I opened my eyes in a narrow squint and exhaled a deep breath.

I was still drunk.  Pushing my long, sweaty bangs out of my eyes, I stared down the alleyway at the street.  The parking lot was empty now, and the strip club was closed.  Elise's car was gone.  Skye's car was gone too, as were all the other dancers' and workers' cars.  The only car left in the parking lot was mine, a lone Mercedes-Benz parked in the darkness, lit up only by the neon blue and pink Exotic Palace sign above it.  Nobody in this part of town was stupid enough to screw with it.  Anybody in this part of town who would screw with it knew who I was; and either out of respect or fear left it alone.

I lay back against the brick wall.  It smelled like piss and vomit.  Someone else's piss.  My vomit.  Splotches of half-dried vomit streaked across the front of my suitjacket, and down my left sleeve.  An empty bottle of Remy Martin XO lay on its side, a pool of the expensive cognac draining into the trash I lay in.  I reached to the back of my trousers.  My wallet was still there.  And my .45 was still there.  The bum I was sharing my bottle of cognac with that night wasn't stupid either.

I stared out into the street, watching cars drive by on the wet street.  Watching the late-night club-and-bar patrons of my town walking down the sidewalk huddled together half-drunkenly, forgetting the dangers of these streets at this hour.

Katie?

My eyes opened wide.  A short blond girl in a black fur-lined coat and knee-high black boots crossed the street forty feet away.  Oh my God it was my Katie.  I sat up.  I leaped to my feet, and started running to the sidewalk.  She was with two other girls and a guy.  Peter?  Was that Peter?  Was she still with Peter?  One of my Prada loafers had fallen off of my feet sometime earlier that night, and it was making it difficult to run on the rough asphalt.  I ran to the edge of the parking lot, and yelled out as loud as I could.

Katie!

The group of four turned, startled.  They looked at me for half a second, and then hurriedly made their way across the street.  I started across the crosswalk toward them, and they started running away from me.

No.  I sighed.  No, she wasn't Katie.  She couldn't have been.  Katie's gone.  I stood in the middle of the street, my shoulders slumped.  It couldn't have been her.  It had been six years since Katie's been gone.  It had been six years since we fell together.  I wasn't sixteen anymore.  I was twenty-two now.  I wasn't a sorry kid in the projects anymore.  This was my town now.  I was Dai-Lo now.

I sighed.

The fire burned in my chest.  I didn't know if it was the bottle of cognac that I had taken down.  I don't know if it was the fugu and sake I had for dinner.  I didn't know if it was the fact that somehow, my life had gone to complete shit even though I had everything a twenty-two year old man could want.  I didn't know if it was because I wanted to vomit every time I thought about how I destroyed the only angel that had ever come into my life, and how since she had gone I had descended into darkness.

I made my way back across the street into the parking lot of Elise's strip club, got into my car, and drove away.
















I leaned on the glass, staring into the window at the five Tokidoki bags illuminated by white fluorescent light in the display case.

This same glass.  I leaned on this exact same glass six years ago.  Except Katie was with me then, six years ago.  I had three-thousand dollars in my wallet now.  I had thirty dollars in my wallet six years ago, when Katie and I walked down this street that afternoon, and she stopped at this window and told me how she thought the Tokidoki bags were cute, and told me how much she wanted one.

It killed me that day, six years ago, knowing that I couldn't afford that one Pirata handbag for her.

It killed me that night, six years later, knowing I could buy the entire fucking store's inventory, and Katie was gone.

It killed me, knowing what I had become in those six years.  I had gone from a idealistic young boy in the projects, wanting to work hard to prove himself and to make money to earn the love of the only girl who had ever given him a chance... to becoming this monster, this criminal, this thug, who thrived in the darkness of the urban night.  I had gone from wanting to escape from this life, to becoming what I hated the most.

I pressed my forehead against the glass and closed my eyes.

"Let's go inside and look", I said, seeing how much Katie's eyes lit up when she saw that handbag.

"No, it's ok."  She replied, "I can't afford it anyway."

"You never know."  I told her.

I decided that day, that I was going to do whatever I had to do to give Katie everything she could ever want.  Standing right there, like I stood that night in that exact same spot, I decided that I would do anything to make her happy.  She gave me her love and her friendship when no one else would.  She wasn't my girlfriend... but she was my girl.  And that's all that mattered to me.

I had a plan.  I didn't care what I had to do.  It would only be for two years.  I would save all my money.  And when we turned eighteen, Katie and I would run away to a better place and start over.  I would go legit.  And we could be together, away from her abusive father and her complacent mother, away from the hell that life was for us -- and we could start a future together.

Princeton, I said.  That's where we would go.  I would study hard and get myself into my father's alma mater, and we would live there and have a life together and leave all of this behind.  I would get a good job, and we could get married and start a family.

I pressed my cheek against the glass of the store window.  I could feel tears begin to well in my eyes.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to pull the .45 out from the back of my trousers and empty the clip into the window display.

I could have saved her.  I could have saved Katie.  If only I had told her before it was too late.   If only I had told her how much I loved her before it was too late.

