Disconnection (5 page)

Sela glanced up from cleaning her pants. “You’re going? You’re leaving me here?” Her breath lodged in her chest at the thought of being left alone in a smoke-filled bar. She told herself once more to not be afraid.

Relax. Think of the crazy eighties song again, the one with the video where a bunch of gay men are humping each other
.

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

Mandy said, “You can go, too. Just catch a taxi.” She threw her beer can with an unsteady hand toward the overflowing trash bin, but it missed its mark and landed by Sela instead.

Warm, gold liquid oozed out around Sela’s shoes, but she took no notice. “Thanks, Mandy. Thanks a lot. It’s a Friday night; it’ll take hours to get a taxi, but don’t worry about it. Go ahead and get laid.” Sela placed one tired hand to her forehead. “Jesus!” she exclaimed in exasperation.

“Jesus who?” Mandy missed Sela’s sarcasm. She lifted her hand up in a thumbs-up sign and said, “I’ll call you in the morning.” And then she was gone.

“Don’t forget your stuff on the table!” Sela yelled out after her. Sela shook her head. Sometimes she really questioned why she was friends with the girl.

Resigned to her circumstances, and fairly confident that her pants were nearly dry, Sela stepped out of the bathroom and walked toward the bar.

But the band had finally finished their set. The blue-haired lead singer took the microphone with his tattooed hands and waved at the audience. “Okay, that’s going to end our gig for tonight, folks,” he yelled. “But thanks, you guys, for coming out tonight!” He picked up a beer can and smashed it against his head. He then threw the disc-shaped aluminum ornament out to the side where a group of trashy groupies waited with high pitched screams to catch their hero’s leftovers.

The crowd went wild as the lights closed onstage. Suddenly Sela was pushed into a thousand directions at once as college kids and ravers and punk rockers began to weave their way out of the bar. All the enthusiasm they’d had moments ago had dissolved, replaced with the desperation to find a new venue to release their youthful angst.

Sela twisted helplessly within a sea of arms and legs and torsos. It seemed like hours before the masses passed, days before she reached her table again. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that her purse was still there, waiting for her at the table. She picked it up and took out her wallet to make sure all the important items were still there—her driver’s license (check), her Blockbuster card (check), the Visa to which she owed five hundred dollars and whose telemarketers called her relentlessly even if she was just a day late (unfortunately, check).

Sela was about to replace the wallet back into her bag when it fell through her fingers and onto the floor. Moaning in disgust—for it would definitely be grimy with floor goo—she bent down closely to the sticky tiles and made a grab for it.

And just when she thought she had it, she realized she didn’t. Her wallet had suddenly become hard and smooth, not like a wallet at all. Sela looked at what she had in her hands: Mandy’s cell phone. It was bright and red and glowing green in the screen where the time said midnight.

A
s a rule, New Orleans natives don’t visit Bourbon Street, the same way New Yorkers never visit the Statue of Liberty, and Romans never take tours of the Coliseum. Bourbon Street was old news to the locals; the French Quarter, in general, was the place for tourists and party kids on the prowl. Sela got over her Bourbon Street fixation after the first month she moved to New Orleans. Most nights she preferred to stay uptown, away from the crazy crowd.

So being downtown now, among drunks and freaks without a friend or car to rely on, bothered her.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and stared into the eyes of the cute guy from the bar. The one who had rejected her.

He smiled at her as if they were old friends, as his eyes crinkled under his glasses. “Prince Charming never showed?”

She shook her head. “Nope. And wicked stepsister ran off with my golden carriage.”

“That’s a shame. Would you settle for a biology student with a ’93 Mazda?”

Is he kidding? He discards me and now expects to make amends?
Sela quickly replied, “No thanks.” The last thing she needed was to get saddled with some loser who saw her as his second chance.

Sela walked further down the sidewalk. Bourbon Street didn’t allow traffic at night, so she knew if she was going to catch a taxi, she’d better stand on a side street. Stopping on Toulouse Street, she began waving her hands wildly at oncoming taxis—none of which stopped.

