The light pierced the peep holes that previous guests of the scumbag hotel had poked and torn to ease or feed their paranoia. Oddly enough the perfect line of light found the clinched, closed eye of Griffin Banks, dust particles shimmered and danced in it and Griffin cursed. He threw his arm across his face in a futile gesture but knew he'd have to do better than that to remain asleep, sleep was a commodity that Griffin bought and paid for- once he was awake, he was awake. So like Lazarus slipping free of his death clothes, he slid from beneath the cheap stained comforter and reached for his straight shooter. Taking a straightened piece of coat hanger, Griffin pushed the Chore Boy screen from one end of the straight glass crack pipe to the other, scrapping the insides of it, gleaning the brownish residue of cocaine left from earlier. The wake-up hit was not blinding in its potency but sufficient to allow him to stand and dress. Griffin was a hustler and small time thief, the clothes that he wore as important as socket wrenches to a mechanic. Black slacks and button downs and the nicest shoes he could shoplift, and when the outfit began to show ashes and other dirt he'd go to a mall and steal fresh ones. Today though he thought they would do for a little while longer. Walking past the television, he hit the on button and looked at his image in the mirror. Wetting his hands, then running them through his hair he made himself look, as much as he could , like the television gangsters he admired so. Then he walked into the tiny bathroom to take a leak. That is when it hit him. Without flushing the toilet he turned back into the main room and saw that he had company, in the bed where he had just got up from, lay a girl.
Holy Crap some days are weird, leaning over her, trying to remember. Holy Crap. She was beautiful. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, but fate deemed their time was done. She was quite dead.
It came flooding back. Last night walking the strip he had seen her. New to him, he knew most of the girls who worked the streets here, it was a small town. She had smiled like some kind of animal: hungry. He didn't have the time then, backpack full of goods, brain gone dry of the substances that drove him. He noticed her none the less. Predator sniffing predator. Kindred spirits. She walked under the streetlights smiling a vendors smile carrying a half of a gallon of cheap vodka for the world to see. She followed with her eyes as he passed by.
Then later, walking back to the hotel, arm full of nod, head full of booze, and a hand full of crack -he saw her again.
Wanna do an oxy? slurring, one eye half closed.
He didn't even answer, never said a word, just looked up the road a block to the hotel and his room and she went with him, rattling the pill bottle as she strolled, oozing sexuality and desire.
They had enjoyed a buffet of drugs and booze and sex acts not for the faint of heart. At some point, satisfied, Griffin had passed out. Their had been plenty of the Oxycontin left at that point. She must have overdosed after.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit!
Griffin didn't know what he was going to do but he knew what he was going to do first. Scooping up his keys and money clip from the bedside table he turned and opened the front door.
Hello. How you durin' today?
Flo, the house keeper. She scared the crap out of him!
Jojo in his room still?
Yeah he there,not for long though.
Don't let anybody in here, Flo, Ill be right back.
Trying to look casual Griffin walked as fast as he could to Jojo's room to cop a small piece of dope. Just something to help him focus, to figure out what to do. When he stepped back out of the room Flo was nowhere to be seen. Walking even faster back to his room, fist clinched and sweating around the twenty dollar distraction, he dropped his key clattering across the concrete and bent to pick it up then straightening turned it in the door.
His heart missed a beat, again , then he realized that Flo had brought the whole cleaning cart into his room. She wanted a hit. He could tell from the look on her face that she had seen the girl. Then she put her finger to her lips, so selfish that she hadn't noticed that the sleep would never be interrupted.
Here take this and go.
Griffin broke her a little hit off and sent her frowning from the room. Then sat in the obligatory chair next to the bed that every crappy hotel room in the country had. Stuffing the gangster white into the end of the pipe, his hands shook as he pulled a lighter from his pocket. Slowly and with a purpose he breathed the chemical smoke deep into his blood rich lungs. And surely the smoke calmed him and killed the jangling of his nerves. A little closer now, sitting on the edge of the bed Griffin studied her face, her form. She was beautiful. Really not the kind of beauty that you ever get used to, exotic somehow. Lying next to her he finished the dope and wondered.
Later after a call to a great aunt that still trusted him no matter what, Griffin pulled into the hotel lot in a car that looked like it had been borrowed from a trusting aunt. Dusk had begun to shroud him, wrapping dark mother arms about his twisted life. Griffin gathered his meager belongings then walked into the room one last time and picked up the girl gently like she might disappear if he jostled and carried her and put her in the car. Not in the trunk, but belted in the passengers seat like a traveler overcome with slumber. He loved her and could not bear to part with her so instead he leaned over and kissed her cold lips and drove away never thinking of his aunt, or Jojo, or how strange this day had been.
