Panic Attack by Jason Starr Page A

working five days a week, making enough money to move into her own apartment in Jackson Heights. For the next few years, Gabriela was working hard, making money, but it was hard not having a man in her life and a father for Manuela.
    When Manuela was about five years old, Gabriela met Juan. He was forty- two, his wife had died of cancer, and he had two boys. He wasn’t very handsome— he was fat and had a big crooked nose— but he was a very good man and he loved Gabriela and always bought her flowers and told her how beautiful she was. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes.
    Everything seemed so happy; she finally had a good man to take care of her and her daughter. Then, one morning, she was working at the Blooms’ when she got a phone call from her sister. Beatrice was screaming hysterically, “ Dios mio, Dios mio, Dios mio !” and then she told Gabriela that a taxi had hit Juan while he was crossing a street in Manhattan. Mrs. Bloom took Gabriela to the hospital, but when they got there Juan was already dead.
    Gabriela knew that Juan had been her true love and that she would never find such a good man ever again. She was sad for a long time, and even though the doctors gave her medicine to make her mind feel better, it was still hard to get out of bed. She used to laugh and smile all the time, and people had always told her how funny she was, but after what had happened to Juan it seemed like there was nothing to laugh about anymore. Some days she didn’t feel like going to her job, so she just didn’t go. Many families would’ve fired her, but the Blooms were very kind. They sent her flowers and called her every day to check on her and tried to get her to talk to the doctors and take her medicine.
    About a month after Juan was killed, Gabriela was finally able to get out of bed and go to work every day again, but she didn’t feel the same and she didn’t take care of herself the way she used to. She didn’t care how she dressed or how her hair looked, and she stopped putting on makeup and she got very fat. If she wasn’t so sad and so lonely and feeling so bad about herself all the time, she probably would never have wanted to be with a man like Carlos.
    She met Carlos on the subway. He was sitting next to her and he asked her if she wanted a piece of gum. She said no thank you, and then he said, “Then how ’bout we go to dinner instead?” She didn’t think he was very handsome, but at least he made her smile, so she gave him her phone number.
    The next night he took her to a very nice Chinese restaurant, and during the meal he held her hand and told her how pretty and sexy she looked. They went out a few more times, and then she went back to his apartment. In bed he asked her to do coke with him. She’d never done any drugs before, but she was a little drunk so she decided to try it. It made her feel good and— for a little while at least— like she didn’t have any problems at all.
    She started going out with Carlos a few nights a week. He didn’t have a job, and she knew he was probably some kind of criminal, but she didn’t want to ask where all his money was coming from. She was just happy to not be alone anymore and she liked how Carlos bought her presents all the time— jewelry, clothes— and she liked having a man in her life again. They did coke sometimes, and then one night he asked her if she wanted to try heroin. She’d seen the marks on his arms and legs, so she knew he liked to shoot up, but she was afraid of the needle. But he kept asking her, saying, “You got no idea how good this shit feels, it’s gonna blow you away.” So she tried it one time, just to see what it felt like, and after a couple of weeks she got hooked.
    Everything was good for a while. She was seeing Carlos all the time and getting high a lot and forgetting about all of the tragedy in her life. But then she started seeing Carlos’s bad side. It was like she was sleeping the whole time she knew him and then woke up and saw who he