Pure – Jessica Daly
May 26, 2026
The getaway car would fail me in the end. For now, it sits regal and cobalt blue, the sun glinting off of it in the parking lot of the pink Camino Real eight klicks from the border of New Mexico.
I pad over to the outdoor pool in my swimsuit, carrying suntan lotion and a dated fashion magazine I found in the lobby. A boy is skimming the top of the pool, fishing out bug corpses and trash, the water faintly green and mystic. He looks seventeen at most. I smile at him as I spread my towel on a pool chair and lie down to watch him work.
“Hey,” I called out to him, picking up the suntan lotion, “can you give me a hand with this?” He pauses, then looks up at the overcast sky.
“Um,” he replies, frozen with his pool net, “I have a girlfriend. Sorry.”
I look around. “Does she work here, too?”
He smiles. “No, she doesn’t. She just wouldn’t like it.” He’s blushing, milkshake pink creeping up the back of his neck.
“I’m not going to tell her,” I say, “I don’t even know her. Besides, I’m a guest at this establishment, and I need assistance,” I yawn. A car drives by, the brakes squealing.
“The UV is, like, super low today,” he tries, freeing a used condom from the pool. Both of us watch it splatter on the pavement.
“I burn easily,” I responded. He sighs, laying the net adjacent to the condom. He walks over to me, a thin gold chain flitting on his neck. He takes the suntan lotion and leans over me awkwardly, squeezing some into his hand.
“Turn around,” he says in a muted, business-like tone. I oblige, shifting my body away from him as his hand glides over my shoulders.
“You can sit down,” I tell him.
“It’s fine,” he says shortly, his movements quickening, spreading the lotion unevenly across my back. “There. That should be good.”
I turn around, smiling at him. “Thank you. How long have you been working here?” I asked.
“Since I was a kid. My dad owns this place.” He pauses. “It’s, like, a complete dump, I know. It didn’t used to be, though.”
“I think it’s nice,” I lied. The water pressure in my room was abysmal. The sheets were stained with brown, as if someone had recently given birth. The woman who works at the front desk chain-smoked throughout my entire check-in, her lazy eye unfocused in the direction opposite me as I swiped Rocco’s credit card. “Is the woman at the front desk your mother?” I asked him.
He laughed. “No, no. That’s Gloria. She’s been working here since, like, the beginning of time.” The sun was beginning to emerge through the clouds.
“How old are you, anyway?” I asked.
“Um,” he said, “why?” He appeared to be finished with his task and was collecting the items removed from the pool, placing them in a black trash bag.
“I’m just making conversation,” I tell him.
“I just turned nineteen,” he said evenly.
“Wow,” I reply, “You’re so mature for your age.” He seemed to react to this, relaxing a little.
“Yeah, I get that sometimes. Have a nice day, okay?” He started towards the pool shed.
“Wait, wait,” I say, reaching down to pat the chair next to me, “keep me company. Are you off soon?” He stared at the pool shed, then turned to face me.
“What do you want?” He asks. His directness gave me pause. The sun is fully exposed now, and I can see more of his eyes, blue-grey and hardening.
“Just to chat. I’ve been travelling alone for the last few weeks,” I explain, which isn’t a lie. I’d been on my own for a while. This was my last assignment before I was free to return home, back to LA, back to my life.
“If you want to chat, there’s a bar down the road that a lot of the locals like to hang out at. There should be some people your age.” He says.
I laugh. “How old do you think I am?”
He shrugs, looking me up and down. “Mid-thirties?” He guesses. Inside me, something twinges.
“I’m twenty-eight,” I say.
“Same thing,” he says, turning to look at the motel entrance. “I have to go see my girlfriend soon, anyway. If you want the address of the bar, Gloria can get it for you.” He steps away from me again.
“Have you ever had pure?” I ask him. He stops.
“Pure?” He repeats.
“Yeah. The good shit. It’s not easy to find around here,” I say, gesturing vaguely. There’s a silence so long I feel my heart quicken.
“Um, no, I haven’t,” he responds. He doesn’t move away.
“I have some back in my room. I don’t mind sharing,” I tell him, smiling. “It’s safe, I swear. Tried and tested.” He looks up at the sky, back at the motel, back at me.
“What’s your room number?”
