Adventures of a Salsa Goddess Read Online Free Page B

received a sign—thunder, a black cat walking under a ladder, crop circles—she couldn’t be dissuaded even if God herself came down from heaven, shook her by the shoulders, and told her to get a grip.
    “I just want to get through this summer,” I said, looking out my patio doors. It looked as though the storm was subsiding. I could now see a horizontal gray line that had to be Lake Michigan.
    “Be positive!” Elizabeth urged me.
    It had only taken me a few minutes after leaving Elaine’s office two weeks ago to decide that I would do this crazy assignment after all. It was certainly time for me to shuffle the deck of my life. I was bored not just with my job as a lifestyle editor, a position I’d held for the past four years, but with everything. Besides seeing Elizabeth a couple times a week and the occasional date, I had no social life in New York. I lived for my four weeks of vacation a year when I could travel with my pal Andre. I loved my younger sister, Susan, her husband, and of course my new niece, Matilda, but Susan and I had never really connected. My father, whom I’d been very close to, had been gone now for almost twenty-five years. And every time I saw my mother, a woman who could drive the Pope to take a hit off a crack pipe, I wasn’t myself for days afterward.
    Of course it would be a dream come true to get “La Vie,” my own humor column, but what had actually convinced me to come to Milwaukee was very simple: I wanted to see if finding a man I could fall in love with and marry was even possible. I had nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain by doing this assignment. Elizabeth was right as usual, I needed to be positive and take this assignment seriously.
    * * *
    The next morning I walked out onto my balcony under a perfect cloudless sky and turned my face up to the sun. White sailboats dotted the sapphire blue water. I could see weeping willow trees bent over a pond in the distance and a few colorful kites hovered over a huge expanse of green. Rubbing my arms, which had broken out in goose bumps, I took in the spectacular view, which made me feel as though in the middle of the night I’d been whisked away to a commercial set for a feminine hygiene product.
    After taking a quick shower, I slicked a comb through my hair and put on my favorite pink lipstick and a thin coat of mascara. I slipped on a red halter dress and a bright yellow sweater and was out the door in twenty minutes. Grabbing the Saturday paper I found on my welcome mat, I took the elevator down to the ground level and stepped outside to take my first sunny breath of Milwaukee. The smell of freshly cut grass hit me, reminding me of summer visits to my mother’s house in Scarsdale, New York.
    In search of my morning caffeine fix, I walked by redbrick and brownstone mansions, twenty-story apartment buildings, the construction site of a new condo building going up, the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, and a small art museum. The sidewalks were filled with people walking dogs, jogging, and strolling hand in hand. Outside a retirement home I passed, old men and women sat on benches, chatting in a broken language full of harsh consonants, probably Yiddish or Polish.
    A few minutes later I saw the sign The Java Junkie and knew I’d found the perfect spot. Anything that implied unhealthy excess when it came to coffee was my kind of place. I ordered a latte and a blueberry scone and took them outside to the only free black, wrought iron sidewalk table.
    Two sets of dewy-eyed hand-holding couples with the we’ve-just-gotten-out-of-bed-after-a-night-and-morning-of-amazing-sex looks on their faces were sitting at tables on either side of me. Post-bonking hormones swirled through my airspace like unwanted secondhand smoke, and I felt my early-morning good spirits slowly sinking into emotional quicksand.
    Not a good way to start the summer. I packed up my scone, grabbed my coffee cup, headed back to my new apartment, and spent