The Last Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page A

barons and derailed railroad magnates, during the Great Depression, and the neighborhood’s northern border,
Washington Boulevard, still stands as a sort of racial equator, with colored folk living primarily to the south. The nightclub is closed and silent, the voices and laughter which earlier enlivened
it now only drunken memories, the neon-tube sign out front – which can normally be read from six blocks in either direction, pinning a name on the place, the Sugar Cube – is dark as the
night itself, and but for two cars, the lot in which Candice now stands is empty. She leans against one of them, a blonde woman with her lips smeared red, her hair pin-curled, her dress
inappropriate for a woman in almost any other profession.
    She works as a B-girl, flirting with men, dancing with them, getting them to buy her watered-down drinks at premium prices. A hand on the knee. A kiss on the corner of the mouth. A suggestive
look. It can be a difficult job. You must laugh at stupid jokes. You can’t allow yourself to cringe at the stink of garlic on breath. Your feet get bruised as the clumsier ones are always
tenderizing your meat out on the dance floor.
    And the men get grabby. Sometimes they get violent.
    She’s been accosted on more than one occasion in this very parking lot by drunken men who wanted to take what she was unwilling to give them – or sell them.
    Men are animals. You have to be careful with them. You have to tempt them, let them hope they might get to see what’s hidden under your skirt without ever letting them believe it’s a
promise. If you let it get too far you’ll find yourself in a dangerous situation.
    It’s made worse by the fact that some of the girls have a price. There’s a dressing room upstairs, and it’s a rare night that Candice doesn’t see men get dragged up there
by their ties like obedient puppies on leashes.
    Only once was she unable to fight off an attacker. He left her torn and bleeding in this very parking lot, a mere twenty feet from where she now stands, took the money she’d earned that
night, spit on her, called her a cunt and a whore.
    For two weeks afterwards she looked like she went several rounds with Rocky Marciano, and though she couldn’t afford the time off, she stayed home until the bruises healed. Once she
returned to work the mere thought of walking out here in the dark was traumatizing. She couldn’t do it alone. She tried to be strong on her first day back, to put on a brave face, but halfway
to her car she found herself shaking and crying, unable to force her feet further into the darkness. She stood paralyzed until one of the other girls saw her and walked her to her car.
    It took months before she could walk out here by herself.
    She’s more cautious now, more careful. Men are animals. And she has a boy to raise, a boy whose father is already absent. She doesn’t want him to lose his mother as well. She wants
him to retain some innocence for as long as possible.
    She lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, looks toward the Sugar Cube’s back door. Vivian said she’d only be a minute, said she just had to use the ladies’ room, but it has to
have been a quarter hour now, and Candice isn’t dressed for this chill night air.
    She looks up at the moon, bright behind a thin film of disintegrating clouds, and feels a small surge of anger. Directed neither at the moon nor at Vivian, but at her husband Neil, who’s
probably asleep on the couch in their little falling-down house on Bunker Hill. Once again he left her stranded. When he gets off work – he’s head mail clerk at a downtown office
building – he often hops on a streetcar and takes it here to the nightclub, says hey, just wanted to see your pretty face, I’ll only stay a few minutes, but minutes turn into hours, and
by the time he’s pushing out the door, the streetcars have stopped running. So what does he do? Sometimes he gets a cab, but too often he stumbles to the car, drives