I opened my eyes in a narrow squint and exhaled a deep breath.I was still drunk. Pushing my long, sweaty bangs out of my eyes, I stared down the alleyway at the street. The parking lot was empty now, and the strip club was closed. Erin's car was gone. Skye's car was gone too, as were all the other dancers' and workers' cars. The only car left in the parking lot was mine, a lone Mercedes-Benz parked in the darkness, lit up only by the neon blue and pink
Exotic Palace sign above it. Nobody in this part of town was stupid enough to screw with it. Anybody in this part of town who would screw with it knew who I was; and either out of respect or fear left it alone.
I lay back against the brick wall. It smelled like piss and vomit.
Someone else's piss.
My vomit. Splotches of half-dried vomit streaked across the front of my suitjacket, and down my left sleeve. An empty bottle of
Remy Martin XO lay on its side, a pool of the expensive cognac draining into the trash I lay in. I reached to the back of my trousers. My wallet was still there. And my .45 was still there. The bum I was sharing my bottle of cognac with that night wasn't stupid either.
I stared out into the street, watching cars drive by on the wet street. Watching the late-night club-and-bar patrons of my town walking down the sidewalk huddled together half-drunkenly, forgetting the dangers of these streets at this hour.
Katie?My eyes opened wide. A short blond girl in a black fur-lined coat and knee-high black boots crossed the street forty feet away.
Katie?! I sat up. I leaped to my feet, and started running to the sidewalk. She was with two other girls and a guy.
Peter? Was that Peter? Was she still with Peter? One of my Prada loafers had fallen off of my feet sometime earlier that night, and it was making it difficult to run on the rough asphalt. I ran to the edge of the parking lot, and yelled out as loud as I could.
Katie!The group of four turned, startled. They looked at me for half a second, and then hurriedly made their way across the street. I started across the crosswalk toward them, and they started running away from me.
No. I sighed.
No, she wasn't Katie. She couldn't have been. Katie's gone. I stood in the middle of the street, my shoulders slumped.
It couldn't have been her. It had been six years since Katie's been gone. It had been six years since we fell together. I wasn't sixteen anymore. I was twenty-two now. I wasn't a sorry kid in the projects anymore. This was
my town now. I was
Dai-Lo now.
I sighed.
The fire burned in my chest. I didn't know if it was the bottle of cognac that I had taken down. I don't know if it was the
fugu and sake I had for dinner. I didn't know if it was the fact that somehow, my life had gone to complete shit even though I had everything a twenty-two year old man could want. I didn't know if it was because I wanted to vomit every time I thought about how I destroyed the only angel that had ever come into my life, and how since she had gone I had descended into darkness.
I made my way back across the street into the parking lot of Erin's strip club, got into my car, and drove away.
*****
Don't you cry tonight
I still love you baby
Don't you cry tonight
Don't you cry tonight
There's a heaven above you baby
And don't you cry tonight
*****
I leaned on the glass, staring into the window at the five
Tokidoki bags illuminated by white fluorescent light in the display case.
This same glass. I leaned on this exact same glass six years ago. Except Katie was with me then, six years ago. I had three-thousand dollars in my wallet now. I had thirty dollars in my wallet six years ago, when Katie and I walked down this street that afternoon, and she stopped at this window and told me how she thought the
Tokidoki bags were cute, and told me how much she wanted one.
It killed me that day, six years ago, knowing that I couldn't afford that one
Pirata handbag for her.
It killed me that night, six years later, knowing I could buy every single bag on the sales floor, and Katie was gone.
It killed me, knowing what I had become in those six years. I had gone from a idealistic young boy in the projects, wanting to work hard to prove himself and to make money to earn the love of the only girl who had ever given him a chance... to becoming this
monster, this
criminal, this
thug, who thrived in the darkness of the urban night. I had gone from wanting to escape from this life, to becoming what I hated the most.
I pressed my forehead against the glass and closed my eyes.
"Let's go inside and look", I said, seeing how much Katie's eyes lit up when she saw that handbag.
"No, it's ok." She replied, "I can't afford it anyway."
"You never know." I told her.
I decided that day, that I was going to do whatever I had to do to give Katie everything she could ever want. Standing right there, like I stood that night in that exact same spot, I decided that I would do
anything to make her happy. She gave me her love and her friendship when no one else would. She wasn't my girlfriend... but she was
my girl. And that's all that mattered to me.
I had a plan. I didn't care what I had to do. It would only be for two years. I would save all my money. And when we turned eighteen, Katie and I would run away to a better place and start over. I would go legit. And we could be together, away from her abusive father and her complacent mother, away from the hell that life was for us -- and we could start a future together.
Princeton, I said. That's where we would go. I would study hard and get myself into my father's alma mater, and we would live there and have a life together and leave all of this behind. I would get a good job, and we could get married and start a family.
I pressed my cheek against the glass of the store window. I could feel tears begin to well in my eyes.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to pull the .45 out from the back of my trousers and empty the clip into the window display.
I could have saved her. I could have saved Katie. If only I had told her before it was too late.
If only I had done something then, if only I had stopped living in self-doubt and asked her to be my girlfriend, she would have been with me and not Peter. She would have been with me. I wouldn't have done what he did. I would haven't destroyed her like he did. I wouldn't have caused her to spiral out of control like he did.
And it would never have been too late.
If only I told Katie how much I loved her then.
"I'm so sorry, Katie..." I sobbed against the glass.
"I'm so sorry..." I fell to my knees, onto the wet sidewalk.
I lay there against the glass, for what must have been hours. I lay there, in my vomit-splattered black-label Armani suit, with my AMG Mercedes-Benz parked a few feet away; there on the sidewalk, my eyes glazed over, staring down the length of the wide
boulevard of dreams I used to walk down with my Katie in a more innocent time, a time before the darkness came. I could still see us there as phantom images making our way down the sidewalk, sharing a funnel cake together, looking into store windows and pretending we were living a life not our own.
The sun was rising now.
I could see the light through my closed eyelids. I could hear the cars and buses driving by now. I could hear footsteps walking past me hurriedly now. The world of night that had become my world would soon to be replaced by the light of the waking day. I took one last deep breath, and stood up from the ground. My clothes were a mess. I looked at the horizon through the tall buildings that lined the boulevard, at the sky beginning to turn shades of cornflower blue.
Katie. Katelyn. I wish you knew.I opened the door of the Mercedes-Benz, and looked back at the store window one last time; and for just one moment, I saw Katie standing there looking in through the glass, her honey blond hair blowing loosely in the wind of the rising morning sun. And just as suddenly, she was gone.
