Page 26 of The Dream Hotel
S ara wakes to the driver cursing at traffic. They have been on this back road for the last three hours, after finding the freeway entrance closed. She wipes spittle from her mouth and looks out of the barred window at a landscape of rock and brittlebush. The sun is a faint orb in a tangerine sky, and the light is dim. The woman sitting behind her leans close, her breath hot against Sara’s neck. She speaks in a whisper, because talking on the bus is against the rules. “Got a tampon?”
Sara shakes her head. She’s brought nothing with her, because Hinton confiscated her pillowcase at boarding. The loss of her journal is enough to bring tears to her eyes again. She turns her face to the glass and weeps quietly, wiping her tears with the palm of her hand. Everything has been taken away from her. Not just the life she had before, with a million pleasures and luxuries she can scarcely remember, but also the rope she’s braided patiently over the last few months, and with which she hoisted herself from the depth of despair every morning. What will Hinton do with her journal? Read it to pass the time on his lunch break? Throw it into the trash without a look? Turn it in to the RAA as material evidence in her retention case? Each alternative seems as intolerable as the next. That journal belongs to her, and her alone.
The bus comes to an abrupt stop, its brakes hissing painfully. The driver leans on his horn until the car ahead of him begins moving again. Sara’s bladder feels full, she wishes she could relieve herself. “How far are we from Victorville?” she whispers to Emily, who sits beside her with her pillowcase in her lap. It was Jackson who processed her for boarding, and she let everyone in her line keep their belongings. If Sara had been in that line, instead of Hinton’s, she’d still have her notebook. “Do you know?”
“The sign back there said Hesperia.”
So not too far, Sara thinks with relief. She closes her eyes again, hoping for sleep, but the driver hits a pothole, and it feels as though someone has punched her in the bladder. She should’ve used the bathroom before they left Madison, but the thought never occurred to her, so anxious was she to leave. Now she slouches in her seat, trying to find an angle that will lessen the pressure she feels. Her big toe is throbbing with pain from being stepped on during the frenzy to get on the bus, and her arm hurts where someone pulled her back.
The driver stays on the small road for another two hours before getting back on the freeway. Finally the cloud of smoke is behind them, the sky is a pale yellow. At least Elias and the kids are safe from the fire, she consoles herself, at least they’re safe at home. Has the CRO sent them notice that she’s being evacuated? Have they been told where she is being taken? The CRO is quick to get on the loudspeaker about shift changes or broken pipes, but today he’s left the attendants in charge of handling the evacuation.
Late in the evening they reach Victorville and drive another five miles, past gas stations and fast-food joints and a nature preserve, to a beige stucco facility that still bears, carved above its front doors, the words Victorville High School . At the parking-lot gate, there is another wait while Safe-X agents give instructions to the driver, hollering so their voices can be heard over the roar of the engine. Finally the bus pulls up to a building in the back of the retention compound.
With guns pointed at them the women are untied, then marched into a gym, where cots have been arranged in rows under bright industrial lights. There are no sheets or blankets. The line to use the only toilet stretches the length of the hall. Congregating in the Restroom Is Strictly Prohibited , a sign says—a warning that is repeated in Spanish and Chinese. As Sara waits her turn she shifts on her feet, hums to herself, bends forward with her hands on her knees, but ten feet away from the bathroom door she can hold it no longer and soils herself. An acrid smell rises from the orange puddle slowly forming at her feet.
“Hey,” someone yells behind her. “Watch it.”
Sara keeps her eyes averted. When next the restroom door opens, the woman ahead of her in the line yields her position. Inside, Sara cleans herself as best as she can. Not even when she was pregnant with the twins did she feel as much pain in her bladder as she did today. She thinks wistfully about the individually sealed dose of ibuprofen she stuffed in her pillowcase, a precious commodity under any circumstances, let alone on a day like this. Why couldn’t Hinton have let her keep her things? What difference would it have made to him? She rinses her pants in the sink, wrings them, and comes out of the bathroom in her underwear.
From the back of the line, someone whistles.
Sara’s face turns hot. She covers the puddle with the paper napkins she got from the dispenser, then moves the tissue papers around with her shoe, mopping up the urine. The other women step away from her in disgust.
Afterwards she has to walk across the gym with her wet pants in her arms. A guard with a trolley is handing out power bars, but she feels too self-conscious to stand in front of him half-naked. She looks for a cot, but they have all been claimed already, so she finds a spot next to Emily, lays her pants to dry, and curls up beside them for the night.