If only I had done something then, if only I had stopped living in self-doubt because she was rich and I was poor, that I was Asian and she was White, and asked her to be my girlfriend, she would have been with me and not Peter.  She would have been with me.  I wouldn't have done what he did.  I would haven't broken her heart like he did.  I wouldn't have caused her to spiral out of control like he did.

And it would never have been too late.

If only I told Katie how much I loved her then.

"I'm so sorry, Katie..." I sobbed against the glass.

"I'm so sorry..." I fell to my knees, onto the wet sidewalk.

I lay there against the glass, for what must have been hours.  I lay there, in my vomit-splattered black-label Armani suit, with my AMG Mercedes-Benz parked a few feet away; there on the sidewalk, my eyes glazed over, staring down the length of the wide boulevard of dreams I used to walk down with my Katie in a more innocent time, a time before the darkness came.  I could still see us there as phantom images making our way down the sidewalk, sharing a funnel cake together, looking into store windows and pretending we were living a life not our own.

The sun was rising now. 

I could see the light through my closed eyelids.  I could hear the cars and buses driving by now.  I could hear footsteps walking past me hurriedly now.  The world of night that had become my world would soon to be replaced by the light of the waking day.  I took one last deep breath, and stood up from the ground.  My clothes were a mess.  I looked at the horizon through the tall buildings that lined the boulevard, at the sky beginning to turn shades of cornflower blue.

Katie.  Katelyn.  I wish you knew how much I loved you.

I opened the door of the Mercedes-Benz, and looked back at the store window one last time; and for just one moment, I saw Katie standing there looking in through the glass, her honey blond hair blowing loosely in the wind of the rising morning sun.  And just as suddenly, she was gone.

I could feel the sweat forming on my cold, clammy hands.

I was so nervous.  You were my friend, I know.  But I had never danced with a girl before.  I'd only danced with a girl in my imagination, over and over again, holding my pillow in the dim light of my bedroom.  But now, two years after my first love, I found myself dancing with you -- a girl who reminded me a lot of her... except you didn't care what people thought of you and me going around together.  After all, you didn't have any friends either -- not real friends, at least.  Not like you were to me.  Not like I was to you.

Katie.

You were the girl who never quite fit into the upper-middle class gated neighborhood across the freeway from where I lived.  And I was the guy who never quite fit into the projects, where your parents forbade you from going to.  But you would come by anyway -- you got your license before I did, a few months earlier, right when you turned fifteen.  You would come and pick me up, and we'd drive to places the other kids wouldn't go.

There, on our hill by the water storage tank, that night overlooking the city far in the distance, I held your hand.  The first girl's hand I ever held.  And I put my other hand awkwardly around the small of your back.  You laughed, telling me that my hands were sweaty, and that I had sweat on the brow of my lip.  I kept my distance, six inches away from you.  And your pretty eyes, like sapphires reflecting the distant city lights, smiled at me.  You bit the corner of your lip, I remember that.  To this day, I remember that.

I knew we would never be more than friends.  You would never be able to introduce me to your parents, and family was important to me.  After all, you had blond hair and blue eyes and fair skin, you were rich; and I was ethnic, with black hair and brown eyes, and my family was poor.  So we retreated from the world, to hang out with each other on our hill, in a place only we knew about where we could talk and be ourselves.

Where, that night, I danced with you for the first time.

"I love this song."  You told me, sitting side-by-side on the worn asphalt, leaning against the door of your car.  I thought it was funny, a rich girl and a ghetto boy listening to a country-folk ballad overlooking a city.

"It always makes me want to dance."  I told you, swaying back and forth and knocking into your shoulder.  You laughed, pushing me away.  I was drunk.  I'd already blazed through one forty of Old English and was working on the second.

"Let's dance."  I blurted out, my eyes closed, a second later catching myself.  OMG I couldn't believe what I just said. 

I started to open my mouth to say that I was just kidding, but you spoke first.

"Ok."  You laughed.  And you grabbed my hand.

And a thousand sensations rushed through me all at once.







Years of dancing practice in my mind helped.  And it didn't.  You weren't a pillow.  I tried my made-up Viennese Waltz.  That didn't work, I just ended up dragging you around, almost making you trip.  So we just stood there, our feet still, and we swayed back and forth.  I pushed up a little closer to you.  And you nudged up into me.  I couldn't see your face anymore, my chin against your ear.  But I could feel you smiling.

And I started to sing along softly, trying to replicate a country twang.

"Easy there, Nashville."  You smiled.

"Shut up, I know you like it."  I teased, drunkenly.

"Mm-hmm."  You turned into me a little.

The nervousness was gone.  It was just comfortable now.  You and me, good friends sharing a moment together, having a dance together.  Good friends, in a more innocent time, before our lives became a place of wrath and of tears.  We had no idea that night what fate would befall us, and what terrible horrors the hand of life would bring to us in the coming years.  That night may have been the last night of pure, innocent love either of us would have for the rest of our lives. 

That dance, our first dance, may have been the last pure, innocent thing either of would ever do for the rest of our lives.