The room at the hotel is destroyed again. It's not all
my fault, but I sure didn't help, and the clutter and clothing strewn everywhere, the papers and pens, partially eaten food and wrappers, cigarette packs, suitcases, boxes, bags and pins, shirts and belts and pieces of trousers curled on the floors, the wardrobe, the walls and bed, may undoubtably be attributed to me. I think. Or maybe this is simply the shoddiest hotel room in one of the dingy hotels that dot this district. The radio is playing, but so softly it seems to simply hum indistinctly. All I can be certain of is that I've been up too late. I haven't even been to bed yet as the inevitable result of an unsuccessful tryst or two, waylaid by contingencies and misunderstandings, and I'll never get enough sleep at this point to be thinking straight when I meet up with you downtown, a meeting I should have wound up at long ago. I shouuld be getting out the door, but the effects of the drug are making me scattered and unable to focus and a bathroom trip seems inevitable. Before the mirror, silver hairs about six inches long, a dozen or so on each cheek, protrude from the side of my face, and it surprises me that I hadn't noticed them ealier. Have I been walking about looking like this all evening or is this a new development? They seem to be made of the finest glass filament, exceedingly drawn out, but plucking on them feels like a pinch - my face in the glass puckers out with each tug. They are disturbingly well rooted, and clearly indigenous. I need a razor and I'm sure there's one around somewhere. So thin and fine they are, curving gracefully straight out into the air as I stare at them. Are they whiskers? Am I becoming a cat, or simply growing old? I hesitate, then my concern turns to a wary acceptance of this perplexing situation.
It's time to go anyway, and I need my phone, so I rummage through my suitcase only to find that this cannot be
my suitcase - this isn't even my room, because this isn't a hotel and here come the proper inhabitants now and I'd better hide because... what the hell am I doing here? Oh yes, I'm looking for my phone, but the only one I can locate is made of black rubber like a dog's chew toy, a perfect imitation, which squishes unsatisfactorily in my grasp. Forget it, they're coming. I sneak out of the room to seek a taxi between the towering grey canyons of the decrepit building structures lining the narrow street. It is nearly morning.
How nice - a ride appears almost immediately. Had it been waiting for me? A yellow cab and one with two drivers as well, charming middle aged black women, each with their own personal steering wheel, laughing and chatting about their day, amused and unconcerned with my inability to remember the street name I need, or, really, where it is I need to be at all. More good fortune - they know just where that is, or at least the best way to get me there and so off we go down the hill, to the right and into the freeway maze, sweeping curves of glittering iridescent concrete improbably cantilevered up and and around and through each other like a ball of gently tangled hoops. Our path carooms past the strobing caissons and stanchions, over the underpass and under the arching overpass, describing a shuddering parabola as we lean into the turn, jet through the hub just long enough to admire the vast scale and height of the brightly lit dazzling white chamber of the terminal cylinder, and exit slowing from it out into the dense darkness weighing upon the crowded shopping district boulevards. The ladies chuckle lightly and smile at each other, then brake the cab, and I disembark without paying under the awnings overhanging the streetside booths which present to the eye a crazed jumble of wares and products dimly for sale in the dull light of dawn. I shufflle haltingly among the cases of goods, lost but interested in the merchandise, and in the course of admiring a bolt of golden brocade behind the back of a broken shelf I glance up and there you are, mumsing through the sidewalk sales, your lips just barely moving in a silent approving murmur at some trifle. I call your name and gesture roundly across the distance, nervously twisting the length of my curling newfound whiskers. Your eyelids appear to flutter slightly - you think you've heard something, but in this midst of the busy din of the street it could have been anything, and your eyes dart once and look down at the item you've been absently holding, dart again, and then curve up to meet my own with an apprehensive smile as the first beams of the new sun illuminate the mist through the holes in the torn canopy above.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe