We had lied to get the voucher and now we were being punished. Who closed a motel at two in the morning? This was California damnit! Were tourists a foreign concept to this part of town? Had no drifter ever needed a room here in the middle of the night? Did Adams Blvd. not have hookers? What about just a good old-fashioned drunk who couldn't make it home?
I press my fingertips harder against my temple as I watched Patrick bang on the door for the eleventh time. I roll down the car window. "Don't they have a night bell you can ring or something?"
Frustrated, Patrick turns around to glare at me before actually looking for one. Finding it in the most glaringly obvious place, next to the door he has been banging on, he curses under his breath loudly enough so that I can hear him, and jams his finger hard against it, straining to hear the bell chime inside through the glass. He pushes it again, holding it for several seconds. No one comes.
I shake my head, knowing there will be an explosion of tears (mine) and tempers (his) if I bring up the fact that I had warned him it was getting late hours ago and that we needed to check in. But high on newfound charity and foodstamps that we had immediately turned into cash, Patrick had insisted on partying until we were right back where we'd been this morning. In the car.
It had been more than a simple warning, I had actually begged him to leave the house we had been taken to by his new friend from the charity office lobby. But once our foodstamps had become cash and alcohol, these people had become Patrick's new best friends and anything I had to say fell on deaf ears. Now I found myself wishing we had stayed there through the night for a soft carpet to sleep on. I should have kept my mouth shut.
How sad, I think to myself, that a dirty carpet at a strange house full of strange people wearing strange boots has become the better of my options. But we are almost out of gas in a part of the city that terrifies me. That terrifies itself.
Patrick storms back to the car and slams it into reverse, barely glancing in the mirror at the eerily empty road behind us and we pull out again, headed back for greener pastures. A residential street or side road with heavy trees to park. We don't find it for another hour and our sleep is fitful.
By seven the next morning Patrick has us heading back to the motel. The area looks very different than it did the previous night, more intimidating somehow. The stares from the few people already up and outside the little store across the street this morning are unsettling and seem menacing.
I hadn't noticed in the dark that the motel was painted Hacienda Green with alternating red and yellow doors. It reminds me of the paint on elementary schoool playground equipment that hasn't been updated yet, full of lead and chipping. The astroturf that lines the sidewalks all around the building are a splotchy gray with patches worn throughout and tears at the edges. The glass wall next to the front door is cracked and held in tact with crosses of silver duct tape that also went unnoticed in the dark.
Patrick pulls open the heavy door and we step inside the entryway. The lobby is covered in the same beat up astroturf as the sidewalk. A single orange couch has been shoved agains the far wall with a crooked picture hanging above it. The rest of the lobby is empty. "Hello?" Patrick calls out.
A head peeps over the massive cash register and a tiny old woman with giant round glasses looks us up and down. "No vacancy!"
I take a step forward ready for battle in my sweatpants and smog-fried hair, looking like the type of deranged crazy person she had already decided we were, but Patrick frowns and shakes his head at me, ever the diplomat. "We have vouchers", he explains. "They gave them to us yesterday at the social services office..."
"Have to check in same day" the head behind the register barks. "Say so on voucher".
"We tried to check in last night. You were already closed. We didn't know you were going to be closed when we got here!" I protest. This earns me another glare from Patrick so I take myself back outside and plop down on the curb. Let him be the fucking hero then. I actually do pray he can negotiate our way out this latest problem, because I do not have the energy to smile and plead my case one more goddamn time.
The air is already perfumed with the hot scent of car exhaust and highway tar, even this early in the morning, and I shrink back against the green brick wall as cars speed past me on their way to wherever. I squint into the sun and try to taste the smoke of my cigarette over the smoke from the road. I stay like this, with my back to the wall, until Patrick comes to find me, motel key in hand.
