"Like Someone in Love"

The streets of the French Quarter on this Mardi Gras night are crowded with people screaming, drinking heavily, laughing loudly, singing, dancing, kissing sloppily and fondling their lovers shamelessly, all dressed in their best nightwear and costumes.

Tourists intoxicated by the debauchery snap pictures of the lantern-lit scenes, cameras flash rapidly as young women up on some balconies with alcohol-induced bravado lift their shirts and bare their perk breasts for green, purple, and gold beads. The crowd roars in approval of the show while patrolmen are preoccupied with breaking up a very messy drunken brawl on the street.

Beatriz does not look very festive as she moves against hordes of merry-makers and they don’t seem to notice or care. Unlike all the other revelers, her attire is nothing conspicuous, just a pink dress and sandal heels.

She walks seemingly without aim until she find takes a seat at a café table outside of a bistro and cups her chin in her hand, looking at the revelers with distractedly and subconsciously toys with her bottom lip. After awhile she stops and heaves a sigh.

Magdalene said she would be here at eight; it is eight-thirty-seven right now. Where is she? Is she ok? Is she lying in an alley somewhere with her throat slit open? Or is she having fun with one of those drunken bitches on the balcony?

Beatriz feels herself get angry and frustrated with herself for being this way. She isn’t usually a worry-wart, but tonight she just feels edgy and uneasy.

Her hand falls away from her mouth as her eyes settle on a happy couple unabashedly making out against the pole of a street light and how they grope each and laugh and how they kiss each other’s smiles. The sight is warm, very pleasantly romantic, but she has to look away before the flood building in her eyes pours down her face and she hurriedly blinks back the tears.

David left before she woke up. He didn’t leave a note, but he took her clothes and left her the suit he wore when he came into town. She wore it while she walked home, his scent still presence in the fabric, wanting to cry into his chest but grateful for this condolence.

She really wants to cry now, right now, in front of all these people and she doesn’t care. What do they care? Why should they? She feels so weak, so vulnerable. Not a new feeling, just not a welcomed one, not right now.

Maggie, where—the fuck—are you? Can’t you see I need you?

Goddamn you, David.

I hate myself for loving you.

Come back to me.