The Last Tomorrow

NINE

1

Seymour Markley, in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, pads barefoot across his hardwood floor, down the wide book-lined hallway, through the tastefully decorated living room, to the thick, hand-carved maple front door. He grabs the glass doorknob and pulls, wondering who could be knocking at this hour on a Sunday morning.

At first he doesn’t recognize her. There’s a part of his brain that knows he should — the short brunette hair; the vacant blue eyes; the full, soft-looking lips — but the context is wrong, and at first he has no idea who she is. He blinks at her through his wire-framed spectacles, lips parted but soundless. He’s about to say something, yes, can I help you, I think perhaps you’re at the wrong house, when recognition comes. It comes all at once, like a fist to the gut.

He glances over his shoulder to make sure Margaret is still in bed, to make sure she isn’t standing in the hallway watching this, then looks back to the woman standing on the other side of the threshold. He believes her name is Vivian. That’s what she calls herself at work, anyway. She works as a B-girl, and sometimes more, at a place called the Sugar Cube. Out on the street behind her, in a green Chevrolet coupe, sits another woman. He recognizes her as well, but has never heard her name spoken aloud. Or if he has he’s forgotten. The woman in the car appears to have been crying very recently. She looks at them, at Seymour and Vivian, through the passenger’s-side window. She has blonde hair. Her face is pale. She looks like a ghost.

Or maybe Seymour’s simply been unnerved by seeing these women out of context. He feels slightly dizzy.

‘What are you doing here? How did you find my house?’

‘I’m sorry to bother you at home,’ Vivian says, touching his arm briefly, ‘but we need help.’

‘You can’t be here,’ he says, glancing over his shoulder a second time, ‘you simply cannot be here.’

‘But I am here, and I’m not leaving until you agree to help.’

‘With what?’

‘Candice’s boy is in some trouble.’

‘Who’s Candice?’

‘The woman in the car. She works with me.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Legal trouble. Why else would I bother you on a Sunday morning?’

‘What did he do?’

Vivian pauses, looks hesitant.

‘What did he do? You didn’t come here to not tell me.’

‘He killed a man.’

‘What?’

‘I know. But you’re gonna help us.’

‘Or what,’ Seymour says, feeling anger start to swell within him, ‘you’ll tell my wife? Do you really think she’ll believe you? You’re just a whore. I can claim it’s nothing but an attempt at blackmail. Why don’t you get the hell out of here?’

‘Nobody has to believe me, Seymour,’ Vivian says. ‘I have pictures.’

‘You have. .’ He blinks at her. His eyes feel dry, itchy.

She mimes the taking of a photograph, says, ‘Click.’

Seymour cannot think. There’s a hitch in his mind. All the gears have locked up. Then, after a moment, after that strange mental hang-up has resolved itself, his brain starts working again and thought returns to him.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But we can’t talk here. I’ll meet you and your friend-’

‘Candice.’

‘I’ll meet you and Candice at nine o’clock. There’s a diner called Fred’s not far from here. We’ll talk there.’

‘Nine o’clock?’

Seymour nods.

‘You better show up.’

‘I will,’ Seymour says, and pushes the door closed.

He turns around and puts his back to it. He looks down the length of the hallway, toward the room where his wife still lies in bed. He knew better than to do what he did. He always knows better, every time. But something in him, some base part of him, thrives on that knowledge, and rather than stopping him it pushes him forward. Into places where a man can buy anything so long as he has enough money folded into his wallet. He lets the women lead him upstairs, or to the back room. He watches them undress. He lets them come to him, not at all assertive himself, lets himself pretend he didn’t know what would happen, what it would lead to. That’s part of the game. Most of the time he has to be so much in control that he likes giving it up on these occasions. But it also makes him feel disgusting to do what he does. After it’s over he feels sick. He fears syphilis. He fears gonorrhea. He comes home and scrubs his body in scalding water and tells himself he will never do that again. It’s filthy and he’s filthy for doing it. He avoids his wife for a week, sometimes two, to make sure he hasn’t contracted anything that he might give her, though it’s less out of concern for her wellbeing than out of fear that he’ll have to explain to her why she must get penicillin shots. But despite the way it makes him feel, despite the guilt, a couple months later he’s in his car again, driving, telling himself he’s not going where he knows damn well he is.

