No Tomorrow

by Jake Hinkson

  I stared at the hallway until she came back and sat down across from me again.

  I said, “What do you mean?”

  “What? About what?”

  “What do you mean when you say I left town in a hurry last time?”

  With a quiet smile, Amberly looked around the restaurant, at the children running around one table, at a young man and a young woman holding hands across a couple of greasy, empty plates.

  She turned back to me. “Right after you and I…spoke at my house, you returned to your room and collected your things and left town. Heard you didn’t even say goodbye to Claude.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  She leaned back and the smile fell away. Her eyes searched my face. “It’s the nature of the place, Billie. You were quite literally the only stranger in town. When the only stranger in town leaves, everyone knows. Everyone knew you left that night. Right now, everyone knows you left town this morning. There is every good chance that everyone knows I left with you.”

  “But no one saw us leave.”

  The waitress brought over our food. When she left, Amberly said, “Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. But if just one person came up to the church to say hello today and didn’t find me there, then with you leaving town…”

  “People will talk.”

  “In all likelihood, they’re talking already.”

  I spooned some sugar into my coffee as she tried her beans. “Oh my. The OK Café has mastered the art of cowboy beans.”

  “Were you mad when I left town in a hurry last time?”

  “I was hurt.”

  “I know. You said that. But were you also mad? I can only imagine that you didn’t look kindly on me leaving you like that.”

  “I didn’t run and put your name on the top of the prayer list.”

  “But were you mad?”

  She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “I suppose I was, Billie. Don’t you think I had every right to be?”

  I muttered something in the affirmative and tried my food. The OK Café had not mastered the art of the ham sandwich.

  “Why are you asking about that day?” she asked.

  I chewed my food slowly. After I swallowed, I took a sip of coffee. She watched me the whole time, waiting for an answer. “I don’t know,” I said. “You just mentioned that day. Made me wonder if you got mad at me.”

  “I was hurt. I suppose I was mad. Is there any other reason you have for asking me?”

  “No.”

  She nodded, and we turned our attention to our food.

  After a few moments of eating in silence, I asked, “Is there really a list?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A prayer list at church.”

  “There is. People would announce things they wanted us to pray for during the week. I’d write it down. During the week I’d read the list to Obadiah and he’d pray over each name.”

  “What kinds of things were on the list?”

  “Oh, many things. Florabel Stoker always wanted us to pray for her husband Vern.”

  “What was wrong with Vern Stoker that couldn’t be fixed by having a wife named Florabel?”

  “He’s a drunk. We prayed for quite a few drunks, on pretty much a weekly basis.”

  “Did it ever work?”

  “Opinions differ.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “About prayer?”

  “I don’t know. About God, I guess. Did you believe what…he preached?” I didn’t say Obadiah’s name. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  She put down her fork and sipped some Coca-Cola. “If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

  “What do you think about the whole God business, then? Up until a few days ago it was your whole life, wasn’t it?”

  Her hands opened as if to catch raindrops as she tried to formulate the words. “I don’t know what to say about it. I guess everything comes down to people in the end. Some folks are just full of kindness. It doesn’t come from anywhere, it’s just in them. Other people are full of meanness. And that meanness doesn’t come from anywhere, either. Praying to God is just praying that the best in people will win out. That’s my thinking.”

  I had nothing to add to that, so this time when we turned back to our food I let the silence stand. I just watched Amberly. It was odd to see her here, in a dinner in another town, in another state. She seemed different – though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how. As I watched her chew her food, I had the oddest realization: I’d never seen her eat before. We’d covered up the murder of her husband, and we’d driven away together to chase some vague dream of happiness together, but I’d never seen her eat.

  As she sat there and chewed her food across from me, I was repelled by her. It didn’t happen slowly or in stages. I simply watched the rotation of her smooth jaw and I felt a revulsion at the gross animal quality of her body. It was nothing she did. She ate, as they say, like a perfect lady. But she wasn’t a perfect lady. She was an animal chewing some food that she’d convert into a shit she’d take somewhere down the road.

  Strange, the thoughts that come to you, sometimes.

  “What are you thinking, Billie?”

  “What?”

  She was looking at me.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Just … how happy I am to be with you. I can’t believe you’re here.”

  She smiled. “Me too. It’s like a fairytale.”

  ~ ~ ~

  We didn’t find a motor lodge that night. We drove for hours. It seemed as if the world had turned off. The sky went dark. No stars, no moon. Even the snow gradually all disappeared. The world was dark and the air was sharp and cold.

  I stayed behind the wheel. I suppose I was too scared to stop, really. Scared that we’d pull over and a police officer would pull up and say, “Are you those two women who ran away from Arkansas this morning?”

  So I kept driving. Somewhere in the night, however, I started nodding off and Amberly shook me. “Billie, we have to stop.”

  “Nowhere to stop.”

  “Just pull off the road and we’ll sleep for a few hours. Then we can get going again and I’ll drive.”

