The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon (17 page)

With a jolt, Albert realized that when something did begin to happen—when the other guy showed up and MacLennan was no longer alone in his truck—he would be too far away to hear what was happening. Too far away to act. What he planned to do, Albert didn’t exactly yet know, but he had no intention of letting Lily’s journal get any farther than it already had in MacLennan’s grubby, thieving hands. So he had to get closer, closer to the parking lot where MacLennan sat waiting.

And with his heart in his throat, terrified of getting caught, terrified of missing something, terrified of failing Lily, Albert bent low again and left the company and smell of the cows and the cover of the building.

Glancing in all directions, he quickly backtracked up the dirt road to the shallow ditch that ran behind the stockyards, then made his way toward the road. When the ditch narrowed into a culvert, he scuttled out of its groove and farther away from Federated Oil, up the dark hill below the highway and away from the floodlights that were lighting the pumps and casting the tanks and the parking lot into half-light. Albert darted across the road and into the darkness of the scrub that choked the large, triangular slope between the gas station below and the highway above.

Hoping his rustling in the weeds wasn’t loud enough to draw attention, Albert circled closer to his target destination: a vantage point near MacLennan’s truck on the other side of the parking lot. As he struggled to find his way quietly in the darkness of the parking lot’s outer edges, he saw the appeal of the Federated Oil station as a meeting place. It was on the other side of the freeway, down the hill in a quiet little spot. The station mainly served truckers who all seemed to pay with gas cards, so there was usually no one around at night except the cattle in the stockyards across the street. It was a quiet, private place.

Albert decided to hunker down behind the dumpster, along the back side of the gas station, because it put him just a few feet away from MacLennan’s truck. Crouched on the ground against a big blue trash bin, Albert could hear the radio in MacLennan’s truck very clearly. He hoped that the sound of voices would carry half as well.

He also hoped he would know what to do and when to do it. At this point, he was still winging it. The anger he’d been feeling had calmed to a hard, hot coal in his stomach, and Albert concentrated on bringing it back to full flame. He would need it for courage.

The sound of MacLennan singing tunelessly along with a new song on the radio was as clear as Albert could have hoped. He ignored the cold blacktop digging into his hands and knees and gazed up the long, weedy hill. There was a green, decaying smell that may have come from the dead, damp weeds or from the cattle feed, and with it was the manure smell of the feedlots and the sharp tinge of the dumpster beside him. The horizon at the top of the hill was a low, straight line, broken only by the silhouette of the old Odd Fellow’s Home and a dark sky with a few darker clouds. It was beautiful in a heartbreaking kind of way, Albert thought. It was the first time he’d found any view in this town worth appreciating, and it struck him what an odd time this was for that to happen. But the view and the silence sucked him in.

The tinny sound of the radio cut abruptly and Albert heard a car door open and shut, echoed by another car door opening and shutting. The sound of metal on metal hung in the air. He hadn’t heard another engine. He leaned as far back against the gas station wall as he could, trying to see between it and the dumpster, but the space was barely a slit and it was too dark to see. He crawled to the outer edge of his cover, wondering if he should risk a glance around the edge.

“I’ve been waiting forever, man,” he heard MacLennan grumble. His voice was coming from very close by and Albert hung back, staying completely out of sight. He heard MacLennan ask, “My parents are going to freak if they heard me leave. What took you so long?”

The person MacLennan had been waiting for ignored the question, demanding instead, “Do you have it?”

At the sound of the voice, Albert felt like his chest would cave in. He didn’t need to see the speaker to know him. That voice belonged to Kogen.

“T hought you said you knew the way,” Albert gripes as Olivia brings them to an unsure halt. “Don’t tell me we’re lost.”

“I got us this far, didn’t I?” Olivia snaps back at him. “I just need make sure we’re on track. I’m pretty sure we are, but I want to be completely sure when we’re this close.”

Albert smacks his hand against his forehead but manages to hold his tongue. It’s hard to hold back with Olivia glaring up at him from under her thick fringe of bangs.

