hotel girl at universal

i needed to charge my car so i drove to universal even though theyve been jacking up the rates

before i could get there, i got a ping at the sheraton next door to go downtown, which i normally wouldnt have taken, but the thought of grabbing a nice al pastor burrito at my new favorite joint called sonoratown had me salivating.

pulled up to the door of the hotel and mama mia my passenger was a vision.

you know how bad uber is to their drivers, when they can only retain drivers on average for 90 days, when every day miami 10s hop in that back seat and chat you up for a half hour.

it reminds me of when i was working at E! my boss hated me, and one day he took me outside to get me to quit. he sat me down as he smoked a cigarette and was all youre a college grad, you think youre some hotshot writer, you admit you hate it here, so why do you stay?

and on cue, two leggy interns from E! News strolled by and sang, hi tony.

rideshare is different because i adore it. only time it’s bad is when i need to drive very long shifts multiple days in a row. because im a thousand years old my arms get sore and my legs will feel like rubber when i get out to take a leak. but those days are in the past. thankfully.

so there i was at the universal sheraton and miss venezuela slid into the back and asked if she needed to wear a mask because she saw i had one on.

im only wearing one, i said, because im a sensitive artist and the smoke and soot of the air from these fires makes me cough.

she nodded as we eased down the hill from universal down to lankershiem as a giant inflatable minion eyed us from the top deck of a parking structure.

her name was eyezeya

i asked her, wheres that from?

she said the future

nothing better than a sassy lassie when the worlds gonna end, i said, merging onto the 101 freeway in unusually light traffic at 5pm. i guess everyones at home watching the fires on tv, i said.

god bless no congestion, she said. it was busy at the hotel, thats for sure, the long haired natural beauty said, sipping through her starbucks straw.

turns out your girl is a front desk clerk and due to the massive winds that caused the fires from malibu through the palisades to pasadena, tens of thousands of angelenos have been displaced, some because their homes had been totally destroyed, and over the last few days every hotel room for miles have been booked.

poor zeya had to tell people who had lost everything that there was no room in her inn.

little kids with dogs staring at the beautifully lit swimming pool saying, mommy they have a hot tub! while my future wife had to break the bad news.

we have had entire families like the mom, dad, grandma, granddad, uncle, dogs, cats take up seven to eight rooms, she told me, as we hit a little backup near the silver lake exit. some rooms were just for the animals, she said. some rooms were a half-dozen little kids with one older kid babysitting. loud. boisterous. giggling. things crashing.

its like a movie, she said, where everyone is still in shock, having as great a time as they can because soon it will dawn on them that things are about to suck

and a little lilt choked her up a bit

it was dawning on her too.

dont cry sweet girl, i said turning down lou reed, because if you cry i'll cry

which made her laugh

and then cry.

haze hung halfway up the skyscrapers of downtown in a horizontal line like mourners looking down on LA

and then i misted up

because i had some people lose their dream homes too

people i love

people who have done nothing but the right things, the right way, and then one day you wake up in your house for the last time. and you never saw it coming.

i clicked the robot car button so the tesla could drive itself.

impossible to navigate through the tears.

dug into the glove box and grabbed a crisp stack of jack-in-the box napkins

handed half to zeya and took the rest for myself

dabbed my face and blew my nose

comically exaggerated like the loudest trumpet

and she laughed

then cried