The Black Car Business Volume 2 by Lawrence Kelter

Author:Lawrence Kelter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

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I’ve Started to Think about Leaving Tonight

Richie Narvaez

An hour before her debut, Ella Courtland paused at the top of the stoop.

Imagine the street, not slick from a summer shower, instead a plush carpet of people. Imagine all of them turning and looking oohing and ahhing, cameras flashing!

Is that?

Yes, why yes, it is!

He looks gorgeous!

Yes, why yes, she does indeed.

Imagine them jostling to get selfies. Imagine them adding #EllaCourtland to their posts.

She posed as if. Newly platinum blonde (and hoping it wasn’t crooked), veiny hand on the bulb at the top of the railing, freshly shaved muscled calf exposed just so.

Imagine that sleek black car up the block, four doors down, the one blaring insistent hip hop, parked halfway in the street, had been waiting, anxiously, longingly, dutifully for her.

Imagine everyone at Apple Blossom’s Beauty Parlor, Car Repair, and Night Club jealous when they saw her for the first time stepping out of that glistening, four-wheeled, polished ebony phallic thing instead of anonymously schlepping out of the F is for Forlorn train entrance. Like she did last week, and week after week before that, seventy-five weeks of them, looking what everyone expected Elias P. Courtland to be. Shirt. Slacks. Tie. Hidden. False. Just casing the place, quietly sipping Corona beers, lime jammed in the neck, making zero eye contact, talking to no one, getting up the nerve to begin to feel just about ready to approach feeling comfortable.

Until this morning. Finally. Resolved. Brave. Spending the whole day prepping, primping.

Imagine them not laughing. Imagine the world being ready to see her as she truly was. Imagine at least one person recognizing this. Imagine at least one person understanding.

Alas, that sweet smooth black car was not to be hers.

Instead, Todd the Big Bro-Douche marched toward it and why? Not even looking at it, not even appreciating it, his eyes stuck to his iPhone. Fool who never deserved such a car. Fool who never said hi although they had been introduced a million times. Fool who treated her bff Brooke like used floss.

Todd was a man who said he couldn’t afford flashy cars. A man who said he couldn’t afford to get married in Iceland, as per Brooke’s forever dream. A man who wanted nothing more than to play with his guitar all day. A man now owned an enormous flashy car?

Must be his friends. Some friend with a golden ticket. Or maybe that record contract he had been whining to Brooke about for years had magically descended from fantasy land.

Ella would get the four-one-one from Brooke later. But for now, after navigating the stoop in these heels—going around that little fat nerdy kid who lived upstairs but loved to plop herself in the middle of the front stairs as if she owned them—Ella would walk gingerly, slightly painfully to the subway.

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