by Pelzer,Lissa
No More Birthdays
LISSA PELZER
Copyright © 2015 Lissa Pelzer
[email protected]
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10:1517675533
ISBN-13:978-1517675554
For Mikey,
Happy Birthday
Sometimes the worst secrets
are the ones you keep from yourself
Chapter 1
The guy on The Plan 8 Hotel reception was checking someone in. Lilly hung back by the painted film poster of a robot carrying a semi-conscious woman.
When he got done with the couple before her, he started shuffling leaflets behind the desk.
She snapped her gum to remind him she was still there.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, pushing his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose.
Lilly stepped forward.
He was about her age, eighteen maybe nineteen. Something told her he hadn’t yet made the big two-oh.
She eased her bag down to the floor and ran her hand through her dark blonde hair.
‘I need a room,’ she said. ‘Just something clean with a bathroom, but otherwise I’m easy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he sang out as if they’d just run out of multi-colored sprinkles. ‘We’re all full up tonight.’
Lilly laughed.
The kid blinked.
She leaned in. ‘You’re not serious, are you?’ This was the third hotel she’d tried here and this was just some nothing, little city in the middle of Ohio. ‘Full up? What the hell is going on?’
The guy’s eyes flashed. ‘What do you think’s going on? It’s Flickerama Weekend.’
‘So what?’
‘So it’s the biggest film festival in the mid-west.’ He looked at her like she was the one being weird, being a pain.
Something clicked.
When she’d called up the movie theater last week to make sure they were playing the movie Bobby had mentioned, the girl on the phone had said that.
‘For Flickerama?’
But the girl hadn’t said what that was. It would have been cool of her to say it was a thing, a reason rooms got booked up out here.
‘Sure,’ Lilly said, and took the gum from her mouth, twirled it around her finger and looked about for an ashtray. There wasn’t one and the guy didn’t offer her anything. So she stuck the gum back in her mouth. ‘But I only came because they’re showing some old film tomorrow at the Neon movies. It’s called ‘Volcano’… I don’t care about the film fest or what else is happening–.’
‘East of Java,’ the guy said.
‘What?’
That’s the title of that film. It’s not called Volcano, it’s called East of Java and that basically is Flickerama.’ His eyes got big. ‘And care about it or not – that’s why you can’t get a room.’
‘Okay, correction. So I came to see someone who’s come to see that movie, not to actually see the movie myself.’
‘That’s a shame for you because it’s a really good film.’
‘I’m sure it is. I wouldn’t know. But seriously, you’ve got nothing. Nothing at all?’ She took out her card and tapped it on the counter, tapping out a beat to nothing in particular. Sometimes when you stopped talking, other people started.
Bobby had told her that and she’d seen him do it, breathing down the phone line on a call to New York or L.A, letting the guy think he wouldn’t accept the offer, that he’d be on his own on Friday night, jacking-off to the same computer he used to video-call his mother.
The boy cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up his nose again. He was going to help her out. ‘If you need a room,’ he said quietly. ‘If you really need a room, there’s the Ramada on I-75, there’s an Econo Lodge out that way too.’
‘Please. An Econo Lodge?’ She nudged her purse in case he hadn’t seen it. It probably cost more than he made in a week.
‘I mean if you need somewhere local to stay.’
‘You’re honestly saying all the hotels down here are full?’
‘You could try The Colorado Palace…’ He lifted one eyebrow. ‘But you’ll need pretty deep pockets to get in their doors if you know what I mean.’
‘I can afford any room in this town, I’m sure.’ She held up the card between her fingers. ‘But I have a question…’
The desk phone rang and he excused himself.
‘Hey! What time’s that movie actually showing tomorrow, do you know?’
She didn’t want to be standing around, all dressed up out front for hours on end.
The guy put his hand over the receiver. ‘Doors at seven o’clock…but tickets are sold out for that too… In case, you hadn’t heard.’ He hung up the phone, scribbled something on a pad. ‘They put about fifty online. But they were sold out pretty quickly and then the prices just started going up and up. Now they’re about three hundred dollars a piece and by tomorrow, they’ll be going for a thousand.’
‘A thousand dollars? Why so expensive for an old movie – can’t you find it online?’
He was shaking his head, not looking at her. ‘It’s the people who’ll be there, movie producers, agents, money people like you said. You go there to see the people who go to see the movie, not just the movie itself. How else do you get to give your script to Terence McCoy?’
She nodded deliberately, but not really interested, already thinking of the place he’d mentioned, ‘The Colorado Palace’. If he couldn’t get tickets to a movie showing in his hometown, he probably wasn’t much use to her and she was just wasting her time even standing there, but everyone has a purpose.
‘This place, The Colorado Palace. Is it nice?’
‘Sure, it’s nice. If you like swimming pools in the basement and twenty dollar cocktails.’
‘Okay. Do you think you could at least look after this bag while I go and check they’ve got rooms? I’ll come back and pick it up as soon as I have something.’
He lowered his chin. ‘What’s in it for me?’
She pulled herself up onto the counter and knowing it was all he was going to get, grabbed his index finger and stuck it into her mouth. She sucked, wrapped her tongue around his knuckle and let it pop out the side. A dumb expression spread across his face.
