The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon

Woodbury, Minnesota

The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon
© 2010 by Sara Beitia.

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First e-book edition © 2010

E-book ISBN: 9780738727462

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For Paul

Albert Morales sits on the curb with his head down between his knees, trying to breathe. He waits for his heart to stop pounding so they can get moving again. Olivia Odilon is nearby, just across the street—a slim shadow concealed by the dark arch of a restaurant entryway right next to an empty newsstand. Albert looks up briefly and sees her eyes across the way, two shining chips of glass reflecting the harsh glow of the streetlight. Albert doesn’t really believe in God but he prays anyway, in a sweaty ecstasy of desperation, that he won’t have a full-on asthma attack. Now that he needs it, the inhaler he uses on very rare occasions is several hundred miles back, sitting on top of his dresser along with, as he recalls, his only necktie, the MP3 player he’d received for Christmas, about three dollars in change, and a snapshot of his girlfriend Lily. Lily, who also happens to be long gone.

No point thinking about that.

After a moment he tries a tentative breath, then, finding that he can, he pulls another one down into his lungs, exhaling gratefully and taking in another deep drink of air.

It’s good.

It’s difficult, but he pushes the panic he’s feeling out of his mind, instead concentrating completely on catching his breath. He can hear Olivia’s feet scraping impatiently at the pavement like a restless animal. He lifts his arm and raises a finger to let her know he just needs another moment.

Albert opens his eyes and sees a small something between his sneakers in the gutter. Without thinking, he reaches down to grab whatever it is, and comes up with a damp matchbox in his fingers. He shakes it. Empty. On one side is a tiny picture of woman wearing a sly smile and not much else; Albert flips the box over and sees that it comes from a place called the Alibi in a city called New Salisbury.

“Whatcha got there?”

He looks up and sees that Olivia has crossed the street and now stands in front of him. He tosses the empty matchbox up and she catches it between her hands. “From some bar or strip club, I guess.”

She reads the thing, then laughs softly. “Wish we had an alibi right now?”

He stands, not answering. “I think I’m okay now. Let’s go.”

The two of them set out again, down the deserted street on their way to Lily.

The Kogen house, tucked away at the end of quiet Myrtle Avenue, stood dark. Avoiding the streetlight that shone like a spotlight on the black road and sidewalk, Albert sprinted across the Kogens’ front lawn and down the narrow side yard. His shoes crunched on the frosty grass. It was a cool, clear February night and he wished he’d worn a heavier jacket, or at least a hat. Shivering, he stepped carefully into a flower bed and inched his way up to the window, lifting his hand but hesitating, drawing out the moment of anticipation before he would see her again. Then he was rapping the glass with his knuckles, two long bursts and three short ones. A second later, a light went on in the room and Lily lifted the sash. It was just after midnight.

“Hey,” Albert whispered, his breath a shimmering ghost between them.

“Hey,” came Lily’s voice from inside. Then she leaned out the window and gave him a long, warm kiss. “Come inside, quick.”

Albert ran his tongue over his lips and tasted cherry lip balm from her mouth. He lifted himself through the low window expertly, having sneaked into her room this way several times in the weeks since that wonderful and unbelievable day when Lily had smiled at him at school and he’d found the courage to actually speak to her.

Her bedroom was warm and smelled like sandalwood, and was lit only by a lamp with a gauzy orange scarf she’d draped over the shade for mood.

“So,” he said, like one of them always did, “what do you want to do?”

“I think you know,” she said, closing the window after him and drawing the blinds quickly, covering the ghostly reflection of her room in the window glass. She kissed him again, a brief peck this time on the corner of his mouth, and asked, “Why didn’t you just come to the door? My parents won’t be back from Philly until Sunday and Liv is staying the weekend with Kate’s family at their cabin. We have the house to ourselves.”

He shrugged, the corners of his mouth twisting. “Coming in through the window is more exciting.” His heart fluttered like a bird trapped in his rib cage, but he kept his voice pretty much steady. He wanted to grab her hand, just for an excuse to touch her.

