The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  “Leela,” Rob exclaimed when he opened the door. Teeth white as snow. Hair like a catalog model. He offered her a double high-five. “You made it.”

  “You thought I wouldn’t?” she said.

  “And look at that, you brought wine. Little Miss Sophisticated.”

  Oh god.

  “I don’t even have a corkscrew. Hold on, my dad’s really into wine, let me ask.”

  Through the doorway she smelled weed, saw people drinking beer from cans. And she’d brought sauvignon blanc. What was she, thirty-nine?

  “Holy crap, Leela? How are you?”

  Within microseconds the Body had cling-wrapped itself around her own. And soon Meg was holding her arm as she told her about Rob’s parents’ retractable staircase to the beach. This came after describing an earlier surf session with Rob, explaining that she, Meg, was new to surfing, but Rob was an amazing, patient instructor. “The stairs go right down the cliff. Then they retract. You pull this lever. So weirdos can’t, like, walk up and rob the house. Talk about a good deal, right?”

  “It sounds amazing,” she confirmed.

  “You should totally come out with us,” Meg said, squeezing her hand. She hadn’t asked her a single question. “We’re going in the morning. You’ll love it. God, it’s so great to see you.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  “What?”

  “I mean tomorrow. Surfing.”

  “So what are you even doing here? I mean, back in town.”

  “I’m visiting my parents.”

  “Awesome,” said Meg. “Is it awesome?”

  “It’s so awesome,” Leela said. “Will you excuse me a second?”

  Back at Sandra’s house, her little haven, getting ready had not been easy. Awful quickly, her Claymore story was turning to shit. She had almost nothing of value. She needed a lot more, fast. The quotes she’d obtained weren’t interesting, the interviews hadn’t led to much. Her old math teacher. Some kids on the beach. And of everyone else she’d contacted, a hundred percent of them had refused to participate after the LA Times story appeared. No matter that she was local, she was one of them.

  More reporters arrived still. She’d barely slept three hours the previous night. Rapidly feeling her chances dwindling, her fate sliding out of grasp.

  And so, in a glimmering moment of drunkenness, only ninety minutes after she arrived at Rob’s garage apartment, she is on beer number four, a ridiculous number, trying to measure the circumference of the Body’s left butt cheek from ten feet away. Thanks to four factors: (1) She’d talked to nearly everyone in the room and no one knew anything about the Claymore Kids that wasn’t gossip or lies or facts she already had; (2) no one had any interesting connections to speak of; (3) four beers was about three and a half more beers than her usual number of beers; (4) drinking beer made her butt-cheek-crazy, it appears. In the same time, Rob had returned and fallen into deep conversation with the Body on a couch. So the two of them were hooking up. What a surprise. But who wouldn’t hook up with either one of them, or both of their bodies at once? Leela smiles. It encourages a guy to introduce himself. His name is Tim. Tim starts off interesting. He’s short and cute, he’s a skydiving instructor. Has she ever been skydiving? “Why would I?” Leela says. Wondering, does he know anything? She feels him out about the murders. He’s not interested. Somehow he finds his way to a monologue about how girls who wear lipstick are communicating an evolution of mating signals that date back to girl monkeys’ red genitals, and doesn’t she think so?

  Which is when she decides it’s time to call a car. Though she does briefly wonder about the shade of Meg Rosenthal’s vulva.

  “Leela, wait,” Rob calls from across the room, when she’s near the door. “Are you leaving?”

  “Thank you so much for inviting me.”

  “We’ve barely had any time to hang. Are you okay to drive?”

  She smiles.

  “Come with me,” says Rob. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  She trails him down a set of wooden stairs, to a room off the breezeway connecting to the main house. A large study. Someone’s office. He turns on lights that softly glow. The most prominent feature is a drafting table, lots of blueprints, file folders. She guesses one of the parents is an architect? Many bookcases, big windows. Outside it’s pitch-black. Above the water is a thin shard of moon. The music from the party is barely audible. There’s a plastic water bottle on a table. She opens it and gulps down half. In a minute she’ll leave, get the hell to bed, sober up for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be different, she promises herself.

