Page 35 of Our Last Resort

Émile hadn’t locked it.

My initial shock gave way to shame.

Émile trusted us. He counted on us to respect his rules, his space.

From the first floor, his office drew me in like a force field.

I stood in the foyer, listening for the pitter-patter of someone else’s steps, for the rustling of clothes.

Nothing.

And so, I went in.

It was the weirdest thing, being alone in his office. I took it in, a strange tenderness in my heart. Naïve Émile.

He was the most brilliant man in the world, and he was an idiot. Thinking himself safe among his women, among the mothers he had trained to stand guard.

I ran my hands over his desk. Thinking:If I had money, where would I keep it?

No idea. I didn’t have money. I didn’t havethings.

I dipped my fingers into his pencil holder, brushed the cover of a notebook.

Open it?

No.

I lifted the lid of a rectangular wooden box.

Small items had been carelessly thrown inside. There were buttons, fallen from Émile’s polo shirts, that a mother would sew back on. There were bright pieces of candy. (Strange: We didn’t eat candy.) There was a chubby key that I would later realize was for his muddy 4x4. Elastic bands, paper clips, andyes, yes—

Coins. Silver and copper-orange.

Pinned underneath them, wrinkled, abandoned like they were worth nothing—bills.

I tugged at a corner of one, the paper thin and breakable. Out slid one, two, three bills. On one of them, a two and a zero. On the other two, a one and a zero. Two tens and a twenty. Forty dollars.

Deeper in the box, a flurry of bills with just a one.

How many should I take? How much did pills cost?

Think.

The bills, abandoned in the wooden box, buried between buttons and pieces of candy, were not cared for. Forty dollars and a bunch of dollar bills evidently did not amount to a fortune.

Do it. You’ve come this far.

At the bottom of Émile’s box, one of the dollar bills had a shape printed on its surface.

I pulled it out, lifted it up: the imprint of lipstick. Like in the images Émile had shown us from the world outside, women pouting in advertisements, their beautiful faces, their exquisite bodies contorted in absurd positions to sell useless things.

It repelled Émile. He said it did. And still, he had kept the dollar bill in his little box.

I inspected it more closely. The scene materialized in my head like a shape in the fog. A lady—it had to have been a lady—running the lipstick over her lips. Pressing them against the paper.Kiss kiss.Then handing the bill to Émile, and Émile taking it. A man accepting a gift. It was an illusion, a fantasy taking place at an unclear location. Somewhere dark, a heavy dampness that stuck to the skin, and Émile radiating light. Good Émile, pure Émile. The dollar bill making contact with his skin like a poisoned dart.

He had to have liked it a little.

A tug in my chest. Captivating, this version of Émile. The best man, torn apart by temptation.

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