story: Reinventing Julia

Reinventing Julia (Novel Excerpt)
By Jennifer Prado - JenniferPrado@yahoo.com

= = = = =
The week after my birthday, as I parted my hair in front of the bathroom mirror I found a rebellious strand of white hair that stuck straight up. It didn’t have the courtesy to come in as gray first; it went straight to white! I was also still thinking about Danilo’s baby dream. Overnight, I was desperate to be young and reckless before motherhood and middle age descended upon me.
I was also motivated by the most dangerous of fuels: revenge. Danilo was away for the next week at a film festival in Amsterdam. The night he left, I had read his E-mail. I know that’s pathetic, but so is wallowing in suspicion and I already knew his password. He had exchanged a series of messages with a Dutch woman, who sounded overly enthusiastic about his participation in the scheduled events.

"I hope we have time to disappear." That had been Danilo’s last answer to her, and I was floored by jealousy. He’s cheating on me again! But this time, instead of crying, I became determined not to stay home alone. I had five nights to go out and look for as much trouble as I could find.

There is a simple rule to going out alone. If a Girl is on her own, every guy thinks that she wants it. This time I didn’t know what I wanted. It was like I was conducting what finance people call a mark-to-market. I intended to go out on the town with my coolest clothes, my biggest attitude, and my sassiest ass to see how my goods measured up to what was available on the scene. My reasoning: I was now twenty-six and before I knew it I would be thirty. I was running out of time. My youth was escaping me and I was working too hard. That was as complex, as I could manage.

Monday Night:
I would need a different look. I opened a drawer in my dresser and put on a pair of iridescent swimming goggles. I opened my closet and pulled out a big, beige coat with yak fur, and stood in front of the mirror and pulled my hair into a spout with an elastic band.

In the lobby of our building, our doorman looked at me oddly. He didn’t recognize me. I left our building, waved, and stopped a taxi.

The taxi driver rolled down the window. “No dogs, Lady.”

“What?”

He drove away.

I chased after him, pounded on the window, and he stopped. “What are you talking about?”

“No pets,” he said through the window.

“What pet? This is my coat!”

“Sorry, Lady,” he said, when I was in the car. “Where are we going?”

“Brooklyn.”

The driver sulked. He had to take me anywhere I wanted in the five boroughs, but at this time of night he would be too afraid to pick up a passenger on his return trip. So he started on the mumble-and-grumble routine.

“Don’t be like that,” I said. “I’ll pay both ways.”

He perked up. “You want music?”

“Play it,” I shouted. He threw on Miles Davis, Some Kind of Blue. Night drivers had class! I pushed up my goggles so he could see my eyes. “I thought you were calling me a dog when you stopped,” I said.

He laughed.

“Yip.Yip.Yip,” I barked as we drove off.

When we got to the warehouse in deep Brooklyn, the taxi driver lost his nerve.

“This is where you’re getting out?” There were two tall guys at the door dressed head-to-toe in baggie sportswear. The designer had outdoorsy campers in mind, but the inner city had inhaled this look for its own use. The taxi driver drove onto the sidewalk to get me as close to the door as possible.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They know me.”

Ralphael was working the door and he opened the taxi for me.

“Where you been, girl?” I shrugged.

“Got busy doing things. How’s your music going?”

“It’s going,” he said. “You alone?”

I nodded. Ralphael had given me his demo CD during another party I had gone to with Danilo. The plastic cover had his name scrawled across it in pretty script. His mom had decided to spell it that way. It was a combination of Ralph meets Raphael. I listened to his CD at home. Ralphael’s singing voice sounded really smooth. He was one more guy with natural talent, trying to get noticed.

Within a half an hour of my arrival, I realized that I drank more vodka at the bar than I could handle and stumbled towards the dance floor to try to burn it off. I took the keep-moving to keep-from-falling-down approach. I danced by myself and with people I didn’t know. When I accidentally stumbled into someone, they lightly pushed me away. The way I looked didn’t draw any stares. We were all bizarre. But they watched me when I danced. That’s when I expressed everything I couldn’t say. Somehow, I managed to climb onto the box above the speakers and danced until my clothes were drenched in sweat. This was a place I could go to reinvent myself. When they threw the spotlight on me, I felt like a superstar.

I was so drunk when I arrived home that I ricocheted back and forth in our doorway when I first stepped over the threshold.

“I smell like cigarettes and I’m doused in enough alcohol to spontaneously combust." I dove onto our bed and passed out. Alone.
= = = = =

Bio: Jennifer Prado has a degree in Fiction Writing from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and her short fiction has appeared in numerous on-line magazines. For further information on "Reinventing Julia" and her Young Adult novel "Latina in Wonderland" please go to http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/JenniferPrado/.