We planned to meet in my room at seven o’clock. He said he had to call his girlfriend and make an excuse. He was supposed to be attending her birthday dinner with her friends.
I showered and stood over my suitcase, dripping in a mouldy towel. I had $50,000 in cash, a pistol, and six ounces of uncut cocaine. In two days, all I had to do was make nice at the border and hand it over to Rocco back in New Mexico. Then I’d finally get to go home.
I met Rocco at a nightclub in LA when I was newly twenty-one. He was handsome and surrounded by equally attractive women gyrating on him in the VIP section. One of the bouncers came up to me when I was queuing for a drink and told me everything I was drinking tonight was covered, nodding over to Rocco, who wasn’t even looking at me. I mistook it as nothing more than a few free vodka cranberries for my friends and me.
“Ew,” my friend Yasamin had said, “don’t take those. He looks like such a fucking sleaze.” Her instincts had turned out to be correct, but at the time, I was annoyed.
“He’s all the way over there. He’s not even talking to us. Who cares?” I said to her, then ordered a round of drinks and shots. Yasamin rolled her eyes, but accepted the drinks anyway. Such is the regular pattern of these things. Resistance can be futile.
Rocco didn’t approach me until much later. I was waiting outside for the next cab after sending Yasamin home.
“Did you like the drinks?” He asked me. I smiled at him.
“Very much. Thanks,” I replied, turning my attention back to the street. I could see a cab light up the road, lost in a sea of vehicles.
“What do you do?” He asked.
“Nothing,” I laughed. This was true. I’d been unemployed for months now, living off money I received from my parents after begging for it via panicked emails, insisting my cheques were late from work, that I’d lost my rent money on the bus, or this or that. This was all a lie. I hadn’t worked in nearly a year.
“Nothing?” He repeated, looking amused. “A girl like you, out here in the city, doing nothing?” I didn’t know what he meant by ‘a girl like me’.”
“I know, hard to believe,” I said, waving frantically at the cab. It sailed by me in the direction of a gaggle of drunk men shouting and jumping up and down, falling over each other like mice in a cage.
“Fuck,” I said.
“You’re going to be out here all night. Let me take you home,” he offered. I paused, weighing my options. It was nearly four in the morning. My cell phone was dead.
“How?” I asked.
He smirked, like I was being naive. “I have a driver. Come. He’s just around the corner.” I paused, feeling silly all of a sudden in my suede boots, my too-short dress. It was getting cold.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“It’s fine. I’ll take you straight home, and you can sit up front. You have my word,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him. So I did. I would continue to follow him for the next several years.
He took me to an Escalade parked in the alley at the back of the club. The driver was lying on the hood, looking up at the sky.
“Emilio,” Rocco said, “Vámanos.” The driver, Emilio, stood at once and went to open his door. Rocco slid inside. “Put the girl up at the front, okay?” Emilio nodded, skirting around the back of the vehicle to open the passenger door. The interior was red and pristine.
“Tell him where you live,” Rocco said, and I gave him my address.
“Studio City,” Emilio laughed, shaking his head.
“Jesus,” Rocco replied. I didn’t understand what was wrong with that.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, both to Emilio and Rocco. Emilio didn’t reply.
“Of course. Listen, if you’re looking for work, I have a business. It involves a bit of travel, if you’re up for it,” he said. I felt my spine straighten.
“Oh, no, that’s fine. You’ve been generous enough,” I said, my heart knocking against my ribs. I don’t know why I thought getting into a stranger’s Escalade wouldn’t result in me being sold into prostitution.
“It’s not like that,” Rocco said, sensing my unease. “I run a travel business. We organise tours of smaller tropical destinations to boost their tourism,” he told me. I was intrigued by this. I’d never travelled before. Moving to LA was the most significant thing I’d ever done. I’d never even been out of the country.
“That sounds interesting,” I said guardedly.
“I’m always looking for young people who are up for leading the tours. It’s very low stakes, easy breezy. Mostly families and college kids.” I smiled. It seemed like a nice thought, walking around a village in cutoffs, taking people waterskiing and swimming in the ocean.
“Okay,” I said, “what’s the name of your company? I’ll look you up tomorrow.”
“I’ll do you one better,” he replied, “here’s my card. Call me tomorrow, and we can go over the details. I need someone as soon as possible.” He handed me his business card, gold and strangely heavy. It looked official.
