Hot City Diary: Day 80

Kyle, the engineer, is no where to be found.

The weekend just ended so it's time to relax.  He must be sleeping in his quarters, or in some hot babes room.

Whatever.

We've got bigger problems on our hands.  It's 1am, Somebody has broken into a guest hotel room and stolen thousands worth of computers and phones and cash and all that.  I'm hoping it's just a transient and I didn't accidentally hand out a key to a master thief.   It could have been my counterpart, or maybe the assailant found the door open?!?  We phone the police and wait 3 hours for them to show up.

In the meantime, there are a couple stupid people crank calling me from a car parked outside in the parking lot.  They're watching me in my glass showcase.  They make me go search for a red purse in the photo booth and then maybe on the couch and then I catch on and tell them to shut up and hang up.  They call back and laugh and laugh and mention how they love my Cardigan.  I don't think it's funny.  They call back a couple more times and then lose interest.  I get back to my paperwork.

Security wanders the property.

Housekeeping wants to know if the aliens will be coming again tonight.  I tell them they're already here and their eyes light up.

Hot City Diary: Day 79

The youngsters are getting heated and nobody has anymore patience.

There is a complaint that the picture booth is broken.  I hear an earful of nonsense from some twentysomethings and then the flashes from the booth light up the lobby.

"Oh look, it works now."  I say

They shuffle off.  I walk outside with Sammy the restaurant manager.

There's a glow in the mountains.  It's a reddish glow.  Looks like it could be a fire but we can't see any smoke, so maybe it's not a fire.  It's also 1am and it's so dark up there on the mountain that we probably wouldn't be able to see any smoke anyways.

Stupid smoke.

Some of the housekeepers come and join us and wonder what the strange red glow is just over the ridge of the Palm Springs Mountain Range.  We all come to the conclusion it's aliens.

The night goes by smoothly, until the drunk Englishmen arrive at 5am and want hookers.

I tell them that there's nothing worth getting in Palm Springs right now.  Craigslist is a disaster waiting to happen.  The girls in the meth hotels in the north part of town are great if you want the gift that keeps on giving; give your girlfriend herpes when you get home.

I call them a taxi and tell them to work it out with the driver.  Maybe the Casinos will still have some girls that are up and ready to go.

They light up when they hear about the casinos.  It's party time.  They want to know where the ATM is and how long until the taxi shows up.  They want to know if they can go back to the room and do some more drugs before going out.  The taxi shows up during the conversation and ends things right there.  They do a little fist bump whisper shout thing and head out to the taxi and jump in.

I continue my paperwork.

Hot City Diary: Day 112

It's only in the mid 90's this evening.  I stay inside the lobby.

The bar closes at 1 am and there is a loud Tranny in the lobby.  She is drunk and wants to try on T-shirts and wants to know if the cigarettes in my pocket is a bad tit job or if they're cigarettes.  He wants to know if I want to drive his car.  Roxy is big trouble.

The bartender comes out and smacks Roxys' ass and gives her a kiss on the cheek.  

"See you next week sweetie!"  The bartender says.

Roxy almost spills her drink.

She's drunk and mumbling under his breath.  Then her eyes light up when she sees me bring out the tshirts and she mumbles some more and picks them up and throws them back onto the counter and takes a drink of his Pina Colada.  She's got all this expensive jewelry on.  It must be fake.  Who wears diamonds that big?  Her leather body suit with matching jacket looks expensive.   He takes a drink of her pina colada out of the straw.  Her botoxed lips suck at it.  She makes everything overtly sexual.  

Roxy has finally had enough of it, she wants to go home.

"Call me a taxi."

One Taxi arrives and stops the cab far short of Roxy and get's out and walks up to her and tells her he will not give her a ride.  He complains that Roxy has a history of throwing up in the cabs and refuses service.  He does the polite thing and calls another taxi company that doesn't know Roxy. 

I wait for the other cab and give the driver a plastic bag and wish him good luck.  He looks confused and I pat him on the back and tell him to keep it within reach in case she gets sick.  He laughs.  I laugh.  Roxy slams the door.

I walk back into the lobby and the bartender is dancing around and telling me how Roxy is crazy rich and she burns through employees at a crazy rate.  

"Didn't you hear her ask you to be her driver?  She wasn't kidding.  That bitch tipped me $200 for each pina colada, and she had THREE!"  The bartender runs off screaming.

