Disconnection (4 page)

It was her ex-boyfriend Rufus who found her the job at Frank’s. He used to be the chef there. Sela lost her virginity to him only a week after meeting him at a seedy pool hall in Baton Rouge. After they broke up due to irreconcilable differences (he cheated, she didn’t), Rufus skipped town. Mutual friends said he called them from Seattle, bragging that he was living there now. But that could be a lie. Rufus lied a lot. Like when he told Sela he loved her—that was his worst lie of all.

Sela chose to work at Frank’s Diner instead of going to college right away so she could save up money for school, and not be in debt until retirement like most of the kids she knew. Last week she had looked at her savings account and realized that in another year, she could go to just about any school she wanted (Ivy League not included) and pay her entire way through. The world was full of infinite educational possibilities.

I’ll just cross that bridge when I come to it
, Sela thought as she walked out of her apartment and into the warm night. The low murmur of the sleepless city beckoned with its trembling, invisible promises as Sela stared at the street ahead of her, which seemed vacant save for a handful of parked cars, including Mandy’s red Honda Civic. Stepping across the lawn, it dawned on Sela that somewhere out in the city, a serial killer was looking for new prey.

Shivers ran down Sela’s spine.

Life is a bad place to live
, she thought.
Life is a bad place…

“Hi, Sela.”

Sela turned around and spotted her downstairs neighbor, Woodrow Brown, standing beside his Jeep. Sela instantly smiled. Woodrow was the residential apartment hotty. He worked as a mechanic for a BMW dealership in Covington, and was seen more often than not in wife beater shirts and tight blue jeans, which exposed his Arnold Schwarzenegger biceps and an ass that would make Brad Pitt jealous.

Sela had a crush on him for the first several months after he moved into her building, but he had never asked her out and Sela could never bring herself to be the aggressive one. Now the two neighbors had reached a comfortable level that seemed far too brotherly-sisterly for it to ever go farther.

Which stinks because, God, he is gorgeous
, Sela thought, eyeing the muscles bulging out of Woodrow’s crisp, white button-down shirt.

Sela’s smile widened as she approached. “Hi, Woodrow. I hardly knew it was you with that fancy get-up you have on. Going somewhere nice?”

It was dark but Sela could still make out the blush that spread across Woodrow’s face. “Is it too much?” he asked, flattening his shirt across his washboard tummy.

“Too much for what?”

“Harrah’s Casino. The
Times Picayune’s
astrologist said today was one of the luckiest days of the year for my sign.”

Sela wrinkled her nose. “You don’t really buy into all that stuff, do you?”

Woodrow shrugged. “We all have to buy into something, I guess. Where are you going? Is that Mandy in the car?” He arched his neck to have a better look at the Honda’s driver.

“Yeah. She’s dragging me to the Black Kitchen. Some band is playing.” Sela kicked a rock into a nearby gutter, showing her lack of enthusiasm.

He smiled sympathetically at her. “You never know. It could be fun.”

“Well, then why don’t you come along?” Sela smirked at him.

Woodrow held his hands up defensively. “I would, but lady luck is calling.” He winked. “Maybe another time,” he said as stepped into his Jeep and cranked the ignition.

Mandy honked her horn. Sela walked away, waving. “Another time then,” she said.

“Absolutely! We just need to coordinate calendars, get our dates straight.” He paused, suddenly looking nervous. His silver eyes dimmed under the car’s interior light. “Be careful, Sela. There’s a maniac out there, you know,” he warned.

Sela nodded. “I will. See ya,” she called and hopped into Mandy’s car.

Mandy watched Woodrow drive off in his Jeep. “What a hunk,” she mumbled. “I don’t get why you don’t just ask him out.”

Sela closed the car door. “There’s complications.”

“Like what? Does he have leprosy?”

“Not funny, Mandy,” Sela chided as she turned on the radio. The Rolling Stones began blasting from the speakers.
The black dress of rock’n’roll
, Sela thought. Went with any occasion.

