One Week (4 page)

“I think that’s my wallet,” he says.

“Shut up,” I tell him. Are those places sanitary? I mean, are we talking motel-where-truckers-get-some-shut-eye, or motel-where-hookers-go-to-die?

I sigh heavily. Whichever it is, it’s not like I have much choice. I look down at the Geek, and sigh again. Not like I have much choice there, either. I haul him to his feet, sling his arm over my shoulders, and pull him across the street. At least the motel won’t object to a drunk guy in their lobby—they’re probably used to it.

As it happens, the clerk gives him a sideways look, but I smile brightly and he takes the cash readily enough. Bastard gives us a room at the very end of the long hallway though. My shoulders are aching from holding up the Geek by the time we get there.  I fiddle with the stupid key card, and when I finally get the door open, the Geek stumbles through and falls down again. I’m tempted to leave him there, but the door wouldn’t close if I did. I kick him gently in the side, and he rolls over.

“Get up,” I say, and point at one of the beds. “Go pass out over there.”

He looks over at the bed, shakes his head, and curls back up on the floor. “Too far. Comfy here.”

I bang the door into his side. “You can’t stay here.”

He glares at me and crawls over to the bed, but he can’t quite get himself up on it. Unbelievable.

“You’re pathetic,” I say. I crouch over him and reach my arms around his waist to shove him up on the squeaky bed. Who needs weight-lifting when there’s drunk-lifting?

As the Geek snores, I look at our remaining cash, and shrug. Enough for a pizza delivery, anyway. I use the flier the motel has so helpfully tucked next to the phone, and order a pizza from “Three Brothers from Italy.” The voice that answers the phone is clearly Hispanic, but whatever.

While I’m waiting, I look around the motel room. It’s not
that
bad, I guess. It’s kind of dim, and the furniture is cheap, and the painting on the wall is incredibly tacky, but it does seem to be clean. Mostly. I sniff the sheets suspiciously. I did specify a non-smoking room, but it totally smells like smoke in here.

When the pizza arrives, I wave a slice temptingly in front of the Geek’s nose, but he barely stirs. Probably for the best—I’d much rather the smell of smoke than the smell of vomit. I eat until I’m full and flick through cable until I fall asleep.

 
DAY TWO

When I wake up, it’s barely light out. I groan and roll over. The Geek snored so freaking loud all night long, there was just no chance of my getting any sleep. The couple having sex next door didn’t help either, though at least they quit after an hour or so. The Geek kept at it all night long. I sigh heavily and get up to go take a shower. The lock on the bathroom door is broken, and I eye it suspiciously. The Geek is still snoring (though at least it’s at a reasonable volume now), but he could be faking it. I sniff my armpit and make a face. I’ll have to take the risk.

I shower quickly, though. For one thing, the water pressure sucks, and it’s not what you’d call particularly hot, either. I hold up my still stiff and scratchy shirt and wrinkle my nose. I wish I had enough cash to buy some clean clothes. Apparently running away goes better if you do a little advance planning. Who knew? I don’t even want to talk about putting on yesterday’s underwear.

I walk out of the bathroom feeling a little better than I did, though, and poke the Geek in the shoulder. I needn’t have worried about the lock—he still hasn’t moved. I poke him harder, but still don’t get a response. I resort to shaking.

“What?” he mumbles.

“We have a bus to catch,” I say loudly.

He opens one eye and looks up at me. “Barbie? What are you doing here?” He opens the other eye and looks around the room. “Where’s here?”

“We’re at a motel,” I explain patiently. “Where I
dragged your drunk ass after you made us miss our bus.”

I watch him try to work that out. “How did I make you miss the bus?” he asks. “I remember going to the bar. And…that’s it. I don’t even remember seeing you after we got off the train.”

“That’s because people who can’t hold their liquor shouldn’t drink like Prohibition is coming back,” I say sweetly. I reach into the pizza box and grab a leftover slice. “Pizza?”

The Geek pushes himself semi-upright and looks at
the pizza uncertainly. “I think…not.” He rubs his
temples. “What time is it?”

I glance over at the alarm clock. “Seven fifteen.”

He looks at me incredulously. “And you woke me up because?”

I shrug. “We missed one bus. I have no idea what time the next one is leaving, and I’m not risking missing it. If you’re not going to eat the pizza, hurry up and get moving. Unless you know when the next bus is?”

