The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon

by Sara Beitia

  It was a phrase Albert’s mother used—usually a gleeful “his goose is cooked!” as the family car passed another car getting pulled over, or when a contestant hit “bankrupt” on Wheel of Fortune. As when watching the Wheel, Albert found the phrase totally square. Yet it was a phrase stuck in his vocabulary, maybe because he’d heard it a million times over the last seventeen years. When it popped into his head, it was in his mother’s voice. Square or not, the mental picture was a satisfying one: Kogen’s face turning tomato-red, popping beads of sweat and then big, wet blisters, as he sat stewing, cartoon-style, in a big pot of boiling water.

  “Hello there, Albert.” A pleasant voice got Albert’s attention. “Got a minute?”

  By now Albert was a few blocks from Lily’s house. He was so intent on picturing Kogen’s slow, torturous death as he walked along the curb, teetering between people’s lawns and the gutter, that he didn’t hear the low hum of the expensive import car that pulled up alongside him.

  Startled, he looked up to see Kogen, steering his car at about three miles per hour and leaning on his elbow out the open window. It was as if just thinking about the guy had brought him forth, like Satan. Looking at him smiling from the window, Albert found it extra offensive that this creep looked so … harmless. Friendly, even. He was like some handsome, middle-aged catalog model.

  “Did I startle you?” The guy laughed, as if reading Albert’s mind.

  “Yeah, actually,” Albert replied, possibly a bit sharper than was wise. Trying to dial back the hostility, he added, “What’s up, Dr. Kogen?”

  The smile stayed on Kogen’s lips. “Give you a ride somewhere?”

  “No thank you. But thanks.” Albert walked a little faster.

  Kogen steered closer to the curb, forcing Albert into someone’s juniper bush. He stopped the car. “Come over here, then, and let’s chat a minute.”

  Albert picked himself out of the bush and stood at Kogen’s open window. The journal—Lily’s journal—was still nestled awkwardly in his waistband, its spine poking into his spine right at the small of his back. It felt like a little dagger back there. As he began to sweat, Albert was sure the journal was sending out some sonar or radar or magnetic resonance that Kogen would pick up on.

  “You seem like a stand-up fella, Albert, despite rumors around town to the contrary. But I’m curious: what were you doing this afternoon in my daughter’s room with my other daughter?”

  Albert gaped at him, surprised. He spluttered for some appropriate response.

  “I only ask because she seemed upset. What did you do to her?”

  “I didn’t do anything to her! And we weren’t doing anything, either. We were just talking.”

  “Talking.” Kogen repeated the word as if it tasted sour. By now the smile was gone from his mouth, too, and suddenly he was the catalog guy no more; now he was getting down to some business.

  “We’re friends,” Albert said. It wasn’t really true, but the truth—the real nature of their (non)relationship—was nothing he could tell this guy. He almost added, Got any more dumb questions? but instead managed to spit out a terse, “Anything else?”

  “There is, actually,” Kogen said. He opened his car door and got out, a trail of leather upholstery smell coming with him. He stood very close to Albert. Though Albert was taller, Kogen had presence.

  Now Albert was seriously alarmed. He was losing his sense of the situation and wondered if perhaps they’d at last arrived at the place where Kogen had been directing this conversation all along. Albert refused to prompt him, determined to wait for Kogen to say whatever he had to say on his own.

  “I don’t think you’re being quite truthful with me. I’d really like to know what you were doing in my house. My house. Invited, were you?”

  “What?”

  “Did your friend Olivia invite you over?” Kogen studied Albert’s face, and whatever he saw made him smirk. “Don’t bother lying. I heard part of your conversation, and I’m pretty sure you know something about where Lily might be.”

  “You’re wrong,” Albert told him, wondering exactly what Kogen had heard or if he was bluffing.

  Kogen went on as if Albert hadn’t spoken. “So, I followed you. And here we are.” He spread his hands.

  “Guess you wasted your time, then,” Albert said. He wondered if the man was going to hit him or something. “I have nothing to tell you. I don’t know anything.”

