Free The Last Good Night by Emily Listfield

catalog from the State University in Syracuse from my bag. I brought her a different one every time we met, thick glossy catalogs of verdant quadrangles and fresh-faced kids, hoping that the pictures would prove to her that there were other worlds out there, other climates. “I can help with the applications,” I offered. “And I’d be happy to write you a recommendation.”
    â€œThey have a communications department?” she asked. “You know, like, TV?”
    â€œYes. Why? Is that what you’re interested in?”
    She shrugged noncommittally, and slid the catalog into her knapsack. “Jay wants me to ask you if he can meet Quinn Hartley,” she said as I motioned for the check.
    â€œI’ll think about it.”
    â€œIs your husband jealous of him?”
    I laughed. “Not that I know of.”
    Shana didn’t smile, she only nodded, taking in the information, collating it. She has a disconcerting habit of asking me the most personal of questions with no warning. Once, she asked me how many times a week David and I had sex. Another time she wanted to know precisely what I ate at every meal. Whatever I answered, she always took it in impassively and added it to whatever map she was trying to chart.
    â€œCome on,” I said. “English starts in five minutes.”
    We left the diner and found Jay leaning up against a stoop three feet away, his enormous foot in complicated sneakers propped up on the railing, waiting for us.
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    W HEN I GOT to my office, I turned on the computer, looked at it briefly, and then began to go through the stack of mail on my desk, mostly a barrage of speaking requests for various civic groups and charities that had already passed initial network standards. I flipped through them quickly, separating them into two piles, those to be discarded and the few I would consider. As soon as I put one in the “discard” pile, though, I had second thoughts and moved it to the “to be considered” pile. They were all worthy, after all, the Women in Media Network, the Girl Scouts, the Central Park Conservancy, the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation. How do you say no? Of course, if I said yes to each, I’d have no time to do the news and then they wouldn’t want me anyway. I turned the television on to CNN, muted the sound, and continued shifting envelopes back and forth between the two piles.
    I only saw its edges at first, colorful, crenellated. I wasn’t even thinking as I pulled it out.
    I froze.
    It was a small old-fashioned postcard, with a picture of a yellow U-shaped motel, the courtyard filled with royal palms, the water in the distance. The sky was a lurid blue. I turned it over to read the legend but I already knew the motel’s name. The Breezeway Inn. Flagerty, Florida.
    There was no handwriting on it, no note.
    But in the space where an address should have been, there was a meticulous black ink line drawing of a coffin.
    I shut my eyes and sat very still, my heart pounding.
    And then, shaking, I rose and went out to the reception area. “How did this get in with my mail?” I asked Carla.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThis postcard.”
    â€œI suppose the way mail usually gets here. With a stamp and a prayer.” Carla’s simple gold jewelry, her flowery perfume, and her soft-spoken voice make her sometimes edgy remarks all the more surprising.
    â€œWell, there’s no stamp on this. And there’s no address.”
    Carla shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it.”
    â€œDid you see anyone go into my office?”
    â€œNo.” She bent down to answer a ringing phone.
    I clutched the card as I stared out at the newsroom. Everything was as it should be, everyone was busy with their wires and their computers and their sheets of copy.
    I went back to my office and locked the door.
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    I LOOKED AT the postcard one more time, staring at the motel, and at the coffin on the