Hurricane
By Sue Verrochi
Published by Sue Verrochi at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Sue Verrochi
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Hurricane
“Bastard!” Eva yelled after John’s retreating form. “Shithead!” she tried again. Still, he didn’t turn. His black leather jacket and long brown hair disappeared from view as he faded into the crowds on Bourbon Street. When he was gone, she caught a glimpse of herself in Paddy O’ Brien’s window. She straightened the skirt of her Gaultier mini-dress, smoothed her carefully flat-ironed blonde hair, confirmed that her legs looked impossibly long in the black leather Stewart Weitzman ankle boots and took a deep breath.
Mentally prepared, now, to step back into the noisy bar, she searched for her table. In the masses of people, she found herself disoriented and stumbling. The place was enormous. Where on earth had their table been? Somewhere to the left of the fiery fountain, or was it to the right? She looked for the handful of people they’d met at the bar, then realized that she couldn’t remember what any of them looked like. One of the men, she thought, had carroty-orange hair, but he was nowhere to be found. At last, wandering the grid of tightly packed tables, she came across the one at which they had been seated. Thank God, her Kate Spade handbag was still there! Her half-finished drink (the fourth or fifth of the night) was still sweating on the glass-topped iron table.
Their newly-met companions must have wandered off at some point after the fight that had begun at the table and moved to the front of the bar. Now, a different set of people had made themselves comfortable in the chairs and were about to order. She snatched her handbag and glass from the table and stood for a moment by the fountain, collecting herself.
She sipped her beverage, eyed the crowd, and watched the door to see if John would come to his senses and return. The drink was a Hurricane, a mixture of fruit juice, rum, vodka, and other assorted liquors, and that had been the start of the whole miserable argument.
One of the women they were sitting with had said, “Isn’t it kind of bad that we’re sitting here drinking these when Katrina is still such a problem?”
“Who’s Katrina?” The words were out of her mouth before she had time to think, and everyone at the table, including John who claimed to love her, burst out laughing.
Of course, she was mortified. She, who had been on the committee for a Hurricane Katrina fundraiser back home in New York two years ago. Two years ago, it had been for heaven’s sake! Why on earth were people still talking about it? Surely that had all blown over. She smiled to herself at the clever pun. If only she had thought to say it at the time!
The problem was that John, and come to think of it a good many other people, acted as though she was nothing but a good-looking, empty-headed, idiot and that he was vastly superior to her. Never mind the fact that he didn’t have two cents to rub together or a decent apartment to live in, just the grubby student housing at NYU. She shuddered and recalled the state of the communal bathroom she had been forced to use the one time she had stayed over at his place.
Bristling with rightful indignation, certain that she was better off without him and his pompous, intellectual friends, she went off in search of the ladies room. The door opened into a hot, stuffy ante-chamber packed with other young women, all of them in various stages of inebriation. After waiting in line for ages, she finally got her turn at the stall. When she came out again into the smelly, claustrophobic restroom and jockeyed for a position at the mirror, she realized that finishing that last Hurricane may not have been a good idea. Her one hundred and two pound frame (blast that last two pounds she had been unable to shed!) was not made to absorb four, or possibly five, strongly alcoholic beverages.
As she reached into her handbag for a lipstick, she gasped. Everything was gone: cosmetics bag, cell phone, and wallet! She couldn’t believe it. She squatted down and peered under the stall she had just been occupying to see if the items had fallen onto the filthy floor, but no. She rushed out of the room and back to her former table, excusing herself to its current occupants as she searched, unsuccessfully, beneath. Panicked now, she waylaid the first waiter she could find.
“Is there a Lost and Found?” she had to shout to make herself heard over the crowd. She was directed to the bartender near the front of the establishment.
Of course there were many cell phones and cosmetics bags and wallets, but none of them were Eva’s.
“But what will I do?” she asked the bartender, tears brimming over her eyelids.
“You could try the police, I guess, but between you and me, your chances aren’t great,” he said in a knowing voice. Clearly, he had been down this road before with other bar patrons. But he was kind. People, men in particular, were generally kind to tearful, beautiful young women, and so he offered to let her use the phone behind the bar.
“Oh, thank you!” she gasped. Lifting the phone, she dialed John’s cell, but his message came on immediately. He was either on the line, or had turned off his mobile. Next, she tried her parents at home in Westchester. Their message, also, came on right away and then Eva recalled that they had left two days ago for a month long European cruise along with her older brother and his wife. There was no way, at least no way she could think of, to reach them. She tried John again, and still there was no answer. The bartender frowned at her. Apparently the limit on his kindness to strangers ran out after three telephone calls. She thanked him again and walked out of the bar.
“Back to the hotel,” she thought. “I must go back to the hotel and forgive John, at least until I get back to New York. Then I can break up with him properly and forget this horrible trip ever happened. Jazz Fest! What was I thinking? I don’t even like jazz.” She turned down Bourbon Street in the direction John had gone and began walking through the throng of partiers.
Beer and rum drinks were spilled on her. Men offered her strings of beads. She walked on, purposefully at first and then more slowly as she realized she had no idea where the hotel was located. After a few blocks, the crowds began to thin. There were no more colorful buildings with iron balconies and open storefronts. These were homes, now, albeit shoddy, rundown ones. On many of them, the windows were either broken or boarded over and there were hand-lettered signs posted on some of the front doors, indicating the building’s state of disrepair, or inquiring about missing pets.
Eva turned on her heel and walked back the way she had come, breaking into a run at one point, so relieved was she to see the familiar crowds of people again. She sought out a police officer and asked directions to the Royal Charles hotel. She repeated back what he had told her and committed it to memory, determined to make no further mistakes that evening.
