The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  She puts down her laptop. Basically it’s Rob’s life story, except the narrator’s unattractive, and with an unaccounted-for wont for Middle English. And he hates women. Does Rob hate women? She can’t help herself, she returns to the manuscript but skips to the end, skims the last three pages—wherein the police respond to an emergency call at Dunkin’ Donuts, only to find the front doors locked. They peer through the windows: it’s a lynching. Four girls, customers who’d ostensibly rejected the narrator’s attempts at seduction, hang from nooses tied to the ceiling. At which moment the narrator, hanging himself, is gasping out a conclusion: “‘I was afeared of offending you, sweet girls. Of upsetting what is politically correct with my wonton desires. So fearful that I never showed you my true self. Sometimes, to be a man in this world, it takes a little rope.’”

  She closes the file, deletes his email, feels grossed-out and sticky, even sad.

  That afternoon, Leela and her mother take a hike in a nearby state park and both complain about their knees. That night she watches a documentary about Civil War medical procedures after dinner with her dad. Everyone goes to bed by nine. Her phone waits in the bedroom. When she finally checks it, two messages wait.

  The first is a text from Bryan, suggesting a meet-up, midtown Manhattan, no mention of her story, just the news that he’s already at the bar, he’s been there all day and wants to see her, come through.

  The second message is an email, from a domain that makes her heart skip a beat, from the Magazine, Bryan’s boss, who wonders if Leela can meet for coffee, as early as tomorrow, if she’s free.

  * * *

  “Yo, Leela. Are you in the bar?”

  “I’m in New Hampshire.”

  “What?”

  “New Hampshire.”

  “No shit. So, what, no cocktails?”

  “Bryan, are you drunk right now?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Is it a holiday?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You sound like you’ve been drinking all day.”

  “I got canned. Two days ago. I’ve been drinking for two days.”

  Wait, what?

  “Are you serious? Bryan, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s super messed-up.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened is that old-ass companies are too fucking PC. So what’s up with you? Holy shit, you’re in Vermont.”

  “New Hampshire.”

  “That’s what I meant. Honestly, though…”

  She wants to reach through the phone, shake him into sobriety, into whatever moment preceded the moment he did something stupid and got fired. What did he do? What did he do to her? What if everything she’s done has been for nothing?

  “Bryan, seriously, what happened?”

  “Dude, no. Let’s talk about your article. That’s so messed up, that you took my advice.”

  “Is it?”

  “Hold on, let me grab it. I’ve got it with me.” In the background she hears country music. “Leela, I’m not drunk.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “So honestly, it’s not that bad. Sorry, I should lead with compliments.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Here’s the deal. I can totally picture this chick. Emily whatever. Which is great. Like, everything she went through, how a girl feels. I think getting that whole female point of view through, that’s rad.”

  “Thanks. That’s good to hear.”

  “In terms of what’s next, you’ve got two problems. We’re not getting the bigger picture. The gestalt. Beyond the gender thing. That’s number one.”

  “The gender thing?”

  “There’s the chick, clearly. But you have to ask yourself, like, who cares? Incest, child abuse, we’ve seen it. Borderline cliché. Homicide: we’ve seen it. The whole angle about kids-use-the-internet-omg, that’s so played out. I’m just spitballing, but you should try thinking more outside the box. I mean, it’s true crime, so what would Didion do, right? Hey, what would Cary Fukunaga do? Go Serial the shit out of it. Or try a media piece, or do historical. Like, a history of moral panic stretching back to Babylon.”

  “So you think the girl’s story is not the story.”

  “People want blood. Editors want blood. The chick, the daddy banging, that’s background. Human interest is boring. This is a murder story, so where’s the blood?”

  She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even know how to begin.

  “Now dude,” he says, “don’t get all defensive.”

  “I’m not being defensive.”

  “Hold on, I’m stepping out to go smoke.” A moment later: “So here’s the main thing,” he says. “Like, I just don’t think this story sounds like you. Leela Mann. I mean, come on, footnotes?”

  All she wants to do is hang up. Go outside and double-check that the sky is not falling.

  “So, just so I’m clear,” she says. “Barring the ‘girl from a girl’s perspective’ stuff, you’re saying (a) I chose the wrong story to tell, and (b) the way I told it is also wrong.”

  “Hold up, I didn’t catch that. Can you say that again?”

  “Bryan, I should go.”

  “Dude, don’t freak out. I typed up my notes, I’ll send them. I’m so wasted. Forget all this shit. You’ve got the start of something great, I know it. It just needs to, like, find itself. You know what I mean? Like anybody does. I’ll email you.”

  * * *

  Two days later, Leela waits across the street from a coffee shop in downtown Manhattan, early by thirty-five minutes, after a night of next to no sleep. The light changes. She trots across West Broadway, bird-stepping in pumps that give her blisters. What if the editor’s superearly, waiting in the window, witnessing her awkwardness?