Sometimes he manages to restrain the urge for as long as six months, but never more. He hates himself for it. Immediately afterwards he hates himself, but the mind is a strange thing, and when the venereal diseases do not arrive, when it’s clear that God hasn’t punished him for his transgressions, the guilt and shame fade away.

But it looks like God’s punished him after all, doesn’t it? He’s certain he never told Vivian his last name, nor would he ever have told her his job. So how did she find him? How does she know who he is, what he does?

Don’t be a fool, Seymour. Your name and photograph are in the newspaper on a regular basis. You were elected to office. You’re a public figure who failed to keep his private vices private.

God didn’t do this; you’ve brought it upon yourself.

He walks down the hallway and pushes into his bedroom. Margaret, in bed, opens her eyes and smiles at him sleepily.

‘Who was it?’

‘Barry. Looks like I’ll have to go into work for a few hours.’

‘But it’s Sunday.’

‘I know. You’ll have to go to church without me.’

2

Candice sits in a diner with a mug of coffee cupped in her palms. Outside she hears cars rolling by, horns honking. Back on Bunker Hill her next-door neighbors keep chickens in their backyard for eggs, and usually by this time of morning she’s spent the last hour or two listening to their rooster greet the sunrise. Neil hated it, swore he would poison the goddamn thing, but she’s always liked the rural images it put in her mind: farmhouses and green tractors parked in fields. It reminds her of her youth.

Right now she misses that sound. She misses the comfort of it.

She looks down at the black liquid in her cup. She can’t believe her son did what she knows he did. The coffee is thick as crude oil. She thought she understood the relationship Sandy had with his stepfather but she had no idea. Steam rises from the surface of the liquid. What kind of mother misses that much hatred, that much pain? If she’d known, if Sandy had told her, she would have changed things. She would have made Neil move out. She bought the house with her ex-husband, Lyle, but she hasn’t seen him in seven years, and though his name is still on the papers at the bank, she’s made the last eighty-five payments herself. It’s her house. It never belonged to Neil. If she’d known how bad it was for Sandy she would have done it, she would have made Neil pack his bags and leave.

She tells herself that, but it isn’t true, is it? Sandy did tell you. Maybe he didn’t tell you in so many words, but he’s only a boy, and in a dozen other ways he let you know what was happening, and you ignored it. You told yourself it would work out. You were selfish, you wanted Neil around, you needed someone to lie beside you in the dark, so you ignored what you knew was happening. You pretended what was happening wasn’t.

She picks up her coffee and takes a sip.

She glances over to Vivian sitting in the booth beside her, looking out a dirty window to the street. Families in their Sunday best heading to church, or maybe to breakfast before service begins.

Without turning away from the window she says, ‘He’ll be here.’

‘Do you think he’ll be able to do anything?’

‘He’s the district attorney. He can do something.’

‘Do you think he will?’

‘If he wants to keep his wife. If he wants to keep his career.’

‘How could I have let this happen?’

Vivian looks toward Candice. She remains silent for a long time. Then she says, ‘You didn’t let anything happen. It happened, that’s all.’

‘Neil’s gone. My son’s gone. They were everything, everything I had.’

‘Sandy isn’t gone.’

‘How could he do something like this? My sweet little boy.’

Vivian shakes her head. Her eyes tell Candice the only answer she has. I don’t know.

Candice doesn’t know either.

‘Drink your coffee.’

She does.

After a long time Vivian says, ‘I think there’s a place inside everybody where it’s always nighttime. A place we keep locked up. But if the latch breaks and lets the night out. . maybe shadows fall on everything.’

‘What time is it?’ Candice says.

‘He’s late.’

