“Shit,” I breathe out, stepping back from the pieces of glass scattered around my feet.
“Wait, Robert, the glass—” she warns as she steps forward, her arms reaching out to me instinctively. Something about the way she says it—the way her hands extend to me—places me back in my nightmare, waiting for Indah’s face to close up the way my mom’s did.
“I’m okay,” I breathe, carefully stepping around the glass.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” she murmurs. “Let me get the broom.”
She walks into the hallway and I hear her rummaging through some cabinets in the dark before swearing quietly to herself.
“Hold on,” she calls from the hall, “I don’t know what my roommates did with the dustpan but I know there’s one in the building’s laundry room. I’ll be back.”
There’s the sound of Indah slipping on her shoes and the door opening and closing and then I’m alone in the apartment. I don’t know where the laundry room is or how long it will take her, so I tiptoe over to the door and look through the peephole. The hallway is empty.
I grab my jacket, throw on my shoes without lacing them up, and make a run for it.
* * *
I don’t think a city has ever been as empty as Los Angeles is at four in the morning. There’s barely any sound. No sirens, no honking, no bars throwing out the last of their patrons. It’s so different from Vegas, from Chicago. It’s closer to Denver, which I didn’t expect. Like a warm, sea-level Denver. I could live with that for a while.
Okay, game plan, Robert. You’ve had an eventful first night in town—found a cool bar and immediately ensured you can never go back there. Telling the bartender she broke the law by serving you and then crashing at her place, breaking her stuff, and fleeing is maybe not the best way to make friends. But not the worst. I’m familiar with the worst way to make friends by this point.
“Hey, man, could you spare some change?”
I didn’t even notice the man lurking under a building’s overhang. He’s got no shoes and reeks to high heaven.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, digging into my pockets. I pull out the stacks of cash I took from my casino winnings and take a cautious step toward the man. “Here you go.”
His eyes widen comically in shock and I move down the street before I have to listen to him thank me. I feel suddenly stupid, handing a stranger a few thousand dollars when I should have left it at Indah’s in apology. Money means so little to me that I always forget what a difference it can make to some people.
I turn a corner and stumble onto what looks like the remains of a massive block party. Right. Halloween. I nearly forgot, Indah taking up all the available real estate in my head. The street is covered in paper and glitter, strings of pennants spreading from the fronts of bars onto the sidewalk like vines. There are a couple of drunken, costumed stragglers, stumbling their way down the middle of the road, leaning on each other and singing—well, no, yelling—a pop song. I give them a wide berth.
I walk. I walk and I walk. I think about taking a car. I’m back on Santa Monica Boulevard, now blissfully clear of traffic, and there are plenty parked along the road that would be serviceable. But the sweat is finally cooling off my clothes, the fresh(ish) air clearing my cluttered head. The idea of climbing into a confined space right now is less than appealing.
I should get a convertible. Once I’ve found a place to stay, I’ll find a convertible. I’ll find a great spot, a great car, and live the great LA life. After the past few months, lying low seems like a smart idea, and what better place to disappear than a city of a million people desperately trying to be noticed.
Eventually the road splits and I decide to walk uphill and get away from the stretch of party-ruined streets. My watch tells me it’s now past five a.m., but the sun has yet to dawn over the city. I thought going farther south would mean near-permanent daylight, but I suppose I’ll be forever chasing the sun.
Ironically, I soon come upon the famed Sunset Boulevard and a little more wandering brings me to the secluded entrance of the Sunset Marquis. Something about the name registers in the back of my mind and that’s enough for me to go in. The hour or so I’ve somewhat unintentionally spent walking has taken a toll and I’m ready to fall asleep again. Ideally, un-nightmare-ified sleep.
“Can I help you, young man?” the night clerk calls out to me the moment I walk through the front doors. The “young man” grates, but I’m not close enough to him to make him call me “sir” or something else. Sometimes I wish that proximity wasn’t such a factor in what I can do. Other times, it’s about the only thing in my life I’m grateful for.
“Yeah, I need a room,” I say, walking toward the reception desk but looking around the lobby instead of at him. “For a while, I think. At least a month.”
“I see.” He stays neutral, typing on the computer in front of him. “We don’t have many suites available at the moment…”
I sigh in annoyance. I really don’t want to have to kick someone out of their room—the more people I use my powers on, the more potential for discovery there is. But the idea of being in a tiny room for a month is making me preemptively tired.
“I’d be fine with whatever for tonight,” I say, cutting my losses, “but, you know, a suite would be preferable for a month obviously. Don’t want to be cooped up for that whole time.”
“Oh, I apologize, sir,” he says. Hell yeah, I got the “sir.” “Our suites are our standard rooms. If you’d like something more spacious, we have our villas.”
What kind of joint is this? Suites are the smaller rooms?
“Oh.” I try to cover up my surprise, acting like this is a problem I encounter regularly. “In that case, a villa would be fine.”
“Very good, sir.” He nods once, deferentially. “It looks like we have one of our Deluxe Villas available—that’s twelve hundred a night.”
I nod at the price like it means anything at all to me. I have no idea what a hotel room is supposed to cost, because I’ve barely paid for anything since I was fourteen.
“Sounds great.” I smile.
The clerk looks at me in anticipation for a moment, expecting a credit card that’s never going to come, before his face smooths over and he nods again, this time to himself more than to me.
“Very good,” he says, matter-of-fact. “How many copies of your key will you require?”
“Just one should do it,” I say, the sentence getting caught in my throat. A familiar daydream starts to come up in my head—one where I’m traveling with someone, where a “villa” in a fancy hotel is something I choose so that I can share it, not just because I can—but I quash it down before the fantasy can take root and keep me awake for the rest of the night.
He hands me the key and shows me to my room. The hotel property is huge—winding paths through gardens, past pools and bars. The villa is tucked into a corner of the garden, nicely isolated. I couldn’t have picked a better place even if I’d bothered to look online before driving into the city. Looks like Lady Luck followed me from Vegas. Not that I ever need to rely on luck. I am luck.