Read Online Postcards from a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber - Free Book Online Page B

bright lights and brighter drinks—orange and lime-green concoctions created to poison the patrons; sick of the day and the night, the smell of suntan oil, the loud cooing of women trying so hard to appear like women who are having so much fun. Sick of myself and this hopeless journey.
    My mouth waters, so I lean forward. I think: nobody will notice if I vomit. The soap machines will wash it all away. This disco is like a human carwash, but it is hot and miserable, not soothing at all. Two fun-filled coconut-oil girls make a Sid sandwich, polishing me with their bronze, bikini-clad buttocks. It all might be very exciting if the motion would cease and my eyes would stop burning and the pounding bass would quit shaking my stomach.I manage to slip through the crowd and squirm safely to a drier part of the club. I climb up two flights of stairs and perch on a dark balcony, high above the light systems and bubble machines.
    From this view, Club de Cuerpo lives up to its name—not due to its beautiful bodies but because the club itself functions like a body. The entrance is the mouth, the dance floor the heart, the bars the stomach, the soap suds the liver, and the back alleyway the anus. The patrons are mere cells who move to the break-beat rhythm of DJ Brain, although not much of one considering the monophonic pulsing. So this must put me in the appendix, the organ which seems to have no purpose. Much better. Of course, the appendix is also known for rupturing suddenly and causing extreme pain and death, but at least my shirt’s not vibrating.
    I scan the crowd for faces, but I don’t see Zoe or anyone even closely resembling her. I wonder if that’s why she was initially attracted to this city. I wonder if she had as much fun as I’m having, or if she traveled to this exotic locale just so she could send a postcard.
    Two twenty-minute super-song mixes later, it’s time for me to leave. I descend to the main floor, where I see a security guy. At least someone’s in charge. But this guy’s not directing traffic; he’s chatting up a model.
    A drunk man by the front door shouts at a hulking bouncer. A fight breaks out. Hands push. Fists fly. A barstool catches air and an elbow jabs a fire alarm. The sprinkler system showers down cold, stale rain, and all cuerpos instinctively race for the closest exit. An entire body’s contents flush out, regurgitated back onto the flashy streets of Spain, and me with them.
    I am soaked, but no longer soapy. I walk across the street to separate myself from the crowd and observe the rest of the wetclubbers as they line the sidewalk. The women pull their long black hair back to squeeze out the water. The men peel off their shirts and tuck them in the backs of their pants. People scream and laugh. The party never stops.
    One of the girls breaks away from the pack and walks straight toward me. She’s peculiar with her short blond hair. She has a cigarette in one hand, held awkwardly above her head to stop the water from streaming down her arm. Her other hand pulls her tight skirt down across tight thighs. Her heels click loudly on the street as she approaches. It’s like watching a movie, until she speaks directly to me. Her words sound like Spanish or Portuguese. She rolls her eyes, looks back at her girlfriends, then says something again, this time in a different language, something harsher. Now she sounds Swedish, or maybe she only looks Swedish. I glance at her girlfriends. They wave. One of them blows me a kiss.
    â€œSorry,” I say to the girl, “I don’t understand. Do you speak English?”
    â€œDo you have a letter?” the girl asks.
    I raise my eyebrows. What does she know about a letter?
    She laughs, puckers her lips, wrinkles her nose at me. “A letter? Do you have a letter?” She holds up her other hand and makes a gesture like she wants to thumb-wrestle me. Bizarre.
    â€œSorry,” she says. “My