The next day, I called him. He failed to mention the job’s extracurriculars; I was doing tours, sure. I was also meeting men in underground poker rings and in the back offices of massive nightclubs, collecting suitcases to bring home to Rocco and pretending the men weren’t looking down my shirt. It was really good money. I tried not to think too much about what I was really doing and who I was doing it for.
The boy, whose name turned out to be Sebastian, arrived early. I opened the door and saw that he’d changed his clothes; he now wore relaxed denim and a three-quarter sleeve t-shirt. He looked much younger than before, standing there beneath the weak porch light.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he replies, stepping in quickly and shutting the door. “Sorry,” he continues, “I didn’t want Gloria to see me coming in here. She tells my dad everything.” He rolls his eyes at this.
“No worries,” I say, then, “sit anywhere.” He chose to sit on the corner of my unmade bed, his hands flat on his lap. I went to my suitcase to retrieve the cocaine.
“Oh, that looks good,” he says awkwardly. I could tell it was his first time.
“Do you want something to drink?” I ask him. “I have some beer. I think there’s some whiskey in there, too.” I gestured to the mini fridge.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, straightening up. He walks over and inspects the IPAs, then the whiskey. It was very quiet.
“Here, I have a speaker. You can put on whatever.” I tossed it to him, and he missed catching it. It tumbled to the floor. He took several minutes to connect, looking through his music library apprehensively. Eventually, he turned on Franz Ferdinand.
“Do you like this?” He asked me. I shrugged.
“Yeah, sure, who doesn’t?” I say absently, cutting up the coke on the vanity.
My phone rang. I saw Rocco was calling. He didn’t normally call while I was away – something about discretion.
“One sec,” I tell Sebastian, stepping into the bathroom and shutting the door. The ceiling fan coughed to life, dust loosening in the air. I caught my reflection in the grimy mirror and quickly looked away, answering the phone. “Rocco, what’s up?” I say nonchalantly, still holding his supply in my hand. I figured I could tell him I had used some to bribe a border agent for my freedom.
“They know,” is all he says back. His voice is calm, but I can sense the anger beneath.
“What? Who knows what?” I whisper. I didn’t quite understand who the people he dealt with were, or who received the items I brought back. I just did what I was told.
“Someone tipped them off,” he says, ignoring my question, “They’re going to be at the border with dogs on Wednesday. If they even wait that long – I think they know where you are, Ramona. You have to move.” My vision starts to blur and wane, and I realise I’m starting to cry.
“How would they know that? I didn’t use my real name when I checked in, I swear. I used the credit card you gave me,” I ramble, my shoulders shaking as I suppress the urge to break down, my heart arrested in my chest. This had never happened before. Though in the back of my mind I was always aware of the possibility of being caught, it felt distant from me, like trying to recall the tail end of a dream as you wake.
“I don’t know. Listen, get out of there now. I need to hang up. Don’t try to go to the border, and don’t you dare talk to anyone. I’ll call you back tonight.” The line went dead.
I cleared the tears from my face with toilet paper, clenching my jaw hard so I wouldn’t cry. My teeth hurt. I felt a migraine coming.
“Sebastian,” I say as I exit the bathroom, “why don’t we go somewhere else? It feels disrespectful to your father to be doing this here. I don’t want you to think of me that way,” I continue, trying to smile at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice my bloodshot eyes.
“Oh, I don’t care. It’s not like he’s going to find out,” Sebastian says easily. “Besides, this is, like, the perfect setup. I don’t know where else we’d go.”
“Let’s get another hotel!” I exclaim, “It’ll be fun.” I start throwing things in my suitcase. “Here, do that over there,” I tell him, pointing to the coke on the vanity. He swallows.
“I think we should stay here,” he says slowly. “I told my girlfriend I was working late. If she drives by and doesn’t see my car, she’s going to, like, lose her shit. It’s her birthday.” His eyes glaze over for a second.
“I have a car. It’s no problem. We can leave yours here,” I offer, increasingly frantic as the seconds drain away. I closed my suitcase, walked over to the vanity to do a line. It was a mistake. The anxiety hit immediately, with none of the high. I stood there for a second, thinking about my entire life.
