The Time of Her Life

Chapter 1

Julie

“Julie, you’re just kind of a loser.”

Well, there was no coming back from that.

The phone call was a wake-up call, because at least until now, I’d been able to console myself that I wasn’t doing too badly because I had a hot girlfriend, but now without the hot girlfriend, I had to confront the fact that yeah, objectively speaking, maybe I was kind of a loser.

I’d come to New York with a dream and, like, two dollars in my pocket, leaving my sad little suburban hole of Benley, Missouri, and I pictured one day I’d be counting my millions in the back of a limousine with champagne and a supermodel girlfriend.

Counting crumpled one-dollar bills on the back of my moped that I bought for too cheap from someone who probably stole it, trying to make sure I could pay rent on my illegal sublet in a laundry closet, that was probably close enough, right?

I didn’t even feel much of anything when Guin dumped me like that.

Embarrassment, I guess. I’d been here for two years now, two years where I’d been telling myself this is just temporary, I’m just doing this to get by, I’m about to hit the big break, about to go big.

But the big break seemed to be just ever out of reach, and I guess if I had to be honest, spending my days doomscrolling social media and getting by on doing gig work delivery wasn’t likely to get me to my big break.

So it was more the sad state of being confronted with my own inadequacy than being upset or offended about what Guin said, or even sad that she was gone, so mostly I just sat on my grimy mattress on the floor in the stuffy concrete box that I called a bedroom, and I looked at motivational pinboards on Pinterest to see if it sparked anything.

Long story short, it didn’t spark anything, so it was the 20th of April when I called my mom and asked her if I could go home.

Admitted that things in New York didn’t really work out for me.

She was confused when I mentioned that things didn’t work out between me and my girlfriend, and I had to remind her that I was gay and how that meant I dated women, and no the fact that I dated Kieran in high school didn’t mean I was straight, and no I wasn’t leaving New York because I was gay, what self-respecting gay person would choose suburban Missouri over New York City?

Well, I kept that last part to myself. She never liked the big city much. She was going to be so smug, so insufferable when I came back.

The 21st of April was the worst day. Not because anything happened, really, although I did hit a rat with my moped so hard I almost wiped out, and somehow the rat lived, but mostly it was just the day that things set in.

I sat in the corner of my mattress crying ugly tears and, one by one, I went through my photos to delete every one with Guin in them.

I typed up a million different messages to her, deleting every one of them, and I searched every variation of how to get over a breakup, but every result said something stupid like just give it time and let yourself feel your emotions, which was not what I needed.

I was looking for, like, a reset switch somewhere that would fix whatever part of me made me stupid.

Maybe something I could eat that would fix me.

Was it kale? I’d even eat kale if it would do the trick.

I wouldn’t eat a lot of it, but I’d eat it.

I told my landlord—if you could call him that—that I’d be moving out at the end of May, and he guilt-tripped me, saying oh, I’ll never be able to fill the room in time by then, I’ll be in so much trouble if you do that, would you really do that to me after everything I’ve done for you?

I don’t know why I was feeling bad and helping this guy fill a windowless bedroom that used to be a laundry supply closet and by god still believed it was one, but I let him bully me into leaving at the end of June instead, so I looked at the four walls of my supply closet and I said to myself goodbye, New York City.

I wanted to say something like you’ve been good to me, but I wasn’t a liar.

And so it was Wednesday, April 25th that I was coming back from the grocery store with my bags of ready meals I would stick in the minifridge in my concrete coffin, my umbrella up against the rain but still getting soaked as cars splashed puddles up from sad gray Ridgewood streets, and somehow one of the flyers pasted up on a pole caught my attention.

DOWN ON YOUR LUCK?

CALL KINGMAKER

AND I’LL MAKE A KING OUT OF YOU

LIFE COACHING – SUCCESS GUARANTEED

That was the sketchiest thing I’d seen in my life. It was a bit old and weathered, and yet not one of the pull tabs had been taken. What kind of sad loser did you have to be to fall for something like that?

Well, I was a sad loser, so I fell for something like that. I took a pull tab. It was a bit soggy, and it threatened to disintegrate in my hand, but I took the pull tab, and I shoved it in the pocket of my threadbare hoodie, and I kept walking home.