Lily’s face was tilted downward and her eyes darted up to Albert’s from under her long eyelashes. When she smiled at him, it was a crooked, sexy smile that caused him actual physical pain when he looked at it too long. From one corner of the room, he couldn’t take his eyes off her—from the hair escaping from her loose ponytail to outline her face in little waves, to her long, pale neck, to her pretty butt rounding out the back of her jeans, to her bare feet with chipping teal paint on the nails. He was amazed at how he could be so delirious over someone he didn’t even know existed a few of months ago.

Breaking into Albert’s thoughts, Lily turned to him and said, “What are you looking at?”

Without thinking, he said the first thing that popped into his head. “You should be naked. All the time.” Even as the words tumbled from his mouth he knew he shouldn’t have said it, that she would misunderstand. “I just mean, you’re beautiful.”

“Idiot.” But she blew him a kiss from where she’d finally sat herself on the bed. She stretched over to the nightstand and turned out the lamp, and then the room was black. “Why don’t you come over here?”

He heard the bedsprings creak as she shifted her weight, and a second later, she was next to him and had hooked a finger into the waistband of his jeans and pulled him away from the window and onto the bed with her.

The few seconds that the window had been open had made the room cold, and they hurried under the covers. The sheets were cold as well, and as Albert pulled the top one up he noticed a light soap smell, like they’d just been washed. He pressed his mouth to hers and then their arms and legs were tangled in each other and the blankets, making it awkward to take off their layers of sweaters, shirts, socks, jeans—everything that kept warm skin from skin.

Albert felt clumsy, like he was moving too fast in the dark, but Lily didn’t act like she minded. It wasn’t long before he stopped worrying about it.

The next time Albert looked over at the glowing green face of the clock, it was almost two. They’d dozed off with their arms around each other. He’d startled himself awake, very aware that the little time they had was slipping away, as always, and that he couldn’t just sink into pleasant sleep for the rest of the night. Before dawn, he would have to dress and slip back into the cold and run home before his parents were up and around and noticed he was gone.

Somehow sensing his wakefulness, Lily stirred in his arms. He was lying on his back and she was nestled in the crook of his arm. He shivered, but all the covers were in a pile at the foot of the bed and he didn’t want to disturb her by reaching down for a blanket. Instead, he tightened his arm around her. Burying his face in her hair, he whispered “I love you” into the top of her head.

“Huh?” she breathed, half awake. “I love you, too.”

They were silent again, and Albert had almost dozed off when he felt the bed jostle and the bedspread slide off. Opening his eyes, he saw Lily’s dim outline, wrapped in a blanket with one arm snaked out, feeling around the side of the bed for her clothes.

“Are you awake?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

He waited for her to continue, or to at least lie down, but she just sat there. He sat up, too, suddenly more awake. “Did I do something wrong?”

A wheezy little laugh escaped her. “Not at all. It’s just, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel weird. Like just now, when I woke up.”

“Weird? You mean, like, since your accident?” Albert knew that Lily had had some kind of accident about eighteen months ago, with an injury that had included a couple months in a coma and months more of rehab that she was still working on. In fact, the whole town knew about Lily’s accident, and Albert had heard about it soon after starting school here last fall; before he’d even met the girl, he’d been familiar with her reputation.

“Yeah. I lost months around that time, big chunks they say I’ll probably never get back.”

He remained silent, waiting for her to continue, knowing she wasn’t done.

She went on, “But sometimes I think I
am
remembering things, and it’s a sneaky kind of coming back. Sometimes I don’t know if these ideas are dreams or memories. Mostly it’s impossible to tell which is which. It really sucks.” She sniffed.

“Are you crying?” Albert asked, putting his arms around her tense body. “What’s wrong?”

She slid to her feet from the edge of the bed, slipping out of the embrace. “I mean, I’ve just been feeling …
weird … and I wanted to, I don’t know, throw it out at you. See what you think.” She began pacing the floor, wrapped in the coverlet. “Only I don’t even know how to put it into words. There’s just something on the edge of my brain, something trying to get my attention. But I can’t quite see it, you know?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said. “But I want to. Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

“I’m trying!” she said, her voice loud in the stillness of the dark room. Then she said, “I don’t want to scare you off. I’m tired and confused and the middle of the night just screws with my head. Forget it.”