“Um, I don’t know,” he says, looking afraid now. “I think maybe we should do this another night.” I whirl around, walking towards him. I climb into his lap to kiss him. He keeps his hands at his sides, even when I part his mouth with mine, forcing my tongue inside. I feel his heart beat through his thin t-shirt, his body still stiff, unrelenting. “Wait,” he breathes, pulling back. I pause, hovering over him, inches from his face. “I don’t even know your name,” he says, frowning.
“I’m Ramona,” I say before kissing him again. He sighs a little as I lean down to kiss his chest, eventually giving in. My phone rings again. I didn’t check it. “Come on,” I whisper, “It’ll be fun, I promise. We’ll find a great place. The Moon Palace is nearby. They have peach margaritas. I heard there’s a party there tonight. And a band,” I murmur to him, trying to be sexy and persuasive, and not as desperate as I felt.
“I’m not old enough to drink,” he protests.
“They don’t care. No one does. Come on,” I say urgently, climbing off of him, taking his hand. I didn’t expect him to come so easily, but he did. He retrieved his backpack, and I wheeled my suitcase teeming with narcotics. We dart from the room and climb into my blue car. He was looking around frantically, surely watching for Gloria, his girlfriend, his father, anyone who would drag him back into reality. I prayed no one would appear.
In the car, he clumsily pours the coke out into the crook of his hand and inhales. “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday,” he tells me. This was around the third time he’d mentioned it.
“How old is she?” I ask, checking the rearview. The sun was beginning to set, the hills black against the fuchsia sky.
“Seventeen. It’s not, like, weird or anything that she was sixteen before, though. We started dating when I was seventeen. So it’s like, fine, I think,” he tells me, looking out the window. “We’ve been together since seventh grade. We grew up next door to each other.”
“That’s nice,” I responded, hands too-tight on the wheel. The Moon Palace is only a few minutes up the road. It enters my mind that Rocco may have cancelled my credit card, but I banish the thought quickly. Why would he? I haven’t done anything wrong.
“Yeah. Her parents are annoying, though. Like, we can’t have sleepovers or anything. I don’t know. It’s kind of stupid. My dad never cared. She’s been sleeping over in my bed since we first started dating. We just, like, don’t tell her parents.” He prattles on. I start feeling as though I’ve made a mistake.
“Parents are annoying,” I say. I press on the gas more, the odometer rising rapidly.
“Um,” Sebastian says, glancing at the dashboard, “can you slow down a bit? My dad knows a lot of the cops out here. I just, like, don’t want to get pulled over, you know what I mean. I don’t want to deal with it.” He shifts in his seat, sniffling.
“It’s fine. We’re almost there,” I reply. The sign for the Moon Palace was materialising in the distance, neon-lit with a blinking palm tree and a margarita wearing large sunglasses. I careened into the parking lot and cut the engine, looking into the lobby. A young woman around my age was at the desk, snapping her bubblegum and staring at her cell phone. “I’m going to see what rooms they have available,” I say, “just stay here for a second. And lock the doors when I get out.” Sebastian nods without questioning why.
The lobby smells faintly of antiseptic. I approach the desk, and the girl looks up at me, expressionless.
“Checking in?” She asks.
“Hoping to,” I reply, “do you have any single rooms? It’s just for tonight. Actually, maybe tomorrow, too. I’m not sure yet.” She looks past me to my car.
“One second,” she says, typing something on her computer. I can hear the faint sound of voices and music, of ice hitting glasses. The party must’ve started already. “Okay, we just have a suite right now. That’s one thousand US per night. That cool?” She asks me.
“Yeah, sure. Here,” I say briskly, thrusting Rocco’s credit card over to her.
“Where are you coming from?” She asks, pressing buttons on the merchant system. She turned the machine around so I could enter the PIN.
“Uh, LA,” I say. “Has the party started already?” I ask. The moment the words leave my mouth, I see the card decline.
“Sorry, it didn’t go through,” the woman says, tearing off the receipt. “Let’s try again.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say, “did the party start?” I type in the PIN again.
“At 8, yeah,” she replies, “it’s in the early stages. They tend to get kind of crazy, if that’s what you’re hoping for.” We both listened to my card decline.
“That’s so weird,” I say breathlessly, “I literally just paid that card off the other day. Is there a problem with your machine?”
