Page 4 of The Last Guy On Earth
“I love you,” she says.
“You too, babe. Thanks for picking up.”
“Anytime!”
She rings off, and the phone makes that beep that tells you you’re all alone.
I lean my head against the headrest and close my eyes. The first image I see in my mind’s eye is Jethro Hale’s brilliant green eyes.
THREE
Fifteen Years Ago
NOVEMBER
From the threadbare sofa,Jethro Hale watches the new guy pace between their kitchen stove and their small living room. Not that it’s a long walk—just a few steps, really.
Clay Powers is a handsome dude, all flashing blue eyes and good muscle definition. He’s older than Jethro by two years, but they’re both newcomers to professional hockey, because Clay finished his degree at a fancy private university before suiting up to play for the Busker Brutes, their new minor league team.
Hale didn’t get to finish his degree, and he’s still bitter.
Jethro would have thought that being a rich college graduate would relax a guy, but Clay (“it’s short for Clayton”) Powers hasn’t sat down for longer than thirty seconds since he moved in three days ago. He’s wound up so tightly that Jethro feels tired just watching him.
“You want some pasta, right?” Clay says, grabbing a frying pan out of the cabinet and inspecting it. He makes a face like he finds it lacking. “I’m cooking.”
“Uh, sure. Thanks,” Jethro says uneasily. Truthfully, he would rather live alone. Except he’s broke, so now he’s sharing a small one-bedroom with a stranger. And it’s tricky to findhousing in the small city of Busker, New York, just outside of Utica.
The team’s owner—a slumlord who also owns car dealerships—solves this problem by renting divey apartments to his players for cheap. The complex is called Double Oaks, and it’s pretty run down.
Jethro and Clay are sharing a bedroom so small that their two double beds take up almost the entire floor space. Their bathroom is similarly claustrophobic. Jethro has bruises on both elbows from bumping his long arms into the walls of the narrow shower stall.
In the kitchen—which is really just the other end of the living room—Clay puts the skillet on the stove and turns on the heat. Then he grabs a funny-looking bottle of oil out of the cabinet, pours some into the pan, and adds a pound of ground beef a moment later.
With stabbing motions, he breaks the beef up with an ancient wooden spoon, while also talking a mile a minute. “There’s something justoffabout this team, don’t you think? You’ve been here longer than I have.”
“Only by a single week,” Jethro points out. He watches Clay attack the meat with speed and finesse, and wonders where he comes from. Like, what planet.
People often mystify Jethro, but Clay is truly baffling. For starters, he drives a BMW. Not a new one, but still. His clothes all look like they were designed and manufactured according to his exact musculature. And there are products in the bathroom that Jethro has never heard of. Styling foam, for example. And Clay’s razor looks like it came from the James Bond lab—all matte metal and angles.
Clay opens another cabinet and frowns. “Is there a cutting board?”
“I…maybe?” Jethro has never used a cutting board in his twenty-two years on Earth.
Clay grabs a plate instead. Then he produces an onion from somewhere and dices it quickly in several directions. As Jethro watches, several cloves of garlic meet their fate in much the same way. “Okay, but the team… There’s all thistension.”
“Because we suck?” Jethro offers. They’ve had three back-to-back losses since Clay arrived. As the goalie, Jethro has been too busy trying to stop shots to notice anything subtler than pucks flying at his face.
“No, it’s bigger than that. The coach always looks like he wants to strangle Laytner.” That’s their team captain. “Which is weird because Laytner is the only decent player who’s not in this room right now.”
Jethro smiles at the compliment, knowing that it’s true. He’s busy keeping their losses to a minimum, while Clay Powers has done his level best to double their shots on goal.
But they can’t do it alone, which is probably why Clay is so stressed out over there, cutting up a red pepper as if it’s personally offended him. “How did Laytner get to be captain, if Coach hates him?” he wonders aloud. “And why is everyone so quiet in the locker room? It’s just weird. But I have an idea. I think I know what we need to do.”
Get some better players and a better coach?
“We have to throw a party.”
“Wait, what?” Jethro has neither money nor friends, and you kind of need both to throw a party.
