Taste of the Dark A Mafia Romance

ELIANA

a·muse-bouche: /əˌmo͞ozˈbo͞oSH/: noun

1: a small item of food served as an appetizer or teaser before a meal.

2: an unexpected little taste that leaves you hungry for much, much more.

If I'm gonna have the worst day of my life, I would've appreciated at least a little heads-up. The universe should have the decency to warn you when bad shit is coming, you know? It wouldn't be hard. A little heads-up text from the cosmos. Maybe a fortune cookie that says, Buckle up, buttercup, because tomorrow's going to kick you right in the hoo-ha.

But no. Nothing.

Instead, I wake up at 5:45 A.M. to an alarm whose noise I hate with every fiber of my being. I swing my legs out of bed with my usual Monday morning enthusiasm (which is to say, none whatsoever) and promptly trip over my laptop charger. It sends me careening face-first into my dresser with a very unladylike grunt.

Things go downhill from there.

It's a gray day, wet and bitter and unforgiving the way only Chicago in February can be. A UPS truck splashes me with a cold puddle of street juice. My coffee shop is out of caramel syrup for my latte. I stub my toe on the staircase leading into my optometrist's office, and then when I get into my appointment, Dr. Haggerty tells me something I never, ever wanted to hear.

In ninety days or so, you're going to be blind.

Oh, yeah.

That.

That actually happened.

It's comical, isn't it? It's ludicrous-the adjective, not the rapper. It's straight-up outrageous for someone to be able to look you in the eyes and say that.

You have ninety days left to enjoy sunsets and pretty flowers and goofy Western movies.

You have ninety days left to memorize the faces of your loved ones and the happy smile of a stranger's baby on the L.

You have ninety days to gaze at everything you've ever cherished, before it all gets taken away from you by a genetic disease that you cannot stop and everything goes black forever.

But he did say that. Dr. Haggerty looked me right in my eyes, in the eyes that have been failing me little by little for a very long time and are soon to be failing me a whole lot more in a very short time, and he said, I'm sorry, Eliana, but there's nothing I can do.

I suggest you make the most of the time you have left.

Impossible.

Preposterous.

But real.

The rest of the day goes by in a surreal daze. I'm like a robot. An emotionless, unfeeling robot. So when Kyle, my least favorite coworker, sends a cryptically worded mass email implying that it's my fault that some requested documents were late, why should I care? When the elevator is down for maintenance and I have to walk up seventeen flights of stairs after my lunch break, why should I be bothered? When Kyle's industrial-political backstabbing means that I have to stay late to compile a report that he should've compiled weeks ago, why would it matter to me?

I didn't care.

I wasn't bothered.

It.

Does.

Not.