"You Just Killed Me"

In the front window of the Café de Paris could be seen a young woman seated at a table by the door, sipping her morning coffee. Her hand trembled as she brought the cup to her lips and a bit of coffee splashed into the saucer when she set it back down. The remains of a bruise could be seen on her left cheek.

A waiter approached to ask if he could get her anything else and she waved him away, never taking her eyes off the building across the street. She was waiting to see the manager unlock the doors for business.

She sighed, looked at her watch, and reached into her purse and pulled out a piece of paper. This was the single most important thing in her life this morning. It was incredible to imagine that this rectangle of paper could mean the difference between life and death for her.

Even more incredible was the idea that she had ended up where she was. She was only 23 years old. She’d grown up in a wealthy family and had all the advantages of affluence, except perhaps for the love and affection of her parents, or their attention. Really though, that was nothing to complain about. All the other kids in her upper class private school were in the same situation; every need met, no one around, except the maid and the cook.

She knew she had no one to blame but herself. She’d had the "DARE to stay off drugs" education, been given the talks and training, she'd taken the vows. Somehow she managed to stay true to her convictions all the way through high school, but when she got into college she couldn’t hold out. The isolation that resulted from her idealism was something she couldn’t take for long and soon she allowed herself to be drawn into the dark culture of campus drugs.

It started innocently enough with beer and marijuana. She had decided that she would never do more than that. She didn’t realize until it was too late that she could never go to a party where hard liquor and cocaine were passed around freely without partaking of the goods. The Corona and joint she brought for herself set her apart as obviously as a cola and cigar would have. After her first humiliating experience she gave in, learning to down whisky without coughing and becoming proficient at snorting cocaine.

The problems started when she got hooked. She couldn’t concentrate on her studies when she was coming down. Even though her father was paying for her education she had to maintain her grade point average or he’d raise hell and pull her out. Then what in the world would she do? Work as a checker at the grocery store?

During those four years she’d managed to keep up her habit by handing her generous allowance over to the dealers. She ate next to nothing, lived in squalor in her dorm room and wore old, worn clothing so she could buy her drugs. She managed to graduate with a 3.0 average and was set loose on the world to make her own way.

And make her own way she did, but not into any gainful employment or adequate housing. Her father was livid. All that money spent and she was doing NOTHING (emphasis his) with her life. She was living in a flat with five others who were as addicted as she, all the while racking up intolerable debt to drug dealers.

Finally, it came time to pay the piper. He came calling with meaty fists the size of grapefruits and as hard as baseballs. She ended up in the emergency room, alone and terrified out of her mind. The only reason she was left alive, the thug told her, was because she could probably get money out of her father. She had two days to get it. Period.

She showed up at home, broken and bruised, prepared to tell the whole story and throw herself on her father’s mercy. They spent the night fighting and screaming and insulting each other, with her mother quietly crying in the wing back chair by the fire. Finally it was her mother who made the difference. She brought up the idea of rehab. It was agreed that if she went into rehab, her father would clear her debt THIS ONCE. He wrote out a check.

And here she was, sitting in this café waiting for the bank to open so she could cash the check. She placed it gingerly on the table, took up her coffee cup and looked back out the window.

That was when the man with the coat and hat opened the door and let in the wind. It snatched the check and carried it playfully out the door, depositing it deliberately in the storm drain, out of all reach.

She raced after the precious piece of paper but was too late to prevent its disappearance. On her way back into the café she looked at the man and said to him, “you just killed me.” She grabbed her purse and walked heavily down the street.

As it turned out, the man did see the girl again. As a homicide detective he saw almost all the murder victims in this town.

898 words