“Nope,” the woman says, watching me.
“Okay, um, I think I have cash,” I said, the $50,000 flashing in my mind. I knew I couldn’t touch that.
She looks back down at her phone while I rifle through my bag, searching for money I knew wasn’t there. I fumbled through some old gum that had fallen to the bottom before coming up empty-handed.
“Shit, I forgot,” I say, forcing a laugh, “these fucking kids stole my purse at the lake the other day. It had everything, all my cards and money and stuff.”
“That isn’t your purse, then?” She asks, pointing to my bag.
“No, god, no. This was the only thing I could find in the market. Just a temporary fix,” I tell her, pressing a hand to my temple. “Listen, I don’t have any cash. I don’t know why my card isn’t working. Can I just call my bank in the morning?” She snaps her gum, shaking her head.
“Sorry. I either need a card or cash,” she says, looking back down at her phone.
“One second,” I tell her, rushing out the door. I jog to the car and knock on the window. Sebastian jumps.
“Hey,” he says, rolling down the window, “what’s up?”
“Hey, I’m so sorry, their machines are all fucked up and won’t take my card. Do you have one on you? It’s just to hold the room. It won’t charge you. I’ll give you cash tomorrow once I can hit an ATM,” I tell him, trying to sound nonchalant. He blinks.
“Um,” he says slowly, “well, my credit card is only for emergencies. It’s actually my dad’s,” he adds, embarrassed, “he, like, watches the charges on it. So he’d probably call me and like, flip out if he saw a charge for a hotel.” I exhale, leaning down.
“There won’t be a charge. It’s just a hold,” I tell him. “Come on. We’re going to have so much fun,” I whisper, smiling at him. He swallows, looking away and out into the parking lot, then back in the direction of the road in which we came.
“You’re sure it’s just a hold? Like, you’re absolutely positive?” He asks, reaching into his pocket.
“Yes, I swear. You can even come in with me and ask her yourself,” I respond, my heart pounding. I knew he wouldn’t.
“Okay, okay. It’s fine. Here,” he says, handing me his dad’s credit card.
“Thanks,” I say, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, “I’ll be right back. Get your stuff ready. The party has already started.”
I paid for the room, and collected Sebastian to climb up to the top floor of the hotel. It was too dark to take in the view, but we admired it anyway.
“This party sounds cool,” he says, “I’ve never been to a party like this before. Like, I’ve been to parties, obviously. This one is just a bit different.”
“Totally,” I say, “it’s going to be great.” I hold a key up to his nose so he can inhale more cocaine.
I changed my clothes and pinned my hair up, and we headed down to the pool area, where the band was now in full swing. I bought both of us a peach margarita, and we sat with our legs in the water.
“This is so cool,” he says, smiling. He was surveying the scene; young men and women dancing together in bright clothes beneath the low-hanging moon. “It was cool of you to bring me here,” he continues, looking at me with dopey eyes. I knew now he was high and drunk. I smiled and caressed his face. I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket, and I switched it off.
“Come on,” I said, rising from the edge of the pool, “let’s go dance.” We joined the tight circle by the small stage. He was laughing a lot, spinning me over and over.
“Hey,” he whispered in my ear as the band went into the next song, “do you have any more of that stuff?” I hand him the small bag, and he disappears into the crowd. I dance alone for a few minutes, sucking on the frayed paper straw of my drink, trying to calm down. I then felt a man approach me from behind.
“Your boyfriend is a little young,” the man says, raising an eyebrow at me. He’s older than I am, probably in his forties, his shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest level. There’s a woman behind him, also watching me closely.
“None of your business,” I retorted.
“Right,” he replies, smiling. “That’s funny. He looks just like my friend’s kid who works at the motel down the road. Pretty sure he’s in high school.” He takes a sip of his drink.
“I think you have him confused with someone else,” I say to him, walking away. He watches me go to the exit. I need to find Sebastian.
I ran into the lobby to look for him. It’s empty. I circle back to the entrance of the party, surveying the crowd, new panic ebbing in my chest. He can’t know this man has seen him. It’ll ruin everything.
“Ramona!” Sebastian shouts, encircled by people at the bonfire pit. A woman younger than me is whispering something in his ear. There’s a purple lei wrapped around her neck, her pupils enlarged.
