Last Things

by Jacqueline West

  There are so many answers that they crash into one another. My head’s full of rubble.

  Frankie is something else I haven’t earned. She’s something else that could disappear in a second, and it will only hurt if I try to hold on.

  “I’m not afraid,” I say. “I just— We’re about to graduate. Leave. I don’t think I can, like, promise anything.”

  Frankie looks like she might laugh. “Have I asked you to promise anything? Because I don’t remember doing that.”

  “Okay. No. You haven’t.”

  “So, how about instead of guessing what I want, you just let me tell you?”

  My skin is electric. If my heart pounds any harder, she’ll be able to hear it. Christ, my deaf cat who’s hiding somewhere in another part of the house will be able to hear it. “All right,” I say.

  But Frankie doesn’t tell me anything. She stands on her toes, and she places both hands on me, one on my neck, one on my chest, so I’m sure she can feel my pulse, and then she presses her lips against mine.

  And I’m lost.

  In an eighth beat, my arms are around her. One wraps behind her back, all the way around her body, crushing her against me. The other hand slides up through her sleek black hair.

  She moves her palm against my jaw, tilting my face downward, so she can kiss me more deeply.

  My breath is on fire.

  She pulls me backward. We stumble together toward the bed. My foot bumps Yvonne, still lying on the floor. I don’t even glance down.

  We hit the saggy little bed with a creak.

  Frankie Lynde. In my bed. Beneath me. Her body, the shape of her, the hollows and curves, pinned under me, my weight crushing the space between us until there isn’t any space left.

  All my worries suddenly seem so distant and small that when I look back I can’t even recognize them. Who cares? Who cares about anything but this?

  Frankie moves against me, spaces notching against curves. She’s breathing harder, too. She runs a hand up beneath my shirt, over my back. Each fingertip leaves a track of fire. Or ice. I can’t even tell.

  And then, slowly, she pulls away. She puts a finger against my lips and smiles up at me.

  “Anders Thorson,” she murmurs. “You really like to keep a girl waiting.”

  I smile back. We both start to laugh.

  “Since December,” she says. “I’ve been waiting since December to do this again.” Frankie laughs some more, eyebrows pulling together. “Why were we waiting?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, because I don’t. I don’t know anything.

  Frankie pushes lightly at my chest. I lean back, and she gets up, smoothing her hair and tugging her sweater back into place.

  “I’d better go,” she says, sidling toward the window. “But I want to see you again. Alone again. Not in front of a crowd. And not four months from now.”

  “Good.” I’m still trying to get my breath under control. “Me, too.”

  “How about tomorrow? After the show?”

  “Sure. Perfect.”

  “Good.” Frankie’s lips curve upward. I want to touch them so much, it makes me dizzy. “Then I’ll see you at the Crow’s Nest.”

  I offer her my knee, and Frankie uses it as a step to climb up and through the window.

  I look past her into the blue-black woods. “Hey. How did you get here?”

  “My car.” Frankie nods into the distance. “I parked way back on the road, so nobody here would hear me come or go.”

  I grin. “You planned all of this.”

  Frankie grins back.

  Then she hops down from the stump and flies off into the trees. I watch her go. I’m just turning away from the window when I catch sight of something else.

  A pale flash behind a big pine. A shape that looks like a face. Glittering eyes.

  I freeze.

  I stare at that spot for more than a minute, but whatever I saw doesn’t reappear. Maybe it wasn’t there in the first place.

  I shut and lock the window.

  Then I flop back onto the bed that still smells, really faintly, of Frankie Lynde.

  I take a deep breath.

  What am I fighting against?

  If life’s trying to give me what I want, why don’t I just freaking take it?

  I roll over on the bed and grab Yvonne from her spot on the floor. I lay her across my chest. The sleek surface of her body begins to warm. I can feel my heartbeat reverberating inside of her.

