Lola: Chapter Three

Lola walks down the street in her tattered black dress, her face charred from the blast, bruises all over her body. Luckily, all her major bones seem to be still intact, but she is pretty beat up and feels pretty beat up. She sees a restaurant opening for the day. It’s a nice restaurant, Lola doesn’t care about that. She needs a place to collect her thoughts, to wash her face, to figure out her next move.

What a fucking morning.

She enters the restaurant and quickly makes her way to the bathroom. Lola finds herself at another sink, just like the one in the motel, she washes her face again, just like in the motel, trying to wash away the previous night and the current morning, trying to wash away the situation she finds herself. What is that situation exactly, she isn’t even sure. How did she end up in that motel room with that bomb and that dead guy.

Another woman enters the bathroom. The woman is well-dressed, maybe this restaurant is a little too nice to use to recover from a bomb blast and a one-night stand. The woman takes a look at Lola, her bare feet, her hair a tangled knotted mess, a black dress that might have been nice once but is not nice now and maybe a little too cheap for this restaurant, certainly to cheap for this well-dressed snob of a woman.

“Rough day.” The woman does not seem to be understanding of Lola’s situation.

Lola gives her the look of death as the woman enters one of the stalls. Lola looks back in the mirror.

Yeah, it’s been a pretty fucking rough day.

There’s movement in the stall as Lola splashes water on her face yet again. No amount of water is going to remove the dust of the morning. She looks over to the stall, the source of the movement. She sees the woman’s handbag on the floor at the edge of the stall. Sticking out of the handbag is a red purse.

Lola looks down to her bare feet. They are worse off than her face, covered in black soot. Lola realizes she has no money and no place to go. She realizes that she’s lucky to be alive but that somebody killed the guy next to her in bed. She remembers the note saying goodbye, somebody wants her dead, too.

Lola looks over at the stall again. The red purse is still there, like a candy cane sticking out of a stocking. The woman is occupied. She’s not going to miss the purse.

Fuck her.

Lola is walking on the street again going through the contents of a small red purse. Credit cards, driver’s license, other cards, she doesn’t care for any of those. There is some cash, not much, enough to buy her a pair of shoes and a little time. She tosses the purse in the garbage and keeps walking.

There’s a clothing store a few blocks down. Lola walks in and emerges a few minutes later in a comfortable pair of pumps. At least her aching feet have some protection now. Her next move is obvious. It’s really the only thing she can do.

Lola finds a payphone a few more blocks down. She has change from her recent purchase. She has the card from the motel. She looks at the card again.

“Dorothy Drake. I can make your dreams come true.”

Lola’s not looking for her dreams to come true but she does need information. She puts the change into the payphone and calls the number on the card, praying this Dorothy woman answers and has some answers.

The phone rings and rings and rings.

The click of an answering machine then an automated voice comes on, not the voice of a human, the voice of a computer imitating a human. It says to leave a message. Lola hangs up.

It’s not even 10 am and it’s already been the longest day of Lola’s life. It was almost the last day of Lola’s life. She walks a few more blocks and finds a park and a park bench. She doesn’t have much in this world. She can’t remember who she is. She only remembers fragments of her past and goddamn is she tired. The weight of a forgotten past is crushing her. It’s a pretty busy park. It seems safe. At least during the daylight it might be safe.

I am going to close my eyes for only a few seconds, just a few seconds. Okay, maybe a minute. I need rest. I need to get this headache to stop. Anything to get this headache to stop.

Lola lays down on the bench to rest her beaten body and pounding head. She clutches the rest of the money in her right hand, balled up into a fist. It’s only going to be for a minute or two, just enough to refresh her mind, so that she can figure out everything, anything.

Just for a minute, only a minute.

Across the park, a nondescript car is parked amongst other nondescript cars lining a side street. There’s a driver inside. He’s been in there for quite a while, a shadow that refuses to exit the vehicle. The shadow has a good vantage point from where he sits. He sees the entire park and all of its activity and he sees Lola sleeping on a park bench in her black dress clutching her dollar bills.

