Page 14 of Face

“Hey, good lookin’,” an older woman said as I passed. She had huge tits spilling out of her tight purple top, and her red lipstick was smeared a little. She looked drunk, or high, or both. “Need a date, sweetie?” she slurred with a lazy smile.

“No thanks,” I mumbled before picking up the pace and walking faster.

I couldn’t believe how crowded this place was. I had done a near-obsessive amount of research on this city, pulling up every Google Maps photo I could find to see what I was getting myself into.

Finally reaching the motel, I stopped in front of it and frowned. “This dump is ninety bucks a night?” I asked myself. With a sigh, I wandered inside and checked in. I paid for two weeks in advance before taking the card key from the clerk and heading toward my room.

I breathed a sigh of relief to see it was clean. One double bed, a dresser, and a small but functional bathroom. After unpacking my oversized backpack, I shoved it into the closet underneath the dress shirts I’d hung up. The jeans and pants I folded nicely on the rack above the shirts, and everything else went into the dresser drawers. The toiletries I stacked neatly on the bathroom counter.

Time on my phone told me I had an hour to get to the audition I had scheduled. “Shit.”

I took a quick shower and put on a dress shirt and jeans, hoping the wrinkles weren’t too noticeable. I pulled up a car service on my phone and ordered a ride to my destination while I perfected my hair. The phone alerted me my ride was here as I sprayed on some cologne. After snatching the folder containing my portfolio of photos, I raced out the door to my appointment.

The clock showed I had five minutes to be there, but the map app showed I still had almost three miles to go. The traffic was moving at a snail’s pace, and I began to panic. I knew I wouldn’t be there in time.

Should I call and say I’m gonna be late?

“Ma’am. Excuse me, but is there an alternate route or something you can take?” I asked the driver.

She pulled the gum out of her mouth and set it on a cup in the cupholder before looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Nope, sorry, cutie. This is the fastest route. LA traffic is a bitch.”

I never ran into traffic problems like this in Texas. Lesson learned.

I arrived six minutes late, racing into the lobby and giving the receptionist my name.

“Sorry I’m late, traffic.”

“Shocking,” she muttered before handing me a piece of paper with the number thirteen printed on it. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks,” I said, finding an empty chair in a waiting room full of men. Men… who all looked just like me.

Well, crap.

I blinked my eyes open and scrubbed a hand down my face with a groan. Why was I dreaming about events from five years ago? These dreams had been coming to me a lot lately, and I didn’t like it. I picked up my phone from the nightstand and saw it was close to four p.m. I slogged out of bed and headed toward the shower.

After I was cleaned up, I took the stairs down into the clubhouse and saw Venom in his wolf form. He sat on his haunches on the concrete floor, looking at the television we had mounted near his cage. I went over and patted him on the head.

“Last night of the full moon at least, huh? You excited about being a papa soon?” I asked him.

He stared up at me and woofed softly. I didn’t need him to use his yes/no squares to answer the question, I knew he was, it was all he talked about. They had decided to let the sex of the baby be a surprise, so nobody knew what to get the kid. The hens of the house were especially annoyed by this. It made me laugh.

I headed toward my office, a little sad that I’d never be a dad. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted kids, but it definitely wasn’t happening now. I thought about my family back in Texas, my mom, dad, and sister. I could still see and talk to them, but Viper had told me I would to have to fake my own death or something in about ten years. With a sigh, I sat down and booted up the machine until all the monitors flickered to life. After putting in my password, I frowned when the antivirus software alerted me to a problem.

“Dammit, what now?”

I clicked on the notification and saw another piece of malware had come through. I was getting sick of this crap. I isolated the malware and used what I’d seen Rocky do to remove it for good. After a few checks, I saw the computer was clean, but realized I had to do something. Thoughts of completely tearing down the system and rebuilding it from scratch filtered through my mind. But the idea of having to do that made me want to stab myself in the eye instead, since it had taken me months to build it when I first got here. Hours and hours of sleepless days. However, it was a real possibility if I couldn’t stop this shit.

“What’s up, buttercup?”

I looked up to see Jemini standing in my doorway holding a coffee mug that read Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

How many damn smartass coffee mugs did we have in this joint?

“More malware,” I murmured. “Got rid of it.”

Her eyes widened over the rim of her bloody beverage. “Are you serious? What the hell. How does this trash keep getting in?”

I shook my head. “I wish I knew, but I’m this close to cloning the drives and then wiping it all clean. Start over with a new server.”

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