Free All About Eva by Deidre Berry

to anyone for anything.
    Tameka and I stood at the baggage carousel for almost an hour, and the only bag I had received out of a total of eight bags was the garment bag containing the chinchilla coat that Donovan had bought for me in Paris.
    â€œYou said you had eight Louie bags?” Tameka asked, pointing out the obvious.
    â€œYes, plus these two,” I said, indicating the train case that held my makeup and the duffel bag that I carried on, which contained my jewelry, digital camera, and other valuables I didn’t want to lose.
    And that is exactly what had happened to all the other bags I had checked with the airline. They got lost.
    It was Murphy’s Law in full effect. Whatever could go wrong was most certainly going wrong.
    Apparently, lost luggage happens all the time and is no big deal. At least that’s the impression I got from the folks in the lost and found department. More than a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of missing items and all I got after filling out a baggage inventory form detailing the contents of my lost luggage was a receipt with the reference and contact number of the Swiss Air lost and found office, and a terse “We will be in contact with you after the central baggage tracing office in Bern conducts a thorough investigation.”
    The ride from the airport to the Central Park West co-op was uncharacteristically quiet for both me and Tameka.
    Usually whenever we rode in the car together, the music was bumping and the conversation was loud and rowdy. Not that day. Tameka had the volume on the radio turned down so low it might as well have been off.
    It was just as well, because I didn’t feel much like talking anyway.
    Instead, I stared out the window watching the multitude of nameless people on the street as they went about their respective days.
    Bike messengers deftly maneuvered through traffic on their bicycles, food cart vendors served their waiting customers, and traffic cops stood in the middle of the street taking their jobs way too seriously, making manic, exaggerated gestures.
    We passed the Naked Cowboy standing on the corner happily strumming his guitar in his tighty-whitey drawers. He was wearing a full-length brown sable coat over his underwear, but it was mid-November, and starting to get too damned cold for that gimmick. I wondered what he does in late December and January, in the dead of winter. If he had any sense, he’d keep the hustle going by packing up his guitar and going down to south Florida.
    Some of the people on the street looked happy. Pedestrians walking in twos, holding hands and laughing like life was oh-so-grand and carefree.
    Even the bums seemed happy-go-lucky.
    I was jealous of them all. Mainly because no matter what their personal problems were at that moment in their lives, they weren’t nearly as big as what I had suddenly found myself having to contend with.
    I could only imagine what Gwen would say about all of this. My mother’s voice was suddenly in my ear, very loud and extremely ghetto. “Eva, girl, it looks like you have really gone and stepped in it now! But it serves your ass right.... Didn’t I always tell you to keep your own everything so that the quality of your life doesn’t depend upon the actions of some damn man?”
    Uh, no.... That was grandma.
    The only useful advice Gwen had given me up to that point was to “cross at the green and not in between,” and not to eat yellow snow.
    Growing up, Gwen was never a constant presence in my life, which was why I preferred to call the woman who had given birth to me by her first name, instead of mom, mommy, mama, or ma dukes.
    Gwen’s voice was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard to me, so I tuned her out and fished my makeup compact out of my bag so that I could fix my face.
    I pulled the sun visor down, flipped open the vanity mirror, and winced at my reflection. I looked like death warmed over. Tired, bloodshot eyes with