The shadow pulls out his phone and makes a call. On the other end of the call is a man named Walters. Walters nods a couple of times as the shadow gives him information. Walters had been given his assignment by Jackson earlier that morning. Now he has the information he needs to complete that assignment.

-----

Hours have passed, Lola is in REM sleep, she is dreaming or remembering, who knows if there is a difference between the two.

A blonde woman with short hair in sunglasses is talking to her in her dream. It’s the same woman that flashed in her head in the motel when she saw the Dorothy Drake card.

Lola and the blonde are sitting inside a coffee shop having a very animated conversation. It’s a little too animated. But it’s a dream so Lola can’t make out any of the words, only the energy of the conversation. They are hidden from the outside tables of the coffee shop. There might be a reason for this. It feels like they are hiding from someone. The blonde finally sees that someone, her prey. She gestures to them. They are sitting outside. Lola turns to look behind her and there’s a guy alone at one of the tables. He’s drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. This must be his normal morning routine.

Of course, it’s not just any guy. It’s the dead guy from the motel. It’s Frank Moreno. The blonde doesn’t take off her sunglasses but she does lean in and whispers into Lola’s ear. Lola understands. She gets up from the booth and walks outside.

The name of the coffee shop flashes in Lola’s head, now it’s definitely memories not dream. “Ray’s Coffee Shop.” Such a generic name. Who is this Ray guy anyway. She startles awake.

Groggy, it takes Lola a few seconds to realize where she is and how she got there. Park benches are not comfortable to sleep on. She cracks her back as she sits up. It seems like she is missing something. Lola looks down at her once balled up fist. It’s no longer balled up, the dollar bills she had been clutching are gone. She looks down at the ground, hoping they had fallen, but they haven’t fallen. They were taken.

Fuck.

Even though she knows the money is gone it still feels like she’s missing something else. Lola looks down at her feet. Her new shoes are gone as well.

Double Fuck.

This day is not going well. Lola sits up on the bench. It might be the afternoon now. It feels like the afternoon, or maybe lunch. Lunch is a good time to go to a coffee shop. Lola needs to find that coffee shop.

Through stillborn eyes Lola looks out across the park. Randomly, she has chosen the exact spot where the shadow sits inside his car, only she doesn’t know he is there, would have no reason to know he is there, that she is being watched. Lola’s groggy throbbing head tries to think clearly. If last night was last night with all of the activities with the guy in the motel, then she must have been at that coffee shop yesterday. They picked him up at that coffee shop to take him back to that motel. And if they picked him up at that coffee shop it can’t be that far from the motel. She isn’t far from the motel now.

Lola may not be able remember who she is, but she can remember her city. She remembers all kinds of random places and important landmarks of Los Angeles and its roads and restaurants and even coffee shops. And if by some miracle as she sits on that park bench staring out into an abyss while being watched by a menacing shadow of death, she remembers where the Ray’s Coffee Shop is and how to get there. It’s just a short bus ride away.

-----

A Los Angeles city bus pulls up to its stop. Several passengers get on putting their money into the slot. The driver is about to close the door when Lola’s hand stops it from closing, she is pretending to be out of breath. She steps on the bus.

The driver looks at the pay slot. Lola looks at the pay slot. She doesn’t have any money. She is still breathing heavily, pretending to breathe heavily, she puts on her best desperate and tries to look like a tourist who has just been mugged, which in a way is kind of true.

“It was horrible… They even took my shoes.”

The bus driver looks at her bare feet, her tattered dress, her tangled hair, Lola may be acting a role but those assholes did take her money and her shoes. The bus driver lets her on. Satisfied, Lola makes her way to a seat.

The bus jumpstarts as buses do as it leaves it’s stop, and with her reflection in the window, Lola watches the city go by for a few blocks.

Ray’s Coffee was farther than Lola thought. Maybe the map in her head is a little off. She had the right street, though, she had the right bus line and after twenty minutes she had the right stop.

The bus makes it to the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles and Lola gets off at the stop a block from the coffee shop. Tentatively, she walks up to it, seeing chairs placed haphazardly outside. Was she here just yesterday? It seems like a previous life or a dream. Actually, a nightmare, maybe it’s a nightmare she is having and she will wake up from. If only that were true.