He tried again to pull her back down to the mattress, back into sleep with him, but she resisted. “Just say whatever you’re thinking, even if it doesn’t make sense,” he told her.

“I want to.” She finally found her clothes. “Hey, I’m thirsty. I’ll be right back—” But she cut herself short.

He lay back down. “We can talk all night if you want,” he said through a yawn. She left and he thought he heard her say something at the door, something that began with
I need
, but it was so soft and then she was gone. And soon, so was Albert, back into sleep.

Awaking with a start for the second time that night, Albert sat straight up in bed. He was confused for a moment, finding himself in a bed that wasn’t his own. Then the sleep fog cleared and he remembered where he was, and why. Shivering, he leaned over and pulled a blanket from the foot of the bed up and over himself. He couldn’t have been asleep long, he thought, because Lily wasn’t back from the kitchen. He looked at the clock, then figured he’d give her a couple more minutes before he went after her and dragged her back to bed for the few more hours they could steal before it was back to their daytime lives, apart.

Another sharp jolt went through his brain and he looked at the clock again. Now it read 4:53 a.m. It had been almost three hours since Lily had gone to get a drink. He rubbed his eyes. Had she come back and he’d forgotten? Was she in another room, brooding or maybe even crying, resentful that he hadn’t stayed awake long enough to come looking for her?

Cursing to himself, Albert jumped up and scrambled around in the darkness for his clothes. Before he’d even finished shimmying into his 501s, he was pulling on his sneakers and slipping through the bedroom door into the hall. Though he knew the house was empty save the two of them, habit and some superstition kept him from calling Lily’s name out loud.

The kitchen was dark when Albert went in, and it was empty. The only signs that anyone had been there were a Coke can sitting on the island and the squeak of his own shoe rubber on the tiled floor. He sighed as he turned to leave the kitchen to begin a room-by-room search—something was bothering her and she wasn’t going to make this easy. It was hide and seek, and apparently Albert was “it.” His stomach knotted with anxiety and he felt guilty for feeling irritated with her.

A peek into the living room and then the den showed the same empty scene as the kitchen, so Albert went back to the bedroom, where there was still no sign of Lily. Both his nerves and his exasperation grew as he left the bedroom again to search the rest of the house. Twenty minutes later he was back in Lily’s room, seated on the edge of her bed—still alone—bewildered and unsure of what to do next.

He was pretty positive now that Lily was not here. It occurred to him that maybe she really was hiding from him, but as soon as he thought it, he rejected the idea as absurd. Anyway, why would she hide from him in her own house? But there was something going on. He’d looked in every room, flipping lights on and off in each one, including the bathrooms and bedrooms and even the basement, then he went back through them all again to check under and behind the furniture, too. By the time he was making his second round through the house, this time faster and louder, he wasn’t worried anymore about making noise—he called her name as he searched for her in the unfamiliar rooms.

Back in Lily’s bedroom again, after coming up with nothing, he tried to figure out what to do next. She just wasn’t here. And to complicate things, dawn was coming fast and he was left with this problem and no time or ideas on how to solve it. As he was putting this together, his irritation was slowly dissolving into a vague fear.

Albert was pulling on his jacket so that he could take his search to the yard and the neighborhood, if he had to, when it occurred to him that he’d overlooked a room: the garage. For some reason it was the arrival of this idea—a vague picture of the never-before-seen garage had popped into his head—that stoked his fear. If she wasn’t there, either, then he would have to face the fact that the problem was a big one.

Following up on what was his last idea, Albert was in the kitchen moments later, where the house and garage were connected. He fumbled with the lock on the door to the garage and stepped into the coolness, his feet echoing on the concrete floor and the faint smell of motor oil hitting his nose. When he found the wall switch with his hand, harsh fluorescence stung his eyes.

As he’d already known it would be, the garage, too, was empty. Lily’s car was gone.