  I wanted to argue, but I wanted to sleep more.

  We were on two-lane blacktop, so we looked for dirt roads off to the side that didn’t seem to lead to any house. They were difficult to find, because the headlights of the car only reached a few feet into the dark and we’d see a road only as we were passing it.

  After we sped past a dusty break in the trees, I slowed down. “Turning around,” I said. I made a U-turn off the road and back to the spot I’d seen. It wasn’t a road or a trail, just a natural divot in the tree line about thirty or forty feet back from the road. I backed into it and pointed the front of the car toward the road.

  Amberly pulled a blanket out of the back and covered us. I kissed her and she kissed me back, but she stopped me when I slid my hand up her skirt. “We’re not far enough back in the woods for that,” she said.

  “You want me to find another place to park?”

  “If you want to do that, then yes.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I allowed that she was making good sense. Then I debated whether to start up the car and drive down the road until we found something more secluded. I’d only been thinking about it a minute or two when I realized that Amberly was asleep.

  ~ ~ ~

  Over breakfast, she asked, “Are you mad at me this morning?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because you’ve barely spoken a word to me. I thought maybe you were the kind of person who’s a little grumpy before they get their coffee, but now you’ve had yours and you still haven’t spoken more than five words to me.”

  We were in another roadside diner. This one, as near as I could tell, was simply called Diner. That’s what the sign out front said, and it’s all the menu sai
d.

  I lit a cigarette. “You fell asleep last night. Do you recall that?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I just – you should know this about me if we’re going to be together – I just pass out when I go to sleep. It’s just like” she snapped her fingers “that. Did it hurt your feelings?”

  “No. Well, a little perhaps.” I lowered my voice, “I thought we were going to…”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Oh. Mm. Yes, I’m sorry, Billie. Like I said, I’m like an electric light. I just switch off.”

  “I could take that personally, you know.”

  “I know, but you shouldn’t. I was simply exhausted. It was a very tiring day.”

  “That’s true,” I allowed. I shrugged. “I was asleep within a few minutes myself.”

  “Good. You needed the rest more than I since you drove all day. Today, however, I insist that you let me do some of the driving.” She reached over and patted my hand, an innocent gesture to anyone who might see it but one that sent an electric shock through my body when she said, “And we’ll make sure we stop someplace with a comfortable bed.”

  We stared at each other over the breakfast plates.

  “Maybe we should get on the road then,” I said. “I want to get to that comfortable bed as soon as possible.”

  ~ ~ ~

  We were on Route 66 somewhere outside of Amarillo when Amberly said, “I can’t wait to get to Hollywood.”

  While she drove, I’d been sitting in the passenger side with my shoes off, staring out the window at the flat brown Texas earth rolling buy, smoking cigarettes and thinking about nothing in particular. Now I turned to her and said, “Oh, yeah?”

  She drove with both hands on the wheel, sitting up straight. “I’ve never been there. Seen photographs in the magazines, and I’ve seen it in the movies. But I’ve never been there.”

  “I thought you didn’t go to the movies.”

  “Well, not after I married Obadiah, of course, but I used to go quite often when I was a girl. I just loved Myrna Loy and William Powell. My mother took me.”

  “I never heard you mention your mother.”

  “No, I suppose you haven’t. She was a very beautiful woman and quite a lady. She died in 1936, far too young.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She nodded. “It was a terrible loss, one I’ve never recovered from.” Amberly clutched the wheel, whitening her knuckles. “My father, however, recovered quite quickly. He remarried within a year to a woman I detested and who detested me. She drove a wedge between us – though in fairness we had never been close. Father had always wanted a boy and was disappointed when my mother could only give him a single daughter. When this imposter took my mother’s place she bore him a son within the year. After that, Father had no use for me. I wanted to attend college, but he wouldn’t hear of it. So I did the only thing else I could think to do. I got married. His name was Edward Vincent Penn. A nice man, quite a bit older than me; he owned a store. We were married a few years, good years. He died in 1943. Sitting at our kitchen table, reading in the paper about the battle of the Kasserine Pass. Remember, in Africa? He was sitting at the table reading me something about it, and I was in the kitchen and he stopped in the middle of a sentence. I walked in and he was dead at the kitchen table. When I buried him, it turned out we had no money. I was destitute. I met Obadiah a few weeks later.” She relaxed her hands and her knuckles softened into pink again. “Now here I am, going to Hollywood with Billie Dixon.”

  “I’d say you saved the best for last.”

  “Tell me about it, about Hollywood.”

  “It’s sunny. It’s a place that basically sells sunshine. Everyone is good-looking.”

  “Really?”

  “Well,” I laughed. “No, not really. I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. It’s a place where the world sends all its pretty people.”

  “That sounds delightful.”