Lola walks up to those cheap plastic chairs and those cheap plastic tables outside the apparently cheap coffee shop, a few customers are drinking their coffee and eating the bagels, it’s not that busy. An older man looks up and watches Lola. He watches her like he knows her.

Was this guy here yesterday? Does he recognize me? Why is he looking at me like that?

She walks by him into the shop. She waits in line for her coffee like everyone else. It’s a pretty long line. AS she waits, she looks over to the booth where she sat with the blonde in sunglasses, hoping it would bring back the details of their conversation. It doesn’t bring back anything, only that she was there, that they were there and that the dead man from the motel was sitting outside.

It’s Lola’s turn to order coffee. She doesn’t want to order coffee. She’s desperate. The woman behind the counter already doesn’t like her.

“I’m sorry, I was wondering if you could help me. I’m looking for a friend of mine.”

The woman behind the counter audibly sighs.

“She was in here yesterday, I think. We both were in here yesterday. Or maybe a couple of days ago. She’s blonde, medium height, she was wearing sunglasses.”

The woman behind the counter shakes her head, why is this nutjob wasting her time. “In this town, honey, that’s just about everybody.”

“I need to find her. If you could just help...”

“I can help you if you want some coffee.” She cuts Lola off.

“Please, if..”

“Next.” She looks behind Lola, some businessman is anxious to get his order in and steps up moving Lola over like a shunted child.

“Could I have a caramel espresso macchiato.”

The woman behind the counter rings him up, the businessman pays, Lola watches, still like an ignored little kid.

The businessman dumps his extra change into the tip jar and goes and waits at the next counter for his coffee to be delivered. The woman behind the counter turns around to make the coffee.

Lola looks at the tip jar where the change was deposited. That damn tip jar. She scans the room. No one is paying attention to her. She is still invisible.

Lola emerges from the coffee shop with a handful of bills and change and starts walking. The tip jar was less bountiful than the red purse but maybe she can cover her bare feet again and make another phone call again.

From a distance, from atop one of the neighboring buildings, a man looks down at her, watching her. He doesn’t watch with the naked eye, he watches her through a powerful magnifying glass, through the scope of a high-powered rifle. The crosshairs of that rifle are directly on Lola’s head.

From Walters’ vantage point, he can see Lola talking to another one of the workers at the coffee shop. This worker was wiping one of the tables. Walters’ finger massages the trigger of the rifle. It seems like Lola doesn’t get the answer she wants. She walks away from the worker and the coffee shop dejected. Walters is still waiting for any sign of that briefcase.

There’s a Rite Aid on the corner of the block. Lola walks in to the Rite Aid. She emerges a couple of minutes later wearing a pair of cheap flip-flops. She marches down the street another block to a payphone. She takes out some change and the Dorothy Drake card. She calls the number on the card again, praying for a better answer this time.

It rings and rings. Lola gets the answering machine with the automated voice. She’s going to leave a message. She needs to leave a message. Lola’s voice falters a little at first, she starts to find the right words to say to this stranger.

“I need to talk with you...I think you know me, I don’t really remember. That’s why I need to talk with you.”

She waits, waiting for the machine to respond. It’s only dead air.

“I don’t have a cell phone, I’ll call back tonight. Please pick up tonight, I need..” The machine beeps, cutting her off, ending her message. Lola hangs up and lets her head rest on the phone, cursing and praying at the same time. She closes her eyes and would like to wake up from this nightmare of forgetting.

She doesn’t wake up. She hears a loud bus instead. Lola doesn’t think, she quickly gets on, this time she has money for the slot, taking the bus to someplace else, anywhere else. Maybe anywhere else will be safer.

A car pulls out following the bus. The driver takes out his phone and makes a call.

“Jackson. Yeah, I’m watching her.” Walters says. He listens for a second, he answers, “No, there’s no sign of it yet. I think the person she was supposed to meet didn’t show. I’ll stay on her.”

The bus drives off into the sunset, Walters follows.