  Inside, she relaxes, slightly. The editor is not there, as far as she can tell. She stands at a metal counter by the window and sips an iced coffee. She’s in her only suit. Her little station wagon is parked on a block in Queens. She’d arranged to crash the previous night on a college friend’s couch. When she left New Hampshire, her father had tried to give her money. She refused him. Then she stopped for gas before getting on the highway and found the tank full; one of her parents must’ve snuck out to fill it. What had she ever done to deserve them?

  For a moment, thinking about her parents takes her stress away. Then a short woman is suddenly at her elbow. “Leela? I’m Lian.” She leads her to the rearmost booth. Midforties. Chinese-American? Taiwanese? Bright expression, short hair, buttoned black cardigan. No obvious adornments except for a silver cuff on her left ear, with a chain looping to a piercing, a small silver hoop. So, straight-up business, but subtly goth. Leela wants to be her, instantly.

  “I’m really glad this worked out,” Lian says.

  “I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.”

  “It’s my pleasure.”

  “Well, thank you,” Leela says.

  “You seem nervous,” Lian says a moment later. She smiles slightly, as if forced. Is it a test? Leela laughs nervously.

  “I’m a little nervous.”

  “We’re just having coffee.”

  “I understand.”

  “What I mean is,” says Lian, “think of this as a conversation. Like you’d have with a friend.”

  “Sure, of course.”

  Now she’s supremely nervous.

  “So, I went over your résumé. I spoke to your references. Everything is looking positive. This morning is more about getting to know each other, if that makes sense?”

  “Totally.”

  Totally? Could she sound dumber?

  “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? Where you’re from, that sort of thing.”

  A coffee grinder growls in the background. Leela smiles tightly and starts—and proceeds to ramble for ten minutes. Mostly talking about her parents for some reason. Lian keeps nodding, encouraging, tersely smiling, or is it a weird frown? Should she have stopped by now? The voice in h
er head drowns out the words coming out of her mouth, so she can barely hear herself. Should she be talking about more professional stuff? Is everything ruined already?

  She stops abruptly when she hears herself start talking about her brother’s business plans.

  Lian smiles tersely again. She explains about the job—five minutes—then asks pointed questions about The Village Voice, her recent projects and responsibilities—fifteen minutes—then she reaches into her bag and pulls out two copies of the Magazine’s latest issue.

  “These are for you.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Leela says automatically. “I already read it.”

  “Really?”

  “I read it on the day it arrives. It’s an old habit.”

  Lian laughs. “How about this: Break it down for me. As much as you remember. What you liked, what worked for you, what didn’t work. How you would’ve done something differently, if you were the editor. That kind of thing.”

  The café is suddenly empty. Her palms are sweating. She wipes them on her legs. It must be a trick question. Weirdly enough, it’s the same game she and some of her friends played in college, when her infatuation began.

  Twenty-five minutes later, even the Gopnik Sinusoid has been explained—the sine wave that Matteo once pinpointed, to account for the amount of wordplay in an Adam Gopnik article in relation to the subject’s proximity to his personal life—and the woman across from her seems slightly approving, not completely weirded out, and Leela wonders if she has reason to feel optimistic.

  “Your friend Bryan was let go recently,” Lian says.

  Or maybe not.

  “I heard that. He’s not exactly a friend.”

  “Really? He definitely sang your praises.”

  “That’s nice,” Leela says guardedly. “We used to work together, that’s all.” Is this the right thing to say? Does she sound unloyal? After they spoke on the phone, she’d gone through Bryan’s notes. Thirty percent of them had been of some value, the rest she junked. On the biggest points, he was wrong, she was sure of it: Emily Portis was the story, at least the story that she felt obliged to tell. But she’d still spent the rest of the night rewriting, revising again just the night before, as well as that morning. Then she’d printed out a fresh version at a copy shop and shoved it in her bag, just in case.

  “We do have another candidate for the job,” Lian was saying. “It’s really just a matter at this point of who’s the right fit.”

  Her throat tightens.

  “Of course.”

  “Bryan did mention that you were working on a story. About those murders up in New Hampshire. The town where you’re from, in fact, is that right?”

  “Yeah. I was up there reporting.”

  “And you wrote something?”

  “I have a copy with me, actually.”

  “Can I read it?”

  She’s caught off guard. Her voice squeaks: “Really?”

  Lian laughs. “Yes. Really.”

  She reaches down for her bag. She’s choking. She’s drowning.

  The pages in her hand weigh a hundred pounds.

  * * *

  “Is this Leela?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Leela, it’s Lian. Do you have a minute?”

  “Of course. I’m just doing some editing.”

  Total lie. It’s been six hours since their coffee meeting, and she’s outside in Queens, on a brick stoop, watching makeup tutorials on her phone to keep herself from thinking about Lian reading her story.

  “So I just read your story.”

  “Oh. Great.”

  “I think you nailed it.”

  “What?”

  What?

  “What you were trying to achieve, I think it’s all here. It’s rough, obviously. But I thought there were some interesting portions. I have to say, I expected to get a media story, or a true-crime piece, so I was glad to read a profile.”

