#geoff murphy

Young Guns 2 (1990). Billy the Kid and his band of outlaws are pursued across New Mexico territory by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who the young gunslingers must face-off with if they are to reach the safety of the border.

“Come on, Li-luh! I wanna dance!”

“Oh, keep your skirt on. I’m comin’, I’m comin’.”

“Okay! What’d’yah think? Too much?”

Of course I couldn’t say how I really felt, and I prayed my blushing cheeks were hidden well enough in my dimly lit bedroom for her not to notice. Maybe I matched the walls, maybe that’s why she could look right past me most of the time.

“I’ve never seen you like this before,” I said, which was true.

She shrugged with a grin. “Trying something new. I’m trying to bring something back, but I’m not really sure what,” she giggled.

“It’s—bold, that’s for sure.”

“So, it’s too much?”

“No!” I protested. If she changed a single thing I was sure my heart would stop beating. “You look great.”

“Great, ‘cause I think we’re crazy late to meet the boys.”

“Grab your purse and I’ll call the cab.”

“We could probably walk there,” I suggested. Anything to lengthen our time alone together.

“We’re late enough as it is, C. I’m pretty sure if we stall any longer Will and Geoff won’t be there to meet us.”

“So?”

“I’m calling a cab. Just meet me downstairs, ‘kay?”

“Okay. Right behind you.”

I want to say that I knew better. I want to tell you that I didn’t spend my whole life following Lila Rose anywhere she went, or Lila Roberts as I knew her then.

“They aren’t comin’,” Geoff probably said.

“Oh my god,” Will would’ve groaned, because who wouldn’t.

“Why would any nice girl wanna be with an old loser like me?” He used to put on this sorry poor me act a lot back then.

“Geoff, pull yourself together, man. Lila wouldn’t do that. They’re comin’, don’t be an idiot.”

Lila fell into Will’s arms immediately jumping out of the taxi. As he said something sleazy, like, “Hey, babe,” I was looking at my date: your father. He was anything but my type, but what he did offer me was a night out with my best friend, so you can understand why I gave him a polite chance.

We got to the bar, and I could tell you what happened there, but I’d only be repeating myself.

We were in university. We were young. She was a senior with her eyes on a sunny suburban dream, and I was a sophomore just trying to keep up. She didn’t know, how could she? I was only just finding out then myself.

But I always wondered...

“Did you like him?” she asked me.

It took me a long minute to remember who “he” even was, but I nodded believing that’s what she wanted me to do.

“Will likes Geoff a lot, those two are pretty tight, like us,” she explained. “And wouldn’t it be great if the four of us could like, all get together and live together and be together? We could even raise our kids together!”

The things she said to me! She must have known how our doomed future gutted me, even then.

I knew there was no competing with Will Rowe — that was his name back then, you see. Will was a farmer boy, sweet as pie and loyal as a dog. Lila told him to change his name to “Rose” because she wanted to be known as “Lila Rose” when they got married and moved to Whibley. I guess, looking back, this was when I also decided to marry Geoff and change my name too. Anything for Lila.

Later, or never at all, I remember thinking. I would tell her later when the time was right, or if the time was never right then I would learn to be content with whatever she wanted us to be: friends, neighbours, it didn’t matter as long as I could orbit her world.

Can you imagine a more torturous way to live?

Part-way through the life I told myself I would be okay with, I needed a release. I turned to writing, but one day Geoff had enough, he kicked me out, rightfully so!, because of course I went to Lila, and I told her, we kissed, but she looked so horrified after that I knew it was—

“The end. I never spoke to her again,” Caroline Murphy finished.

“So that’s the Lila story,” her son Allan puzzled.