  Kogen stepped closer. They were now nose-to-nose. Albert rocked his body forward just barely, determined not to give any ground.

  “Don’t you?” Kogen asked. Albert could smell the mint he’d probably just eaten.

  “Well,” Albert said, dropping his voice and forcing Lily’s stepfather to strain to catch his words, “I do know one thing. And there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about that, is there? You see, I know, you got it? And soon, so will everyone.”

  Kogen’s eyes were dead. Albert really expected the guy to take a swing at him now. But Kogen’s fists stayed down, even though they were white-knuckled. “Tell me what you think you know, and tell me where my goddamn daughter is.”

  “Stepdaughter.”

  “I don’t make that distinction.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.” Albert reached behind his back and skimmed a hand over the book under his shirt for courage.

  Kogen changed his approach. “You’ve been seeing Lily for a couple of months now, haven’t you? So you must be aware that the poor girl isn’t quite right up here.” He pointed at his own head. “She is, in fact, quite troubled. Well before the accident that caused her head injury—the accident she had at my clinic with a bunch of her delinquent friends where they almost burned the place down. Everyone knows I was a victim there. Being a stepparent is a thankless job, sometimes.”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  Kogen held up a hand. “Can we talk reasonably? Think about how things look—which is what matters. I don’t think the police are going to look favorably on my delinquent stepdaughter’s delinquent boyfriend breaking into my house to cause this family more trouble in an already difficult time. You’re already looking pretty bad in their eyes, mi amigo. Whatever you think you know doesn’t matter. Nobody is going to believe anything you say, being some nobody punk kid, while I’m a somebody with plenty of friends in high places. As for Lily … she has been a wild, unpredictable embarrassment to both her mother and myself. Any accusation, even if the little runaway turned up to make it herself, would look like the horrible girl was trying to cause her poor family even more grief.” He paused to let it sink in. “Do you get the position you’re in?”

  “I know exactly how things stand. I’m not sure you do. Let’s wait and see who’s right, yeah?”

  Kogen jabbed a finger into the middle of Albert’s chest. “Drop it, or I’m going to make your life unbearable. And I can.” He reached into the interior pocket of his jacket and Albert flinched, until he saw that Kogen held a cell phone. “Maybe I’ll just call the cops right now and report a break-in. Twenty dollars missing off my kitchen table.”

  Albert thought he was bluffing. He wished the guy would just do it … Olivia would back him up anyway. They could lay all their cards out right now. “Go ahead.”

  “Show me what you’re hiding,” Kogen said suddenly, grabbing Albert by the forearms. He lowered his voice. “I know you took something.”

  “Albert Luis Morales!”

  Albert heard his name, called in a furious bellow, even before he heard the growl of his mother’s beat-up old Ford as it rattled up behind Kogen’s sweet ride. His arms were suddenly free and Kogen backed up a pace. Albert’s mother’s face was furiously peering through the windshield, but he was still glad to see it under the circumstances. She was motioning for him to come to the car. He did. To his dismay, Kogen followed him.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded once Albert was within scolding range. “The school called me at work to ask why you weren’t there today. I had to take ti
me off and I’ve been driving around looking for you for over an hour!”

  Albert’s heart sank. “Mom, I—”

  She plowed on, really working up a head of steam, “And now I find you out on the street bothering Dr. Kogen!”

  Kogen stepped in. “Really, Mrs. Morales, it’s fine. We’re just having a chat.”

  Struggling to control her rage at Albert, his mother said, “I’m so sorry if he’s done anything distressing. My son is a good boy, but this thing with your daughter—well, you understand. We’re all upset about it.”

  “Please don’t waste a moment worrying on my account. Lily has a lot of problems and I think her association with your boy hasn’t necessarily been the best for him, in terms of influence.”

  Albert’s mother actually blushed. “She’s a lovely girl …I mean, I don’t want to speak ill …”

  She would have continued sputtering if Kogen hadn’t added, “But I think Albert and I understand each other now, don’t we, Albert?”

  “Go to hell,” Albert muttered.