After he’d returned to where Olivia slept on the bus bench, Albert hadn’t known what to do. Seeing their faces on the laundromat TV had shocked him more than it should have. After all, what was so surprising about it? They were missing minors or fugitives or something, connected to the Lily Odilon story, so it was bound to make the news.

He’d sat next to Olivia, waiting for her to wake up so they could move on, and after a while his eyes had dropped and the next thing he’d known, it was maybe an hour before dawn. The sky had gotten light and it was bitterly cold and Albert was stiff from sleeping on a bench.

He’d shaken Olivia awake, and as they walked the cold and stiffness from their limbs, Albert filled Olivia in on what he’d seen through the laundromat window. She’d taken it with less surprise and more pessimism than he had, shrugging and saying little.

Now here they are, desperate to get through the last leg of their journey. Olivia leads them, since it’s on her memory alone that they will find the lakeside house where she and Lily spent so many summers of their childhood.

Neither of them speaks of what comes after that, or what they will do if Lily isn’t there or if she’s been forced to move on. Albert can’t stand to think of the possibility, much less say it out loud.

“We need a map,” Olivia says after another pause. “I need to check a map, just to make sure.”

Trying to hold in his frustration, Albert thinks. “We can get one at the gas station back that way,” he says, gesturing back over his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure they have a bunch of road maps for sale.”

She sighs. “One problem. We have less than two bucks left.”

He claps his hands together, a startling noise that reverberates in the clear, cold air. “Then we’ll just have to steal one.” He sounds way more confident than he feels; he’s never shoplifted anything in his life.

“Perfect.” Olivia adopts the plan so quickly that Albert wonders if this is something she’s done before. “You distract the clerk by trying to buy cigarettes, and I’ll grab it while they’re dealing with you.”

“We don’t have enough money for a pack of cigarettes. If we did—”

Olivia rolls her eyes. “That’s the point, dummy. They won’t sell them to you anyway, not without ID. Which you don’t have. I just need you to distract the clerk for a few seconds while I grab what we need. Can you handle that, Morales?”

“Whatever,” he says, still not overconfident. “Let’s just get it over with.”

“Right,” she says. “I just have a bad feeling, that jumpy, looking-around-corners feeling. I won’t feel good until we find my sister and I know she’s safe.”

Albert agrees but says nothing. He has the same uncomfortable feeling and doesn’t like it. Seeing their pictures on TV hasn’t helped.

“Funny,” Olivia says as they backtrack to the convenience store, “this isn’t the first time we’ve worked together on a theft.”

This brings to Albert’s mind how he’d found Lily’s journal and taken it home hidden in the waistband of his pants. This memory, of course, leads him to the memory of how he’d
lost
Lily’s journal—and that part makes him feel sick.

He shivers, but not from the cold. “I hope things turn out better this time.” He doesn’t just mean stealing the map.

Olivia’s plan does work out, though, and they have their map, if by shady means. Albert has started to feel better when Olivia gives a little cry at his elbow and startles him with a shove that almost knocks him off his tired feet.

“What the—?” he begins, irritated.

“Just hide over there,” Olivia hisses as a police cruiser coasts toward them, the siren off but the lights flashing.

Albert stumbles to right himself against the mailbox she’s just pushed him into. “Over where?” he asks.

“Wherever! Just get lost before they get closer and see us together.”

Annoyed by the way she says it but still seeing that she’s right, Albert drifts from her side in what he hopes is a nonchalant manner. There aren’t many places to hide where they are, but as he glances up and down the sidewalk, he sees the narrow crack of an alley between two old, brick buildings just a few paces away. A rank whiff of damp garbage greets him as he slips into the darkness, just before the police car slows nearby. He’s tired of always hiding.

Albert wonders if these cops are just cruising around, or if they’re looking for a couple of missing teenagers. Or two recent shoplifters.
Take your pick
.

Olivia keeps walking, passing Albert’s hiding place without a glance in his direction. She ignores the police car until they give the siren one long whoop and glide to the curb beside her. She stands there looking bored, her hands buried in her pockets, head cocked, watching the cops get out of the car.
If you didn’t know better
, Albert is thinking as he watches her,
you’d guess she wasn’t worried about a thing.

