Lola: Chapter Fifteen
Driftwood Motel. Lola closes the door to her room and puts the chain lock on. She collapses onto her bed. She feels something beneath her. A hard object digging into her back. She reaches down and pulls out the gun that killed Walters. She stares at the gun, she stares at her hand holding the gun, her hand still bloodied from the blood of Walters’ dying body. Blood down the front of her shirt. Walters’ blood all over her body, all over the warehouse floor. She takes the clip out of the gun and throws it across the room. She stands up from the bed, alone, in this random motel room, far from her previous life, even farther from her current life, far from any kind of possible future of happiness or contentment or even safety. Lola is truly alone now. No hitmen chasing her, no hitman to console her. Alone. Defeated by Roxanne.
A bag sits on the bedside table. It’s a small bag but it contains the few items Lola still owns and possesses in this world. A couple of changes of clothes, some makeup and other necessary supplies. And one picture. The picture she took as she left her house for the last time. The picture of her with her former husband, Bill, of both of them smiling, early on in the newlywed phase, when the future is just that, a future, with unlimited possibilities, with the hope for a long life filled with all of the things she ever wanted. What did she want? What did she want back then? Lola stares at the picture. She looks at her own face, unformed, like a baby’s face before the bone structure solidifies and the muscles fill in. She never knew what she wanted, did she? Not when she moved to Los Angeles, not before she got married, not after she got married. She never knew. She knew what she didn’t want, what she was running away from, not what she was running towards.
An unformed mass of expectations and hopes and childish dreams, that’s what she is looking at when she looks at that picture and her face. That is the person she used to be. Now, after all that has been taken from her, she is left with one thing. It isn’t the clothes in the bag on the side table. It isn’t the memories of her past life or the picture she holds in her hand; it’s a purpose. For all that was taken, she was left with that purpose. It isn’t a happy purpose or a hopeful one, it’s mean and vengeful and dark, but it’s there, it’s given her a meaning she never had. That bitch tricked her into leading a guy to his death, she stole my $93,000, the money I was going to use to start over, and then she tricked me one last time into killing the only person who was trying to help me.
Yeah, I would say I have a pretty definitive fucking purpose. I’m not some unformed baby calf that can be led around by the neck anymore, I’ve grown a lot in the days since I woke up with amnesia next to a dead guy. I’ve grown more than most people do in a lifetime in the last one hundred and twenty hours.
Tears begin to flow from Lola’s eyes, because of the death, not just Walters’ death but her own as well. Dorothy Drake died when Walters died, maybe even before she shot him, maybe when she shot the goon to save Walters’ life, or maybe when she watched Roxanne slice Frank Moreno’s throat open. Dorothy Drake is most certainly dead. But in her death she has created life. She has given Lola a mission.
The tears stop as suddenly as they start, her eyes as dry as fire. Those hands start tearing the photo, tearing and tearing, ripping and ripping, a piece of radiated phosphate to shreds with a vicious ferocity reserved for the wronged in the world. It’s only a bunch of snowflakes now, littering the moldy gray carpet of the motel room. Lola goes and finds that clip she threw across the room. She’s going to need it. Because of the mission. She only gets to live again once that mission is complete. She only gets to reclaim her life once her revenge is complete.
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There’s a pleasant white two-story house sitting on a quiet street called Arrowhead in a section of the San Fernando Valley called Van Nuys. It hasn’t been occupied for some time. It’s been broken into a couple of times lately, at different times by different men carrying firearms, but it’s been untouched since a couple on the run hastily left it at peace a few days ago.
The middle of the dark of night. So far into the abyss of the night, everything is asleep. There are no dogs or cats making noise. The cars that travel major thoroughfares at late hours don’t touch this street at this time. A little oasis of serenity.
The windows of the of white house are darker than the night. Like the eyes of the dead. Until. In the back, far in the back of the eyeball, there is a flicker. It looks like a light being turned in one of the back rooms only it’s not a light being turned on, it’s the type of flicker that keeps flicking. And grows. It’s followed by another flicker in the living room two rooms away that can be seen from the large bay window in the front of the house and then a third flicker of orange flame in the front room that can be seen from the street.
The man tasked with watching the house by Jackson for Roxanne sits up in the driver’s side seat he has planted himself into for the last eight hours of his shift. This has been what he is waiting for. Some sign of life. He may not have expected a fire, but in his line of work it’s not exactly unheard of either. With the appearance of the flames, he readies himself for an appearance of a person. He draws his Beretta 92FS and waits for that inevitable someone to emerge, running out the front door to safety as flames grow higher behind them. His hand goes to the latch on the door, he opens it a smidgen. He puts his left foot on the ground. He doesn’t want to miss the running person. His eyes stay on the front door.
The front door never opens, it stays shut until the white of the door begins to crisp at its edges. Dusted white turns orange, fire burning through wood, orange turns brown then black, the entire faded white of the front door glows alongside its burnt frame until the whole thing lights up like a torch in the night along with the rest of the front of the house. No one emerges from that fire, no running person, no walking person, no dying person. The man and his drawn Berretta are confused, and a little disappointed. He expected more. There’s only a quaint nice white two-bedroom craftsman house now completely immolated from the ceremonial bonfire.
Some kind of accelerant must have been used to make this place go up like a yule log, it’s going to be ash before the fire trucks arrive. The man, one of Roxanne’s many nameless henchmen, can hardly believe his eyes at this offering to the gods of war. The house continues to burn, the henchman continues to watch, distracted from his duties by the giant flames.
Somewhere behind the house, somewhere down a forgotten alley, a figure in dark clothes with a black ski cap over her hair walks away with a confident stride. She knew the house was being watched. She knew she just sent a message.