“Get out.” He points.
Oh my God. Where the fuck am I gonna go?
“You on drugs, too? Get. The. Fuck. Out!” He roars. “I don’t need this shit.”
I stare, dumbfounded for a minute as it all starts to dawn. All the shit I’ve got stacked on me right now. All of it.
And I find myself immobile.
“Are you stupid on top of wasted? Go. Before I call the cops. You’re fired. Leave your keys.”
I have no idea where I’m even going. I don’t know where Shane went, either. What do I do? What the fuck will I do?
I woodenly walk back into the bedroom where I’ve got a duffle bag and a backpack. My stuff is all inside, I never made myself at home here. Tried to just stay here with as minimal a footprint as possible, knowing I wasn’t supposed to be here and that I hadn’t gotten permission.
I’ll grab my stuff and I’ll go. Go where? The warehouse? Where the heck is Shane gone? I’ve only been there once, and it’s in an industrial complex so I’m not even sure if I can find it on my own. I have to grab my stuff and his stuff and track him down, I guess.
But where would he even be? I don’t know anybody who was here, except sort-of the security guard.
Where’s my laptop? I look around. I need that laptop. That’s my only source of money, the only way I can look for jobs, the only thing I can do right now to help myself. It’s where my stories are, too, and I need it.
I check the master bedroom. Shane was there, maybe he took it in there.
I’m dizzy, I feel weak, and my heart hammers hard in my chest. Fast. Too fast, it feels like, but I keep looking for my laptop. Please don’t let it be gone. Please don’t let one of Shane’s junkie friends have taken it.
I look under the bed. It’s not there. I look in the bedding, which is all messed up (it wasn’t when I left earlier. We haven’t used this room. I’ve used the master bathroom, but Shane and I are both using the spare room for our stuff and he’s sleeping on the floor.) I sway with a headrush, like I got up too fast.
The guy hollers from behind me, “What are you doing?”
Why does he keep hollering at me? I can’t take it anymore.
“I need my laptop! And I don’t know where I’m going and what I’m doing and where Shane went and God, this is just my luck.”
I realize that I’m shouting at him instead of talking calmly, instead of acting sorry, which I am, but I can’t make myself stop shouting.
I blow out air and try to calm myself.
“You understand you’re fired, right? I’m gonna need the keys.”
“Fired from what, though? I tried to tell you I don’t work here.”
He looks at me strangely.
“You’re quitting after trashing the place?”
“No, I did work for Aiden and he moved. Do you not know this?” I snap.
He looks at me with confusion. “Did you know I was coming? Alice call you?”
“Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?”
I almost laugh. That’s the name of that song. A song Shane’s punk band friends started practicing after we moved our stuff in there the other day.
He gives me a weird look. “Let me get this straight. You aren’t here because you were rehired by CC?”
“Cici?”
“Carmichael Consul – never mind. What exactly are you doing here? Throwing parties and squatting in my brother’s place if you don’t work for him?”
“I…” I feel dizzy. Dizzier. “He said to consider myself freelance. I was just stuck and…” I lean against the wall.
“Does freelance mean you can throw sex parties in his apartment? Are you a hooker?”
“A what?”
“Stripper?”
He gestures to me with a face that says, duh, look at you.
My face burns hot.
“I’m not a hooker, not a stripper! How dare you!”
“I came in here and found a couple goin’ at it in the spare room and you in your dominatrix gear with that other couple gettin’ it on in my brother’s room, so yeah, I dare.”
If I were a stripper or a hooker I probably wouldn’t be homeless. Though, maybe I’d be bad at it so homeless anyway.
He shakes his head. “Just go or I call the cops. My brother might decide that they’re getting called anyway when he gets a load of this fucking place. Is that a goddamn … what the fuck? Is that a tarantula?”
“A what?”
“Look!”
I don’t wanna look, but he’s looking so I turn my head to look over my shoulder and immediately let out a blood curdling screech. There’s a giant furry spider walking through the sheets as casual as can be, like it’s his bed!
I run behind the guy, grabbing his shirt at his back.