Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

‘You must be hungry.’

‘No,’ Eugene says, backing away. ‘No.’

But then he’s against the wall and can back away no further.

‘You haven’t eaten for months,’ the cannibal says, pushing the beating heart toward his face.

It smells of iron; it smells of blood.

He turns his head away.

‘It’s the only way out,’ the cannibal says. ‘You’ll see. Eat.’

Then: a strange knocking sound from within the walls. The floor drops out from under him and he’s swept into a brief blackness before sitting up in bed.

Someone is knocking on the hotel-room door. It must be Evelyn.

What time is it? He picks up his glasses and puts them on. He looks at his watch to see it’s just past midnight.

He hadn’t planned on falling asleep. He was only going to lie down a moment, exhale some of this tension he feels. But he did fall asleep, and he’s now disoriented. He feels lost, detached from everything that’s happening. He isn’t ready for this. He isn’t at all ready for this.

Doesn’t matter what he’s ready for. Evelyn is here. It’s time.

He inhales, exhales.

It’s time.

He gets to his feet, turns on the lamp. As well as the rest of the room it illuminates a roll of duct tape, a pair of leather gloves, and his Baby Browning. They sit beside one another on the room’s rickety dining table.

How’s he going to do this?

He doesn’t want to hurt Evelyn but needs her immobile, and the only way he can think to get her that way is with a fight. She won’t simply sit still while he tapes her up, and he can’t hold a gun on her to force her to, because if he’s close enough to tape her up he’s close enough for her to take the gun away and turn it around on him, and she would. This is the business she’s in. He’s a mere tourist.

She knocks again and says his name.

‘I’ll be right there.’

He picks up the pistol and tucks it into his pants.

He walks to the door, pulls it open.

Evelyn stands on the other side, the black night behind her. Her red hair frames her pale, slender, reptilian face. Her blue eyes are large and glossy with alcohol. Her red lips are moist. She smiles when she sees him.

‘How’d it go?’

‘Why don’t you come on in?’

‘You’re starting to trust me.’

She steps into the room and walks to the bed and sits down. She kicks off her heels and rubs her feet against one another and splays her toes as much as her pantyhose will allow. He closes the door and puts his back to it. He stands looking at her and she looks back smiling her beautiful-ugly smile.

She pats the bed beside her with a slender-fingered hand.

‘Let’s talk,’ she says.

He thinks of the pistol tucked into his pants.

Pull it out, Eugene, use it to smash her nose to smithereens. Tape her up while she’s incapacitated. It’s going to get ugly eventually, you might as well start it ugly. Do it now before she suspects anything. This is your best chance and you know it.

He walks to the bed and sits down.

She puts a hand on his thigh, rubs the flat of her palm against his leg. Even through the thick fabric of his pants her touch brings goosebumps out on his flesh.

‘How’d it go?’

‘He has a shirt with blood on it in his suitcase. He also still has the typewriter he typed the blackmail note on. Typewriters have distinctive prints, same as people. And the police must’ve picked up the note from my table when they searched my apartment, so they’re sure to put them together. And I put the knife in a drawer.’

‘You wore gloves?’

Eugene nods.

‘Good. Then it’s all set up.’

‘It is.’

‘We can call the police tomorrow and end it.’

Just do it, Eugene. If you don’t want to hurt her face, take the gun out and hit her in the back of the head. Hit the soft spot at the back of her skull and knock her out. Do it and get it over with. There’s no sense in prolonging any of this.

He nods. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Then tonight is ours,’ she says. She rubs her hand up the inside of his thigh to his groin. He pulls away.

‘You’re drunk.’

‘I want to feel close to you, Gene. We’re almost on the other side of this and I want to feel close to you.’

She leans in, puts her mouth against his mouth. He can taste the whiskey she’s been drinking, both sharp and earthy. At first he doesn’t respond to her kiss, tells himself this can’t happen, but it does happen, and he finds himself pushing his mouth against hers, biting her lip. He loves her taste and her scent. She smells of that flowery perfume of hers and beneath that sweat and salt and sex. He reaches to her neck and strokes her smooth skin. Then moves his hand down her chest, across her breasts, feeling them through the fine thin fabric of her clothes.

You’re being stupid, Eugene. You need to get on with this. You let her seduce you you’ll fall in love with her all over again and won’t be able to follow through with it. Then where will you be? Prison, that’s where. Or dead.

She reaches her hand into his pants and stops, pulls back from the kiss blinking at him in surprise. She removes her hand from his pants. In it, his pistol. She looks down at it for a time with an unreadable expression on her face, then smiles.

‘You won’t be needing this anymore.’

She leans over and sets it on the nightstand.

‘Now where were we? Oh, that’s right.’

She pushes Eugene so that he falls back on the bed. He picks up his head as he lies there and looks toward her. She gets to her feet, reaches up under her dress, and pulls down her pantyhose. She almost falls as she pulls them around her left heel and kicks them away while hopping on her right foot, but manages to catch herself on the edge of the bed before going down, and laughs at her own clumsiness. Once she regains her balance she stands and looks at him smiling.

Her eyes full of knowledge she’s ready to impart.

2

Evelyn steps forward, looking at this man lying before her. He’s beautiful and intelligent and mean enough that she might not destroy him as she’s destroyed others who came before. She can be a hard woman and cold, has long suspected her heart dead or absent, but he’s brought feeling to that previously numb part of her. She can imagine a future with him, backyard cookouts, angry fights over trivial matters, makeup sex. She can imagine bearing his children. Their boys will be hellraisers and their girl will be a heart-breaker. Like she was.

Now that this is almost finished she allows herself to believe in the possibility of that future. She knows things can still go wrong. She knows the future is unpredictable. But it seems to her things very well might work out.

She allows herself to believe in the possibility.

Her biggest concern is Daddy. If Eugene isn’t wanted for those two murders, or convicted of them, Daddy will consider him a problem; he knows too much, and people who know too much about Daddy’s business tend to die.

They’ll have to leave before that can happen. They’ll have to pack their bags and go away, take a ship across the Atlantic, live in Paris or London.

They’ll think of something together.

But first they get through this. First they clear Eugene’s name.

They can worry about what comes after once there is an after.

She leans forward and puts her hands on his knees and runs them up the inside of his thighs. She unbuttons his pants and pulls them down to his knees, smiling to herself as he gasps. She leans forward and kisses his slightly protruding stomach, runs her tongue along the line of hair leading to his belly button. The stink of his sweat is strong, but she likes it. He smells like man. She strokes his penis and feels it stiffen and grow in her hand and likes that feeling of power. She did that with her mere touch. She puts her mouth around him and tastes salt and teases him with her tongue.