“Thank god,” I say when I finally reach him, taking his hand. “Come on. I have to tell you something.”
“Tell me now! These are my new friends. You can tell all of us,” he says, beaming. He’s obviously done a lot of the bag. He’s grinding his jaw, grinning stupidly as he half-listens to the group’s conversation. I hear the girl with the lei say that tonight, with a telescope, you can see Neptune. “No way! That’s so fucking cool!” He exclaims, “I’ve never heard anyone talk about that. Seriously, you’re like, so fucking smart. Honestly. Has anyone ever told you that? Most girls don’t care about shit like that. You’re so cool.” The group is subtly laughing at him, exchanging glances. I feel a pang as he smiles earnestly at the girl.
“Sebastian,” I say, more sternly than I’d intended, “seriously. Come here.” He finally stands up, disturbing the slew of drinks on the table.
“Guys, I’ll be back soon, okay? Don’t leave without me, please. I mean it,” he says, stumbling over to me.
“You need some water,” I say to him, linking our arms and leading him back into the lobby.
“What did you have to tell me?” He asks, looking back at the girl with the lei.
“Those people don’t want to talk to you,” I say flatly. “I heard them earlier when you went off with the bag. They were making fun of you. They just wanted to sit with you so they could laugh at you,” I tell him matter-of-factly, as though we were discussing the weather. He stops walking.
“Really?” He asked. I shrugged.
“Yeah,” I say, “I’m sorry to have to tell you. Let’s go up to the room and chill out for a bit.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” he murmurs through his clenched jaw. “We were having a good time. Actually, they were asking me if I was okay.”
My ears started ringing. “Why would they ask if you’re okay? What were you doing?” I was growing irritated.
“I wasn’t doing anything. They just mentioned that you looked a lot older than me, and asked if I was alright.” He was frowning at me. “And, like, you are a lot older than me, actually. It’s kind of weird you want to be here with me.”
“I’m not that much older than you,” I say tightly. “You’re being ridiculous. We’re having a good time, right? Come on. I can order some drinks to our room. Don’t let those random strangers get in your head,” I ramble, my pulse thrumming in my wrist.
“Actually, you wanted to get in my head,” he replies. “You told me they were talking about me. Why would you say that?”
“Stop it,” I whisper. The woman at the front desk was looking over.
“This is so fucking weird, dude,” he sighs, “fuck. It’s my girlfriend’s birthday.”
“Okay,” I reply, “okay.” I have no idea what to do. I think of Rocco’s voice on the phone. I look out at the party and see the group he’d been with watching us.
“Sebastian, come on,” I say faintly, “let’s just forget about this. Come on. Let’s go.” We return to the room in silence. He sits on the bed and takes out his cell phone, which is alight with notifications.
“Fuck,” he says, “shit.” He scrolls on his phone, a panicked expression on his face.
“What?” I asked, dread carving a hole in my stomach. He looks up at me, tears cresting in his eyes.
“It’s my dad. He’s called, like, a hundred times. He said there’s a charge of a thousand dollars on the credit card,” he says weakly, pressing a hand to his face. “What the fuck? You told me they wouldn’t charge the card. You promised me,” he says, looking from me to the phone in disbelief.
“They must’ve made a mistake. I’m so sorry, Sebastian,” I say, the blood pounding in my head. “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it, okay?” The screen lights up as his father calls again.
“Fuck!” He shouts. “Oh, god. I’m too high. I can’t deal with this.” His face is pallid, sweat collecting on his forehead. “Jesus, how much of this shit do you have?” He asks. I follow his gaze to see that the top compartment of my suitcase was left ajar, the drugs poking through.
I’m too sober. The room feels too sharp and detailed. I mumble to Sebastian that I just need a second, grabbing my phone and running into the bathroom, locking the door behind me and sitting on the blue tile. Rocco has called six times. He’s texted several.
Pick up your phone.
I’m serious. You have my shit. Pick up now.
I need to know where you are.
????
Hello?
Answer me.
Where are you?
Pick up your fucking phone.
They’re coming. I can’t help you anymore.
I throw my phone against the wall. When it doesn’t break completely, I drop it in the toilet and flush. I keep pressing the handle until the water rises, spilling gently over the bowl.