From his vantage point in that narrow alley, Albert can see Olivia—a small girl flanked by two big, uniformed officers—but he can’t hear what any of them are saying. All he can hear is some mechanical pulsation from deeper down the alley and the nearby splash of water into water from snow melting on the roof three stories above. He watches as Olivia pulls something from her pocket and hands it to one of the cops, who examines it, then takes it back to the car. After what seems like forever, the cop returns to Olivia and the other cop and gives the thing she handed to him back to her. The three of them appear to be having a conversation and Albert sees Olivia nod her head a couple of times, as well as shrug once. As Olivia is talking with the first cop, the other one looks around, up and down the street and over toward Albert’s general location. He doesn’t dare move or even breathe as the cop’s gaze lingers. Narrowing his eyes, he hopes they don’t reflect the dim glow of the streetlight at the corner, like an animal’s eyes catch the glow of a headlight.

There’s a loud thump and a crash behind him, then an echo from a dumpster, and the second cop’s shoulders tense. He takes a step toward the alley, one hand reaching for the heavy-duty flashlight on his belt. Unsure whether to wait it out or to run, Albert is saved having to decide when a streak of fur flies past him and out onto the sidewalk—one hissing, yowling cat chasing another into the street, nearly colliding with the shins of the cop heading for the alley. Feeling faint, Albert watches as the first cop touches the second on the elbow and leads him back to their cruiser. The cop who hasn’t just been nearly run down by a cat fight is clearly amused by his partner’s jumpiness, and the sound of deep laughter reaches Albert. Olivia is smiling, too, and she gives a kind of half-nod as the cops pull away.

After the car has gone, she drops her lazy pose and hurries over to where Albert is hiding in the alley.

“That was lucky,” she says. Her smile is gone and her face is pinched and tired. With a shaking hand she pats down her pockets, saying, “I really wish I had a smoke right now. I can hardly walk, I’m so tired.”

“What happened?” Albert asks.

“They just wanted to make sure I wasn’t out past curfew.”

“But you were. Why didn’t they take you in?”

She pulls a small rectangle from her back pocket and flashes it at him. “Saved by the fake ID!” Her smile returns—the mischievous one that echoes her older sister’s—at the warring admiration and surprise written on Albert’s face, and she adds, “I have a few secrets, too.”

“Good thing.”

“You’re telling me,” she says, turning the little rectangle over in her fingers a few times before putting it in her pocket again. “I thought I was toast when he took off back to his car with my ID, but he didn’t say anything when he gave it back. I don’t think he even bothered to run it.”

This time Albert’s legs really do feel too weak to hold him, and he slides down the brick wall to the alley floor. “Jesus.”

Olivia nudges him with her foot. “Plus, one of them gave me ten bucks. Let’s get out of here.”

Albert gets slowly to his feet. “You are amazing.”

“Yeah?” She’s still smiling from her victory over the cops.

“Yeah. You’re so good at taking care of yourself.”

Her face loses that gleeful kidlike expression, falling into its more familiar scowl. “It’s a good thing I am,” she says. “No one else is going to do it.”

Albert doesn’t know what to say.

“I mean, you’re so devoted to her. When we were really little, it was my dad. After the accident, it was my mom—for a while, anyway. Now you’re the one she has looking out for her.” Olivia walks fast now, and Albert wants to pull her back, slow her down.

“What’s wrong with devotion? What else can you do when you love someone?” he asks, the words coming out sharp.

“It just never matters what she does … Lily always has someone running to her rescue. I think you’re really stupid, actually … and you’ll end up with a broken heart no matter what you do for her. It’s never enough.”

“But you’re right here with me!” He grabs her arm to stop her.

She shakes his hand from her arm. “I’m stupid, too!”

“Are you … jealous of her or something?”

“You are so … stupid.” Something like hatred shoots out of her eyes at him.

“Yeah, you already said that.” Now it’s Albert who’s walking away, and Olivia is left trying to catch up.

“
Fuck
you, Morales,” she spits at his back.

After that, she keeps several paces away from him as they walk, and she won’t speak to him at all. He finds that he’s fine with that.