  “Albert! That’s it—get in the car. Now. We’re going home.”

  Albert thought about dropping the dime on Kogen right then and there. His mother was so pissed at him right now, though, that if she found out he had skipped school to sneak into the man’s house, poke around, and actually steal something too, the last thing she would do before her head actually exploded would be to make Albert turn over Lily’s journal, sight unseen, apologizing for Albert’s behavior as she did.

  “No,” he said, letting this vivid picture dissipated. “I feel like walking.” He was too close to cornering Kogen to risk it now. He could wait a few hours, take a bit more screaming from his mother. It would be worth it.

  He turned on his heel and walked past Kogen, though not without a hard shoulder bump. In a low voice just for Kogen, he muttered, “Stay away from me unless you want to get hurt.”

  Lily’s stepfather gave him a hard clap on the back as he walked away and said in an equally low voice, “You’ve started a war you can’t win.”

  But Albert wasn’t so sure. Leaving both Kogen and his mother behind, he set off once more toward home, balancing his steps on the curb with a calm he didn’t really feel and a confidence that was at least half bluster. He was aware of his mother’s car a little ways behind him, where it stayed all the way home. He wasn’t looking forward to the next few hours and trying to explain himself to his parents. He’d had to do a lot of that lately, and they were definitely as tired of it as he was. Though he suspected that it wouldn’t dampen his mother’s enthusiasm for yelling—she had to be fuming as she chugged along behind him at five miles per hour—nor his father’s for using the words “unbelievable” and “dink.”

  It was all too much, and threatened to overwhelm him. His life these days sucked worse than he ever would have believed. But the spine of Lily’s journal was still poking him in the small of the back, reminding him what was at stake. And that was something.

  Albert might be the one whose strength is almost tapped by something as stupid as an asthma attack, but Olivia is the first to drain to zero.

  “Let’s stop a minute,” she says when they arrive in the town. They drop themselves onto a bench in the cove of a bus shelter. The best they can say about it as a resting place is that it’s dry, at least, and out of the wind. That’s good enough for Olivia. Within a few moments of what’s supposed to be a short break, she’s slumped against Albert, deep in sleep.

  He looks down at her upturned face, smashed into his shoulder. Snores and humid breath come from the open hole of her mouth. Placing a hand under her cheek, he lowers her down to the bench while scooting himself out from under her weight. She stirs a bit and tucks her feet up onto the bench, but she doesn’t wake up.

  Albert is very tired, too, but sleep is about as far away as Antarctica. Watching Olivia drop off like a little kid, he envies her the ability to do that. At least one of them is getting some rest.

  Maybe it’s because he’s tired, or maybe it’s an effect of constant worry, but when Albert closes his eyes he can see himself floating up above the bus shelter. He looks down and he sees himself and Olivia below. With their frizzled heads and rounded shoulders they look small and ridiculous, and definitely not what anyone would hope for when expecting the rescue to come riding in. They are just two teenagers slumped on a bench in the middle of the night, far from where they were going and still farther from home.

  Albert opens his eyes, and he is himself again. Pathetic.

  For a few minutes he lets himself just wallow in his misery. His legs bounce up and down in a jerky, nervous rhythm, and he has that speed-freak adrenaline that surges on the strangely alert other side of exhaustion. Unable to take it any longer, he stands up, and Olivia slumps farther down the bench as he does.

  “I’m just going to take a walk up the block and back,” he says to her even though she’s now asleep, totally beyond the reach of his voice.

  Albert has to move, that’s all—he’s too worked up to sit and watch Olivia sleep. If he just goes up the block and back he’ll be able to keep his eye on the bus shelter the entire time, but still work off some of his nervous energy. He’s afraid that if he doesn’t move his legs will give out on him, like machinery pushed until their springs pop and the whole thing jams.

  By this time of night, the town is shut down. Nothing seems to be open, and even the traffic light has gone from timed cycles of red and green to a steady, blinking yellow. Pacing the sidewalk in an unfamiliar town while the rest of the world sleeps, Albert is the loneliest he’s ever been.

