The Last Tomorrow

SIXTEEN

1

Seymour Markley sits alone in a booth. He looks out the grease-spotted window to the street but doesn’t see them. He looks around the diner for the second time, scanning the faces of the other patrons, but none of them are familiar. They didn’t inadvertently cross paths. They aren’t waiting for him at some other table. They simply haven’t yet arrived.

He takes a sip of orange juice, straightens his tie. Though he doesn’t plan to eat, couldn’t eat if he tried, he wipes the water-spotted flatware off with a napkin and sets each piece down parallel to the others, fork, knife, spoon.

He can’t stand that these people have turned this around on him. Despite the fact that he might be able to advance his career because of it, it bothers him. He’s an important man. He’s an important man and he’s being made to wait by unimportant people: by scum: by a whore and her cuckold husband. It’s almost too much to take.

The door swings open and he looks toward it.

A fellow in a cowboy hat walks into the diner wearing dark pants, a checkered shirt with pearl buttons, and a bolo tie. On the pinky finger of his right hand he wears a blue topaz ring. His mustache is thick and long, hiding his mouth, and the ends are waxed to ice-pick points. Seymour feels like he knows him from somewhere, but can’t imagine where, unless he’s put him in prison before.

But he doesn’t think that’s it.

Behind the cowboy walks Vivian in heels and a brief dress.

The cowboy scans the room. Then, tipping two fingers toward Seymour, he says in an oddly cheery voice, ‘That him, darlin?’

‘That’s him.’

The cowboy walks over and drops his hand like an axe in front of Seymour’s face. Seymour blinks at it.

‘Leland Jones. Wasn’t sure I recognized you with your clothes on.’ He smiles.

Seymour lets the hand hang for a long time, then says, ‘You can put that away. I’m not going to shake.’

‘Well, shit, that’s all right, sugar. I wasn’t dying to wring out your sweaty dishrag paw anyways.’

He slides into the booth. Vivian sits down beside him.

‘Hi, Seymour.’

‘We’re not friends, whore. Do you two have the pictures?’

Leland Jones leans in, smile gone. ‘You best watch the way you talk to my wife.’

‘Is your wife not a whore?’

‘My wife is a beautiful woman, and you’ll respect her. What she does for work don’t have nothin to do with who she is.’

Seymour knows suddenly where he’s seen this man before. He remembers him from Fort Apache, and is almost certain he’s seen him in other Western movies as well. He didn’t have any lines that Seymour can recall, he was just human background, but yes, that’s why he seemed familiar.

‘Do you have them?’

‘What’s that?’

‘The pictures.’

Leland Jones reaches into his back pocket and removes an envelope that’s been folded in half. He tosses it onto the table. It lands between the salt shaker and a bottle of hot sauce. Seymour blinks. Then reaches out and picks up the envelope, pulls it open, looks inside. Three Polaroid pictures. He flips through them twice, frowns.

Looks up at Vivian and says, ‘The first picture you showed me isn’t here.’

Vivian looks confused. ‘It’s. . what?’

‘Yeah,’ Leland Jones says, looking at him with blue eyes, his relaxed way of speaking stretching the word like verbal taffy, ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

‘Leland, what are you doing?’

‘Yes, Leland,’ Seymour says, ‘what are you doing? We had an agreement.’

‘You and the ladies had an agreement. But these pitchers don’t really belong to the ladies. They belong to me.’

‘We talked about this, Leland.’

‘All right, darlin, I get you’re mad, but let Leland take care of business.’

‘I held up my end of this agreement,’ Seymour says.

‘I appreciate that. Candice is a hell of a woman and she don’t deserve to have no pain in her life. That’s why I’m willing to give you that last pitcher for a mere hundred dollars. A bargain when you think about it.’

Vivian stares at her husband, clearly furious, her face white but for hot pink blotches on her cheeks, but she says nothing.

‘How do I know,’ Seymour says, ‘that once I pay for this last photo, another one won’t turn up? And another after that?’

‘I don’t mean to insult you, Mr Markley, but I don’t think Vivian had your pants down more’n five minutes before you was putting em back on. There just wasn’t no time to take a lotta pitchers.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

‘Then you’ll have to trust me.’