The music was only a temporary tranquilizer. As the car rolled through the urban landscape, Sela began to have the strangest thoughts. An increasing sense of panic loomed over her like a hurricane building over an ocean. She felt her throat close, her eyes water. The air grew cooler in the car as Sela sensed a dark spell hovering near, a curse of unseeing danger that seemed to whisper with veiled threats. Goose bumps began formed on Sela’s arms. She opened her eyes again and looked outside. Mandy was gabbing on about her latest dating escapade, but Sela did not listen. She watched the city deepen with the darkness of night. On the surface everything seemed calm, natural. Another evening on the town. And yet—Sela could not shake the feeling of uneasiness that had suddenly overwhelmed her, as if she were out on the road, hunting for her own death.

What’s happening? Why do I feel this way?

It must be her dream, Sela decided. And the news of another murder. The combination of both.

Sela sighed.
Life is a bad place to live. Life is a bad…

I
t was not a bad time. Sitting in the Black Kitchen, amid cigarette smoke and crappy music and a friend who was out-of-her-mind drunk and who was now parading around the dance floor with her dress hiked up almost above her hips—this, Sela decided, was not a bad time. This was torture.

“Leave,” Sela whispered to herself. “Just get up and leave.”

“Yeah-hoo!” Mandy yelled from the dance floor. She waved at Sela with two frantic hands. “Come out here. I want you to meet someone.” Mandy tugged on the sleeve of a man who was tall and ugly enough to play Frankenstein in the next Hollywood remake. “This is Kevin!”

Sela made a dismissive wave with one limp hand before turning her face away and focusing her attention on the opposite wall. If Mandy thought to play matchmaker, she was sadly mistaken.

“She’s just shy, that’s all,” Mandy explained loudly, and the replica of Mary Shelley’s creation laughed with her as they disappeared into the crowd.

Oh, this is hell
, Sela thought.
If only I could be magically transported back to my apartment. A deus ex machina. A chariot, with Jude Law at the reins. Whatever it takes
.

Sela winced when the band broke out into a large mosh-pit anthem of crippled guitars and screaming lyrics over a microphone that bled with each punctured sound. For Sela, the band definitely added their own flavor of pain. For Grand Theft Auto to be known as the best local band in New Orleans did not speak well of the city’s music scene.

But then, Sela knew they would be bad. All music sucked these days. Nothing was original anymore. She grew up in the Age of Grunge, when Pearl Jam and Nirvana ruled the charts. It was her belief that music had been going down since Kurt Cobain died. Politics were involved too. Whenever a Republican President entered the White House, the music industry turned to shit. George W. and Britney Spears were in cahoots together, Sela was sure of it.

With the music pounding in her ears, Sela finally looked away from her spot on the wall and glanced around the room. She inhaled sharply when she realized that
everyone
was smoking. Or at least it seemed like everyone. Everywhere she looked, smoke was rising up, flames were igniting out of lighters, from matches, orange pyramids licking the air.

Sela’s heart leaped in her chest.

She tried to talk herself out of a panic attack. One quote usually worked:

You have nothing to fear but fear itself
.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s finest passage, but Sela liked to attribute it to her mother, who had used it just about any time she tried to talk her shy and reluctant daughter into trying something new.

Nothing but fear
.

Relax. How does that song go?

(Relax, don’t do it, when you’re gonna come to it, relax.)

Sela began to calm down. She tried to look on the bright side of her situation—she had picked up an admirer. He had been staring at her all night. A cute, dark haired boy at the bar. He wore glasses and a plain white shirt. He didn’t look like a Bourbon Street regular either, which was to his benefit, because Sela never dallied with run-of-the-mill frat boys.

Maybe the night was not a complete waste. Maybe the universe had brought her here for a reason, and that reason was sitting at the bar, waiting for her. Perhaps
torture
was not the right word after all.

Sela sat for another few minutes at the table and listened as the crappy band played a song called, “I Only Fuck You When I’m Drunk.”
Not exactly Elvis
, Sela thought as she gripped her gin and tonic and gulped down the remaining liquid. Her eyes searched the room for Mandy until she found her friend in the corner under a strobe light, lip locking with a bald-headed fat guy in tight jeans.

Sela rolled her eyes.
Time for another drink
, she decided, standing up.

She walked to the bar and purposely stood next to her cute admirer, close enough to smell the light woodsy fragrance of his cologne. Sela asked the bartender for more of the same as she casually leaned her head over just enough to see if the cute guy was watching her.

Yep
, Sela thought.
He’s watching me
. Her night’s worth of trepidation began to evaporate. Hope sprang anew.

