Read Online Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead by Perri O'Shaughnessy - Free Book Online
Authors: Perri O'Shaughnessy
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hard to believe how cute they made her feel. She had never expected to watch her hair thin, but that it had done. One morning, she had followed her brow to her hairline and discovered—a bald spot! Up the street, rightoff Highway 50, was a hair/nails place where a Vietnamese lady, singing to herself in her own language the whole time, carefully wove strands of someone else’s lovely thick hair into Brenda’s own, until you couldn’t see where the other person’s hair ended and hers began.
Worth every penny, especially the previous week when Ronnie took her out to Harrah’s to a live show, and she curled her new hair and looked fantastic and sexy.
How else could a girl compete in this culture of ski bunnies and entertainers who looked twenty when they were thirty, and twenty when they were forty, the dyed-blond boob-babies?
Wiping the dressing from her lips, she rose, then climbed downstairs and down a long hallway, where she picked up her cleaning cart. An extension of Prize’s Casino-Hotel, the two-story motel part of the complex had some cheap rooms that opened directly on the parking lot.
Pushing the loaded cart seemed hard today, even though a thin springtime sun warmed her. Her partner, Rosalinda, was home sick, so, doing double duty, she was running late. A few of the rooms she should have finished in the morning she hadn’t yet done. Oh, well. She’d skimp on the bathrooms. You could run a dry cloth quickly over water drips and toothpaste blow, fold down the ends of the toilet paper rolls, and keep the customers happy.
She rolled up to Room 102, where the guests had checked out according to her schedule, and saw that the door was ajar. A DO NOT DISTURB sign dangled from the knob.
Ah, jeez, they hadn’t left yet after all.
Once, a bad thing had happened—she had busted in on a couple making love on the bed. Brenda had backed out again, and nobody had ever said anything about it to her.
She put her hand on the door, ready to give a swift knock and push it open.
Then hesitated. Something was making her nervous. It was—boy, was she ridiculous—it was as if she could feel that someonewas in there, and listening for her. She looked down. Someone had blocked the door with a pillow. Odd, a pillow of all things. It would be hard to step over that with a suitcase.
Not a sound within. It looked dark in there, though it might only have been the sunlight she stood in, contrasting with the interior light.
Fucking Tahoe. All this beauty, but you couldn’t ever forget the Donner Party, the starvation, the cannibalism—fucking place, mysterious always.
One thing she believed: when you felt something wrong, something was wrong. How many movies had she seen where the heroine walked right into a situation, a dark alley, toward a couple of lurkers with hoods, when any sane person would turn right around and head for the lighted, busy street? Also, Rosalinda was an astrologist and had been talking about Saturn being ascendant, which meant strange things, occult things, afoot.
She slid back into the hall, skittered under an outside staircase at the end of the block of rooms, and waited.
And waited.
The door opened all the way and she caught a glimpse of someone stepping over the pillow and coming out. A man’s leg, that was all. But then the leg was pulled back in and the door softly shut.
Huh? The whole thing was giving her prickles. How could a hotel ground-floor corridor feel so spooky and lonely? Where was everybody?
What was wrong with people? You’re in a hotel. Every day, someone comes to clean the room. Where’s the surprise in that? Unless you’re up to something. Another time she had found a little baggie of white powder on the sink. She and Ronnie had been dating at the time, and she had given it to him. He never mentioned what he did with it, but he took her to a nice place in Carson City the next night.
Now the door opened again. A figure stepped outside the room,peering up and down the shade
Worth every penny, especially the previous week when Ronnie took her out to Harrah’s to a live show, and she curled her new hair and looked fantastic and sexy.
How else could a girl compete in this culture of ski bunnies and entertainers who looked twenty when they were thirty, and twenty when they were forty, the dyed-blond boob-babies?
Wiping the dressing from her lips, she rose, then climbed downstairs and down a long hallway, where she picked up her cleaning cart. An extension of Prize’s Casino-Hotel, the two-story motel part of the complex had some cheap rooms that opened directly on the parking lot.
Pushing the loaded cart seemed hard today, even though a thin springtime sun warmed her. Her partner, Rosalinda, was home sick, so, doing double duty, she was running late. A few of the rooms she should have finished in the morning she hadn’t yet done. Oh, well. She’d skimp on the bathrooms. You could run a dry cloth quickly over water drips and toothpaste blow, fold down the ends of the toilet paper rolls, and keep the customers happy.
She rolled up to Room 102, where the guests had checked out according to her schedule, and saw that the door was ajar. A DO NOT DISTURB sign dangled from the knob.
Ah, jeez, they hadn’t left yet after all.
Once, a bad thing had happened—she had busted in on a couple making love on the bed. Brenda had backed out again, and nobody had ever said anything about it to her.
She put her hand on the door, ready to give a swift knock and push it open.
Then hesitated. Something was making her nervous. It was—boy, was she ridiculous—it was as if she could feel that someonewas in there, and listening for her. She looked down. Someone had blocked the door with a pillow. Odd, a pillow of all things. It would be hard to step over that with a suitcase.
Not a sound within. It looked dark in there, though it might only have been the sunlight she stood in, contrasting with the interior light.
Fucking Tahoe. All this beauty, but you couldn’t ever forget the Donner Party, the starvation, the cannibalism—fucking place, mysterious always.
One thing she believed: when you felt something wrong, something was wrong. How many movies had she seen where the heroine walked right into a situation, a dark alley, toward a couple of lurkers with hoods, when any sane person would turn right around and head for the lighted, busy street? Also, Rosalinda was an astrologist and had been talking about Saturn being ascendant, which meant strange things, occult things, afoot.
She slid back into the hall, skittered under an outside staircase at the end of the block of rooms, and waited.
And waited.
The door opened all the way and she caught a glimpse of someone stepping over the pillow and coming out. A man’s leg, that was all. But then the leg was pulled back in and the door softly shut.
Huh? The whole thing was giving her prickles. How could a hotel ground-floor corridor feel so spooky and lonely? Where was everybody?
What was wrong with people? You’re in a hotel. Every day, someone comes to clean the room. Where’s the surprise in that? Unless you’re up to something. Another time she had found a little baggie of white powder on the sink. She and Ronnie had been dating at the time, and she had given it to him. He never mentioned what he did with it, but he took her to a nice place in Carson City the next night.
Now the door opened again. A figure stepped outside the room,peering up and down the shade
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