3

Seymour parks his car on the street and steps out into the bright morning, all blue sky and white sun and not a cloud in sight. He slams his door shut, glancing once at his reflection in the driver’s-side window and dusting a bit of lint off his sleeve before stepping up onto the sidewalk and, two arm-swings later, into the diner. He’s wearing a somber blue suit and a hand-painted tie from George’s Haberdashery out on Ventura. He wants these women to understand that he’s a man of importance and will not be pushed around. Which is also why he’s walking through the door ten minutes late. He’s a man who sets his own schedule.

His list of campaign contributors during his last run for DA was a veritable Who’s Who in Los Angeles. He’s taken on gangsters and state senators. He’s considering a run for Mayor against Fletcher Bowron. He’ll not be pushed around by a couple whores. He intends to make that clear; he intends to make that very clear.

He will not be pushed around.

The diner smells of burnt cooking grease and breakfast foods — eggs, sausage, fried potatoes. You can feel the airborne grease particles on your skin as soon as you step into the place. A thin layer of it coats everything in here, including the windows, making the world outside look smudged.

He scans the room and sees the women sitting at a booth, a cup of coffee on the table in front of the one he doesn’t know. A fat-calved waitress with her hair in a pony-tail walks over and refills her cup.

Seymour walks to the table and slides into the booth across from the two women.

‘Can I get you something, hon?’

‘Two poached eggs, a side of fruit, and a glass of orange juice.’

Seymour isn’t hungry but he wants to give the impression that he’s not been affected by this morning’s threats, that he isn’t worried about a thing in the world. He’s far too important to be worried about such piddling affairs as these, inconvenient to his day though they may be.

‘All right.’ She sets down the coffee pot and scribbles down the order on her pad. ‘Either of you ladies gonna get any food?’

Vivian shakes her head. ‘No, thanks.’

The other woman only stares down at her coffee.

‘Ma’am?’

She looks up. ‘What? Oh. No, thank you.’

‘All right,’ the waitress says, picking up the coffee pot.

Once she’s gone Seymour looks to Vivian and says, ‘I’m here only to eat. Your threats will get you nowhere.’

Vivian licks her lips, pauses, then finally says, ‘Okay. We’ll leave you to your food. You can see the pictures in tomorrow’s paper.’

‘You’re bluffing.’

Vivian raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

‘If you actually have pictures, which I doubt, you won’t make them public. If you do, your husband will find out you do more than merely flirt for money. Are you really willing to ruin your marriage simply to ruin mine? I don’t think so.’

She looks down at the wedding band on her left hand. He noticed it this morning. She might take it off for work, but it was there when she knocked on his door. She spins it around with her thumb until the stone is centered on the back of her finger. She smiles.

‘I won’t be ruining my marriage,’ she says, looking up at him with amusement twinkling in her eyes. ‘Who do you think took the pictures?’

And with those words the courage he spent the last three hours building up, building up like a dam against the flood of worry, is gone. Visions of newspaper headlines fill his mind. The end of his career. His wife walking out the door. His wife whom he loves. His wife to whom he is good but for these occasional betrayals. Betrayals that hurt her not at all so long as she doesn’t know about them.

He stares at the women sitting across from him. He remains silent.

The waitress brings out his breakfast.

He glances down at the food, pushes the plate away.

After a while he says, ‘Do you have the pictures here?’

‘I have one of them.’

She removes a small rectangle from her purse and slides it across the table. An instant photograph from a Polaroid Land Camera. His face is visible in the shot, as is the length of his body, his pants unbuttoned, his erect penis jutting from the fabric. And Vivian as she kneels before him. He remembers what her breath felt like against his skin in that moment, warm and moist and very, very close. He remembers how quickly his heart was beating. The numbness in his fingertips.

His cheeks feel hot and his head throbs with pain. He closes his eyes. He thinks of the Polaroid Land Camera they have at home. He gave it to Margaret last year for her birthday. They took it with them on vacation to the Grand Canyon last summer. They had a stranger take their picture. A minute later they stripped off the negative and there they were. That picture even now is on the mirror above the dresser. There are a dozen others littered throughout the house.

He will never again be able to look at any them without thinking of this. All of those captured moments ruined.

He opens his eyes.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘What do you want me to do?’

PAPER MOTHS