Itdisappears.
And it’s back tosquareone.
Err… to be more specific, back to the closest bar, where I’ll speedily identify another perpetual bachelor over the rim of my martini glass, and start the cycle all overagain.
My girlfriends, worried by my constant revolving-door of conquests, frequently remind me that, statistically speaking, I’m bound to stumble upon a good man eventually.Don’t worry, Lila,they assure me, frowning slightly as I laugh off yet another break-up.There are plenty of fish inthesea.
True though that may be, as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t mean I have to eat seafood every night. In fact, I’m more of acatch and releasekind of girl, when it comes to reelinginmen.
Officer McStudMuffin is still glaring at me from down the hall, so I tilt my head, pop my hip, and waggle my fingers at him in my best flirty wave. My lips twitch when I see his scowl intensify. Damn, he’s even hotter when he wants tothrottleme.
Rather than push my luck, I call on my final shred of common sense and turn to the payphone. I can’t recall ever using one — hell, I didn’t even know they still made these obsolete contraptions anymore. In this modern, thoroughly mobile world, I rather figured they went the way of typewriters, floppy disks, mp3 players, andpagers.
I pluck the heavy plastic receiver from its cradle and lift it to my ear. Listening to the dial tone buzz flatly, my eyes lock on the small, square metal buttons in front of me. I raise a hand to punch in a phone number, mentally preparing to plead with my best friend Phoebe to come bail me out… attempting to think up some way to explain these rather odd circumstances… and freeze as I realize Ican’tcallPhoebe.
In fact, I can’t callanyone.
Because, thanks to my shameless overdependence on my iPhone — which, unfortunately, I left laying on the floor of my former employer’s bedroom in my hurry to get the hell out of there in one piece — I can’t recall a single, flipping phone number. Not even for my immediate familymembers.
How patheticisthat?
Not that it matters much — they’d be pretty useless to me, at the moment. My parents are abroad again, closing another business deal. I swear, these days, they’re off this continent more frequently than they’re actually on it. Unreachable except byemail.
My big brother Duncan has been incommunicado for the past few months, in the throes of a quarter-life crisis after his latest startup venture failed miserably out in California. This might be worrisome if it was the first company he’d sunk, instead of the sixth. Frankly, I’m not sure why investors keep giving him money. I am sure of one thing, though: even if I knew his number by heart, there’s a slimmer chance of a cat calmly taking a bath than him actually coming to my rescue. Especially considering he’s the whole damn reason I’m in this mess tobeginwith.
Of course, it would be different if my sister were here…So many things would be different.I push away that train of thought before it can derail me completely and focus onreality.
Me.
DelilahSinclair.
Alone.
Desperate.
And soon to be forced into a severely unattractive striped jumpsuit of some kind, if I don’t find a way out ofthismess.
What’s black, white, and redallover?
No, not a newspaper. A redhead in prisonstripes.
My heart drops into myshoes.
If inanimate objects were capable of mockery, thisobsoletepayphone would totally be mocking me right now. Alas, as this isn’t the enchanted castle fromBeauty and the Beast, the phone is just a phone. It offers no wisdom or advice about what to do in this situation. I stare at it blankly, racking my brain for a number.Anynumber. Sadly, the only one that comes to mind is from one of those annoying radio jingles for carpet cleaningservices.
Oh my god, I think, horror dawning.My options are either “rot in jail forever with a street-walking cellmate named Destiny” or “agree to steam-clean my entire apartment in exchange for bail money from a man namedStanley.”
I’m genuinely not sure which alternative would beworse.
(I really hate toclean.)
My grip tightens on the receiver to keep it from slipping from my increasingly clammy palm. I’m not generally one to freak out, but I’ve also never been in a situation quite like this before. Even when I dragged Phoebe to Burning Man with me last summer and we got lost in the desert wearing nothing but gold lamé bikinis and body paint, I managed to keep my cool. (Then again, I also knew that, if necessary, Nathaniel Knox — Phoebe’s private-investigator-slash-all-round-badass fiancé — was one satellite phonecall away, fully capable of air-lifting us out by helicopter in under an hour, ifnecessary.)
There’s no extraction plan for this,though.
Thanks to my general flightiness and tendency to “go dark” — Phoebe’s words, not mine — for weeks at a time, it’ll take ages for my friends to even realize I’m gone, let alone track me down in this godforsaken place. It’s safe to say, the Mattapan county lockup doesn’t typically make the list of my most frequented Saturday night stompinggrounds.
My hands have really begun to sweat, now, and I can feel beads of perspiration gathering on my brow. Panic is setting in. I won’t last long behind bars. Three days without Starbucks, WiFi, a blow dryer, and a constant stream of relatable internet memes, and I’ll probably spontaneouslycombust.