  God, it wasn’t delightful at all. Maybe I should have told her the whole truth, which was that it’s a factory town that mass produces pictures of youth and beauty, so pretty young girls go out there chasing a dream and they end up getting turned into commodities. If they’re lucky, they actually get to be in a movie or two, and then maybe they break out and then maybe they become Joan Crawford, but most just get passed around between the studio men like some kind of perk. Every lower tier executive and hack comedian in town who fancies himself a ladies man can basically buy, bribe, or steal his share of aspiring actress pussy. The casting couch is where dreams go to die, but what’s a girl gonna do except hit her knees or go back to Arkansas? No pretty young thing ever showed up in Hollywood just praying she was going to wind up with Bob Hope’s dick in her mouth, but more than a few have suffered that fate.

  “You know,” Amberly was saying, “mother always said I was pretty enough to be in the pictures.”

  I smiled at that and turned back to the passing land in time to see a hawk swoop down into a ditch. It happened so quickly, the hawk must have killed something. A rat, maybe, or a gopher.

  “You said so, too,” Amberly added.

  “I said what?”

  “That I was pretty enough to be in the movies.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  As she drove, she never turned her head to look at me, but just then she glanced at me. “You weren’t just saying that, were you, Billie?”

  As it happened, I couldn’t recall saying those words exactly, but they sounded like a line I might use. I was from Hollywood, after all, and telling girls they were pretty enough to be in the pictures was a line as old as the pictures themselves. “Of course not,” I said. “You’re a lovely woman, Amberly Henshaw.”

  “Mm, we’ll have to fix that Henshaw bit, I suppose. My maiden name was Fleming. Do you think Amberly Fleming sounds like a movie star?”

  “Like a movie star?”

  “Yes.” Now she turned her head and looked at me. She only looked at me a moment before she remembered herself and turned her attention back to the road, but in that moment I saw something on her face I had never seen before. Innocence. She thought we were going back to Hollywood and she was going to be a movie star.

  “Yes,” I said. “Amberly Fleming sounds like a good name for an actress.

  Her brow furrowed. She chewed her lip. “Good,” she said.

  ~ ~ ~

  Before we got to the New Mexico state line, we pulled over at a filling station to get gas and use the ladies room.

  As I waited for Amberly to come out, I stood at the edge of the lot and stared out at the scrubby desert. As far as I could see, all there was to see was dirt and rock and scrub bushes. My beautiful native state.

  Amberly walked up behind me, and I nodded at the scenery. “I’m always nervous to be in Texas,” I said. “It’s like I’m afraid of running into someone I’ve tried to avoid.”

  “Things will be better once we get to Hollywood.”

  “Yes.”

  I turned around. The wind tousled her hair, but her face seemed tight. “Whenever I mention Hollywood,” she said, “you get quiet.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  She crossed her arms and chewed her lips.

  “I lost my job.”

  “You lost your job with the movie studio.”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean? You… Can you get it back?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You knew this yesterday. Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

  “I don’t know. I was scared.”

  “But how am I going to…” She trailed off, turning away as if to watch the words drift across the cool barren desert. Or maybe she just preferred the rocks to my face. I watched her walk out among the rocks and dry underbrush.

  Behind me, the fellow working at the station lounged in the doorway and stared at
us. He was rawboned and young with buzzed brown hair and a dimpled chin. He was far enough away that he probably couldn’t hear what we said, but he didn’t seem to think anything of openly watching us for his amusement. Men did that, stared at you as if you were there to be stared at.

  I picked up a pebble and threw it at him. Startled, he glared at me, but he retreated into the station.

  When I turned around, Amberly was walking back to me.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “You drive.”

  We got it the car. She didn’t say anything as Texas slipped by. We’d be in New Mexico soon. Sometime tonight we’d stop there, but I didn’t think we’d get the comfortable night we had hoped for just a few hours before.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We stopped for the night outside the town of Brittle Rock, New Mexico at the Days And Nights Motor Lodge. The place had clearly been around for a while, but from the road the bungalows looked like they might be spacious and clean. Out front, anchored by a thick cement base, was a twenty foot sign with a smiling neon yellow sun and a snoozing neon blue moon.

  Amberly sat in the car while I went inside to register our stay.

  The manager’s office was a freestanding pueblo-style building with red clay walls and a tall cactus standing out front like a sentry. As I pushed inside, a bell jingled on the door. From a cracked door behind the front desk, a little voice called out, “Just a minute.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Presently, a little woman shuffled out. She wore glasses, her hair up in a bun. In her left hand she held a dime paperback with her finger marking her page.

  “Evening,” I said.

  “Good evening,” she said, taking out the registry with her free hand. “I suspect you’d like a room.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “How many beds?”

  “Two, please.” We only needed one, but it was best to keep up appearances, especially on the road.

  “Luggage?”

  “Some. We can get it.”

  “I can get Delmer in here. He’s in the backroom napping. Won’t take but a second.”

  “We can get it. We’re traveling rather light. No need to wake him.”