who lies upon it. She’s on her side, one of her arms tucked beneath her pillow, the other stretched across the bed as if feeling for the man who should be lying there. Her blonde hair is splayed across her pillow. Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted. The blankets were kicked to the foot of the bed during the night, but she’s covered in a thin sheet to the waist. Her upper half is bare. Her small breasts hang slightly, the left resting in her armpit, the right hanging toward the middle of her chest, which is marked by a small patch of freckles. Only hours ago his mouth was on those breasts, on that stomach, buried in the woman’s sex now hidden beneath that sheet. It’s difficult to understand how it happened. But it did, and part of him is glad it did. Maybe most of him is glad. It felt strange and wonderful to be close to a woman again. Several times while they made love he thought of his dead wife, and in the end he wasn’t able to orgasm, but that didn’t seem to be the point, neither for him nor for her. Being close to another human being was the point. He slept the night through lying beside her. He slept with his back to her and she had her arms wrapped around him and he could feel her breasts pressed against his back and her heart beating there as well like a small bird fluttering.

It made him feel, for a time, almost human.

But now he feels as though it was a betrayal. His wife is dead, but her spirit still occupies their house, and he has yet to face it. He has yet to say goodbye.

But it was the cramps and the sweating which pulled him from her bed, and the urge like a rash in his mind needing salve.

He picks up his pants from the floor and steps into them without bothering to fasten the button. He grabs his coat from a chair in the corner and walks out of the bedroom, down the hallway. He looks out to the living room where Candice’s new couch sits, a blue couch with red stripes. He walks to the bathroom and closes the door.

He doesn’t want to do this here. He wants to be normal. He wants to cook eggs and bacon and sit across the table from Candice while they eat breakfast and talk about nothing, flipping through the paper, chuckling about something amusing in one of the comics. But what he wants doesn’t matter. His legs are cramped. He’s covered in sweat. He feels sick to his stomach.

He drops his pants and sits on the toilet. His guts come rushing out. He either can’t force out anything or else he has diarrhea, there’s no in-between. And there’s that itch at the back of his brain. That itch that demands attention. That itch that will not allow him to focus on anything else until it’s scratched.

Goddamn it, he misses his wife.

Goddamn it, he wishes he could have a relationship with someone new without fucking it up and without it feeling like betrayal.

Maybe someday. He hopes so. But not today.

He wipes, checks for blood, flushes, and sits back down. He grabs the syringe box from the inside pocket of his coat. He looks at the inside of his arm, at the puncture wounds dotting it. He’s glad it was dark last night when he and Candice undressed one another. He’ll have to put on a shirt before she wakes up.

He opens the syringe box.

2

Candice sits up in bed. She’s glad the space beside her is empty, though she hopes Carl hasn’t yet left for work. She simply wants a few minutes to wake up. She wants to brush her teeth and wash the makeup from her face. Usually she washes it off before bed. Last night that didn’t happen. She’s certain that with her makeup smudged as it is she looks a bit like an out-of-focus picture, and she doesn’t want him to see her like that just yet. They haven’t known each other long enough for that level of comfort.

It’s been a long time since she’s shared a morning with someone new, and she hadn’t planned on such a thing happening today. Despite the fact she told him on the phone there could be nothing between them, she knew she had feelings for him; she told him there could be nothing between them because she did have feelings for him, and she didn’t think she was ready to step into something new, and she didn’t want to sabotage whatever this was — if it was anything at all — by hurrying into an affair so soon after she lost her husband. She feels raw. Despite the fact that she’s holding herself together, she feels perpetually close to a breakdown. But she doesn’t regret that it happened. It felt right in the moment and good, and she needed something that felt good after all the bad she’s suffered. Even if this morning turns out to be awkward she won’t regret last night. Even last night had its awkward moments, but despite them, or because of them, it felt wonderfully human. Last night she felt like herself for the first time since Neil was murdered. It made her wonder where she’d been.

This morning she must again deal with this mess her life has become. She must drive down to the district attorney’s office to sit with Sandy while he’s coached on his testimony. She must discuss the terms of Sandy’s deal with Markley and her lawyer, with whom she’s only spoken once before. If everything’s in order, then paperwork can be signed, making the arrangement official.

But last night let her know that this isn’t all she can have. There’s something beyond this, even if she isn’t yet there. Last night was a glimpse of it. She hopes, though her hope is a cautious one, that Carl might take her hand and help lead her there. Maybe she can help him too.

She gets to her feet, finds a pink nightgown hanging over her door, and slides it over her head. The material is night-chilled and as it slips over her body it brings out gooseflesh on her arms.

She walks to the living room.

‘Carl?’

No response.

She wanders through the living room and the dining room to the kitchen, but the kitchen too is empty. A brief but intense sadness overwhelms her, like a wave crashing on the shore and then quickly retreating. He left without saying goodbye. Maybe he left a note for her somewhere. Or maybe he simply stepped out to get some fresh morning air. There’s almost nothing finer than a spring morning after it’s rained.