The Geek shakes his head, and immediately looks like he regrets it. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking that clearly yesterday.” He rolls off the bed and stands—kind of wobbly, but he stands. “Let me just…figure out if I need to puke, and we’ll go.” He holds on to the wall as he makes his way to the bathroom.

I hear the water running, but no heaving, thank God.
He comes out ten minutes later looking much less like
death.

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath. “So you got me here last night?”

I nod, smirking a little. He owes me.

“Right. Thanks. What’s your name?”

“Bee,” I say, and silently dare him to make a comment about it, but he just nods.

“I’m Jess. Thank you, Bee, for getting me here last night.”

“You’re welcome.” I try to think of ways I can milk this, but there aren’t really any I can think of. Though if he starts mocking my inability to navigate train travel again, I’ll shut him the hell up. “Can we go now?”

He nods. “Might as well.” He looks around the room. “Where’s my duffel bag?”

Um. “I don’t know,” I say.

Jess sighs heavily. “Damn.”

“Well, it’s not like I could’ve carried you
and
the giant bag…” I say defensively.

“No, no,” he waves me off. “It’s not your fault. I probably left it at the bar anyway. I just have no idea where that is.”

I smile with relief. I mean, it wasn’t my responsibility to watch out for his bag, but I do feel kind of bad that I forgot all about it. “It’s right across the street. But,” I bite my lip. “They’re probably closed, don’t you think?”

He frowns. “Probably.”

“We’ll go check just in case,” I say comfortingly. I don’t know why I’m feeling all this sympathy for the guy, but I just can’t imagine losing my bag. My phone, my iPod, my wallet, my gum—I need these things. They’re my security blanket. They’re also all I have.

I wince as I strap my sandals on over my broken blisters, and snag a slice of pizza for the road. Jess looks like he’s reconsidering whether he’s going to be sick, so I don’t offer again. He waits patiently while I check out, and we cross over to the bar I sat outside for so long yesterday.

Unsurprisingly, it’s locked up. On the other hand, Jess’s bag is lying across the doorway.

“I guess the bartender must have liked you,” I say, amazed.

“Or he didn’t give a shit if my stuff got stolen,” he grumbles as he slings the bag over his shoulder. Kind of a glass-is-half-empty attitude, considering.

I limp as fast as I can, trying to keep up with Jess as we walk back up the hill to the train station. He glances down at my feet and stops. He drops his bag on the sidewalk and starts riffling through it.

“Here,” he says, and tries to hand me a pair of kind of cruddy, way too big flip-flops. “Put these on.”

“I don’t think—” I begin, eyeing them distastefully.

“Your feet are bleeding,” Jess says. “And who are you looking to impress?” He waves a hand around the empty street. I shake my head and take another few steps, wincing. I look back at Jess, who continues to patiently hold out the flip-flops. All right, fine.

I actually walk even slower in the flip-flops, I have to shuffle so much to keep them on, but at least my feet don’t hurt. I feel like an idiot, though.

I don’t feel like such an idiot when Jess announces that our bus leaves in fifteen minutes. Ha. Bet he’s glad I woke him up so early now. He rubs his head a bit sheepishly and nods his head at the bus.

“Want to go find some decent seats?”

Does he mean…together? Like, sitting together? I cock an eyebrow at him, considering.

“You know,” he continues. “To protect each other from the various unsavory types that catch buses to Sacramento at eight in the morning.”

Hmm. Based on my observations, Jess totally qualifies as one of those unsavory types. In all the time I’ve spent with him, he’s been either incredibly rude or drunk. The last half hour or so of polite behavior doesn’t exactly go a long way to offset the rest of the time. On the other hand, better the unsavory type you know…

I smile at him. “Okay,” I say.

“Cool.” He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet. “I’m just going to go to the vending machine and get some snacks for the ride. Want anything?”

Um. He doesn’t have as much money in there for snacks as he thinks he does. “Uh, no thanks. You know, I had pizza and all. I’m good.”

“Right. Hey, Bee?”

I look at him warily.

“Thanks again for getting me out of the street, and for paying for a place for me to crash last night. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.” Jess turns to walk over to the vending machine, and I bite my lip. God, it’s going to come out sooner or later. “But, actually…” I call after him. He turns. “Uhh…you paid for it.”