Their eyes met and he smiled at her, revealing twin rows of perfectly arranged teeth. “Are you who I think you are?” he asked. He pushed his trendy, black-rimmed glasses to the top of his nose to have a better look at Sela.

“It depends on who you think I am,” Sela answered, ignoring the peculiarity of the question.

“Were you supposed to meet someone here tonight?” he asked.

Sela nodded. “Yes. Prince Charming. But he stood me up. The bastard.”

The cute guy laughed.
Good, good
, thought Sela. He was a laugher. A sense of humor was regarded as gold in her idea of the perfect guy, as essential as it was for other women to find men with money.

The band’s love song finished as the bartender handed Sela a new drink. “Gin and tonic, huh?” the cute guy asked.

Sela nodded and lifted her glass. “The drink of champions.”

He laughed again and cleared his throat. “Were you
really
supposed to meet someone here tonight?”

“Why do you want to know?” Sela asked as she thoughtfully played with the lemon slice in her drink.

The guy’s smile fled from his face. “It’s just that—if you’re not, I mean—I don’t know how to put this, but I’m supposed to meet someone.” He threw his hands up in the air, using a physical gesture as the period to a sentence he could not finish.

Sela took the hint. “You want me to leave?” she asked, though it was more of a rhetorical question than anything. The frown on his face spoke volumes.

“Well…” he began, “it’s just that, if you’re not her …”

“How do you know I’m not her? Never mind, don’t answer. I’ll go.” Sela hopped off her stool.

She heard his faint protest as she made her way back to her table near the dance floor.

So my admirer turns out to be a jerk. Can this night get any worse?

And then Sela felt a cold splash of liquid hit her outer thigh.

Yes
, was her answer.
It can
.

Sela looked up and saw the culprit—a braless blonde with a store’s worth of Mardi Gras beads around her neck. The girl screamed, “Oh, no! Did I do that?” She looked inside her recently emptied glass. Her Revlon-happy face contorted in amazement. “Oh, I guess I did.”

She leaned over and placed her lips close to Sela. Sela cringed. “It was Billy’s fault.” The girl laughed. Sela could smell the bourbon on her breath. “He pushed me.” Her perky, unsupported breasts jiggled up and down while she laughed.

“Don’t listen to her,” said the guy who Sela assumed was Billy. From the Abercrombie and Fitch shirt to his beer-soaked New Balance sneakers, Billy had Frat Boy written all over him. “She’s had a lot to drink,” he reported, nudging the girl.

“I can tell,” Sela mumbled grudgingly.

Billy and the girl left as Sela grabbed the napkins from her table’s dispenser and began the task of drying her jeans. No matter how hard she rubbed, the stain wouldn’t budge. The napkins turned to pulp in her hands.
A job for a paper towel
, Sela thought as she stood up and made her way to the bathroom.

Once inside the bathroom, she ripped a dozen or so paper towels out of their silver container and started cleaning the stain.

The Cherry on the Cake of the Night from Hell. One gin-soaked pair of jeans to go, thanks
.

Mandy walked in a second later. Her leather dress was lower than before, but only just so. She held her beer can sideways in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. “What are you doing in here?” she asked. Her eyes were half closed. Pupils dilated. “The band’s out there!”

Sela looked up. “Leave me alone, okay? I just got soaked by some sorority girl. And
please
put that cigarette out. You know how I hate it when you smoke around me.” Sela pointed to the smoke billowing from Mandy’s lips.

“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. So the girl… damn, that sucks. I’m sorry that happened to you. Did you kick her ass?”

“Did you see her? She didn’t have an ass. She looked like that chick who used to play Ally McBeal on TV.”

“Yuck. That actress sucks,” Mandy said.

“So did this girl.”

Mandy stuck her cigarette in the beer can. The cherry fizzled as Mandy scratched the top of her head where her brown roots were showing by an inch. She announced, “Well, I met someone.”

Mandy, I saw you out there. You’ve met a bunch of someones.”

“Yeah, well, it’s always hard finding that one guy you’re gonna screw.” She paused to take a sip from the same beer she had recently stuck her cigarette in. “Anyway,” she continued, “this guy wants me to go home with him. But I’m gonna take my car, okay? Cause I wanna go home when I wanna go home, not when he wants me to go home. You dig?”