Sela was mentally planning her revenge on Mandy when she heard her ex-admirer behind her. He said, “Look, my name is Dean. I’m sorry about earlier.”

Sela turned to look at him. “It’s cool, okay? We’re all looking for our soul mate.”

He stepped closer. “I was supposed to meet a girl at the bar back there. I’ve never seen her before. We met on an online chat room and she told me what she looked like and well, you fit the bill perfectly. But I realized it wasn’t you when you didn’t know the password.”

“What’s the password?” Sela asked. She thoughtfully rubbed the mole on her upper arm. The guy had piqued her interest once again.

He hesitated. “I can’t tell you.”

Sela rolled her eyes and said, “Tell me the password and I might talk to you.”

“I really can’t.”

“It’s not like you’re revealing the location of weapons of mass destruction or anything.”

“True about that. If those weapons
do
exist.”

“My grandmother thinks they do.”

The guy smiled at Sela for a long time. It was dark but she could still make out the green irises of his eyes. They seemed to unravel her piece by piece, as if he was documenting of every particle of her person. The feeling, Sela admitted to herself, was eerie.

Finally the guy said, “It’s ‘Led Zeppelin’.”

“What’s ‘Led Zeppelin’?”

He cocked his head. “The password,” he said. “That’s what you wanted to know, right?”

“Right.” Sela paused. “Led Zeppelin? Really?”

“Yeah. We’re both Led Zeppelin fans. I mean, that’s how we met. On a Led Zeppelin fans’ chat room,” he replied. For the first time Sela noticed an accent thickly layered in Dean’s words.

She was talking to a tourist. It was his rushed sentences that gave him away—so unlike a Southerner’s. The Southern-born drew out every vowel they could. This guy’s words were sharp, in place. She’d heard his accent before. It was a cadence of words she’d heard for weeks on the TV after two planes had delivered human missiles into the World Trade Towers. Sure there had been Southerners and Midwesterners and West Coasters and East Coasters and the random Brit or Aussie around—hell, death and destruction and loss weren’t partial to just one regional voice—but Sela remembered hearing mostly the Big Apple natives. She remembered an interview Ashleigh Banfield did with some young Yankee guy (an electrician, if Sela recalled correctly) who was supposed to have been working on the second tower but arrived there late and therefore missed becoming a human sacrifice. “I guess my num-bah wasn’t up,” he had said to the camera.

The lucky electrician and Dean sounded exactly alike.

Sela had no patience for a Yankee tourist. She said, “Right. Well, listen, it’s been lovely talking to you. I hope you and your missing girlfriend have a fabulous life together. But now I have to find a cab.” Sela turned her back on him.

He ignored her rebuke, sticking out his hand. “My name is Dean.”

“You said that already.” Sela glanced back at him and hesitantly took his hand. “My name is Sela.”

Dean did not let go of Sela’s hand even when she attempted to pull it back. He smiled again, apparently pleased he had wrangled a name out of her. “Let me take you home,” he suggested.

Sela cocked her head and looked at him as if he’d just asked her to saw off her arm. “You have to be kidding,” she said.

“Why not? You’re waiting for a taxi, aren’t you? Just let me take you home.”

“It’s really not a good idea. I’m not letting you take me home. I don’t even know you. You could be the one killing all those girls and putting the Fishhook symbol on their backs for all I know.”

Dean laughed. “There’s no way I would ever do something like that.”

“Well, how do I know?”

“I’m Jewish, for one.” He pulled out the Star of David hanging on a chain around his neck. “See?”

Sela shrugged. “So?”

“So whoever is killing those girls is obviously some crazed Christian fundamentalist.”

Sela arched her brow. “You’re wrong. Whoever’s killing those girls is not a Christian, or why else would he use the Christian symbol that way?”

“Who knows the minds of madmen?”

Sela grunted. “I think it could be anybody, to tell you the truth. And the fact that you went out of your way to show that you’re Jewish just makes you more suspicious.”

Dean tilted his head and stared inquisitively at Sela. “You know, I guess you’re right. In theory. In actuality, you’re wrong. I’m a harmless biology dork, really.” He waited for Sela to say something, and when she didn’t, he continued, “Look, I’ll take you home. I’m not a murderer or a criminal or a cannibal or anything. I don’t eat human flesh, it’s not kosher.”

