Flophouse Blues

I've squatted over jakes holes that smelled better than this room. It's like an old onion based cheese and a piss soaked sewer rat died smoking three bags of brown-tips after having nasty anal sex on the windowside bed. There's a no smoking sign on the door but everyone knows that neither rats nor cheeses read. I swear, this place makes the house I grew up in smell like a sixteen year old girly girl's room. Maybe the nicely toasted Korean gentleman in the office will give me my $60 back if I throw a fit about the management's no cleaning policy.

Yeah, right, and maybe then my right nut will grow back.

Of course the sun's shining bright and clear on this the day of my most heinous abandonment and it's warmer enough to leave the door open a while - maybe air some of the stank out. A trillion galaxies of dust motes dance in the light as my entrance stirs current into the stinking void. The saddest part is that this fits a little too well with how my life has gone from Ritz to shits in less than a week of hell.

"You staying long?"

I'm wound so tight that the question springs me a good foot into the stale air. She's standing backlit in the doorway and with the sun shining through the thin fabric of her sundress to outline a figure drawn straight from an X rated day dream by Art Wetherell. Against my will, the creature stirs.

"Hard to tell right now," I tell her big brown eyes. "Only paid for two nights' worth."

"Sucks." She says it like a curse and self advertisement - maybe I'm hearing things. "Tran kicks in a fat discount if you stay more than a week."

I don't know if I'll be cohesive in a week. "Cash is kinda' scarce right now." This is a lie. Even after paying my way to and from Milan (well, the Milano-Linate airport) I'm flush to the tune of twenty-five grand not to mention the solid gold Rolex, platinum Dunhill lighter and diamond cufflinks stuffed into the bottom of my pack. My pension and living large on the arm of Manon Champlain sees to shit like that. "I'm flying by the seat of my pants basically." This is true, unfortunately.

"Nice pants too." She says it to my crotch and receives a twitch in reply.

"Tailored," I reply like it matters. "Can I help you with something?"

"I'm sure that you could help me in a lot of ways but I really just want to beg a shower off of you."

"A shower?" She wilts a little at my uncertainty but I smile to dispel any doubt. "Be my guest."

"Oh, you're the best. Just gimme a sec to grab my things, I'll be right back." She leaves a wake of immitation perfume (it bothers me that I know the difference) in her haste that does little to improve the atmosphere. My cellphone pulses twice in my pocket heralding an incoming text and I jump like a scalded cat.

It's her, fuck me gently. "We need to talk" she says.

"Fat fucking chance" is what she gets back and I know the profanity's just driving her.

What's-her-tits is back before I can pocket the phone and the eyes she gives me have calculation in them sure as Texas Instrument. "Won't be a tick more than three minutes and fifty-seven seconds," she assures me and she's passed by before I can register the way too shorty plush robe. But she looks over her shoulder in time to catch me staring at the bottom half of her ass and tips me a wink that moans. Christ Jesus God fuck! What have I walked into?

The next incoming text doesn't quite scare the crap out of me but the seat of my tailored denims flap like a torn sail in high wind. "Grow up" she says.

I barely notice the shrieking from the bathroom but my backbrain figures Mammary Mary just got a shot of cold water.

"Go suck another cock" flies back to her across the Atlantic and makes me wonder what kind of time lag I'm looking at on an international 4G network.

The pin-up in this scum hole's bathroom is singing while she showers and her wacky time estimate suddenly makes sense. She's belting out one of my secret favourites: Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" is exactly as long as she promised. And she's got a pair of lungs to match her rack.

Sitting against my better judgement raises another cosmic dust storm which is less disturbing than the distinctly soggy mattress. Maybe it would help if I put my head between my legs like they show in the first class seatbacks but the reply pulse still makes me want to puke. "I don't know what you think was happening but..." it goes on but I delete it out of hand. She's not gonna' talk her way out of this one.

"Eat shit and die." It's a juvenile response but it'll buy me some time. Honestly, I didn't think she'd notice I wasn't there.

"FROZEN IN TIME WITHOUT YOUR TOUCH, WITHOUT YOUR LOVE, DARLING..." Two and a half minutes in means a minute and a half before the girl washing ersatz Chanel from between her tits comes waltzing out to...

"Gimme' a break," I tell the swirling dust. Manon's next text is a sequel to the one before and it's just as easily deleted. "All a misunderstanding...he's no one...an old friend..." Fuck her. Who does she think she's trying to kid?

"Save your breath for cooling your porridge or see how long you can hold it before passing out, matters not to me...you made your decision" Yeah, chew on that gibberish a while, Princess.

Shower candy holds the last "Life" long enough so's I notice her voice give in a wracking cough at the end. The water stops right away and she recovers her voice to beg a towel. "I don't wanna' get my robe wet or it goes see through."

"Help yourself. I'm too young for a heart attack." Smoothe, Weaver...that was pure butter flavoured Pam slickness that was. But she gives me a real life LOL and I figure this could go one of two ways - better or worse (like I'm capable of telling the difference between them now).

The bathroom door opens with a cloud of steam and now there's a towel wrapped around her head and she's glistening from the steam and smells clean. After 40 hours of non-stop travel and too much coffee all I should be doing is counting sheep and not between her pillows. "Better?"

There's a hardness in her eyes that stops her smile just short of being radiant but it's real. "Much, thank you."

"I was gonna' burn one if you're inclined to join me." I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean but she takes it as sit next to the strange man on the bed and press your breasts around his arm.

"Don't mind if I do." Her breath wasn't cleaned in the shower so I choose a mint wrapped blunt from my inside breast pocket and light it with the complimentary Burger King matches. "Wonder where Tran got the matches?" she asksabsently. "There hasn't been a Burger King in this town for years."

It's like she's plucking the thought right out of my head and I choke on the draw trying to light the gather. She plucks it expertly out from between my fingers and takes a foot long hoot off the thing while I recover. "This shit's pretty good," she says around her exhale.

"Oughta' be," I tell her, "friend of a friend grew it at the agricultural research centre in Ottawa - ten years in the making." Again, like it matters.

She takes another long haul before handing it back in my general direction. "Does your phone do music?" she asks dreamily.

"Sure does." In two seconds we've got "Living Dead Girl" blaring out as loud as it can go.

"Yeah," she mutters, "that's it. My doctor said I shouldn't mix pot with my cyroquil but what the hell."

She's on her feet before I can puff and starts into a routine I can only assume is the product of lots of weekend shifts on a pole but, fuck a duck, I don't care. She's really quite good at interpreting the howling guitars in a visual display and her robe comes off before the towel. An hour ago I was on the Sudbury Express watching the city come into view over Thibeault Hill and now I've got an eye full of...

"What's your name?" I ask too loudly.

She smiles and flings her hair while her hips gyrate on an imaginary cock. "What does it matter?"

"Cool by me."

All pretence vanishes when she straddles my legs to grind away like it's her job. Then my phone buzzes again.

"And that picture you saw was taken over a year ago before we started steady"

My in room service already has my belt undone before I've finished reading and there's a moment of horror when I realize that she doesn't know what to expect down there. But then she wraps the little monster with her lips and starts to rooting and before I can think about it too much I snap a quick head shot and compose my reply: "Yeah, what's the time stamp on this picture?"

Now I get to wait for the reply that never comes - great, fuck my life.

"Did you want something?" she mumbles.

"Just keep going." It's good advice - I'll take it.