Slim: Book 6

Crash and Room

"Stay. I'll check."

I took up wide swathes of my dress to clench as he got out and closed the door behind him. He came out stark and strange in the dusty headlights wearing his white dress shirt and tux pants. When he vanished from view and into the darkness, I started digging through skirts to find my shoes again. I didn't know what use I'd be in heels, but I couldn't leave him alone to whatever was out there. Something unnerved me. An old instinct I had grown to respect curled restlessly in the pit of my stomach.

Just as I had my shoes on and my hand on the handle, Naru opened the door and fell back in.

"Nothing," he said, snapping in his belt.

"What?"

"There was nothing. Whoever they were, they were well enough to run off. I don't think we hit them anyways, we would have felt it."

"But he was right there in our faces. There's no way someone could just...dodge that."

Naru just twisted around to see out the back window as he reversed us out from the shrubbery and back onto the road. The branches of the trees that had managed to stretch through the dust reluctantly let us go and soon the black tarp was back beneath the wheels.

I found my hands sweating and twisted them in my skirts once more. "I've got an uneasy feeling."

"Natural or otherwise?"

"I think it's otherwise."

"Do you think we should call the cops when we get to the hotel? We're almost there, and even if we found them we're poorly equipped to help."

"No, I..." I glanced back out the window. The night that had once been charming to me now seemed just dark, and I couldn't help but wonder what was beyond the tree trunks. I regretted saying anything to Naru, who was likely to worry in quiet over it. "It's probably nothing. Yeah, we'll tell someone. I didn't think there'd be any homeless up here."

Naru snorted. "Those kinds of people are everywhere. It was most likely some, what do the American's call them, hippies? Ate one too many mushrooms and happened to cart across the street as we were passing."

Comforted by this thought, I all but forgot about the incident by the time we rolled up to the hotel. It looked just as it had in the pictures: a traditional Japanese bathhouse tucked away in the woods. On walking in with our bags over Naru's shoulders, every eye in the room turned to stare. It didn't last long as a man wearing what looked to be the hotel's uniform shirt offered to take the bags from Naru and a lady at the desk came around like a chittering bird getting busy to make the nest.

"Don't tell me, you must be the Davis's! Please, right this way. Our best suite is already prepared."

Naru told her about the man we almost hit and she promised to call the authorities on it before leading us away, followed by more employees than I thought necessary to show someone to a room. My excitement was being dampened by this attention. Even after being exposed to the Davis's money for the past few months, seeing the evidence of it still gave me the urge to crawl into a thrift store somewhere so I could breathe reasonable air. And always, the thought would burst in 'how many months of utilities and food could I get with this?'

The suite didn't help. It wasn't a hotel room, it was a freaking apartment done in the old Japanese world style, sliding doors, low setting furniture, water paint artwork and all.

She asked when we would like to have dinner, Naru gave her a time, and then, indicating a map and other brochure like instructions on the dark wood table in the middle of some sofas, the lot of them actually bowed and backed out of the doors like that—as though we were some shogun or feudal era lord.