Strangers or not, I could probably nail their whole story with at least seventy-percent accuracy.
I didn’t need to be able to see the map that was undoubtedly on that phone to know they were tourists. Their clothes made it obvious. They were decked out in beachy coastal outfits that they thought would make them fit in, but only other vacationers wore that shit.
Mid-to-late forties.
Likely from the Midwest.
Three kids at home. Probably all boys, much to Mom’s secret resentment. She’d dreamed of tea parties, beauty pageants, and shopping dates. Instead, her boys all played football, and her life revolved around getting them to and from practice, cheering them on, and handling the fundraising, the politics, and the uniforms. Plus, the countless other thankless tasks that came with raising kids and keeping a home.
The things agoodmom did.
Dad helped by telling the boys the same glory day stories about how he would’ve gone pro had it not been for his damn knee.
The trip to see the big lights of Hollywood was her reward for putting her own life on the back burner. For putting her family first. For letting her body go soft because she had to do everything for everyone else and didn’t have time to think about herself.
His body had also gotten soft, but it was because he sat on his ass and drank beers with his boys all the time. That was how a man lived in his world.
She stressed over how she looked. She tried to find more hours in the day to get her steps in, but she was just too tired, dammit. She would stand in front of the mirror, turning all around to inspect her widening ass as she worried whether he still found her and her new Costco blouse attractive.
Meanwhile, he could barely get it up on his own—let alone with her—but he never doubted his sex-god appeal.
I hated them both.
I hated the knowledge that if an LA-four threw a wink their way, they would ditch each other and whatever semblance of apple pie happiness they had.
Not that I would blame her. I bet she would even struggle with the decision. But then that hidden resentment would bubble to the surface, and her sexually repressed and neglected body would remind her that it’d been years since her husband had given her more than a half-flaccid, three-minute pounding.
He was the same as most men. He already had it better than he deserved, but he wouldn’t hesitate before leaving her for the first set of fake tits that bounced his way.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were effortlessly devoted to each other. Maybe he helped around the house, and she was the envy of every housewife in their little neighborhood.
I doubted it.
They were all the same.
Wewere all the same.
Because I wasn’t any better than they were. I mean, Iwas,but not because I was a better person. I wasn’t more honest or humble or charitable.
No, I was superior because of dumb luck and good looks. Or was it good luck and dumb looks?
Either way.
They started walking again, and I took a picture of them, blurry from the distance.
Or maybe that was just my vision.
I sat for a few stretching minutes, scanning around for something to distract me from all the nothingness. I’d nearly hyped myself to return to the party when the heavy metal door clattered open and shut.
Too soon to be Easton.
At the approaching footsteps, I pressed the camera to my eye and lazily spun my head to the side. I expected to see Cohen’s smile.
The strained one he gave when something was pissing him off, but he was working to keep his easygoing, Southern vibe.
A smile he would follow with a forced joke about how the media coverage of me plummeting to my death would make it hard for them to keep Gilded a secret club.
And then he would give me shit for using the off-limits stairwell that led past his floor and Atlas’s floor to the roof.