‘You’ll just have to trust me.’
‘Okay…’
‘You’re a life saver,’ Lilly said.
‘I’m a sucker,’ he replied.
‘Well, both are sweet.’
She reached over and took a sip from his water bottle and swished it around her mouth like Listerine. She would spit it out in the street.
Lilly knew The Colorado Palace when she saw it, a large, white hotel with a portico front and trees outside. The guy was right, this hotel was classy, maybe too classy for how she was dressed right now, in shorts and a shirt, but she had a pre-paid credit card and she knew how these places worked.
The times they’d been on the road with Bobby she’d seen how it was. The receptionist would swipe her card when they checked in, but the money wasn’t charged till they checked out.
Bobby used to put his hand out.
‘I’ll just give you cash if that’s okay with you.’
No one ever said no to cash.
And after she had cleared everything up with him, he’d pay cash for her room too.
She took in the columns, the potted palms and the dark wood of the hotel bar. That was the bar where Bobby would be sometime tomorrow, showing guys pictures of pretty girls on his phone. And after he got a little drunk, scaring them with tales of how he beat a rap for Murder One with his tame judge.
Lilly stepped up to the desk. She felt the eyes of someone on her behin
d and pulled at the butt of her shorts. Her shirt had stuck to her back with sweat and wrinkled up under her armpits, but here was nothing she could do about it until she got a room.
‘I need a room for tonight – please.’
The receptionist was hating on her already. ‘Just for one night?’ she asked.
‘That’s right. One night.’
She knew Bobby’s style. He’d drive in overnight for tomorrow morning, for the seven o’clock show. He didn’t like staying in hotels if he didn’t have to, but she had to. She needed to get ready tomorrow. She needed to look her best for when she saw him again. After a year of him ignoring her, she had to show him what he’d been missing.
‘Currently, the room rate is running at about seven hundred and twenty a night… Do you still want to take it?’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
The receptionist acted like she was trying to breathe out of her eyeballs as she typed. There was a whirl and a piece of paper came out of the printer. Lilly slapped down the card and began to fill in her details.
‘And I’ll need a state ID.’
‘Oh, Jeez. See, I lost my purse, my other purse at the airport. Can’t you take my card as proof?’
‘No,’ the woman said bluntly, kind of enjoying herself.
She would take some persuading. Lilly stepped up on her tiptoes. ‘Look, I hate to be like this, but I’m desperate. I need a room and I reckon this is the last one in town.’
‘There are other places you can go. Econo Lodge on I-75 will take you with just a credit card. They do all night checkin.’
‘The Econo Lodge?’ Why on earth did everyone want to send her to the Econo Lodge? ‘Thanks for the tip, but really I need to stay here in town. I’ve got to meet someone tomorrow and I don’t have their phone number.’
‘Are they a guest here? I could take a message.’
‘Yes, they are but…’ Lilly rolled her eyes.
The woman blinked.
‘I really just need to stay here, in this hotel. You know…well if I can’t get a room here, I’ll have to sleep in the park or else I’ll need to find someone who’ll let me crash at theirs. And that’s pretty dangerous don’t you think?’
The woman looked confused for a moment and suddenly distressed, but Lilly had misread her. She was one of those people that couldn’t handle that feeling and Lilly watched, as her outward slanting eyebrows slowly became inward leaning.
‘How dare you! I don’t appreciate that you not having your ID is somehow my fault! I would recommend–’
And right on cue the other guy stepped over. ‘Is there a problem here, Janet?’
Lilly stepped back from the desk. ‘No. There’s no problem here.’ She unzipped her purse and put the card away, the precious card, a fat lot of use it was without an ID. ‘Excuse me,’ she said playing it polite. She might have to show her face here again. ’I’ll try that Econo Lodge, you suggested.’
Before she knew it, she was out on the street, clenching her fists. She couldn’t get a room at The Econo Lodge. The Econo Lodge was a damn motel. Motels made you pay upfront. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it. She wasn’t a total moron. If she’d known she needed a motel out on the highway and the cab money to go with it, she would have got some more cash together. Except, that wasn’t true either. The hundred and fifty she’d put on the card was all she could get together. And once she worked it all out with Bobby…
But what about right now?
She was just thinking that she might be screwed, really screwed this time, when some people moved off to the side, and she saw her. A girl with spaghetti arms hanging down and hands on the end of them that she didn’t know what to do with. A girl with an innocent, pale face as white as the moon.
She was local. Lilly just knew it. It was her only option. She went over.
‘Huh,’ Lilly said, looking down at her black platform shoes. ‘Are they from Fredrick’s?’
‘What?’
‘Fredrick’s… Fredrick’s of Hollywood. They do have that out here don’t they.’
‘Out here?’
‘Yeah. In Ohio.’ Maybe she was a few matches short of the whole box. ‘You are from around here aren’t you?’
The girl’s mouth made a big wide O shape. ‘No… I’m from Indiana.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ Lilly sucked on her teeth. ‘Never mind. They’re nice all the same. I have a pair just like them,’ she said and turned around and looked off the other way at the hundreds of unknown faces in the crowd.