Wow. 

Hot City Diaries: Day 225

The ghost in the bottom of the pool is not making me feel very good about things.  I have to stay in the shallow end or else I might fall prey to him/her.  It all happened the other day.  I fell asleep on the mattress in the pergola last night with the dog and after we woke and ate most of the watermelon and then took the rest for a swim.

The light is flickering in the shallow end.  The floaties are casting mean stares across the water.  Swoony the swan has only one wing now.  She's just a fun reminder of the crazy Italian film producers that came to stay at the house.  But not tonight, she tries to smother me as I come up for air.  I have to really push up to break the surface and throw her off me.  The turtle and orca aren't any help.  Then it was either the ghost or me cramping up from eating half a watermelon and plus more while in the water.  The hulk of it sits there on the side of the pool.  The dog licks it and takes a few bites and wags her tail.  It was probably just the watermelon, but who really knows what lives at the bottom of the pool.

It's hot outside.

The spirit seems to move the floaties about the pool.  No real direction or pattern.  Nothing really aggressive and things seem to be copacetic.  It's a scary good time at the pool.

Hot City Diary: Day 230

It's getting close to Halloween.  I can see the leaves changing colors, or maybe it's just that they've been burnt by the sun.

I feel burnt by the sun.

I find myself sitting for days in the living room watch the mold grow.  No real food besides the dog food is left.

Hot City Diary: More Dope

The Restaurant manager walks into the lobby and places three baggies on the front desk.  They sit on top of all my paperwork.

There's about an eighth of mushrooms in one bag.  An eight ball (which is just stupid drug talk for an eighth) of white stuff.  It could be heroin or cocaine.  Nobody knows and Sammy and I aren't just going to try it.  Kyle walks in.  He tests a bit.  It's cocaine.  Really, really good cocaine.  The third bag is full of dirt, Two wristbands, a hotel business card and a sandal strap.

I laugh.

The restaurant manager is on his way home and off to a vacation in Miami when he stops by the front desk.

"I don't want to deal with this."  Sammy says

"You should take some with you to Miami."  Kyle trys to put the cocaine in Sammys' bag and we all laugh and laugh and laugh.

A guest walks into the lobby and while everyone freezes, I nonchalantly throw some paperwork over the drugs and Sammy puts the cocaine in his bag.  He asks about food and I tell him the only thing open is Taco Heaven and Double Burger, but nobody delivers after midnight in Palm Springs.  Maybe 1 am on Weekends.  We all look at our respective watches, phones, whatever, it's 2 am.  He reaches for his car keys and falls to the ground.  We help him up and call him a cab and push him inside and tell the driver to drive him thru the Double Burger drive thru and then bring him back.  He mentions to Sammy a few times that he could use a pick-me-up while waiting.  Sammy apologizes for the coffee machine being put away.

Once the guest is gone Sammy takes the cocaine out of his bag and puts it back on the desk.

Kyle wants just a couple caps of the mushrooms and Sammy laughs and says it's all too late, because it's all on camera and security better just log it and destroy it.  Sorry Kyle.  Sammy has me radio security and our new gung-ho recruit takes it all away to the security office to log and destroy, or does he?  Kyle doesn't think he's going to do it, and follows close there after.

I get back to my paperwork.

Hot City Diary: Day of the Rig

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.

Hot City Diary: Day 133

The papers arrive in the mail today.  Apparently the state of California wants couples to wait 6 months to finalize any divorce proceedings.  So we will wait 6 months and when she see's that my girlfriend is 7 months pregnant, then Shelly is never going to talk to me again.

It's humid.  Around 96 degrees.  It certainly doesn't feel like the furnace is turned on high today.  I think I've just been sitting here too long; BECAUSE 96 IS HOT!  But it doesn't feel like it.  The humidity makes everything sticky.

Damn.

Hot City Diary: Day 140

It's triple 1's today.  It's triple crazy.  Who can live in 111 degree heat?

I've been taking the car out to pick up groceries and such in the evening when it cools down and to run some errands but the other day when I went out to get groceries I found myself blacked out in the desert off of Dinah Shore Drive last night and when I start the car again it was a real chore to get it back on the road and back home.  The car engine knocks and rattles when I drive over 50 mph, now.

I don't need any car Trouble.