Finally she reached the small lobby of the boutique hotel and breathed a sigh of relief. She got into the elevator, rode to the fourth floor, exited, and knocked firmly on the door of room number 423, as she no longer had her keycard. John didn’t answer. She put her ear to the door and listened, but could hear no sound within.
“John! John!” The sound of her voice surprised her. It was high and shrill and shook like an old woman’s. She banged on the door, this time, hard with her palm. Panic rose in her breast. She fell to her knees, sobbing quietly in front of the door, although she was certain he was not behind it. Someone from a nearby room must have complained, for after a quarter of an hour, a short, stubby man wearing a suit that was too tight around his middle and a dark goatee appeared beside her.
“Miss,” he said, “Can I be of service?” as he helped her to her feet. She told him everything. Her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend had, for some inexplicable reason, picked a fight with her and left her alone in a strange city. She explained that she was a guest in the hotel, but her purse had been stolen and so she had no keycard. She saw his gaze fall to the handbag at her feet as she said this, and she pressed on, her voice still betraying the panic that clung to her.
“Well, the purse itself wasn’t stolen, but everything in it was!” and she held it open and displayed the vast emptiness within.
“Have you been drinking, Miss?” His tone had changed along with his face. His lips were slightly pursed and his eyebrows were raised. He took her by the elbow and led her toward the elevator. As they descended, she tried to catch her breath and take stock of the situation. She saw that the interior of the elevator was lined with mirrors, and she barely recognized the woman before her. Her meticulously straightened hair had lost its battle with the steamy New Orleans air. Rivers of mascara ran down her face. A large stain of something brown and flecked with yellow, could it be vomit?, was splashed over her right breast.
With all the calmness she could muster, she asked, “Please, can I just use the telephone?” He said that she might make one call, but then she would have to leave the hotel if she had no key and no proof of her identity. She dialed John’s number once again, but to no avail. Heels dragging, she stepped back out onto St. Charles Street. During the time she had been inside the hotel the streets had become deserted. It was quite late now, probably close to four am.
Eva wandered the streets until she found a McDonalds that was open all night. She sat there until one of the staff told her, quite kindly, that if she was not eating, she would have to leave. By then it was dawn and she found an outdoor coffee shop where she could sit at a table unnoticed by anyone. Crying softly, she laid her head in her arms on the table, and eventually fell asleep. She awoke two hours later, starving, the mesh pattern of the tabletop woven into her cheek.
At a nearby table, someone had just left a two dollar tip. She looked around guiltily, got up and snatched the money off the table as she walked past. She hurried back to the McDonalds and ordered an Egg McMuffin, which she was seventeen cents short of being able to afford. The person in line behind her handed her two dimes along with an impatient sigh, and she sat down and devoured every last crumb of the breakfast sandwich, something she would never eaten twenty-four hours ago.
During the rest of that horrible day, Eva went to the police station and filed a report about her bag. Of course, she was unable to list a local address or number where she could be reached on the remote chance that her possessions reappeared. She mumbled that she would check back later. She walked along the streets of the city, washed in an eerie morning light, and watched the bar-owners hosing down the sidewalks in front of their establishments. The smell of stale beer, spicy food and urine met her on every corner. Her head pounded and her heart raced.
Two bartenders let her use their telephones. She left messages for John, but he never picked up. She left messages for her parents and her brother. She could not recall the numbers of any of her friends; all were saved contacts on her stolen cell phone. Even if she had remembered their phone numbers, she was uncertain whether any of them would help her. Most of her friends, she realized then, were little more than acquaintances. Great for a night at a club, or a shopping expedition, but not anyone you could depend on in an emergency. Eva was now, and had been for most of her twenty-four years, alone.
Someone directed her toward the train station on Loyola Avenue. There, she learned that a ticket back to New York would cost her $296 and that the journey would take over 24 hours. A short distance down the street was the bus station. A bus ticket to New York could be had for a mere $179 dollars, but would still take over 24 hours. Around dinner time, starving once more, she went into a crowded restaurant and waited again until someone left cash on the table. Luckier, this time, she pocketed $35 dollars and ran with it to a tavern, three doors down.
At the bar, she ordered a plate of red beans and rice and a Hurricane. She gobbled it down and ordered another Hurricane, and then another, listening to an old man playing a steel guitar and singing sad songs in a language she didn’t know. The bartender there let her use the phone, and she left a few more messages for John, which were increasingly incoherent. By the time she staggered out of the bar, she was very drunk.
Later that evening, the Royal Charles hotel would not allow Eva access to the elevator and eventually the same man with the goatee ushered her out of the lobby and into the street. She spent the rest of her money on two more Hurricanes. Now, as she passed shop windows, mumbling to herself and shuffling along, she did not notice that her dress was torn, or that one of her heels had broken off, or that a long cut on her right arm was bleeding. She was oblivious to the smell of vomit and filth that preceded each step she took.
Ahead, she saw a tall man with long dark hair, wearing a leather jacket. Joyfully, she broke into a run, caught up with him and grabbed the back of his coat, a sob catching in her throat.
“Oh thank God” she moaned at him. He turned to face her and she realized that he was not John; that he scarcely resembled John at all. His eyes were blue and cruel; he was heavyset and he had an ugly mustache.
“Please,” she began, “please...” but she could not think of what else to say.
As she followed the man into the shadowy alley and got to her knees, she had the oddest feeling that everything else in her life thus far had been leading her to this moment.
THE END