Third day at the hotel, inert. Vague memories that mingle with the sound of laughter coming from the hallway. Young laughter, smeared with alcohol and good intentions that end in resentment and alimony. Background noise that is not mechanical. It is inside you and establishes a dense mentality, like something trying to slowly shut down. The sound of the sheets when one moves over them. Those slow awakenings that remain in memory. Mouths, skin, something wet. Room service leaving me for dead. Planes flying over LAX with people convinced of their own lives, their beliefs, their possessions.
The whole day locked up, waiting. Conversations as background noise, imagined, practiced out loud to convince me, to recreate something I can't identify. There's a knock at the door. A guy brings food I ordered to keep me busy. I ask him if he's hungry, tell him I can't eat it all. I invite him in. He tells me he can't, he has other errands. He speaks wrapped in tattered clothes, with a Midwestern accent. I tell him that not everything goes the way you expect it to. He looks at me as if I've heard his thoughts. He is startled, turns away. He thanks me and disappears downstairs. The apartment reeks of food seasoned with urgency to trigger a cheap pleasure. For some reason, I remember those nights in the jungle, cooking by the fire, all of us in silence, hypnotized by a life that unexpectedly made sense.
I drive down Vine and turn onto Hollywood Boulevard.
Claire, speaking in whispers. She tells me secrets of her life, her struggles. She says she was a happy child and a tormented young woman. She confesses to me that her life is to become someone she doesn't know. She bursts into laughter and ends up crying. She asks me about blind love, uncertainty, the horror of knowing that everything ends. She admits to me that she smokes on the sly, that she uses lubricated objects to give herself pleasure, that she fantasizes about men gagged at her feet whom she watches while masturbating. She tells me that sometimes she feels the fatigue of starting over every day. Then she sees Lena and marvels at her brightness, her determination, her beauty. He tells me I'm lucky, asks me if I notice. I wake up in a daze.
I get an anonymous message. Both bottles contain the same substance. Double access dose. No signature, no warning. The bustle fills the bar with a dense haze in which to rest. Everyone's monologue, echoing like a great distraction. I get another message. It's Dennis, my editor. He needs more. More words, more facts, more lies. He needs more drugs and more sex. People want to know how others do it, openly. What their show is, their decadence, their duration, their performance. Sex as a form of fitness exquisitely dirty, timed. Dennis screams in his posts the despair of entering a late age. I wonder if Lev will be able to pull off the whole charade. If he can fake my identity. Dennis insists that I interview people who wander around the psychedelic revival like the characters in a bankrupt circus. The true witnesses of the revolution have lost their minds so as not to be contemplated, not to be taken into account. Cornered in the peace of anonymity. I reread the first message. Double access dose. The ice that was floating on the margarita continues to melt away
The back room of Mrs. Wang's Laundromat. A circular chamber with boxes stacked against the walls, muffled voices in rooms without doors. Dusty floor and walls lined with newspapers that echo tragedies. Two young women, dressed with eerie elegance, enter the chamber. They looked at me for a second and immediately dismissed me. Mrs. Wang appears and walks toward me. She asks me for a few more minutes while she says goodbye to the novices. She calls them novices and at that moment they turn to look me straight in the eye. They want to know if I recognize the plot, the action, the pain threshold. I ignore their stares and take Mrs. Wang's hand to emphasize the importance of our meeting. She smiles at me for a moment and walks away, dismissing the novices who are now watching me with the face of someone calculating a risk. A man crossed the room with a huge bird perched on his leather-covered forearm. He stops for a moment to give it a piece of raw meat. The bird is not interested in anything but blood and soft tissue. I recognize the same need and take a deep breath to control the desire. Mrs. Wang speaks softly and makes slight hand gestures that pacify the mood even though the words speak of death and decay. There comes the smell of something being spilled somewhere. There comes the sound of something spinning on itself and squeaking. The novices hugs Mrs. Sui warmly and walk toward the exit. As they pass me, one of them stops for a moment to look at me closely. She whispers to herself "so it's you" but lets me hear it. She wears her blouse open and I can see how her breasts are born. A small tattoo on her right breast. A sign, a mark of belonging, a commitment. She lets me see her tattoo so that the image is stored in my mind and won't leave me alone, flitting around like that huge bird in the cage of questions one asks when one has no answers. She wants me to imagine it. She wants me to imagine everything.
The questions that catch you unawares. Do you want to go back, to clarify some words that did not reach the place you intended? Do you want to listen, to gesture, to breathe deeply as an act of confirmation? Do you want to run away, pretend that the world is with you? A whole evening talking about those spaces where nothing belongs, where nothing stops, which do not harbor memories. Neither do we, after two bottles of wine and a monumental hangover.
The phone rings. A recorded voice tells me that time is running out. Something about deals and discounts and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. I tell the recorded voice that everything happens once in a lifetime. They hang up. I keep thinking I should eat something, get more sleep, look human. I open the window and traffic noise comes into the room like the rustle of a mechanical forest. The radio says all is not lost.