Sela’s gaze scoured him again, from head to toe.
He is too cute for his own damn good
, she decided.

“Just let me take you home,” he said again. His green eyes had brightened, Sela noticed, and were now the color of Jude Law’s in
Gattica
. “We could talk on the way,” he suggested. “And if I try anything, you’ve always got your cell phone.”

Sela looked down at the cell phone in her hand. She looked back up at him and smiled.

They stopped off at Houston’s and had a few drinks before they went back to her apartment. From the time they spent together, Sela learned that Dean talked more than any person she had ever known. And now that they were back at her apartment, he still had a lot to say about his New York past. Lucky for him, Sela had consumed too many drinks to mind.

“So I told my father, I’ve got the rest of my life to live in New York. I said, Dad, I want to go to New Orleans, you know, where there are trees and grass and green things, green things, you know, I really love them. Must be the biology student in me. I never get to see green stuff in New York except Central Park, but it’s too far from where I live. Five stations away. And since I’ve been here it’s been very green.”

Sela took off her shoes and turned on the radio. Pure, hypnotic New Orleans jazz began to play from the radio. Sela immediately relaxed under the spell of a sad saxophone and a rhythm guitar, a boppity-bop-bop tenor’s voice and lightly tickled piano keys. She smiled at Dean from the other side of the couch. He smiled back at her. Sela tried to remember what they had been discussing, and when it finally occurred to her, she asked, “What about New Jersey? Don’t they have parks?”

“Uh, that doesn’t count. You know I think they spray-paint the leaves green there to keep the puke grey of pollution from making everyone queasy. New Orleans is really a magical place, isn’t it?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I guess. But in what way, particularly?”

“I don’t know, the music.”

“New York has music. New York has
tons
of music.”

“You’re right. New Orleans feels different, that’s all. Say, do you have any beer or scotch?”

“I have tropical wine coolers,” Sela interrupted, feeling suddenly silly for having tropical wine coolers. Who else other than ninth-grade, underage girls drank wine coolers?
They were on sale for half off
, Sela reminded herself.

Dean answered, “Tropical wine coolers are great. I was just thinking something was missing from this conversation.” He laughed and it sounded like water flowing over rocks. Sela decided that she loved his laugh.

“I’ll go and get them,” she said. She walked into the kitchen. “I’m used to getting things for other people,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m a waitress.”

Great
, Sela thought.
Why’d I tell him that? Now he’s going to think I’m a loser with no prospects for the future
.

But all Dean said was, “Okay. Hey, where’s your bathroom?”

“First door on your left,” Sela called from the kitchen.

Sela heard the bathroom door open and close. She walked to her refrigerator and pulled out two tropical wine coolers. Sela was in the process of taking off their caps when the lights went out. The music stopped.

Sela inhaled sharply and looked around. She could see nothing. Only darkness and more darkness. She heard a door creak open. Sela called out to Dean, but silence was her only answer. The moon cast the lone light in the room, and it guided Sela with its beam from the kitchen to the living room. Sela cried out, “Dean? Where are you?”

She heard a shuffle of feet behind her.

“Dean?”

A presence lurked around her, beside her, so close, so close. And then a fleshy hand touched her lips, and Sela screamed.

S
ela swung at the hand. “Ow!” she heard a voice yelp.

She turned around. Dean stood with a lighter lit in his hand. His confused expression shined with the fire’s yellowy glow. “What’d you do that for?” he asked.

She paused to catch her breath, feeling suddenly very, very sober. “You scared the heck out of me!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were a burglar.”

Dean smiled apologetically. “Sorry. Why are the lights out?”

“Power outage probably. It happens.”

“Well, I have a lighter. You have candles?”

Sela held the wine coolers up to her cheeks as she glared fearfully at the flame in Dean’s hand. “No, I don’t, actually. I don’t have candles or lighters or matches or anything that can light or be lighted. I have pyrophobia. Do you mind turning that lighter off? I think the moonlight is bright enough.”