I take it into a car repair shop today with some good reviews and they make it worse.  The engine mounts have become loose and are hitting the engine.  The mechanics say there is nothing they can do.  They actually say it in a really menacing way and there are three of them and it's weird so I just leave.

Dang it.

I barely make it home.  The car rattles like I'm being shot at.  It does better at high speeds but maybe that's just wishful thinking.  I keep it slow most of the way home with people running this way and that when I stop at the intersections.  It rattles off like an AK-47 and people duck and sprint when I make a right hand turn.   I keep the windows rolled down and wave people past as I try to stay in the golf cart lane.  The sun cooks me and my wounded car as we limp back to the house in the cove.  The neighbors come outside to see what's happening when I pull into the driveway.

They snicker and congregate in the middle of the street and I apologize and hastily make my retreat back into the walled compound and across the blistering cement front patio and into the house.

The door is open.  The dog is laying in front of some fans on the cool tile floor.

I join her and lay down in defeat.

No more wheels.

Hot City Diaries: Day 123

It's another Scorcher.

Losing my mind.

Up in here.  Up in here.

Music does help, though.  So I have the computer streaming all day.  I can switch over to the mobile when the black outs hit.  Gotta stay in the shadows.  Stay cool.  Stay hydrated.  Wait out this heat like a lizard under the rocks.

The lizards are all over the back yard.

Not as dangerous as their intelligent counterparts up there on Io.  The ones in my back yard are missing a couple hundred million years of evolution.  By the time they evolve to something formidable, the sun will have enveloped the planet.  Those fucking lizards better get it together.  Suddenly a large shadow passes by the window.  I sit up from the couch where I've been kinda napping/sweating. What was that?  The dog is barking like crazy.  There is a loud smash in the back yard and I'm up with my crocs on and running around the house to see what it is.

I run inside my gated side yard.  It's blistering hot out.  Then the door closes behind me.  I turn to see a lizard tail pushing it closed.  She's standing in the shadows.  She tells me that there is a plan for us.  She doesn't want to be dangerous and we can all live in harmony she tells me.  If I can just get the dog to play along.  Don't be a fool like the people up in Joshua Tree.

An intelligent life form from Io has come to visit.

She crashed her Ionian ship down the street and needs some water and chlorine and acid to get the ship going again.  It's kind of like a tourist bus.  She brings wealthy Ionians to Earth and shows them the sites.  They were on their way to Tijuana when the ship crashed in the hills behind Cat City.  Needless to say, everyone is pissed.  She needs to get the stuff and kinda get going.  They're behind schedule and all that.

She mentions that the pool waters' PH balance is all off.  Too much alkaline, but it will have to do.

I tell her to take as much water as she needs.  She says she's gonna need some muriatic acid.  I ask her how much she needs.  She says all of it.  I fetch it from the garage and when I come back the pool is empty.  All 18,000 gallons.  She's holding it in a small bag.  It's easy to move around when you shrink the molecules, she tells me.

Whatever.  I tell her it's gonna cost her something.  She fiddles with her ear and hands me an earring and tells me to wear it if I ever want to talk to her.

That'll work.  I ask if I can see the craft and she tells me that the Ionian tourists might like a close up chat with an inhabitant, which usually doesn't happen until the tour hit's Phoenix, but sure why not.  She does remind me that they are in a hurry, though.

She reduces the size of the chlorine and acid and strides out the back gate and I struggle to keep up with her.  I don't have time to close the gate, so the dog runs out and follows us as well.

"You go back home!"  I yell at my dog, but she doesn't listen.

We all run/jog down the wash to the ship.  The Ionian tour bus leader tells me we only have a moment and brings me onto this silver cigar looking ship.  It shines in the sun.  She parades me up and down an aisle and all the lizard people gasp and gawk and talk amongst themselves.  I get to wander the aisle for a minute.  They sit in fancy seats and drink fancy drinks and slap their legs in disbelief.  I do a little tap dance routine and they love it.  Then the tour bus leader shoo's me off.  It's time to go, they are running late.

I thank the Ionian for her time and then she makes sure I'm outside and seals the door and it just lifts off.  Very quietly.  Very slowly.  Like somebody turned off gravity, but only for the ship.  It floats up past my head and then after getting 30 feet up, it zooms out of the picture.

I wander back to my barking dog and we head back to the house.  I'll have to refill the pool.