  Rob suddenly comes in close. “Is that a tattoo? I love it.” He touches the snowflake inside her wrist. “Hey, I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “Okay.”

  He’s holding her arm.

  “I need your help.”

  On a shelf is a thick stack of printer paper, held together with rubber bands. He takes it down delicately.

  “What’s that?”

  “Okay, I’m sure you get this all the time.”

  “I mean,” she says, “not really.”

  Wondering what the hell is going on.

  “I wrote a novel.”

  “I thought you wrote poetry,” she says.

  “What?”

  “In high school. In English class. Never mind.”

  “Now I know I’m not a writer, I know that.” He’s downcast. Deadly serious. “But I really want to be. I have this urge.”

  “Okay,” she says dully.

  “I realize how stupid I sound. But it’s like I have this thing inside, I need to get it out of me. Does that make sense?”

  “It could be appendicitis.”

  The joke doesn’t land. He looks pained. She can’t stand how earnest he’s become, and for some reason also weirdly keyed up, as if to confess something he’d been forced to hold back.

  “I’m not really a writer,” she says.

  Rob only laughs.

  “Nice try,” he says. “You always had the talent. Everyone knew you’d make it. Listen, it would mean the world to me,” he says, holding out the pages, his baby. “Be as tough as you want. I need to get better. I can take it, believe me. I want the hardest shot you’ve got.”

  She laughs lightly, and is now deeply uncomfortable. His self-deprecation, she notices, has an uneasy, aggressive edge.

  “So is that a yes?”

  “Maybe. I guess.”

  “Leela, you are the best.”

  She hears noise from the party, someone shouting happily. She reads the cover page: “The War on Men: A Novel. By Rob Miller.” When she looks up, he’s turning around, holding out a crystal glass and a pen.

  “Since you’re into wine,” he says. “It’s my dad’s favorite Scotch.”

  “I think I’ve had enough to drink.”

  “It’s peaty. Try the nose.”

  “The what?”

  Then something dawns on her, from the glowing wattage of his expectancy, the Scotch, the fact that the pen cap is red.

  “Did you want me to read this now?”

  “Is that cool?” A second later he freezes. Distressed. “Oh shit.”

  “Oh. It’s fine.”

  “Wait, I’m such an asshole. That’s, like, so male privilege. I’m sorry.”

  He takes back the pages before she can resist. She feels bad, which is quickly compounded by the emotional hangover from her long day of disappointment. After all, who does she think she is? Rob Miller invited her to a party, he wanted to help her. Was it his fault that his friends came up empty?

  “How about this,” she says, “I’ll give it a start.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s fine, seriously,” she says, and hopes she’s not as drunk as she sounds. At the very least, it will give her time to sober up.

  “Dude,” he says, “you don’t know how much this means to me.”

  He smiles and stares deep into her eyes. The way a boy does when he’s about t
o kiss you. Maybe he is about to kiss her. Rob Miller? But he just called her dude—is that a problem? Is that a good problem?

  Her seventeen-year-old self says in a deep voice: Fuck it.

  She puts her hand on his arm.

  He comes in closer.

  The tension’s unbearable, also wonderful.

  “Here, I’ll get you situated,” Rob says, and pushes her down into a leather easy chair. Which she allows, and does enjoy after a drunken fashion. If only he’d keep pushing. He covers her legs with a wool blanket, like she’s his grandmother, then hands her the pages, and shuts the door with a neighborly wave.

  Well, shit.

  She takes a gulp of Scotch, another one. Things could be worse. Did Robbie Miller not just call her talented and smart? Everyone knew you’d make it. Her chest warms. She smiles; she’ll dine out on this for years. And she will read his manuscript with gratitude, drink his dad’s whiskey, and make helpful notes in red ink.

