In our continuing showcase of the work of Russell Bittner, we are pleased to present the short story Last Exit.  Although Last Exit does not appear in the collection Stories in the Key of C.  Minor. which is now available for sale, it clearly displays the literary talent of Russell Bittner.  Click the icon below to purchase the collection, or continue to Last Exit.

Last Exit

We look at the menu, but it’s only a formality.  We already know what we’re up against:  a Siren of a thing this restaurant calls ‘Love Boat,’ which is a collection of sushi-and-sashimi-for-two the three of us have never been able to resist—and so, we’re not about to now.

We chat, just like old times, and the two of you occasionally squabble.  Normal for siblings, I think.  And I’m quietly thankful for the familiarity—which still has the nice ring of ‘family,’ even if the rip tide of ‘concept’ is moving steadily, irrevocably, out to sea.  I feel myself drifting with it, but trying to hold fast to pylons for the duration.

‘Love Boat’ finally arrives, and we dig in.  Eager mouths attach to this love-in-a-boat, and the earlier testiness disappears from the table.  My two babies are now just taking on fuel against a cold February night.  I love their greediness, which is a father’s delight to be able to satisfy.

But my delight is on a clock, and that clock has now ticked out.

We conclude with Green Tea and Red Bean ice cream:  exotica beyond mere flavors or colors in this frigid time of year.  I ask for the check, lay down a cool hundred—my last for the privilege of a ‘Love Boat’—and we stand up to leave.

“You’re going straight home?” my little guy asks.  I lie, tell him “yes.”  We walk two blocks to their front gate, and his sister, my daughter, says “g’nite.”  He knows, however, that an entrance to the park is just another block away and insists on walking me to the subway stop.  It’s a park, he knows, in which one can easily lose oneself on a winter’s night—a park asleep, a park apart, a park of no necessary exit.  There was a time, he knows, when I walked–sometimes slept–there late at night, quite apart, looking perhaps for a last, fast exit.

We walk to the subway stop.  He waits at the top, I imagine, until he’s heard “goodnight” from me and a click from the turnstile—until he knows I’m going home.

“I’ll call you,” is the last thing I hear from him, and I know he means it.  This is his watch, and he’ll want to verify that I’ve gone nowhere else, not to any last exit, nowhere but home—at least tonight.