‘Trust a man who makes an agreement and then changes his mind when the other party has fulfilled his end of said agreement? I don’t think so.’

‘“Fulfilled his end of said agreement.”’ Leland laughs. ‘You are a lawyer, aren’t you? But last I heard Candice’s boy was still locked up.’

‘These things take time. The point is this: that last photograph has been paid for and I’m not willing to pay for it twice.’

‘I don’t see that you got a choice. I ain’t givin it back till you do.’

Seymour simply stares at him.

‘Tell you what, think it over. I’ll call your office at five o’clock and we’ll have us a little chat. Till then, I’ll bid you adieu.’

Seymour watches them stand up from the booth and walk toward the exit.

He doesn’t move for a long time.

2

Leland sits on the couch at home, staring at the television’s blank gray screen. Ever since they left their meeting with Seymour Markley Vivian’s been telling him what a goddamned idiot he is. You know the rule, Leland. You don’t put your fucking hand in the same till twice. Well, it isn’t his rule. He’ll grab as much as he can, and if that means two fistfuls instead of one, all the better.

He looks at his watch.

It’s time to call Markley. He knows what the man’s decision will be — he knew before he stepped through the diner’s front door and out into the sunlight — but he wanted to let him think it over. He wanted the man to realize on his own that he really doesn’t have a choice in the matter. He wanted to let it sink in.

Better to simply pay and be done with it. Better to put the situation behind him.

He knows what Markley’s decision will be, but he might as well hear it.

He gets to his feet and walks to the kitchen. He pulls the phone from the wall and puts it to his ear. He dials Markley’s office.

3

Seymour knocks on the blue door in front of him. A moment later a Negro woman pulls it open. She’s about thirty-five, and pretty, with broad cheekbones and a heart-shaped face. Her skin is very dark and smooth. Her hair’s been ironed straight and pulled into a tight ponytail. She’s wearing night clothes.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m not sure I have the right address.’

‘Well, who you looking for?’

‘Barry Carlyle.’

‘Oh, you’re Seymour. Barry said you might be stopping by tonight. Come on in.’

She steps aside and he walks into the apartment. The walls are covered in striped green wallpaper. The couch is green corduroy. An oak coffee table sits in front of it, glowing with candles. A large oak record player sits against the wall. Bebop music plays, a trumpet screeching wildly while brushes slide against a snare drum.

‘Thank you,’ Seymour says as the woman closes the door behind him.

Barry, drying his hands off with a dish towel, walks into the room from the kitchen. ‘Seymour, I see you found the place. This is Maxine, in case you haven’t gotten to the introductions yet. She helps out around the place. I apologize for the delay but I was peeling shrimps. Maxine gets squeamish about that part of the process. Pulling the heads off, you know. All that orange head fat. Anyway, have a seat.’

Seymour’s never seen Barry like this — no coat, no tie, shirtsleeves rolled up, top button undone, suspenders hanging loose around his hips. He almost seems a completely different person.

‘Have a. . yes, of course.’ He sits down on the corduroy couch.

‘Would you get Seymour a — what would you like to drink?’

‘Water’s fine.’

‘Would you get Seymour a glass of water, hon?’

‘Sure,’ Maxine says.

Barry sits on the couch beside Seymour and tosses the dish towel onto the table.

‘She helps out around the house?’

‘That’s right.’

Seymour clears his throat. ‘That’s all?’

‘If I’m not mistaken, Seymour, you’re here to ask a favor.’

‘Of course. You’re right.’

‘What is it you need?’

‘I have an appointment tomorrow with Leland Jones. I’m to give him money, he’s to give me the last, uh, compromising photograph he has. I’d like — and I know this is a big favor — I’d like you to search his place while he’s out with me, make sure he doesn’t have any other photographs. I want this to be the end of it.’

‘Seymour, this goes well beyond-’

‘I know that, Barry. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important. And, of course, if my career moves forward I’ll bring you along with me.’

‘Can’t it be someone who-’

‘I need it to be someone I trust. You’re someone I trust, Barry.’

Barry sighs, scrapes a bit of shrimp out from under his fingernail, wipes it on the dishrag. He stares thoughtfully at nothing. Finally: ‘Okay.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Just give me the address, Seymour.’

‘Of course.’

Maxine returns with a glass of water.