Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

That cocksucker.

He walks to his truck and slides in behind the wheel. He starts the engine. It rumbles to life.

He’s gonna make that son of a bitch pay, and unlike this morning, ain’t nothin gonna stop him. He won’t be able to live with himself if he lets the district attorney get away with what he’s done. He won’t feel like a man.

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

2

To get home Seymour Markley should pull out of the parking structure and turn left on Main, heading north. He turns right instead. He knows better than to do this. He knows what it will lead to. He should stop immediately. He should turn his car around. If he doesn’t turn his car around he’ll end up doing something he regrets. He’s certain of it. Nearly certain of it. Nearly certain, yes, but it doesn’t have to be that way. He might merely stop in somewhere for a drink or two. He could absorb a little atmosphere and, having done that, head home to his wife, whom he loves very much. But he won’t go straight home. Today has been stressful, today has been nothing but the world collapsing down around him while he tries desperately to hold it up, and he needs to forget it. He needs to go somewhere where nothing is required of him. It doesn’t mean anything untoward will happen. It doesn’t mean anything at all. Besides, he already called home and told Margaret he was working late. If he goes straight home she’ll think he was lying when he called. So he has to follow through. He’ll have a few drinks and leave. If he wanted a whore he could go to any number of places in Hollywood. Or he could rent a hotel room, make a phone call, and have one delivered. That isn’t what he’s after. What he’s after is a few drinks in a relaxed environment, and that’s all. He works hard. He deserves that much. No one would say different.

He cannot believe he’s doing this. After how close he came to losing his career and his wife he cannot believe he’s doing this.

Maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s merely driving somewhere to get a few drinks. Maybe he just wants to sit in a room where no one will make any demands on him. Every time the phone rings it’s a problem or a question. Every time there’s a knock on his office door it’s the same. He goes home and his wife wants to know if she can buy some new curtains she saw in a catalogue and she talked to Ophelia down the street, how about they invite the Loorys over for dinner and cocktails on Friday, they’re such delightful people. A man deserves reprieve.

No one would say different.

He parks on Washington Boulevard in front of a crumbling stucco building with

The Pink Flamingo

hand-lettered across the facade above the door and a painting of the same just to the right of it. He steps from his vehicle, feeling excited about the evening’s possibilities while simultaneously denying they exist. He’ll simply drink his drinks and watch the crowd and enjoy the music. He can do that.

He pushes into the Pink Flamingo and stands for a moment by the door.

The place is dimly lit. A few lighted signs hang on the walls advertising Schlitz and Ballantine and Budweiser. A jukebox in the corner plays Billie Holiday’s rendition of ‘Mon Homme’, her silken voice explaining how she dreams of a cottage by a stream with her man. Two couples are dancing to the song, but it’s early yet, and except for them and five ladies lining the bar like birds on a telephone wire the place is empty.

He walks to the counter and orders vodka with a twist. He sips it and glances toward the five ladies at the bar. He smiles at them and they smile back, one even waving like a beauty queen on a float, then he turns away and carries his drink to a table in the corner, only a few feet from the jukebox. He likes the music loud, he likes it to overwhelm him. It makes thinking impossible, which is just what he requires of these evenings: the cessation of all thought.

This is the third time he’s been here, and he knows there’s a room in the back where the ladies will take you if you respond correctly to their signals. If you don’t, they’ll simply ask you to buy them drinks and flirt and touch your thigh suggestively. But really, the choice is yours.

He sits down and sips his vodka. The couples on the floor continue to dance. They smile as they dance, looking natural, looking like they’re having a swell time; you’d never know from looking at them that their arrangement is a financial one.

Buy me another drink, sugar?

That isn’t anything he’s going to do tonight.

He’s here for a few cocktails and nothing more.

The Billie Holiday song ends and the jukebox changes records. The needle drops once more and after a moment of crackling there’s a blast of horns. The horns give way to Lorenzo Fuller singing ‘Too Darn Hot’.

One of the five ladies at the bar, a blonde woman with her lips painted burgundy, a blonde woman in a black dress that hides none of her curves, peels herself from the stool on which she’s been perched and sways her way toward Seymour.

‘I remember you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Mm-hm.’

She sits in a chair across from him, her leg brushing against his leg.

‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

‘It’s a free country.’

‘That’s what I hear,’ she says, ‘but it seems these days everything has a price tag on it. How’d you like to buy me a drink?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seymour says, feeling a familiar fluttering in his stomach and an anticipatory heat between his legs. He licks his lips. ‘I wasn’t really planning on meeting anyone tonight.’

‘That’s why one should never plan.’

Seymour lets his hands drop to his lap and pulls his wedding band off his finger. He hates himself. He hates himself for this. He knew this would happen. He knew he shouldn’t come here exactly because this would happen.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘sure.’

‘Oh goody,’ she says, ‘I’m very thirsty.’

She waves to the bartender. He nods at her.

Seymour slips his wedding band into his waistcoat’s watch pocket.

3

Leland pulls to the curb about half a block from the Pink Flamingo and watches the district attorney step from his car and head into the place. He can’t believe this son of a bitch. He gets blackmailed for his whoremongering and only a week later, a week and a day later, drives to a joint whose B-girls go horizontal for ten dollars and a please. The dumb motherfucker deserves to get blackmailed — a big-shot lawyer and not enough brains in his head to keep a parrot operating at full speed.

He deserved what he got and he deserves what he’s gonna get too.

And if he thinks Leland Jones will slink off with his tail between his legs, he’s got another think coming.

Leland grips the steering wheel with both fists, grips it tight, and twists as if wringing out a washcloth. He clenches his teeth. He watches the door. The leather of the wheel feels grainy in his grip.

That son of a bitch. That motherfucker.

4

Seymour Markley, still fully dressed but with his belt undone and his fly open, lies on his back while the blonde woman whose name he’s already forgotten, with her dress hitched up around her waist, lowers herself onto him. He grips the cot on which he lies with one hand while with the other he reaches up and strokes one of her breasts. He hates himself. He hates himself for what he’s doing. Why did he let it come to this? Why did he let this whore lead him back here and push him down, reach into his pocket and pull money from his wallet, unzip his fly and stroke him? Why did he let her roll a condom onto his penis? Why did he let her lower herself onto him, wrap herself around him? Why did he allow her to make him betray his wife? He knew it would come to this. He never should have allowed it to come to this. He never should have come here. He knew better. Oh, God.