I walk over to the sink and splash water on my face. I hadn’t realised how terrible I looked, sweat matting flyaways into my hairline, mascara tracks all the way down my cheeks. My eyes are pink and hazy, neither here nor there. I suddenly see what the people at the party saw; I do look old.
“Sebastian!” I say, lightening my voice as I exit the bathroom, “I’m going to go downstairs and talk to the girl at the front desk.” I round the corner to see he’s no longer where I left him. I run over to the balcony, which is also empty. His backpack is gone.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
I hastily throw my clothes back in my suitcase, feeling the loud silence everywhere; in my chest, between my eyes. I leave the key card on the nightstand and run like hell down the hallway, through the stairwell, to my car.
“Sebastian!” I shout, looking around desperately, a last-ditch effort. The parking lot is virtually empty. I know he’s on foot and can’t have gone far, but I don’t know where to begin to look. The darkness seems to expand the longer I look out at it. “Sebastian!” I scream. “Sebastian, I’m sorry!” If he can hear me, he’s ignoring me.
I’ll go to a new motel, I reason. I’ll go to a new motel, where I can be completely anonymous, and I’ll come up with a new plan.
I get in my car, locking the door behind me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I scream, hitting the steering wheel repeatedly with the palm of my hand. “Fucking Rocco. Fuck me,” I shriek. I press my forehead to the wheel for a minute. I know I need to move. He’d said they were coming.
I pull out of the parking lot, the back of my car fishtailing. I speed up, racking my brain for an idea. I can use some of Rocco’s money to pay for a room. He’ll have to understand. Once he cools down, he’ll understand, I’m sure of it.
I’m passing the shuttered businesses in quick succession. Behind me, the Moon Palace has nearly disappeared. The tears come fast, my hands still hitting the wheel. “Fuck this,” I cry, “fucking Sebastian. Leaving me all by myself. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” The Camino Real comes into view, and I press harder on the gas. I just need to get a different room. I need to think. I can’t think in here, with the past streaming behind me.
I collided with something solid. I brake after the impact, far too late. There’s the horrible sound of metal, a dull thud landing on the road. I scream, covering my face with my hands as my car churns to a stop at the edge of the road. The Camino Real looks on quietly. Behind me, there’s the unmistakable flash of red and blue. How long had they been following me?
I thrust the car door open, realising my whole body is numb. I think I’m in shock. I can’t move my mouth, I can’t scream anymore. I touch my face, and my hand comes away wet and red. I collapse from the car, pull myself across the pavement.
“Stop!” I hear from behind me. “Hey! Stay where you are!” I drag myself further, seeing the outline of something on the road a few feet away. I was hoping for a fence post or sign, but it looks like a wounded animal. I see the chest rising and falling with laboured breath. Then, a head of hair. It’s a man. “Miss, please! Stay still!” A beam of light falls across the road as the officer turns on their flashlight. It’s Sebastian, lying there as though he’d just fallen from the sky. With his face now illuminated, I can see that his nose is caved in. He’s breathing raggedly. Beside him, his backpack is spilt open, money leaking out like innards. Something sharp and black rests by his head. I stared at it until it came into focus. It’s my pistol. When had he stolen from me? I lay still, in shock, as the officers approached.
“Jesus Christ,” one of them says, bending over Sebastian, “what the fuck is all of this? Sir, can you hear me? What’s your name?” I see two figures looming over us, their shadows elongated in my headlights. “Sir, are you okay? The ambulance will be here soon. Just stay with me.”
“No,” Sebastian breathes. I can’t tell if I’m relieved to discover he’s still alive. He looks horrible, blood filling the whites of his eyes. His teeth are broken. He looks around, dazed, first at the officers, then craning his neck to see me. “Holy shit,” he whispers.
“This is twenty grand, at least,” one of the officers says. “And what’s this?” I notice the cocaine, packaging all torn up, burst open like a bag of flour. I roll over, looking up at the stars.
“It’s hers,” Sebastian rasps. “She’s crazy. I took it from her. I was taking it to my dad so we could figure out what to do,” he pleads. I hear him start to cry, and one of the officers shines his light in my face.
“Do you know him?” He asks me. Distantly, I hear the wailing of sirens. In the corner of my eye, I see the warm pink of the Camino Real.
“No,” I wheeze, “He came out of nowhere.”