Free The Last Tomorrow by Ryan David Jahn

along.
    But he didn’t think he could do it in New York. He needed a change of environment, a change of scenery. He decided to go to Los Angeles. He liked the idea of getting as far from New York
as he could without first obtaining a passport. He would go to Los Angeles and he would live off his savings and he would write a novel. He would throw out his twenty-nine pages and start a new
novel in a new place. He’d sit on a sun-lit porch or on the verge of a hotel pool with a portable typewriter on his knees and write a novel while sipping rum cocktails. And he wouldn’t
go back to New York till it was finished.
    That was his plan.
    And a week later he stepped off a train in downtown Los Angeles, with a cardboard suitcase gripped in his fist and a small fold of cash in his pocket. He was in his new place and his future
seemed bright.
    But things didn’t go according to plan.
    In two and a half years he has written not a single word unless the paper it’s typed upon has been promptly crumpled into a tight ball and thrown into a trashcan.
    He still pulls out his typewriter after work sometimes and rolls in a sheet of paper, especially when he’s been drinking. But then he simply sits and stares. The blank page is somehow
intimidating. He knows what he wants to put on it – it’s clear in his mind – but it won’t come. Something in him won’t let it out.
    With comics it was easy. It didn’t feel like it mattered. He didn’t even sign most of his work. It was creative, sometimes he did something he was proud of, but in the back of his
mind he knew it didn’t mean anything. He’d never sent a comic book home to Kentucky as he had the short stories he’d published. He’d never even told his father he was
working in comics. Comics were disposable. No matter how good they were, they were trash. There was something creatively liberating about that. If what you do doesn’t matter, you can do
anything. But this matters. This is his dream. And he knows that as soon as he slams his fingers against those typewriter keys, as soon as he commits to certain words in a certain order, he will
have tarnished his dream.
    He can’t bring himself to do that.
    It’s better to wait.
    Someday the right words will come and he’ll know they’re the right words because he’s been waiting on them for so long. When the time arrives he’ll sit down and write his
novel. He will do what he’s always said he’d do.
    Until then, he’ll be a milkman.
    3
    He makes a right onto Wilshire, heading east. The street is empty but for him, and its emptiness makes it lonesome. Like a dry riverbed, it feels almost sad. This isn’t
how it was supposed to be. It was built for so much more. But he likes that feeling. He likes it because he knows it’s temporary.
    This isn’t failure; it’s potential.
    He rolls down the empty street, makes a few turns onto other empty streets, and finally pulls into an alleyway, driving along the backs of anonymous warehouses. Trash bins line the alleyway.
Tractor trailers parked at docks. Homeless men with newspaper blankets. Then he arrives, rolls past a steep ramp, slams the truck into reverse, and backs up the incline, ignoring the engine’s
high-pitched whine. He brings the truck to a stop, kills the engine, and steps out of it with a clipboard in hand.
    The warehouse guys are sitting at a rickety table playing cards.
    Once trailers are unloaded and product is inventoried and stocked, the warehouse crew merely wait around for milkmen like him to arrive so the day’s orders can be pulled and loaded. Then,
after all the trucks are on their way, they sweep, check inventory once more, and shut the place down. By eight o’clock they’re headed home to sleep, or to a bar to toss back a few.
    ‘Eugene,’ says the warehouse foreman, Darryl ‘Fingers’ Castor, looking up from a fan of cards. ‘How’s the novel coming along?’
    ‘Slow and steady. What about last night’s gig?’
    ‘It was