  There was a guitar that used to hang on the wall at the Underground Music Studio. A Fender Stratocaster. Arctic White. The tag dangling from its neck said it was six hundred dollars, but it might as well have said six million. The Fender was there when I started lessons with Flynn nine years ago. Back then the only guitar I owned was an acoustic we’d gotten for free from one of Mom’s coworkers who didn’t play anymore. It came with a cardboard case and a pack of spare strings and a book called You Can Play Folk Guitar! I’d sit on the lumpy navy couch in the middle of the studios, waiting for my lesson with my own crappy guitar beside me, and I’d stare up at the Fender’s pearly curves and glossy finish. It looked like it had been made of magical snow.

  For my thirteenth birthday Mom and Dad got me a secondhand electric, an Epiphone Les Paul Special. That same year Flynn helped me find a great deal on a decent Yamaha acoustic, something I could afford with two summers’ worth of lawn-mowing money. Later I found out the deal was so great because Flynn had paid for half of it himself. And the whole time that snow-white Fender hung there, above the lumpy couches, just out of my reach.

  I’d gaze up at that guitar week after week. I’d picture it in my hands. In my bedroom. I could see our future together stretching out in front of me, all the glory, all the music.

  You can want something so much that it feels like it’s already yours.

  I thought I’d never want anything as much as I wanted that Fender.

  But that was before Frankie Lynde.

  And it was before Yvonne.

  I remember how it felt the very first time I played her. The skin of my forearm on her curve. My hand wrapped around her neck. The way her name just came to me, Yvonne, like someone had whispered it in my ear, like it already belonged to her, just the way she already belonged to me. It seemed impossible that something so exciting could feel so familiar. I guess that’s how you know it’s right. I guess that’s why you should just take it, without dissecting it into pieces. Even if you know you don’t deserve it.

  Thea

  Before the Crow’s Nest opens, the woods are louder.

  It’s early in the afternoon. The coffeehouse doors are locked, the parking lot empty. There’s no one here but me to hear the trees roar.

  I sit on the back stoop. Behind me two broad steps lead up to the Crow’s Nest’s kitchen door, set back in a frame of scarred gray wood. Moss and mushrooms and tiny white flowers sprout from the earth on either side. My bike leans against the wall nearby. It’s shady here. It smells like coffee and pine.

  The wind pulls my hair. The trees shake. They would like to lash out and brush me away.

  I should be at school right now. History class. Second to last row, right-hand side. Mrs. Wilder probably won’t even notice that I’m gone.

  The thought of Anders being there alone makes my chest tighten for a moment. But being here mattered more.

  This morning when I went into the living room with the coffee tray, I found Aunt Mae half unwrapped from the wadded blankets. She was shaky and dew-drenched with sweat, whispering, “No. Not too late. No.” The TV babbled in the background.

  I sat down on the edge of the couch. There was some whiskey left in the bottle. I poured a slug straight into her coffee. Then I helped her sit up and curl her fingers around the cup. The oily surface trembled.

  “So hot,” she muttered, her eyes still shut. I was ready to take the coffee back, to pull away the loose cocoon of blankets. Then Aunt Mae went on. “It melts the glass.”

  She didn’
t mean the coffee. I watched her face. “The glass where?”

  “A kitchen. A little room.” She shivered. “At the back of a bigger place.”

  I found her bony leg beneath the blankets. Rubbed the spot below her knee. “What else?”

  “Too late for him. Standing right there at the stove. He’s one of the good ones. And they know it.” Aunt Mae’s eyelids twitched. “Skin gone. Shirt charred to his body.”

  There was a little trail of drool leaking down Aunt Mae’s chin. I patted it away with my sleeve. “What else?”

  “Spreading. Out into the big room. Bottles bursting. Bags of coffee beans. Pop pop pop.”

  I felt it. The hot breath on the back of my neck.

  They’re getting closer. They’re nibbling away at the edges. They want to leave me nowhere to hide.

  “The Crow’s Nest?” I asked, although the answer already sat heavy inside me.

  Aunt Mae’s eyelids flickered upward. She looked out at me. Watery eyes, blue on red. “Yes,” she breathed. “That’s it. Yes.”

  “Do you know when?”

  “Soon.” Aunt Mae squinted. “Afternoon. The sky outside the windows is light.”

