Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

He isn’t.

But nobody else can find out what he’s doing.

He drives toward the boarding house. He’s going to be late for work, but that’s better than showing up looking like he does right now.

1

Leland Jones stands in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. He wears no shirt, only a pair of dark pants. He isn’t muscular, but his torso is tree-trunk solid and tanned from mowing the lawn shirtless every Saturday. His hair is wet and finger-combed back. His nose is swollen and purple. His eyes are black.

2

Two days ago, on Saturday, he was bashed twice on the head with a shower rod. He fell face-first to the wood floor and broke his nose. He was knocked out. When he came to, the house was empty. He woke and called out to Vivian but received no response. He got to his feet. Blood ran from a gash on the back of his head. It ran down his neck, staining the collar of his shirt. More blood ran from his face. He felt wobbly and unbalanced. He walked to the couch and sat down. He stared at the ceiling and held his nose so blood wouldn’t run from it. Instead it ran down the back of his throat. He had no idea what had happened. He walked through the door saying that everything went smooth as a baby’s backside and next thing he knew he was on the floor. He called to Vivian again while sitting on the couch, his voice sounding strange with his nostrils pinched shut, but knew she wasn’t home. She’d had a funeral to attend.

He couldn’t believe she’d leave him lying on the floor bleeding. It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t like her. It didn’t make any sense at all.

Then it did make sense.

She was mad at him. She’d told him you don’t put your hand in the same till twice if you don’t want to lose your fingers when the drawer slams shut. She’d told him that, but he’d ignored her, and now he was sitting on the couch with a broken nose and a gash in the back of his head.

The son-of-a-bitch district attorney had sent someone to do this to him as punishment for the blackmail. That’s what had happened. That’s what he thought had happened. But two hours later, when Vivian returned, he learned he was wrong. The district attorney hadn’t sent someone here to beat him up. The district attorney had sent someone here to get any pictures Leland might not have handed over, and that someone had left with all the pictures, his retirement.

His first thought was to go after Markley, but Vivian talked him out of it. They’d pushed him and he pushed back — it was the way of the world, downright Newtonian even — and Leland shouldn’t have expected any different. If he pushed again, Markley would push back again, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone. Anyway, they could take more pictures. She still had a pussy, after all, and he still had a camera.

He agreed to let it go. He was angry and he wanted to do something but in the part of his mind where emotions didn’t rule he knew she was right.

And he knows it still.

3

He blinks at his reflection and wonders briefly if he might be able to use Vivian’s makeup to cover the bruises on his face. He has a meeting with a producer at Monocle Pictures about a speaking part in a Western movie. His character would have a duel with the film’s hero and get shot down. The guy’s given him background work before. Leland had pictures that ensured at least twelve weeks of work every year, that’s the agreement they came to, but a speaking role is a different matter.

He walks to the bedroom and looks at Vivian in bed with her eyes closed.

‘You asleep?’

She opens her eyes to slits. ‘Not anymore.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘What?’

‘Think I should try to use some of your makeup to cover up these bruises?’

‘What for?’

‘I got a meeting with a producer.’

‘What kind of part?’

‘I have a duel with the hero and get shot down.’

‘No, keep the bruises. They make you look like a ruffian, which is probably what they want. Now shut up and let me sleep.’

‘You don’t think-’

‘Shut up and let me sleep. I worked last night, in case you forgot.’

He puts on a pearl-button shirt and a bolo tie. He slips into socks and black alligator-skin boots. He perches a Stetson on his head, grimacing as it slides over a bruise. When all that’s done he walks back to the bathroom and looks at his reflection once more. He decides Vivian’s right. The bruises make him took tough. He scowls at himself, squinting and looking mean, then the scowl breaks into a toothy grin.

He grabs his keys and walks toward the front door.

4

Leland parks his powder-blue Ford pickup truck on the south side of Sunset Boulevard, glances into the side-view mirror, sees the street’s clear, and swings open the door. He steps out into the morning air, boots thudding on asphalt, inhales the lingering scent of yesterday’s rain, and slams the truck’s door shut. He heads inside, feeling good.

He slaps his hand on the counter and smiles at the pretty little secretary sitting behind it. She was painting her fingernails fire-engine red as he approached but now she looks up and smiles back at him coolly, no trace of the smile in her eyes. She screws the top back onto her bottle of nail polish.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘It’s Leland Jones, darlin, and good mornin to you.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘You can pick up that phone and let Woodrow Selby know that Leland Jones has arrived and is ready to speak with him about a part. I’m an actor.’ He gives her his most winning smile.

‘You and everyone else in this town.’

She picks up the phone, says a few words, and hangs up again.

‘You can have a seat,’ she says. ‘Mr Selby will call down when he’s ready.’

‘Is it gonna be long?’

‘Do I look like Nostradamus to you?’

‘Don’t know, I never met him.’

‘He’ll call when he’s ready.’

Leland’s first instinct is to snap at the woman, but he knows that’ll get him nowhere. They’ll have an argument, he’ll get angry, and his day will be ruined. He doesn’t want that. He wants today to be a good one. He needs it to be.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says, touching the edge of his hat.

He walks to a couch against the wall opposite and falls into it. He leans back, settling in. Tilts his hat down over his eyes. Pictures himself in a dusty one-saloon town, standing in the middle of a dirt road, facing some dogooding sheriff in a white hat. They stand twenty paces apart, elbows bent, hands at the ready mere inches from the butts of their weapons, fingers twitching. Leland’s got a smoldering cigarillo in his teeth. He gnaws on it, squinting at the man standing across from him as the man squints at him. Leland’s got the advantage. The sun’s behind him. A wind kicks up. Something rattles to the left, a pie tin rolling along the boardwalk. White-hat’s eyes shift that direction. Leland takes the chance, draws. Not fast enough. His barrel hasn’t even cleared his holster when he feels something like a sledgehammer thudding against his chest. He stumbles back two steps, looking down at his blue shirt blossoming red. It’s all over now. It’s-

The telephone rings.

Leland pushes his hat up, away from his eyes, and looks across the room to the secretary. She picks up the telephone, says yes sir, okay, and hangs up.

‘He’ll see you now.’

Leland gets to his feet.

5

He steps into daylight. He’s been ruined. That son-of-a-bitch district attorney has ruined him. Forget speaking roles in movies. He’ll be lucky if they let him shovel the horseshit from the dusty streets after a day of shooting. It’s over, he’s over. The district attorney didn’t stop when he had someone bash Leland in the skull, and he didn’t stop when he got the pictures. He only stopped when he made sure Leland was ruined. The son of a bitch is giving the photographs back to the men pictured in them. Leland has had these men scared for years, made them feel like nails with a hammer about to fall, and now they will see there is no hammer, no danger, and they’ll resent the threat.