Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,8

me these rapid little pats on the forearm. “I really think we should be good friends,” Celine told me.

“Actually, that was an accident—” I began to explain.

“But nothing more than friends.”

A falafel vendor had observed our whole little soap opera, and it was clear he thought I was coming on to Celine. Now he eyed me with suspicion and turned the long pointy sticks of his sizzling kebabs in a sinister fashion.

“Just friends,” Celine repeated yet again.

Okay, okay! I didn’t need her to translate “just friends” into French and sign language. So I said, “See you around,” and walked away.

Was I going in the right direction? I had no freakin’ idea. I didn’t know New York City at all. So I removed my map from my pocket.

Uh-oh. Something else came out with the map. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, the first English edition. Shit.

Looking back now, I should have dropped the damn book in the garbage. I should have just let it go. But at the time, I didn’t want a souvenir of this awkward first (only) date.

So I doubled back.

“Celine!” I called from the end of the block. Celine was already crossing the busy street between two honking yellow cabs. She hadn’t heard me.

A Frankenstein-like mob was clawing its business-casual-clad-way out of the subway station. These New Yorkers were moving at warp speed (hey, I lost the girl, I can dork out as much as I want). So I set off with a few jogging steps in Celine’s direction. Seeing as my jog was slower than most people’s walking, I hoped no one would notice my desperate efforts to catch up.

I called, “Celine! Hold up!”

But I’d lost sight of her. There were more people on that stretch of New York sidewalk between Celine and me than there were in the whole town of Alexandria. When the crowd parted, she was a full block and a half ahead of me. In order to catch up, I set off on a bizarre obstacle course. To the right of the hundred-year-old grocery woman. To the left of an imposing businessman. A sharp angle to avoid a double stroller; a leap over a pissed-off dachshund in a dog sweater. A sprint past a drag queen in size-fourteen heels.

Celine had crossed the street already. When I reached the curb, my chest was pounding and I was out of breath (and, clearly, out of shape). But my primal side emerged. I called “CELINE!” above a honking yellow cab, all Rocky Balboa.

Celine was enjoying a little French stroll by a park where the sun was setting. There were no lap dogs or transsexuals in her path—proving once again that life was unfair. Celine was ignoring the wind, which was blowing her skirt up around her legs in an attempt at a paparazzi shot. She also ignored me when I called her name. Maybe it was for the best. If she had turned around, she would have seen her pale and sweaty Internet lover sprinting at her—and probably would have freaked out.

But she didn’t turn. I crossed the street but didn’t have time to call Celine’s name again. While I was looking ahead at her skirt, something hard tripped me up, and I lunged forward into a restaurant’s basement cellar. My shoulder slammed down three cement steps, which hurt like hell, and I tumbled headfirst right into a box of peppers. I guess landing with my head in peppers was better than smacking my head on the cement floor of the basement while my arm was pinned under me, but they weren’t even red peppers, which are ballsy and kind of cool. I landed in a bin of green peppers. Wuss peppers. How appropriate.

As I tried to push myself out of the bin, overwhelmed by the smell, a large truck backed up onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant cellar. Two men climbed out and began unloading wooden crates. They were bringing new food down. They wouldn’t have even seen me if I hadn’t tipped the bin over, spilling the green peppers everywhere, like boccie balls.

“Hey!” the first man called to the second. “There’s a kid down here!”

“I’m just leaving,” I mumbled to the two of them as I climbed the steps.

“Sure you’re not tomorrow’s white meat, kid?” the second man asked. They both burst out laughing.

Because people who mock me often do so with enthusiasm, he repeated the joke. Somehow, they found it even funnier the second time around.

I didn’t even attempt a laugh. I