Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Everything Is Preordained
Most people start from the beginning: Miss A was born in the city of B, raised by hardworking, middle-class parents who only wanted the best for Miss A, spent wonderful Indian summers with loving grandparents, graduated with honors, saw the world, settled down, married C, had little D's and E's. Most people embrace a history of themselves for the very reason that it is embraceable — in wrestling it's called playing to somebody's strength. Certainly, I have a past — that I'll get to in due time'and some of it is even embraceable. Hey, I went to a prestigious high school, didn't I? My grandparents had a boat, right? And fathers? I had three, possibly four, if you count the boyfriend in between who never married my mom. What I have then, more than fond memories, are acknowledgments. Look, I was always a big, different . . . visible girl. Heads turned in the third-grade cafeteria (I lived with it), heads turned at the Emmys (I gave them the finger). My life is roughly (ha ha) divided into three parts: Being different and hating it. Being different and accepting it. Being different and, well, embracing it. And the embracing began with a kiss.
Independence Day 1995 God, I look great in a uniform! Standing in front of the closet-door mirror, I am a beaming approximation of a prim and professional flight attendant — tight skirt cut at mid-thigh, wrinkle-free blue blazer, white blouse, looking a little underinflated, frankly (the miracle of the saline baggie would come later), but I make up for it in legs, tensed by two-inch pumps. And, be honest, now — can anybody otherthan a teamster resist my seductive Prince Valiant 'do? “Knock them dead, Joanie Laurer, knock them dead!” my neighbor, Maxine, shouts as I'm climbing into my car. “Hope you get the belt!” she called out, doing the pantomime of some freaky housewife superhero, her hands raised over her head, joining them together as if she were plugging in all the juice needed to light the Florida Keys into an extension cord. Yeah, the belt. Back in flight school everyone wanted to do the belt thing, that little preflight demonstration where you show everybody on the plane how the seat belts buckle. I had just completed a six-week class, training to become a flight attendant'a class of about thirty bubbly hopefuls of both sexes. Most of them were my age, early to mid-twenties, with a couple of divorcées sprinkled in, hiding their forties behind face putty and Jackie O glasses — I actually liked the older ones the most because they knew shame. The ones my age had that typical sense of entitlement, that slacker, world-weary thing going on, as if saying, “Gimme the damn job already, so I can get on with the hating of everything about it.” When graduation time comes (if you're conscious, you graduate), everyone's forgotten everything about safety, inflatable life jackets, where to blow, the psychology of handling some drunken rock star who wants to crap in the coffee service cart — but not the belt, not the demonstration. Even the most jaded, bullshit — slinging, bored, Tetris-playing, tanning losers sat up when the belt was mentioned. And that first time when you're chosen? Wow. You're the point man. Everyone on the freaking plane immediately knows there's something extra-special about you.
They may not pay attention, but believe me, they know you're not just some run-of-the-mill pillow fluffer, right? Of course, I'd be lucky if the planes even had seat belts. My new job was with some outfit now out of business whose name we will withhold anyway. I mean, these guys were way below ValuJet, we're talking bottom of the barrel here. And I couldn't have cared less. Because I've had a lot of jobs. I was a cocktail waitress in a stripper bar and still have bruises on my ass from the pinches of slumming Cuban nationals. I sang in a bar band (when the drummer showed up) and never made a penny. This was before I got clotheslined in the throat so many times that I lost my voice. I fell asleep manning a 900-number chat line, where one guy paid $2.99 a minute to have me listen to him blow his nose into his ex-wife's underpants. (And what a nose. He stayed on the line for a half-hour.) I had more bad jobs than Manpower. But this? Finally I was going in the right direction — in a brand-new ride, I might add. Yeah, I bought a new car, trading in the Jeep Cherokee that said, “Mountain climber, into campfires, hiking, looking for enduring relationship w/clean, hetero male,” for a Ford Probe that spoke of futons, sushi, self-actualization, the piercing-the-tiger position, and take me to your leader! The sky was the limit! Exciting places to go to, people to meet'maybe a marriage proposal from some high-powered commodities broker? Okay, so I was probably selling myself a little short. I knew the job wasn't nearly as glamorous as I wanted it to be, but I could do worse. Hey — a steady paycheck. Benefits. Money. The belt . . .
If you live in the Florida Keys, there's literally only one way to get to Miami and beyond. Route 1, which eventually becomes Interstate 1, runs on the spine of the Florida Keys, then swings northwest, up a stretch of causeway not much wider than The Rock's cocked eyebrow. I'd driven the stretch hundreds of times, and the worst part of it'for me'was driving at night in frog-spawning season.
Thousands of them, crossing the causeway. They pop when you run over them. So it's two lanes, running north and south, at one point narrowing to two hundred yards between Blackwater Sound to the west and Barnes Sound to the east. Other places it gets wide enough to accommodate a gas station or a hamburger joint.
And that's where the trouble starts. Water on both sides of you, fog, desolation, it's easy to get disoriented. We call them ghost riders — people who pull off for something, get all turned around, and pull back onto the wrong side of the causeway...