He stares at me blankly, then pulls out his wallet. “There’s only five dollars in here,” he says incredulously. “I had eighty bucks. What the hell did you do with all my money?”

“Well, we needed a place to sleep,” I begin defensively.

“So you
stole
money from a guy too incapacitated to defend himself?”

I put my hands on my hips. “What happened to ‘thank you for getting my incompetent and drunk ass off the street, Bee?’”

“I could have slept in the bus station!” Jess exclaims. “That was all the money I had to get back to New York, and you stole it!”

People around the platform are starting to stare at us. They’re looking at me like I’m some kind of thief, rather than the clearly way too nice and thoughtful person who helped out an ungrateful jackass.

“Fine!” I snap. “I’ll pay you back, what’s the big
deal?”

“Great,” Jess snaps back. “Hand me the cash.”

I roll my eyes, exasperated. “I don’t
have
any cash. If I did, I wouldn’t have needed yours, now would I? I’ll pay you back
later
.”

“There’s an ATM right over there,” Jess says, pointing at the bus station. “You can get the cash, and pay me back
now.
”

I don’t move, and Jess grabs my arm and starts to drag me. I plant my feet firmly, which is kind of difficult in his giant flip-flops.

“What?” Jess says. “Are you telling me you don’t have a dozen credit cards you can use?”

I shake my head. Not here. This is way too close to LA still, and there are dozens of people who’ve noticed
us arguing—if I use my card, my dad will show up here looking for me and find out in five minutes where I was going. My credit cards are officially off-limits until I’m
out of California. “I can’t. I’ll pay you back once we get to Chicago.” Jess looks at me incredulously. “I promise!” I say.

“And what am I supposed to do between here and Chicago? Starve? It’s like a forty-eight hour trip!”

Forty-eight hours? Is he kidding me? We’ve already been traveling since yesterday afternoon. There’s no way it takes that long to get from California to Chicago. This is the 21
st
Century, for God’s sake.

“I don’t know,” I say sarcastically. “Maybe
you
could use the ATM? If it’s such a big deal to you, I’ll cover your vending machine expenses as well. With interest.”

  Jess glares at me. “Not everybody has that option. My credit card happens to have been cancelled—that money was literally all I had. And you stole it. Because you’re spoiled and psychotic.” I glare back at him, but he ignores me, and points at the ATM machine again. “Now go get my money.”

I cross my arms and shake my head. “In Chicago,” I repeat.

Jess throws up his hands in frustration, grabs his duffel bag—nearly swings it into me, by the way—and stomps onto the bus. I look around at everybody staring, and shrug. I climb on the bus after him, because what else am I going to do? I flash my railpass at the driver, who nods me on. I see that Jess has got his bag on the seat next to him, and is looking out the window. Guess we’re not sitting together after all, then.

The bus filled up while we were arguing; Jess got the only double seat left. Of course he did. I look around. Woman with baby, definitely not. Not sitting anywhere within three rows of her. Guy with music pouring out of his headphones, no thank you, pimply kid with ten Snickers bars and a nudie Manga scattered on the seat
next to him, really no thank you.  That leaves a
businessman-type who seems pretty engrossed in his BlackBerry. That’s probably manageable.

I sit next to him, and he looks up. And smiles. Uh-oh. I nod coolly, and pull out my iPod. If I ignore him, he’ll leave me alone.

That works for the first hour and a half. Which is plenty of time for me to determine that buses are every bit as uncomfortable and nauseating and boring as I thought they would be. But then the businessman-type runs out of emails on his BlackBerry, and has nothing to do but turn his attention to me.

“So what’s San Jose got in store for you?” he asks.

I pull out my earbuds and look at him blankly. San Jose? Oh, right, that’s where this bus is going. I shrug. “Just a stopover.”

“Ahhh,” he says knowingly. “A destination on the way to greater destinations.” Ooh, deep. I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

“I’m headed there for a conference. My company—I have my own company,” he says, and checks to see if I’m impressed. “My company specializes in making and selling mooring covers—that’s full deck over-boom sailing covers,” he explains. I smile weakly. Yes, I understood, for I am not an idiot. “And there are some new developments in the field, stronger elastics, that sort of thing, that we need to stay on top of. It’s very exciting.”