  “That’s definitely what I was going for.”

  It is now, at least.

  “Well, you had unique access. And the girl comes through, so that’s good. To the piece overall, are you interested in my thoughts? I should warn you, I’m not a softie.”

  “No, yes, absolutely. Please.”

  Lian exhales lightly. “So I didn’t mind the footnotes, but didn’t love them. In any case, we’d never run something like that, it’s just not our thing. Overall, the mountain metaphor was a little too on the nose, I’d lose that. Also, do teenagers really have so much going on upstairs? Or in their romantic relationships? I didn’t at that age, but that could just be me. Anyway, I’d revisit the characterization; you don’t want to overinvest. What I think needs the most work here is what’s missing. I don’t want to second-guess your reporting, but there’s too much here that’s anecdotal, if not mawkish. The whole confessional sequence, I mean, I don’t even know where to start. Probably we’d cut it, but does the scaffolding elsewhere fall apart? Then all the ‘Girl’ and ‘Boy’ references, let’s be honest: it’s a gimmick. It just looks coy. Also, there was too much sex by half. Why are you in the story but not completely, you know what I mean? I guess the good news is that you’ve got all this material to work with, so you can cut a lot without losing muscle.”

  There’s a long silence. Leela doesn’t know whether to rage or cry.

  A second ago, hadn’t she “nailed it”?

  “Lian, thank you anyway,” she manages.

  “You know, you should read ‘Landing From the Sky,’ Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. It’ll give you an example of something to shoot for. I can give you a couple other directions to consider, if you like.”

  “Sure,” she says. “That would be great.”

  “I meant what I said earlier. You found a story and an interesting way to tell it; you found a shape that fits. That’s not easy. What I liked best about this piece has nothing to do with the narrative. You showed tenacity. To go after something and put it together. Down the road, who knows? Maybe a version will find its way to the website. But let’s wait and see.”

  A bunch of kids run by on the street. Someone nearby is cooking onions. She’s about to bite a fingernail off, but something tells her to snap to attention.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m putting you forward for the job.”

  WHAT?

  “But why?”

  Lian laughs. “You’re hilarious. Leela, this is a tough gig. There’s a lot of pressure. There’s plenty of competition, old habits, all the problems of a big institution. I need someone steady, day in, day out. What I don’t need is a freelancer who turns around perfect profile articles in a week. That’s not the kind of stuff we run anyway. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll send you an email tonight, we’ll get the scheduling started.”

  “But this is amazing,” Leela says quietly.

  “You need to sit down with human resources, and there are people I want you to meet. You still need to interview with my boss; this is by no means a done deal.”

  “Lian, I can’t even begin to tell you.”

  “One thing. Your friend, Bryan.”

  “We worked together.”

  “Do you know why he was let go?”

  “No.”

  “They caught him jerking off at his desk. I mean, this is a hard enough business. And I don’t like to fire anyone for reasons other than competence. He actually was good at his job. But stupid. You see what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  “You seem to me highly competent. Please also be smart.”

  “I will be. I mean, I am. I promise.”

  “We’ll talk soon. Goodbye.”

  The connection goes dead. Leela stares at the phone. And does nothing more to express her exploding joy than to call her parents.

  * * *

  The house is empty. The sky’s all clouds. A bird starts to sing, and the song is boxed by the whuff of a car driving fast up the mountain.


  Emily snaps her eyes open and feels a really strong need, but for what isn’t clear. She gets up and moves at a snail’s pace from room to room, while the house slowly brightens. She goes into the dining room and stares at family pictures on the walls, framed portraits of grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The house is not hers anymore. She almost doesn’t recognize the rooms. She feels like her life’s sliding away from her, out from under her feet. Weirdly, she’s not totally uncomfortable with the sensation. She stands in the yard. The gatherings of houses down in the valley look like pens of little animals gone to sleep. She imagines floating above them, on the wind, drifting slowly out of the state.

  But it’s not until around eleven that she puts her longing into words, what’s been nagging her for days, the need that floats in her brain. And against great reluctance, she decides to do one of the things she promised herself she’d never do, not in this lifetime, without being begged.

  The drive will take about three hours. The weather’s unusually chilly. Emily tries the truck’s heater, but it’s broken. All she’s got is her cross-country windbreaker and a T-shirt. The sun remains stubbornly behind the clouds the whole way. Still she feels an incredible sense of purpose, almost happiness. The single-mindedness of traveling, of being in charge. She counts signs and houses, red cars, green cars. She counts the number of songs a radio station will play in a row without commercials. She catches herself wondering what became of Leela, the journalist. She wants not to care but can’t help it. She’d been so energized that night. The same feeling of being in charge, unafraid, almost no longer human, just force.

  The truck loudly charges north and east. After two hours, the drive is now the longest Emily’s ever driven, never mind gone so far alone. She checks her phone: nothing. At that moment Nick’s at work. He worked the previous night, too. Alex and Meg had come over while he was out, the three of them talked into the night about the future.

  She double-checks the directions she printed out.