  As he walks, his pace is purposely slow. There’s just this block and back to go, and he isn’t eager to burn through the only distraction he has while Olivia sleeps awhile. He doesn’t have anything to read, not even one of those free newspapers that seem to litter the street until someone actually wants one. He passes a thrift shop storefront with bars on the windows and old manikins in the shadows, and then the front of a narrow Chinese restaurant. When he comes to an alleyway and peers down its dark opening, he sees that all the brick buildings are squatty behind their tall fake fronts. He passes a couple more windows, all of them dark, of course, and comes to the corner. Since there’s no traffic, he’s able to cross.

  The other side of the street isn’t much, either. Albert walks by a heavy wood door set back in its building, a neon sign reading The Prospector buzzing over the dark entryway. He pauses there a moment, thinking he can hear a faint hum of music from inside. It’s a small sign of life that he savors for just a moment, even though he’s hoping no one comes staggering out of the place while he’s standing there like a dink. He glances toward the bus shelter to make sure Olivia is still fine.

  He passes a few more lifeless plate-glass windows, whatever goods inside them completely invisible in the dark, until he comes to a bank of windows that aren’t black. He didn’t notice it before because the light inside is only a dim gloom. Looking up, he sees a sign that reads The Rinse Cycle All-Nite Laundromat. There are banks of molded plastic chairs all along the window, and also opposite the wall of stacked washers and the bank of dryers. The black and white tiled floor looks gray in the bluish gloom of the two fluorescent lights still shining far in the back, next to the vending machines.

  The place isn’t exactly appealing, but it’s probably warm enough, and definitely better than a bus bench in February.

  Albert presses his face against the glass and sees just one person in the place—an older guy wrapped in a long scarf and wearing a stocking cap. He looks like he’s asleep, and Albert doesn’t see any laundry basket near him.

  Good enough. Time to retrieve Olivia and regroup somewhere warm.

  A flicker and a glow from inside catch his eye, and Albert sees a high wall-mounted television to his left, in the front corner facing the dryers. Onscreen, a man and a woman are sitting behind a desk and he figures the local station is replaying the ten o’clock news. The camera focuses in tight on the wo
man, a picture-within-the-picture hovering over her left shoulder. There are two still photos in the box next to the woman’s head. Albert sees the girl first, and she looks familiar. Next to the photo of the girl, he sees himself, a picture cropped from a framed snapshot of him and his father.

  Olivia Odilon and Albert Morales, their pictures right up there on the TV in the all-night laundromat.

  He can’t read the newswoman’s lips and there’s no caption under the pictures. And while he should’ve known people would be looking for them—not the least of which, the police—seeing their likenesses like that is badly startling.

  As he stares through the window at the TV screen, Albert has a sudden uncomfortable feeling that someone is right behind him. He whirls around, half-expecting someone to point from the television to him and back and yell for the police to come arrest the fugitive. But when he turns there’s no one there, not even a burger wrapper fluttering in the gutter. He is just as alone as he’d been a few minutes before.

  Quite jumpy now, Albert hurries away from the laundromat window and cuts a diagonal across the wide street between him and Olivia, a sudden superstitious dread driving him to hurry back to her.

  “Get your butt in your room and don’t come out until I tell you to.”

  His mother’s command drilled into Albert’s back as she followed him through the kitchen door once they’d arrive home—him getting there on foot, her just behind him in the car. When she spoke, her voice was cold. His mother was a no-nonsense type of woman, and although once in a great while she could be surprisingly cool about things, this was not one of those times.

  “I’ve just about had it with you,” she said, slamming a cupboard.

  Her tone was disgusted, something Albert had gotten used to the past four or five years. When his mother was like this—not just her regular exasperated bluster, but truly pissed off—her eyes became narrow lasers shooting out from under furrowed eyebrows, and her lips were pinched almost out of existence. Then there was her voice. Even though she’d quit smoking two years ago (it was an excruciating couple of months for Albert and his father), her voice still turned sandpapery when she was bitching someone out. Right now she was too angry to hit him with a lecture, but Albert knew that wouldn’t last.