The late shift. It's one of the slower days so as soon as the person I relieve takes off, I walk over to the engineer shed to say hello to Kyle and make some coffee. Engineers now have Folgers on repeat in the engineer office. I make some coffee with Kyle. I've got to stay awake and I'm not going to use the stuff that the new security guard is using. I haven't used that stuff since the 90s. The engineering shed buzzes and hums with electrical equipment. There are a couple different rooms, all kinds of strange and funny looking tools and graffiti from what looks like every engineer that ever worked here.
The shed is uncomfortably hot.
It's still hot as all fuck outside. How can it be 100 at midnight?
I make my coffee and thank Kyle and head back to the front desk. I pass the pool. People are swimming and dying on the pool deck. The chicks like to wear wife beaters with no bras. It's driving the young men wild. They horseplay in the jacuzzi and it spills over into the pool.
This week we have a group of designers staying at the hotel. They happen to be all women. They're a group of successful, stylish, good looking chicks with money. They're as gentle as a pack of Koalas. You can see they have the claws, but they don't use em. They wander the lobby and hotel bar and make polite conversation. I start my paperwork and take a sip of my coffee.
The security guard tears through the front office. He's mumbling a mile a minute and says "HELLO." somewhere in the middle, and stops right in front of me and then starts talking about what a nice piece of knotted wood we have at the front desk. He wonders what kind of wood it is. So do I. He then asks for a vacant room list, so I print one out and hand it to him and he studies it closely, turning it over in his sweaty hands and grimacing about the amount of work, then heads off to make sure the vacant rooms are vacant. It's something we do every night to make sure the vagrants aren't sneaking into the rooms or the patios.
Kyle comes into the front desk to hang out.
Before the new security guard get's outside the lobby, he get's a phone call. I'm busy shuffling through the paperwork and talking with the hotel restaurant servers about their shift, but when everything calms down and the lobby is empty with just me and Kyle in it, He asks me if I heard the telephone call the security guard just got.
He swears it was his dealer. He was saying things like: "Yea, where you at? I could meet you over there on my bike later. Yea! Do you have enough? No, I can't right now, I'm at work." and things like that. Kyle explains that we get a lot of bad elements through security. Most of them have criminal backgrounds. Then he throws a bunch of packaged needles on the front desk. He found them out front of the South building. They could be for someone with diabetes or they could be rigs for our security guard. He says the desert is a haven for meth users. It's even worse up in Joshua Tree. It's so bad there is an emergency phone number given to residents to call regarding meth activity. He asks where the security guard lives and I tell him White Water. Kyle nods his head. It's a huge meth neighborhood.
What can you do? People need to fill their time up with something.
Wow. Only serious users shoot that shit. I thought that maybe he was just a weekend warrior with a little bump to help him through the night.
Nothing works like coffee.
Kyle and I agree that he'll fuck it up all on his own, no reason to report it. No reason for me to report this, yet. Maybe I should report it.
He's running through the lobby at one point. Then comes back inside and tells me he's tired. His cheekbones are starting to become more pronounced. He's sweating. He asks for my full name.
He leaves.
Then comes back full of energy. He's got to pull the bikes up and for the next hour I see him ripping around the property delivering the bikes to the hotel guest bike rack. We stash them at night so no one steals them.
My relief comes in on time and I take off.
