A Neon Darkness

by Lauren Shippen

  “I don’t drink,” Indah says as she pours me more vodka.

  “What?” I blanch. “A bartender who doesn’t drink? What kind of crappy punch line is that?”

  She huffs a laugh as she puts down the vodka bottle and starts wiping down the bar, not meeting my eyes.

  “Oh shit, is this an alcoholism thing?” I wince. “Like, is this part of your recovery or something?” I make a vague gesture at her general situation.

  That brings her eyes up as she laughs heartily, the sound like a beautiful bell that clashes with the tinny sound of Fergie coming through the bar speakers.

  “What kind of twelve-step program has an alcoholic working in a bar?” She giggles, and it helps me not feel stupid for suggesting it.

  “Okay, then why not?” I press. “Alcohol is great.” I smile wide at her but her giggles stop and her shoulders square off defensively.

  “Yeah, well, the Qur’an feels a little differently,” she mumbles.

  “The Qur’an?” I ask, my fuzzy head not putting two and two together.

  The movement of her arm stops for a second before she continues.

  “I used to drink, but then I…” She trails off, her hesitancy making me more alert, more curious. I lean forward, my elbows sliding farther onto the bar top.

  “Things change,” she finishes anticlimactically.

  She keeps moving her arm in circles, cleaning an already pristine bar, when my curiosity finally does the work for me and prompts her to say more.

  “I’m Muslim,” she spells out. “A lot of us don’t drink alcohol. Working in a bar is questionable to begin with, but, well…”

  She trails off again and I opt for nodding like I know exactly what she’s talking about. I want her to say more but the desire is dulled by the feeling that I’ve said something stupid. The vodka running through my veins lets me admit to myself that I want Indah to think I’m cool.

  “You’ve never met a Muslim person before, have you?” she asks, cocking her head as she peers at me and breaking me out of my reverie.

  “I’m from Kansas.” I shrug like I’m being clever and it makes her laugh that big laugh again.

  “You know,” she says, “they have Muslims in Kansas too.”

  “Figure of speech,” I clarify. “I’m from more of a nowheresville than even Kansas has.”

  “Oh yeah?” She cocks her head. “Where you from then?”

  “Wait,” I say, deflecting, “aren’t you supposed to be, you know, wearing one of those, you know…”

  I circle my head sloppily with my hand and Indah clenches her jaw but smiles through it.

  “There’s lots of ways to practice Islam,” she says simply, and I nod sagely like I understand the conversation we’re having at all.

  “You’re sweet for asking though,” she continues, her jaw relaxed, the smile easy again. I’m pretty sure it’s me making her smile like that, brush off my ignorance, but I have a hard time feeling too bad about it with the vodka warming in my blood. Her smile is so beautiful, so welcoming—I can’t be blamed for wanting to see it over and over.

  “You’re not a bad sort,” she continues, looking at me sappily. Blankly. Her smile is turning generic and there’s a familiar rush of delight and disgust coursing through me.

  “Nice of you to say, darlin’,” I say, pushing away the bad feeling, and she giggles again.

  “You’re a hoot.” She snorts.

  Encouraged, I say: “You wanna know how old I really am?”

  She leans her elbows onto the bar, mirroring my posture.

  “Sure.” She wiggles her eyebrows like she’s indulging me.

  “Eighteen,” I whisper, and her eyes widen.

  “No, you’re not,” she gasps over-dramatically.

  “No, I really am.”

  “You couldn’t have gotten in here if you were eighteen.” She looks at me dubiously.

  “I have my ways,” I purr, and she rolls her eyes.

  “Why would you tell me that now?” She smiles. “I should report you.” She crosses her arms, but she’s still grinning playfully.

  “To who?” I ask. “The alcohol police?”

  She just lifts a single eyebrow and leans against the back counter.

  “I really shouldn’t have served you.” She shakes her head, the grin collapsing. “I thought I checked your ID…”

  “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” I croon, liking the way the endearments flow off my vodka-soaked tongue. “Just pour me another drink and forget I said anything.”

  And she does exactly that. Almost as if she’s asleep, Indah grabs the nearly empty vodka bottle and pours me another double. I have no intention of drinking it—any drunker and things will get very bad—but I take pleasure in watching her hands do the work while her mind is somewhere else.

  She seems smart. Maybe she’ll catch on. Some people do, like the head of security at the Bellagio. They never understand what it is they’re catching on to, but I see a revelation dawn in their eyes and make sure to leave them before they can examine it, or me, too closely.

  “Why…,” she starts, looking at the drink she just poured.

  “Do you have a place I could crash at?” I interrupt.

  I already know the answer. But my parents taught me to be polite.

  * * *

  “Robert?”

  I spin around to try to find the source of my mother’s voice. She can’t be here. She can’t be in LA.

  “Robert?” I hear again, and I spin and spin and suddenly I’m not in LA either. I’m sitting at my kitchen table. The table I sat at when I was small. The table where we had every meal together, as a family.

