Read Online Mafia Girl by Deborah Blumenthal - Free Book Online
Authors: Deborah Blumenthal
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puts up the posters and I stand back and check his work, yelling out obnoxious orders like “a little higher on the right,” and “no, a little lower. More. Keep going, Clive. No, Clive, no. Too much, too much. Up again on the right.” And even Clive who has the patience of a saint is starting to get a trifle sick of it and me, I think, because I see him stop and take a deep breath and shoot me a look before he makes the adjustments and all the fine tuning so that everything looks perfect.
I step back to look at the posters from a distance and walk backward farther until—whack—I slam into someone and lose my balance, and all I remember as I’m on the ground is seeing a crowd of people around me.
“Gia, Gia, can you hear me?”
Their voices fade and get lower and lower and lower until everything goes still and an eerie silence fills my head, and in the last few seconds of consciousness I’m thinking that, you know, maybe I’m not going to live to be the class president after all.
ELEVEN
They called a stupid ambulance. I find out when I come to because I must have been down on the floor unconscious for a while, which is totally embarrassing. I guess I didn’t wake up as fast as I should have. Then the stupid ambulance takes me to the stupid Lenox Hill Hospital emergency room like I might need life support, and anyway I totally hate being in those kind of places because who do they put you next to except people dying of cardiac arrest or paralyzed by strokes or burning up with fever from pneumonia or some other raging contagious Ebola-like infection or what have you? And is that what you need on top of what you already came in with?
When I open my eyes again, some EMT guy, who’s blond and surferish and not half bad looking, is holding my wrist and taking my pulse and then shining an annoying flashlight pen thingie in my eyes and lifting my lids, and I really wish he would stop it for chrissake.
“I think she’s probably fine,” he says, “but we should just check her out anyway.”
Another voice above his says, “Christ, do you know who she is? We damn well will check her out,” and then he laughs.
I pretend not to hear that and ignore them because, hello, no surprise. So I turn my head away and rub my eyes, and on the other side of me there’s someone else, and I look up at his face and—oh my god—nearly go into shock because he looks so much like Michael Cross. And then I’m convinced that I’m not okay and I’m hallucinating or delusional because it couldn’t be; but anyway, I blurt out, “Michael?”
“Yeah.”
I sort of can’t breathe then and whisper, “What are you doing here?”
“Riding with you in the ambulance.”
Yeah, that’s, um, obvious—even to me in this condition. “How come?”
“You tripped…over me…over my foot.”
I look at him like what? “Start over.”
“I was assigned to security at the school for the election and you walked into me and I tripped you.”
And I’m like, what ? Because I think it was all my fault because I remember walking backward in four inch heels and the eyes behind my head were obviously not working.
But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything because all this time he’s leaning over me, my blouse is pulled up out of my skirt, I realize. And there is a significant amount of naked skin below his full gorgeous lips. I can practically feel his warm breath on me as he exhales. I stare at him and he stares back, and very gently, he reaches up and slides my blouse down, covering my stomach. And something about him slowly pulling the swath of silk across my skin…
The EMT guy interrupts the most erotic moment of my life and starts babbling like a moron.
“Who’s the president of the United States?” he asks, to see if I’m brain injured or what have you, which breaks the steamy staring thing and destroys the mood.
“Abe Lincoln,” I say because I’m pissed.
So that’s it and for like the next four hours I have
I step back to look at the posters from a distance and walk backward farther until—whack—I slam into someone and lose my balance, and all I remember as I’m on the ground is seeing a crowd of people around me.
“Gia, Gia, can you hear me?”
Their voices fade and get lower and lower and lower until everything goes still and an eerie silence fills my head, and in the last few seconds of consciousness I’m thinking that, you know, maybe I’m not going to live to be the class president after all.
ELEVEN
They called a stupid ambulance. I find out when I come to because I must have been down on the floor unconscious for a while, which is totally embarrassing. I guess I didn’t wake up as fast as I should have. Then the stupid ambulance takes me to the stupid Lenox Hill Hospital emergency room like I might need life support, and anyway I totally hate being in those kind of places because who do they put you next to except people dying of cardiac arrest or paralyzed by strokes or burning up with fever from pneumonia or some other raging contagious Ebola-like infection or what have you? And is that what you need on top of what you already came in with?
When I open my eyes again, some EMT guy, who’s blond and surferish and not half bad looking, is holding my wrist and taking my pulse and then shining an annoying flashlight pen thingie in my eyes and lifting my lids, and I really wish he would stop it for chrissake.
“I think she’s probably fine,” he says, “but we should just check her out anyway.”
Another voice above his says, “Christ, do you know who she is? We damn well will check her out,” and then he laughs.
I pretend not to hear that and ignore them because, hello, no surprise. So I turn my head away and rub my eyes, and on the other side of me there’s someone else, and I look up at his face and—oh my god—nearly go into shock because he looks so much like Michael Cross. And then I’m convinced that I’m not okay and I’m hallucinating or delusional because it couldn’t be; but anyway, I blurt out, “Michael?”
“Yeah.”
I sort of can’t breathe then and whisper, “What are you doing here?”
“Riding with you in the ambulance.”
Yeah, that’s, um, obvious—even to me in this condition. “How come?”
“You tripped…over me…over my foot.”
I look at him like what? “Start over.”
“I was assigned to security at the school for the election and you walked into me and I tripped you.”
And I’m like, what ? Because I think it was all my fault because I remember walking backward in four inch heels and the eyes behind my head were obviously not working.
But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything because all this time he’s leaning over me, my blouse is pulled up out of my skirt, I realize. And there is a significant amount of naked skin below his full gorgeous lips. I can practically feel his warm breath on me as he exhales. I stare at him and he stares back, and very gently, he reaches up and slides my blouse down, covering my stomach. And something about him slowly pulling the swath of silk across my skin…
The EMT guy interrupts the most erotic moment of my life and starts babbling like a moron.
“Who’s the president of the United States?” he asks, to see if I’m brain injured or what have you, which breaks the steamy staring thing and destroys the mood.
“Abe Lincoln,” I say because I’m pissed.
So that’s it and for like the next four hours I have
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