An hour later, the lights are turned off.
—
Sara opens her eyes to find Hinton standing before her, flanked by two prison guards in brown uniforms. Have they come to escort everyone back to Madison? She scrambles to cover her bare legs with her pants, still wet from the night before. Her bruised knees stick out, the nail on her big toe is broken. The overhead lights are blindingly bright, and the stink of unwashed bodies hangs in the air. All around the gym, the women are rising from their cots, wiping sleep from their eyes, getting ready for device check. Why is Hinton towering over her like this? In his hand is her dream journal, with a dozen neon-colored page markers sticking out of it.
So he’s read it. And he’s brought it with him this morning to torment her. Enraged, she tries to grab the booklet, but he lifts it out of reach with one hand, while with the other he places a leather strap on her wrist. Sara lets out a yelp of surprise. What is happening? In a swift motion, Hinton tightens the strap around her wrist and unfurls the rest of the leash. “What are you doing?” she manages to ask. Her chest is tight, she feels out of breath. “What are you doing?”
With the leash Hinton pulls her to a standing position and leads her, bare-legged and barefoot, toward the door. The two guards follow behind, a hand on their holsters. From their cots the other women stare.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the cage. Where you belong.”
“No!” She pulls back violently at the leash—and wakes when her elbow hits the wall.
—
The smell isn’t so strong at first; it might be nothing more than the foul odor from the bathrooms that haven’t been serviced, or the fetid scent of a hundred and eight women who’ve been locked in a windowless gym for the past eleven hours. Sara tries to find a comfortable position on the vinyl floors, tries to go back to sleep. But as time passes, the smell becomes more distinct.
Smoke.
She sits up, alarmed. Under the LED lights of the cameras mounted along the wall, she can see wisps of smoke filtering from the vents. Emily has woken up, too. “Fire!” she yells in a voice that carries clear across the gym. “Fire!” She walks along the aisle, shaking the women awake. One by one they rise from their cots.
Sara runs to the nearest camera and waves her arms like a madwoman, trying desperately to get the attention of whoever is watching from the other end. Some of the women go to the door and bang on it with their fists. “Fire!” they yell. “Open the doors!”
Smoke continues to seep through the vents. Sara is struggling to breathe, her cloth mask is useless. She joins the crowd at the door, trying to push it open. Then someone unlocks it from the other side, and she is crushed under the weight of other bodies. She takes a hit on the head—and wakes on the floor of the gym.
—
Zach stands in the driveway, under the shade of the magnolia tree, his inhaler bulging out of the front pocket of his jeans. It is a sunny day in June, school has just let out for the summer. “My turn to be the zombie,” he says.
“No, my turn,” Sa?d replies. He just got a haircut, his ears stick out.
Zach and Sara protest at once. Sa?d has already gotten two turns, and wasn’t he it when they played Red Light, Green Light? That’s not fair. Inside the house, the kettle is whistling on the stove. Their mothers must be making mint tea, getting ready to watch their TV show together.
But Sa?d ignores the complaints. He contorts his face, tilts his head, and starts walking out of step across the driveway. His eyes bulge, his movements are jerky. Whether the others like it or not, the game has begun. He tries to catch Zach first, but Zach is too tall, too agile. So Sa?d goes for Sara. As they tussle, she falls to the ground, and blood gushes out of her knee. “Mama,” she calls. “Help!” But no one comes to her aid and she has to kick and pinch and elbow her brother in order to free herself. As she tries to release Sa?d’s grip on her, she realizes that his face has turned into a skull.
—
“Rough night?” Emily asks in the morning. The industrial lights have come on, the cameras whirr as they follow the movements of the women rising from their slumber. Marcela is doing sun salutations, Alice is unfolding her headwrap, Toya has turned her face to the wall, trying to sleep some more. Somewhere outside, a truck beeps as its driver goes into reverse. “You look a little pale.”
“I haven’t had anything to eat, is all,” Sara replies. Her pants are still damp and smelly. To think that she once stood every morning in her closet, undecided about which shirt to pair with which skirt, or what piece of jewelry might best complement the dress she picked out. After a moment of hesitation she slips her pants on and walks to the restroom. Sleeping on the floor has left her with pains and aches all over her body, but it comes as some relief that there’s no smoke, that the only scent in the air is that of the women around her. Maybe the fire has been contained.