‘But I live here now. Pretty much. You?’
‘What?’ Lilly stopped and turned.
‘I said, I’m from Indiana, but I’m living here now.’ Her voice wavered as she spoke.
‘You are, huh? How come you’re on your own?’
‘I’m not on my own.’
‘Oh, you’re not?’ Lilly glanced to the side of the girl but tried not to be too sarcastic about it. ‘That’s good for you. I’m on my own at the moment.’
‘We can hang out together if you want.’
‘Okay, cool. But I’m not on my own – on my own. My friends are coming in tomorrow, but I just lost my room at The Plan 8…’ Lilly paused. She couldn’t make out that she had nowhere to stay. She didn’t need to wave a flag to say how desperate she was. ‘I mean, I have a room, but it’s not ready yet and I’ve come in dressed like this. Seems like a waste of an evening…’
‘You have a room at The Plan 8?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘You know Thad?
Lilly thought quickly. ‘Is that the guy who works there?’
‘Yeah. He’s cool.’
‘Sure.’ She wanted to say he wasn’t that cool, but why piss her off as well as him? ‘Like I said, just a shame I couldn’t get ready there because I’d much rather be wearing something hot tonight than to be standing around in these shorts.’
The girl was pensive. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m nineteen’
‘You’re never nineteen!’
‘Are you serious? Okay. I’m nineteen on Sunday. How about that?’
‘Oh yeah? I’m eighteen too.’
In any other situation, Lilly would have called bullshit too. This time she just said, ‘So let’s go somewhere and get ready and go party.’
‘We could go into the Denny’s on South Main and you can get changed there.’
‘Do I look like the kind of person who would get ready in a restaurant bathroom?’
‘It’s fine. I go in there all the time. They don’t care. It’s Denny’s, right? The waitresses don’t care.’
‘I don’t think Denny’s is going to cut it.’ Lilly shrugged trying to keep it casual. It wasn’t about getting ready for tonight. If she could get to wherever this girl stayed, she could leave her bag there. They could hang out and she could go back with her and sleep on her couch when they were done. ‘But hey, don’t you live nearby?’
The girl’s attention shifted. Over on the stage Terence McCoy was asking for applause and the crowd was giving it to him. A guy up a tower was hanging off a spotlight, shining it over the crowd that had grown suddenly bigger.
‘Yeah, I live nearby,’ the girl said.
‘Couldn’t we go back to yours, so I could use the shower?’
‘I don’t think my roommates would be cool with that.’
‘I wouldn’t make a mess.’
‘That’s not the problem. Anyway, you don’t need a shower. You look fine. Why don’t you just go into Denny’s and put something hot on?’ The moon-faced girl looked her up and down.
Lilly didn’t want to go to a Denny’s. She wished the girl would just drop it, but could see the problem. She probably lived with her parents and was too proud to admit it. She probably had a pink bedroom and a weird father and that’s why she was out here on her own on a Friday night.
‘What if we just sneaked in and sneaked out? Couldn’t we go back and get ready, really get ready and look hot? I mean I could put gas in your car. Do you
have a car?’
‘Of course I have a car.’
‘Come on. Are you just going to stand here for an hour until your feet go numb or do you want to work the crowd with me?’
The girl gasped. ‘But it’s already nearly ten-thirty.’
‘These things don’t kick off ‘til after midnight.’
‘They don’t?’
‘Never. You might as well get home and change your shoes so you can get around more easily. And anyway, I bet producers aren’t looking for girls who are taller than their actors.’
She was pulling on a strand of her dark, flat hair, pulling it like she was trying to hurt herself. ‘I’m not an actress,’ she sneered. ‘And I can’t take you back with me to get ready either.’
‘What’s the big deal?’
‘I just can’t.’ But she was twisting her body away not knowing where to turn. She could wriggle as much as she liked, Lilly wasn’t going to let this go.
‘So maybe you have a friend’s house we could use, someone downtown with a bunch of roommates. Don’t be a wallflower.’
‘I’m not a wallflower! If you knew me…’
‘So let’s get to know each other.’
She pouted for half a second, but the wheels were turning. Was she going to stand here on her own all night? ‘Yeah, maybe we can go somewhere and get ready,’ she said. ‘I know somewhere we can drop by.’
‘Cool.’
‘Where’s your stuff – don’t you have luggage?’
‘I left it at the hotel. Wait here, I’ll get it.’
‘No, I’ll meet you at the Park. Do you know where the park is? Behind the stage, under those trees…’
‘Okay. I know it. Or I’ll find it.’ Lilly didn’t need a tour guide for this little town. ‘I’ll be five minutes.’
It was a lucky break, but she had to be quick. The girl was right. It was late already. She had to do the right thing and show her a good time for an hour before she started hinting it was time for bed. Lilly left her standing there and pushed through the people, past the popcorn and beer stands and the stalls selling black and white photos, through the wide hips and the skinny asses until she saw the black and neon on the hotel front.
The guy was checking some woman in and Lilly took the opportunity not to make good on her promise.