I’ll Be Fine!

Thirsty Work — Chapter 21: when you’re not the real girlfriend

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Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than she knows how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the twenty-first chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.

When I woke the next morning, everything was different — again. There were the usual bodies scattered across the floor and mattresses, wheezing and snoring. But their faces no longer inspired my affection. Their stories didn’t pique my interest. I’d already heard them all.

Howie, I saw, hadn’t pulled his sleeping bag next to mine. And I knew even before I asked him that it wouldn’t prove convenient for me to visit him at his parents house in Boston right now, as Cathy and I had hoped. They probably wouldn’t be delighted to meet me. They probably preferred a certain refinement in their guests — people who had heard of the Seven Sisters.

I was the first one up. And after taking a shower in the rusted stall I pulled on some almost-clean clothes and began the slow and vaguely satisfying ritual of packing up. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I was going somewhere. I put…