∞∞∞

Kingmaker wasn’t one for small talk. As soon as I got on the phone with him, he wanted to meet at his, and I quote, forward base to discuss my case and to, and I quote, see the king within me. I should have protested that that sounded like a human trafficking scheme, but instead I protested,

“Wouldn’t you see a queen within me?”

He chuckled down the line. “See you soon, Julie. Peace out.”

Kingmaker hung up on me. This was the number one thing I should not have done.

But I guess I just couldn’t find it in me to care anymore.

I’d fucked up, my life was over, and if I got myself chopped up for organs in Kingmaker’s secret basement, it would at least be over with.

And I took some dark comfort in the knowledge that my combined organ value on the black market would make me the most valuable I’d ever been.

There was a mouse named Harold who lived in the back entrance of the complex—or, well, I’d named him Harold, and I assumed it was the same mouse, but I guess it could have been multiple mice rotating shift duty of nibbling on plastic containers, each one taking their turn of being Harold—and I said goodbye to Harold on my way out.

He was my only friend, so it was worth letting him know my liver was about to go save the life of a drug kingpin in dire straits.

It was a half-hour walk to the address Kingmaker sent me, down in Bushwick, and I guess I wasn’t all that surprised to find out his…

forward base, as he called it, was a pizza parlor.

A sketchy spot that looked like an artist with a fever tried to paint a picture of Pizza Hut circa 1999, it was right across from a gas station on Myrtle Avenue, where the night air was heavy with the stink of gasoline kicked up off the pavement by the rain from earlier, and trucks rattled by loudly on the road that had seen better days.

A faded sign over the door read TASTY SLICE, which was a terrible name for a pizza parlor and a worse name for an organ harvesting joint, but at least there were a decent few people inside.

Or maybe it was a bad thing, because if it had been empty save the creepy life coach, I’d probably have come to what little remained of my senses and bailed out, but alas, I pushed open the doors and stepped into Tasty Slice.

The staff greeted me at the counter with classic Brooklyn hospitality where they just looked at me like I wasn’t supposed to be there, waiting for me to order, and I stalled, suddenly awkward and self-conscious.

Kingmaker had told me in the text to tell them I was here to meet him, but…

I felt like a fucking tool walking in saying Kingmaker sent me like I thought I was hot stuff. I blushed as I stammered over my words.

“I-I’m here to meet someone,” I said, and nothing in this universe could have prepared me for what came next—this guy who looked like he had never smiled in his life, who sweated pizza grease and knew how to make a good dough and how to end a fight by killing someone in a single punch, in the blink of an eye, was suddenly grinning like a golden retriever puppy.

“You here to meet Kingmaker?”

“Oh, uh, yep.” Jesus Christ, I was about to die. This whole place was a front. The guy behind the counter turned to the other two in the back, shouting so loud you could have heard it halfway down the L train line.

“Hey! Guys! Kingmaker’s client’s here!”

“Well, aw, shit,” the other man in the back said, a tall and vaguely greasy white guy who looked like he always smelled like oregano, leaning over the counter to get a good look at me, grinning with two teeth missing. “You’re in good hands, miss.”

The first guy, a Black man with a beer belly that could have sustained a month-long Oktoberfest, pointed a chubby finger towards the corner of the parlor. “Kingmaker’s back there. Your pizza’s already waiting.”

“It’s Kingmaker’s client?” The last person behind the counter, a Black girl with hoop earrings and tall curls, crowded in to look at me.

I was starting to feel like a circus attraction.

Was that what this was? Not organ harvesting, but something far more sinister, selling me to the circus?

The girl lit up. “Aw, you look like shit, babe. Kingmaker’s got his work cut out. ”

“Hey—I didn’t ask.”

“Do you want a drink, babe?”

I was pretty sure they’d poison it. “I’m all good. Just here for the… consultation.”

If I had a friend, I’d have told them what I was doing, so they knew to come look for me if I disappeared.

But if I told someone what I was doing, they’d probably barrel in and haul me out under one arm and give me a lesson on stranger danger.

And I wasn’t my own friend, so I let myself go to the corner, where there was only one seat taken at a booth, a man who I could only assume was the illustrious… uh, Kingmaker.