Chapter 1
She glanced at the screen on her iPhone and groaned. It was 10:17 p.m. Exactly three minutes and twenty-one seconds since the last time she checked. Even worse, she had run out of people to call. No one was left on her speed dial list.
She didn’t like waiting. And it was getting late, so late that it felt like the entire night was slipping through her fingers. A total bust while all her other friends were having fun.
She took in a deep breath and exhaled, watching the vapor fog the windshield. She shivered in the cold night air. It was mid-December in Los Angeles. Twelve days before Christmas. Last week it actually snowed in Malibu. She had seen it on the news. Kids riding down the hills on pieces of ripped cardboard. Snowmen overlooking Santa Monica Bay. It seemed like the world was coming undone and no one on TV was saying anything.
She shook it off, found the keys on the dash and fired up the engine. Checking the heat vent, she adjusted the driver’s seat and tried to relax. After a while the fog began to clear from the windshield and she could see the motel and restaurant just past the Dumpster on the other side of the parking lot.
She could see the girls dressed in their sheer tops walking in and out of the place, the men eyeing them openly and hungrily as if they were riding cardboard sleds and had become little boys again. Faint bursts of laughter hidden in the wind began to push against the car. When she caught the scent of a wood fire, her eyes rose to the building’s roof. A neon rooster was mounted to the chimney. Below the rooster another neon sign read Cock-a-doodle-do, The Best Chicken Pieces in LA!
She giggled, then caught herself. Two men were staring at her. They were leaning against the rail outside the restaurant, smoking cigarettes while they picked chicken out of their teeth. It didn’t take much to guess that they were looking her way because this was the Cock-a-doodle-do, their stomachs were full and now it was time for dessert. Even from a distance she could tell who they were and what they were. She moved her head into the shadows and looked at their low-rent faces. The creases on their foreheads and the deep lines around their eyes. Their cheap clothing from aisle 7 at Walmart. She wanted to tell them to stop looking at her. She wanted to tell them that she didn’t fuck truck drivers or losers, only doctors and lawyers, movie stars and agents – but she didn’t. Instead, she cracked the window open, fished her cigarettes out of her purse and lit one. By the time she turned back, two blondes had approached the creeps and all four were purring.
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