  Leela pulls up the blanket and peels off the cover page. From the get-go: wide margins, big font. He’s using Garamond? There’s an impressive copyright notification in the footer. She sighs and can’t help but start, then can’t help but continue, though more in the manner of rubbernecking than anything else. She’ll need another glass of Scotch. If not the bottle.

  It was a dark and lonely afternoon at Dunkin’ Donuts. In fact, every afternoon at Dunkin’ Donuts is rather orange and pink, all credit to an interior design think tank somewhere. But who said dark and lonely were specific hues? Welcome to my humble existence. I’m the manager. Do you desire cream with your coffee, you cunt?

  * * *

  Suzanne breathes out raspily, clears her throat, only ends up hacking up some gravel from her lungs. Does she hear a car in the drive? Ostensibly her son’s come down from his girlfriend’s mountain cave so the two of them can have dinner together, and he can help her with her computer. Also, ostensibly, she’s not drinking anymore, perhaps even not smoking cigarettes, and isn’t life a thrill. And in the morning she’ll be picked up by a condescending ex-cop to attend a cult meeting in a church basement. Maybe she’ll blow him off—she doesn’t quite know yet. Or maybe she’ll go through with the meeting and hit up the farmer’s market after, take a yoga class and grab a smoothie with Stephanie Condren and compliment her tights.

  But terrifically little of any of that remains in her mind, is relevant or even real, on the Friday night that her only child arrives for dinner, sits down in the living room, closes his eyes, and begins, unprompted, to relate the entire story of what happened those weeks ago, as he’d promised her he would do—it’s as if he’s not her son at all, but some strange young man who wandered in and picked up the police blotter—and for once she’s able to keep her mouth shut, just cower, creep into the tunnel of her inner safest space and listen, absorb, accept without protest, as she actually hears him—but she’s only able to do this with clenched fists, deliberate self-control, while she resists every inclination to interrupt, deny that which is surreal and unlikely, and also peculiarly terrifying for actually happening to her own son.

  And by the end, after about fifteen minutes, it’s quite unworkable to even start to address the hell that’s just been described, or what happened since, or what happens tomorrow and what will occur in the days to come—whatever is the time frame of this endless crisis, in the wake of fear—so she goes out to the garage.

  Ten minutes later, Nick finds his mother behind the steering wheel. The nose of the car points out the garage bay, faces the neighbors’ dark houses, the sticky night, the scant brightness of two streetlamps and the neighborhood’s glow. Several beer cans stand in a row across the dash. She’s got her favorite sweater wrapped around her, his grandfather’s ratty old cardigan. It looks like one of those blankets firefighters give people after car accidents.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her eyes are red. He never knows what comes next, but this might be pushing it. He gets in shotgun. He notices that none of the beers are open.

  “If Emily’s mother is in a clinic, won’t the state intervene?” she says. “Protective Services or whatnot?”

  “Not if we don’t tell anyone. Are you going to report us?”

  “Of course not.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “From the cop.”

  Probably the last thing he wants to do is be there. Her nose and face are all messed up, she still hasn’t told him how. She did promise to tell him, if he’d explain how everything else had played out. The sort of shitty tit-for-tat that only his mom would consider part of a normal relationship.

  “You know it’s your turn,” he says. “To tell me about your face.”

  “I know that. Thank you.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  “Would you mind if I had a drink?”

  “I thought you quit.”

  “I did.”

  “Whatever.”

  She could kiss him. She takes one down. She tries not to drink it too quickly. She sees herself in the mirror, her ruined face.

  “I didn’t want any of this to happen,” she says.

  “That’s a messed-up thing to say.”

  “I mean it.”

  “What? What does that even mean?”

  He stares dejectedly out the window. His eyes land on a scraggly tomato patch she grows by the corner of the garage each year, each year a half-assed effort.

  “This is such bullshit,” he says. “You don’t change.”

  “I should have done better.”

