The Hotel With No Name

Blog Entry #26: January 10th, 2018, 5:08am

Status: bump in the night

There's an ugly bruise blooming on Montag's abdomen. It's mottled red right now, but she knows it'll fall into angry shades of purple in a couple days. It hurts to take a full breath. Fuck, Naomi can hit hard.

Montag's been lounging in bed all day feeling sorry for herself. She's out of ibuprofen, and the hotel hasn't given her any more, so part of her self-imposed misery lies in the ache of being whacked by a baseball bat. The rest of it is in her head, which she knows, but that doesn't make it feel any different.

When she saw Sinclair in the lounge she'd practically tackled him, chair wobbling against the wall as she pulled him into a tight hug. It took him a second too long to start hugging back, but she'd barely even noticed. "Where have you been, bastard?"

"In room seventy-two, apparently," Blake said. She was slurping the remnants of her margarita through a skinny straw. "Got stuck with a good book, like an absolute nerd."

"Hey, I couldn't get the door to open!" His sturdy hands eased Montag away, and she slouched into the chair next to him. A short glass of sparkling water had appeared on the table before her, but she didn't even reach for it. She just stared at him, his stupid little smile, the way he shrugged his shoulder almost up to his ears in insistence. "I tried everything, I swear. It just wouldn't open until today, so, yeah, I passed the time with the weird book in my room. Sue me."

Montag kneaded at her temple. "God, I'm so tired of this place. What book was it?"

"Oh, don't bother, he won't say a word about it," Blake cut in. "But he says he found Naomi. She came in here with him and then ran off, and, man, I don't mean to nag on you Montag, but that girl feels like bad news to me. Something in her eyes is just... off. She's cute, but she's way too twitchy for my comfort."

"You're right about twitchy," Montag muttered, glancing at the doorway. A couple was walking into the lounge hand-in-hand, massive, dreamy grins plastered on their faces. The pink-haired girl was nowhere to be seen, though. "She just beat me in the parking lot because she thought I was Rabbithead."

Blake snorted, and Sinclair asked, "She beat you? Are you okay?" He reached toward Montag, as if to inspect her, then swallowed and dropped his hand to his knee. He was squinting at her in this odd way, like he didn't quite know what to make of her. Like he was almost a little scared. It's not a look he'd ever given her before, and it made her hackles raise.

She just shrugged. "I'll be alright."

"If she thought you were Rabbithead, wait until she finds out-"

"Yeah. Look, I can't deny that she's a wild card. But so am I, and you put up with me. Trust me, she's useful to have in the loop. Probably less dangerous, too."

Blake bit the end of her straw, brown lipstick smearing all over the plastic. She had her elbows planted squarely on the table, ever the pinnacle of etiquette. "I think saying I put up with you is a generous overstatement."

"Oh, please. If I was into women you'd have made out with me by now."

"Mmhm. Naomi's on my list, too, and what about it? Not that I will, I mean. Laning would flay me alive if I conflicted her interests that hard."

"Blake has caught me up on just about everything," Sinclair interrupted. "At least her side of things. So we know that Silvia is hiding here in a new-ish form as a..." He appeared to be searching very hard for a term that wasn't degrading. "She provides people sex, basically. And she's not entirely 'awake'?"

Blake shook her head, glancing toward the stage a few feet away from them. It was dull and empty tonight, and Montag hoped sincerely that it stayed that way. "I've watched her perform every night since we've been here, and even followed her back to clients' rooms. She never says a word and you can tell on her face that she's in complete space-cadet mode. It's really creepy. She's such a blip, in terms of activity, that I'd almost say she's irrelevant, except for that first entry on Naomi's blog... it's all just weird. And Naomi comes and goes like a set of goddamn hiccups, and every single time she shows up she's doing some new weird violent thing, which is just cool. I dunno. Montag got the more interesting jobs."