  I squeezed her leg again. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Aunt Mae gave me a grateful look. Another long sigh. Then she blinked down at her coffee, seeing it for the first time.

  I watched her take a careful sip. “Do you think it’s an accident?”

  Aunt Mae just looked at me. More sharply now.

  “I’ll be there before they open,” I told her.

  And I am.

  The Crow’s Nest opens at three on weekdays. Most of its customers are at school or work or asleep until then. I’ve been waiting since one. Sometime around two o’clock Ike Lawrence’s big gray truck rumbles up the road that’s slashed through the oaks and pines like a paved wound. He veers across the empty parking lot, stopping at the far end.

  He climbs out of the cab. The trees hush.

  He saunters toward me, face unchanging, one hand swinging his ring of keys.

  Ike is well over six feet. His face is like carved oak. His black T-shirt strains around his torso. The Crow’s Nest doesn’t need bouncers.

  But Aunt Mae is right. He’s one of the good ones. You can see it, deep down, under the black T-shirt. The light.

  He stops, standing above my spot on the stoop. He looks down. I look up.

  “There’s something wrong with your stove,” I tell him.

  His face doesn’t change. “Well,” he says. “Let’s see about that.”

  He unlocks the back door.

  I follow him up into the kitchen—a small room at the back, lined with wire shelves of paper goods, seasonings, bulk food bins. The smell of gas is faint. Easily hidden behind the rich hum of coffee, the lingering harmonies of chocolate, muffins, toasted bread.

  Ike throws me a look.

  He grasps the sides of the big gas stove and yanks it out, one corner at a time, onto the scarred black-and-white checked linoleum. He cranes around it.

  “Huh,” he says.

  Then he turns to the nearest window and opens the pane wide. Forest air blasts in. I hear the woods roar. Ike opens another window. I step in to help. As I pass the stove, I can see it, too: a crook in the blue hose winding out of its back, the crack like a wrinkle in thick skin, letting out the explosive gas.

  Ike heads to the basement to shut off the gas main. When he comes back, shoving through the swinging door into the main room, I follow. He leaves the lights out, striding through between the empty tables and upturned chairs to the patio entrance. Throws the doors wide.

  Leaf-tinted light. More cool, piney air.

  Ike walks slowly back to me. “Guess we won’t be serving hot food tonight.”

  I nod.

  He tips his head to one side. It’s only a few degrees, but for someone as stony as Ike Lawrence, it’s a tip. “How?” he says.

  “My aunt Mae. Mae Malcolm. She—”

  “Yeah,” he cuts me off. “I know Mae.”

  There’s weight to the words. He knows. Lots of people in this town guess or whisper or imagine, but there are also a few who know.

  Ike looks at me for several seconds.

  I almost never look at myself. I try to imagine what he sees. Scuffed sneakers. Jeans with holes in each knee. Black thermal shirt, men’s, secondhand. My favorite old flannel, also made for a man, hanging loose and soft around me. The hair. White blond, flyaway, with wide curls. Unfashionably long.

  “You know how to grind coffee?” he asks.

  Not what I expected. I nod again.

  “I’ve got an old hand crank around here somewhere. We’ll wait until the place airs out before we start any electrics.”

  Ike turns, his broad back disappearing into the storeroom beside the kitchen.

  He sets me up behind the coffee counter with a stool and a hand crank and a sack of roasted beans and a metal container to dump the little grinder drawer into each time I fill it.

  I’m still there, turning the crank, when Janos crosses the room.

  He stops. Does a dramatic double take.

  “It’s like seeing a statue climb off of its pedestal,” he says, starting to smile. He pats the stool at the very end of the counter. “Aren’t you supposed to be sitting here?”

  I smile back. “Not all the time.”

  “Gas leak,” says Ike to Janos, coming out of the kitchen. “Repair guys are coming. We’ll just have drinks and baked goods for tonight.”

  “Sounds good to me,” says Janos. He grins at me again. “Grilled cheese and I could use an evening apart.”

  Ike goes back to the kitchen. Janos steps behind me, checking the cooler’s milk supply, sliding empty trays out of the bakery case.