  “And it’s all about you, once again.”

  For the first time, if only briefly, he steps into the mind-set of his dad when he left. The relief he must have felt. But he can’t go any further with it. More easily, more quickly, the short exercise makes him realize how humiliated his mother must have felt, probably still feels.

  “Actually I don’t think it’s about me,” she says. “You know, I don’t think much of myself.” She takes a deep breath, as if it’s her final breath. Her heart climbs into her throat—no defenses left. “I know how I seem.” Her voice buckles. “To you. Your friends. I barely get out of bed in the morning. What do I have left? I have a brain, what’s left of it. My education. My memories. And I have you, Nicky, and not even that anymore.”

  “Mom—”

  “Just don’t let it be enough,” she says angrily. “Not for you.”

  They sit in silence for a minute. The air’s still hot from the day. She grimaces down and sideways.

  “I’m a terrible mother.”

  He laughs. “You’re not the best.”

  It’s a joke but she doesn’t answer. Then she laughs, she can’t help it, and he laughs quickly, too. Soon the sound of the laughter’s so loud it can be heard up and down the block.

  * * *

  Late that night, two in the morning, Martin drops the barbells on the floor, and they hit the ground with a refreshing crash. Still, he winces. There are dull pangs in his lower back, in his buttocks, even numbness. Probably he’s pushed himself too hard. For the last couple days he ran five miles a day, between the beach and the road. And that evening he’d found himself drawn to the hotel’s tiny exercise room in the attic, mostly because he couldn’t sleep.

  A few minutes later, the big innkeeper opens the door.

  “Mr. Krug?”

  What does he see? Another old man, grizzled and sweating, shorts and undershirt soaked.

  “Sorry about the noise.”

  “There is a reason the sign’s here.”

  The sign on the door says it’s after hours, he’s in violation of the rules.

  “It’s just,” the innkeeper says gravely, “we have other guests. My family lives here, too.”

  “I understand. It won’t happen again.”

  Sweat gets in his eyes. He looks up. The guy’s still there. Demeke’s dad.

  “There’s something we should talk about,” the
man says. With an undertone of antagonism.

  “What is that?” Martin asks.

  The guy closes the door.

  “Moira Ashburn. The Ashburns’ daughter.”

  “I know who she is.”

  “She’s a friend of ours. Well, a friend of my wife. Gabriela saw her tonight for dinner.”

  “How’s she holding up?”

  The guy glares incredulously, quickly emotional. “Her family was murdered.”

  “I apologize. I meant it in all sincerity.”

  The innkeeper leans resignedly against the arm of the old treadmill. He and Martin are about the same size. Between them they take up nearly every inch of space in the room.

  “She wasn’t in a great place to begin with. When all this shit happened. To the degree that this is any of my business, granted.”

  There’s a tiny porthole window that looks out over the dark sea.

  “Well, it sounds like you’ve made it your business.”

  “She’s having a hard time. Not just from your lot.”

  Martin can’t help but laugh.

  “She said we gave her a hard time?”

  The innkeeper crouches by the treadmill and rubs his neck. “A lot of people don’t know where this thing’s going,” he says. “Don’t know and don’t like it. The media’s making us out like we’re some kind of a hellhole. This is a small town. We like it quiet. Business isn’t always great. People say the valley’s cursed. Years ago, a lady almost set nearly the whole valley on fire. People honestly talk about that. There’s been a lot of bad breaks. For too long. The recession did us bad. People don’t know what’s coming next. For a tourist town, all these journalists snooping around, this thing is the plague. Which obviously those kids didn’t understand, that Emily girl.”

  “Let’s leave the kids out of it.”

  “Now that’s my point. You’re not from around here, you don’t get it. If you were from town…” He strokes his mustache, agitated about something. “My wife and I get a single bad review, we’re up all night worrying about our mortgage. That’s how things work now. Fine. But then these kids decide to screw around, take out their smartphones, take their clothes off.”