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“Shit,” I said aloud.
The knocking continued. “Open up,” said a stern voice from behind the door. I recognized the Bronx accent immediately as belonging to the motel manager. “I know you’re in there.”
I tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack.
“Is there a problem?” I asked. “I’m busy and need to get back to work.”
He shook his head. “No pets allowed,” he said. “Get your dog out of there.”
“Look,” I said, “I need a place to stay. Bill my room an extra hundred dollars a night if you have to.”
“This isn’t a pet motel, buddy,” he said. “We’d get fined a whole hell of a lot more than a hundred dollars a night. Go find somewhere else to stay.”
“Two hundred,” I said.
He shook his head. “Go find somewhere else.”
This was a guy who was cool with renting out rooms by the hour and acting as a middleman to a pimp, but he drew the line at letting a pet stay in his motel. I suppose there wasn’t as much money in allowing dogs as there was in providing a convenient place for men to cheat on their spouses.
“You don’t understand,” I told him. “Bagel’s not just a dog. She’s my baby. She means the world to me and…” I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. Empathy may not have been the best strategy.
“Tell you what,” I said, “Just give me one more night. And name your price.”
“All the money in the world won’t matter to me if you end up getting my business shut down.”
“I promise I won’t tell a soul,” I said.
He shook his head back and forth. “Maybe you won’t. Maybe you can keep your mouth shut, but I’m not so sure about Fido. The second he starts barking like that, other people will hear.”
“Shewon’t bark again,” I said. “Just give us one more chance.”
He wasn’t hearing any of it. “I don’t want you here,” he said. “Get out.”
“Or what, you call the police?” I stood there smug, knowing he wasn’t about to pull the cops into this.
He looked back at me with a look that was at least twice as smug.
“Buddy, when I’ve got a problem, do you really think I go to the police?” he said. “I don’t need the police. I’ve got friends who handle things for me. Capiche?”
Now he was giving me the same stare I was giving him the other night. Was he bluffing, or was I risking my thumbs or kneecaps by staying here and arguing with him?
“Yeah, I’ve got it.”
“This is me asking nicely,” he said. “I’m going back to my office, and I’ll come back in ten minutes. If you’re still here, you’ll find out what me asking not so nicely sounds like.”
For the first time in the conversation, he nodded and even gave me a smile. “Have a nice day, sir.”
The stubborn asshole part of me wanted to stick around and see what happened, but every other instinct I had told me to run. Nothing good would come from sticking this thing through. Ten minutes wasn’t much time, but fortunately I didn’t have too much to pack up. I shoved all of my things into my duffle bag and was out of there, driving away in less than three full minutes time.
I could go find another motel — a dog friendly motel, of which I was sure there must have been many in West Hollywood — or I could face the music and head back home, hoping that, with the pressure of time pushing against me, I’d manage to come up with the thing to say that would win Mila back into my life.
As I was driving there, however, I realized I had already said it. Without realizing it.
“You’re my baby, Bagel,” I said. And she was. Even though she looked nothing like me and I certainly wasn’t the father, I loved her like my own because she was my own.
The baby growing inside Mila may not have had my DNA, but it didn’t need to for me to love it. And, as an added bonus, it had half of Mila’s DNA, which couldn’t hurt.
I had told her forever ago that genes are much more complicated than the media likes to pretend they are. Two people making a baby didn’t end up with half one parent and half the other. Oftentimes, they ended up with someone who looked almost exactly like one parent. Or, due to recessive genes, didn’t look that much like either of them. And, while it wasn’t my specialty, environment was so important to human development that I probably would have more influence on how the baby turned out than its genetic father would.