  “How was school this afternoon?” he asks.

  “It was good,” I answer. “I’m guessing.”

  Janos smiles wider. He begins arranging a row of biscotti on a sheet of waxed paper. I knock another heap of grounds out of the drawer.

  “Think we’re in for a storm tonight,” says Janos in a moment, in a way that doesn’t tell me whether it’s a statement or a question.

  I stop and try to feel the air. Here, inside the long, scarred-walled room, it’s cool and shifting. Changing. Changeable. A faint sourness of gas still hangs beneath the scent of fresh ground coffee. The open windows are gray. The sky beyond them, behind the trees, is too dark for midafternoon.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “Oops,” says Janos, with a stagy twist of one hand. “This one is broken. We’ll have to eat it.”

  He holds out half of a snapped biscotti. I take it. Give him another smile.

  For the next hour Ike leaves every window and door open. The woods breathe into the Crow’s Nest, touching everything greedily but unable to carry any of it away. A work crew thumps into the kitchen. Heavy footsteps, the rasp of appliances pushed across the floor. Janos lets me help him take down the chairs from the tabletops, refill sugar canisters and stir-stick cups. It’s Friday. Which means Last Things. Which means the place will be packed, and soon.

  People start showing up right at opening time. Janos plugs the steamer into its socket. He switches on the coffee machines. Dark streams pour into their carafes.

  Ike strides back with a handwritten sign to tape to the register: Kitchen Closed Tonight. Then he steps over to the corner where I’m wiping the backs of the old wooden chairs.

  “Here,” he says in his gruff voice. He holds out a folded twenty between his first and second fingers.

  I don’t touch it. “You don’t have to pay me.”

  “Come on,” he says. “I owe you for the help. And I don’t like being in debt.”

  I still don’t touch the money. “Anybody would have told you about the leak,” I say. “If they knew.”

  Ike narrows his eyes just a little. “I’m not paying you for that. I can’t, and I know it. I’m paying you for the prep work and cleaning you’ve done. Now, are you
going to take this or am I going to have to mail it to your aunt?”

  He sets the money on the table in front of me. Twenty dollars. I don’t know when I’ve had twenty dollars of my own to spend.

  “One other thing,” says Ike, already stepping away. “That money is no good here.” He gives me the tiniest one-cornered smile. “Anybody who literally saves my ass gets their coffee for free.”

  I pick up the money. There’s a second twenty folded inside the first.

  I slide the bills into my pocket and smile at Ike’s disappearing back.

  Janos has finished making flavored mochas for three freshmen girls when I walk up to the counter. He raises an eyebrow at me. He overhead everything.

  “So,” he says, “what can I get for you, miss?”

  “A cappuccino. Please.”

  Janos gives a little bow. He turns to the steamer, packing espresso into the little basket, picking up the metal milk pitcher. When he’s not looking, I slip one of the twenties into the tip can.

  I take my cappuccino out to the edge of the patio. Three other outdoor tables are already taken by people with dark clothes and bright tattoos. I don’t recognize any of them. The wind through the trees is blowing harder. Spatters of loose leaves click across the pavement.

  Janos has made a leaf in the foam on top of the cappuccino. It’s pretty. Brown-veined and delicate. I whirl it into a smudge with my fingertip.

  Far off to the north, there’s a rumble of thunder.

  The crowd grows fast. People from school, people from town, people I’ve never seen. They lounge at the edges of the parking lot, smoking. They crowd around the coffee counter. They stake out spots near the edge of the stage.

  Around five-thirty Jezz and Patrick pull up. I can see them park from my spot at the patio’s edge. They climb out of the rusty pickup and begin to unload. Patrick’s face is hard. Harder than usual. Even Jezz, who’s always joking about something, looks like someone who’s just witnessed a car crash.

  A few minutes later Anders pulls in next to them.

  He steps out of the little white car. He’s wearing faded black jeans. A gray T-shirt that fits tight around the tops of his arms.

  “Hey,” says Jezz.

  “Hey,” I see Anders answer.