  “Robert, eat your peas,” my mother tells me gently. She’s smiling down at me, love in her eyes.

  “I don’t wanna.” I pout, swinging my legs back and forth, my toes inches from the ground.

  “Robert, remember what we talked about,” my father says, his voice strong and warm and never stern. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do, but we do them because they’re good for us.”

  “But I don’t wanna,” I whine again, voice rising. They both sigh, their breath a soft breeze over me. They tilt their heads in unison, shaking them slightly.

  “Oh, you sweet boy,” they say, their hands brushing softly along my cheeks. “Remember: sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do, but we do them because—”

  “I don’t wanna!” I screech. The hands recoil from me, leaving my face cold. Their mouths snap shut. And then they have no mouths. Their skin grows over their lips, their eyes, their noses. They are blank and screaming and I wanted them to stop. I wanted them to stop telling me what to do and now they can’t tell me anything. I’ve taken it all away and suddenly their faceless bodies are gone too and I’m left alone with two empty chairs and the echoes of their screams—

  I gasp awake.

  It’s not so dramatic as it is in the movies. I don’t shout out, don’t jolt upright in bed. Just a quick inhale of breath, the opening of the eyes.

  I am in a cold sweat though. That much translates from the screen. I soaked through my T-shirt. My jeans stick to my legs, suffocating my lower half.

  Indah’s couch is serviceably comfortable. It’s not the MGM Grand, but tomorrow I’ll find a more permanent crash pad. Some hotel suite or maybe a Malibu mansion. I should get a car first, but then the world is my oyster.

  I make the short walk from Indah’s couch to her kitchen and pour myself a glass of water. It might be worth it to try to fall back asleep but I don’t like my chances. I’m never able to get back to sleep after a dream about Them. My watch reads 4:02. The worst goddamn hour of the night, four a.m. Too late to hit up a bar, too early to hit up a diner. Might be the perfect time to go lift a car, even though I’d prefer just to get the keys from someone. I still haven’t really mastered the hot-wire—

  “Robert?”

  The glass falls from my hands as I spin around in panic. The shattering gives m
e an extra jolt of adrenaline, and in the few seconds it takes my eyes to adjust to the darkness and make out Indah’s confused face, my heart has made a pretty decent bid to permanently exit my chest.

  “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.

  The clerk leaves me with a, “Let me know if you need anything else, sir,” and I start to explore the room. “Villa.” It really is more than a room. It’s several rooms, with a fireplace and a piano and everything. This will do very nicely indeed. I haven’t gotten that good at spinning stays more than a month, but maybe this is the perfect time to practice.

  The sun is just beginning to peek through the shades but I ignore it in favor of the plush bed in front of me. I sleep like the dead.

  * * *

  “Excuse me,” a voice calls out as I walk through the lobby, “young man! Excuse me.”

  I turn to see a woman waving me over from reception. I barely suppress a sigh and eye roll as I saunter over to the d
esk.

  “Yes?” I ask politely.

  “You arrived earlier this morning, correct?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me. “You’re staying in one of our Deluxe Villas?”

  “That’s right.” I nod.

  “Peter mentioned you would be staying with us for a while,” she continues. “But it seems he forgot to get your payment information.”

  I clench my jaw in annoyance, distantly hoping I didn’t get this Peter guy in trouble and wondering how much I should spell this out for her.

  “Yeah, look,” I say after a moment, deciding on the blunt approach, “you’re not going to get payment info from me. And you’re going to let me stay in that room for as long as I want, and it’s not going to be a problem. So write whatever little note in your system you have to to make sure that happens.”

  As I’m speaking, I’m thinking, Believe me believe me believe me, even though thinking it doesn’t seem to make a difference. As long as I want it, even if it’s subconscious, it happens. But it still feels good to try, to put effort and intention behind it, giving me the illusion of control. And sure enough, she nods, hits a few keys on her computer, and then looks back at me. Blank. They’re always blank. I sometimes wonder if wanting people not to be blank is something I could make happen. Maybe I just don’t want it enough.

  * * *

  As luck would have it, the Sunset Marquis is part of one of the most famous music scenes in the entire world, the name registering in my head as familiar because of some rock star’s biography I read a while back. After wandering the area for a few days, letting myself become part of the landscape and routine of the neighborhood and the hotel, I start going to shows along the Sunset Strip. Rock shows, weird new electronic bands, even some stand-up here and there. I dance and I laugh and I still don’t talk to anyone, the crowds too big and too raucous to infiltrate.

  It’s the closest thing I have to a routine—I arrive in a new city, pick a neighborhood, and soak up as much of it as I can. Now that the chaotic loudness of Halloween is over, Los Angeles reveals itself to be livelier and brighter than anywhere I’ve ever been. I’m entranced by the mismatched buildings, the sparkling hills, the scents of interesting food wafting down the street. But it’s as overwhelming as it is enticing, and like with every other city I’ve been to, I have a hard time seeing how and where I’m going to fit into it.