The line is mercifully shorter than the night before, but by the time her turn comes there’s no soap and the napkin dispenser is empty. She washes her face and hands, fretting all the while about the smell of urine that lingers on her. As she steps out of the bathroom, she bumps into Toya, who carries a little ziplock bag with her medications. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
Toya puts a hand on Sara’s arm. “Emily told me what happened.”
“We had to try something.”
“You had a bad day. Everyone does, at some point. You’re lucky you didn’t get caught.”
Sara nods. Someone pushes past them to get out of the bathroom; it’s the woman who sat behind Sara on the bus; her pants are wet, and stained maroon. The gym where they’re being housed has no supplies of any kind. Sara is about to ask Toya if she can spare an Advil for the broken nail on her toe when Victoria comes to the door. “Are you two coming or going? Don’t just stand there. You’re blocking the way.”
Toya goes in, Sara comes out.
Moments later a bell rings. Two Safe-X guards walk the length of the warehouse, telling the women to pick up their things, straighten their cots, keep the alleys clear. Once the safety check is completed, another guard orders the women to stand. But instead of the neuroprosthetic scanner at Madison, he uses a simple counting device.
At least there’s that.
—
For five days the women remain in the gym. Being segregated from the other retainees at Victorville—most of them men under investigation for future gun crimes—they can’t use the television room or the exercise yard or the comm pods. Meals consisting of stale sandwiches and salty snacks are brought on trolleys by two guards, who are immediately assailed with questions each time they hand out the food. Is the fire contained? Have you notified our families? Can we make phone calls? Can we get some soap? How about a change of clothes? And the most common, the most pressing question: When will we get out of here?
There is no air-conditioning, and the little ventilation they get is from the doors that open to let guards in and out. The crowding around the food trolleys gets especially intense on the second day. “Get back,” one of the guards yells at the women. “Make a single fucking line.” With a flick of the wrist he unlocks his baton and raises it, which is enough to force the retainees to comply, but the heat and the rank smell of the women have made him pale and a minute later he faces the wall and throws up.
From then on, the retainees are ordered to remain six feet away from the trolleys. No one who approaches without verbal permission from a guard will be given any food.
Rumors run wild. The firefighters are slowly gaining control of the fire. No, they’re losing the battle, and the entire town of Lake Perris is gone. The freeways have reopened. No, only the 10 and the 5 are open, the other freeways are still closed. Governor García is going to grant some compassionate releases on account of the wildfire. No, you must’ve heard wrong. Retainees evacuated from another Safe-X facility have been put in a cramped activities room, we’re lucky to be in the gym. Bitch, you call this luck?
And so on.
The uncertainty is compounded by boredom; Sara would do anything for a book. After hours of cajoling, Emily allows her to read the unfinished comic book, which turns out to be not about the pyromaniac superhero so much as it is about Rina Campoy’s relationship to her mother, a burlesque dancer who travels the country with members of her company. The work is exhausting and precarious, so she leaves Rina in the care of an uncle whose nine-to-five job she believes will provide a more stable lifestyle. The uncle is a struggling scientist for a weapons corporation based in Washington, D.C., and when he needs volunteers to test his experimental serum, he secretly uses his niece. As Rina grows up and her powers become evident, she spends much of her time trying to reconnect with her mother.
“What part are you at?” Emily asks, after every few pages. The rash on her neck seems to be clearing. “Do you like it?”
“It’s not at all what I expected.”
“In a good or bad way?”
“In a great way.” If only she’d been in the same line as Emily when they were being processed for boarding, she could’ve kept her journal. She could be writing a letter to Elias, or recording all that she’s seen of this facility, or jotting down the horrendous dreams she’s been having since she’s been brought to Victorville. What will the RAA’s algorithm make of these nightmares?
On the sixth day the guards finally bring some news: the women are to get ready; they will be driven back to their retention center this morning. This time, the bus driver takes the main road, speeding past apartment buildings and strip malls toward the freeway. Sara leans her forehead against the barred window. The sky is gray, the trees bend under the heat. When they exit the freeway, they pass a cluster of damaged structures in the little town of Ellis—a gas station, a tire shop, and two adjoining convenience stores.
Ellis used to be known for its tool factory, which once supplied farms throughout California with modern equipment; there are still murals here and there celebrating the workers who built the town, proclaiming it the place where “imagination meets creation.” But these days the factory is home to a Twenty-Thirder community—a subject of frequent complaints among Safe-X attendants, who blame it for the general dilapidation of the town.
Without slowing down, the bus crosses old railroad tracks to the eastern part of Ellis, where all the structures have remained safe from the fire. Including Madison.