Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

She walks to the living-room window and looks out. She doesn’t see him, but she does see his car, which means he hasn’t left after all. Simply seeing his car parked out there on the street causes a smile to touch her lips.

She turns from the window and makes her way to the bathroom. She has to use the toilet. She hopes it doesn’t burn when she pees. The first time she urinates after sex is sometimes less than pleasant. She might have a urinary-tract infection. It’d been so long that she’d forgotten she often gets them after first making love with a new partner. She supposes she’ll know soon enough.

The bathroom door is closed. She gives it a tap with her knuckles, says Carl’s name, and when he doesn’t respond pushes the door open.

As the door swings wide she sees flesh, sees Carl sitting on the toilet, smells the stink of shit, and starts to pull the door closed with sorry on her lips. But before the door can latch she stops. There was something strange about what she saw. Carl didn’t look up at her with surprise in his eyes, didn’t look up at her at all. He just sat there, slumped. There’s something very wrong about that.

Slowly she pushes the door open again.

‘Carl?’

Still he doesn’t move. His legs are sprawled out in front of him, feet jutting from wrinkled slacks, pale and gnarled. The toenails are yellow. His head is tilted down, chin resting on his chest. His eyes are closed. Drool hangs from his open mouth. Spittle clings to the patch of hair between his pectorals. It runs down his pear-shaped stomach.

A needle hangs from his left arm, a glass syringe.

She looks from that to his face and understands.

She thinks of her first husband, Lyle, always drunk; controlled by the bottle. Often he’d barely manage to stumble home before passing out on the lawn in his own sick. He couldn’t hold a job. He was married more to his addiction than to her, and of course he finally chose it over her. You need to quit or leave, Lyle, that’s your choice.

Then goodbye.

No. She will not be anybody’s mistress. She will not be second in anybody’s life. She’s been through too much. She’s worth too much.

She walks into the bathroom, stands over Carl. She says his name, and when he doesn’t respond she says it again.

He picks up his head and looks at her. He smiles.

‘Candice,’ he says. ‘G’mornin.’

‘You need to get out.’

‘What happened?’

‘You need to get dressed and you need to leave.’

‘What?’

‘Now,’ she says.

‘What did I do?’

‘What did you-’

She stops. She leans down and pulls the syringe from his arm and holds it up in front of his face.

‘This is what you did. I’m not having that in my life. I’m not. I won’t.’ She throws the syringe down and it shatters on the tile floor. She feels the sting of tears in her eyes, and blinks repeatedly, wanting to hold them off, wanting to get control of her emotions. She exhales.

‘You need to go,’ she says again. This time she says it calmly.

3

Carl looks down at the shattered syringe on the bathroom floor. He can see through the shards to the black and white tiles on which they lie. He looks up at Candice. She glares down at him angry, her brow furrowed, her mouth a narrow line. She shouldn’t be so angry. She should smile instead. He should tell her that.

‘You. . you should-’

‘Get out of my house.’

She wants him to leave. He supposes it’s best if he does. They can talk about this later. He’ll call her later and they can talk about it then. He’ll make her understand that it’s not how it looks. He isn’t an addict. He would never let himself become an addict. He needs to explain that to her. He’ll do it later, though. Right now she’s too angry to listen to him. Right now she’s too angry to listen to reason.

‘Okay,’ he says, and gets to his feet.

The syringe box, his bindle, his lighter, and his spoon all fall to the floor.

‘Oh.’

He leans down and picks up his belongings. He puts them into his pockets. He looks at Candice again. She stands with her arms crossed in front of her chest. When he tries to make eye contact she looks away.

‘Okay,’ he says again.

He walks to the bathroom door. He can hear glass cracking beneath his feet. He supposes he can feel it too, though it doesn’t feel like much. It doesn’t really feel like he can feel it, but he guesses he must.

‘You’re cutting your feet.’

He looks behind him, sees a trail of blood.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ll clean it up. I’ll go get something to clean it up.’

‘Just go,’ Candice says.

‘Okay. We’ll talk later.’

‘I don’t want to talk later. I don’t want to see you again.’

He doesn’t respond to that. There is no response. He turns and walks to the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed and brushes glass from his feet, picking shards from his flesh when he needs to and setting them on the night table. Then he puts on his socks and his shoes, his shirt and his tie. At first he cannot find his coat. After a few minutes he remembers he took it to the bathroom. He doesn’t want to go back there. Candice is angry. He’ll leave it.

He walks to the living room. His fedora hangs by the door, the lone fruit on the hat tree. He plucks it from where it hangs.

‘Shit in it and pull it down over your ears,’ he says to himself before setting it on his head. He looks over his shoulder. Candice stands in the hallway entrance, arms still folded over her chest.

Blood fills his shoes.

He takes a step toward her, thinking maybe he can hug her goodbye. If he hugs her, if she can feel how much he cares for her, she’ll forgive him. She’ll soften in his arms and forgive him and everything will be fine.

But before he can take a second step she’s shaking her head.

He turns around without responding and unlatches the deadbolt. He grabs the doorknob. It’s cool to the touch.

He pulls.

4

Candice watches him walk out the door. As soon as he’s gone she slides to the floor and puts her face in her hands. That was hard to do. He showed her kindness, he made her feel understood, he made her feel there might be something good on the other side of all this shit she’s been wading through, but she will not be second to an addiction. She’s been that woman before and she’ll not be her again. She simply won’t.

After a few minutes she forces herself to stop feeling sorry for herself. She wipes at her nose with the back of her wrist. She gets to her feet. She walks to the bathroom and looks at the mess on the floor. She needs to clean it up, then she needs to get showered and dressed.

She still has to meet with the district attorney and her lawyer.

At least she gets to see Sandy today. That will be the single bright spot on what she thinks is bound to be an otherwise black square on her calendar.

5

Carl sits in his car and stares through the windshield at nothing, blank as a blackboard during summer vacation. After five minute he blinks and thoughts once more begin passing through his mind. He starts his car. He looks down at his feet. Blood is leaking from his shoes. He probably shouldn’t have stepped on that glass. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t think about it.

Candice shouldn’t have thrown it on the floor.

He puts the car into gear and pulls out into the street.

He considers heading straight to work. He doesn’t want to be late. But he knows he can’t do that. He knows he has to be careful. If he isn’t careful other people will find out something’s wrong. He needs to clean up, bandage his feet. He thinks he can fix things with Candice. He just needs to make her understand that he isn’t a junkie.