Alhambra Motel Nights

The naive night clerk at a seedy red-light district motel is dragged unwillingly into an unlikely, and potentially dangerous side gig.


They bulldozed the Alhambra Motel.
I drove past last week as I do when nostalgia for my almer mater gets the better of me. From the safety of my locked, parked SUV, because Swampside is still the Swampside, I watched the wrecking ball take down the north wing, filling the pool in the centre of the two-storey U of scruffy rooms with rubble, not that it’s seen water for a decade. I may be the only one in the city who felt the slightest pang of regret.
You probably don’t know the Alhambra unless you were born into the Swampside, and if you were, congratulations on making it out. It’s a hellhole now but you should have seen it thirty years ago.
By day I took undergraduate anthropology at Westmore College.
At night, I got my PhD at the Alhambra. It was a flea pit even then, hell, the A was built derelict and went down hill through decades of calculated neglect before I signed on as the night clerk.
One of the guys in my industrial capitalist society tutorial tipped me off to the vacancy after I mentioned a dire need for spending money. He was sneering, challenging me, trying to impress girls with his wordly inside knowledge of the state’s meanest red-light district. But getting paid for putting my feet up at a quiet desk with thrilling proximity to salacious, dirty deeds sounded good to a country club kid who knew no better. My interview was barely more than proof I was eighteen and willing yet long enough for a couple of drug deals to go down in the restrooms across the sticky, brown stained industrial carpet from the manager’s office. A car was jacked out front while I was shown the reservation system and rostered for my first shift.
What followed was an education in so many ways.
I watched life in the raw play out through the thick glass in reception. Gunshots woke me half a dozen times. Hard-eyed first responders ventured warily into the corridors at least once a month with warrants, vague suspicions or summoned when odours or the ruckus through the paper-thin walls became unbearable to tenants in neighbouring rooms. With my clapped out Kia chained into the staff parking cage and the Ka-bar blade I bought from an army surplus store with my first wage packet, I spent many contented, productive hours in the Alhambra. That trusty blade remained in the drawer under the receptionist desk, thankfully never required, until graduation took me off to more harrowing, infinitely busier, slightly better paid, very occasionally rewarding but much less threatening employment as a city probation officer. I gave the owners a semblance of an official presence as required by law for three years, a  sordid carnival of low lifes room keys, change for the eternally jammed vending machines and a place to report blocked plumbing while I made the honour roll with a vast store of cautionary tales to astonish my peers by keeping my nose out of anyone else’s business and firmly in my books.
I didn’t know it then, but the most important lesson began late one Thursday night about three months into my first year at the A.
The after hours entry bell rang and I lurched to the release button with my head still full of arguments comparing and contrasting patriarchal trends in South Asian and European cultures. The door stuck as it did on hot nights. I said, ‘Push hard,’ into the intercom and it came open suddenly sending a woman stumbling into the foyer. She was neatly dressed, about thirty, flustered, harried, a gym bag over one shoulder, nose wrinkling at the unique Alhambra musk of sweat, cigarette tar and cleaning fluid. A sleek fish in murky waters. They turned upon from time to time in two distinct types, the first rented by the hour to shoot up in private, and she could have been one of those despite the Rodeo Drive vibe. Druggies come in all shapes and sizes, but her short-sleeved top and clean arms put her in the second category, hooking up for an illicit liaison where they wouldn’t be recognised or judged and her husband wouldn’t suspect. So, “Which room?” I asked, reaching for the internal phone because the male half of the infidelity usually checked in.
She fumbled for her purse did a double take and said, “Oh,” when she saw who she was dealing with.
It happened often.
The full glass panel that protected staff from Alhambra clients, and them from us, I guess, was thick enough to distort perspective until you stepped up close and no-one expected a preppy, white kid in a college sweat shirt in the A at any time, let alone ten o’clock at night.
She hesitated, probably suspecting she’d walked into the Holiday inn by mistake.
“Welcome to the Alhambra,” I said, because I have a sense of irony and in case the miasma and peeling paint weren’t enough to convince her.
“I want a room for the night.”
“The night?” I said. The rate chart pasted to the wall clearly stated the hourly rates. Latecomers rarely stayed more than a few.
She planted a hand on the six inches of counter on her side, hip tilted aggressively, but the corners of her eyes had sunk in what looked like exhaustion. 
“Is that a problem?” She phrased it as a plea more than a challenge.
“No, no,” I said, scrambling to realign.
“I’ve been driving a while. I need a place to … to sleep, okay?”
“Sure, sure, only, if you’ve come off the freeway, there’s a Best Western about five blocks over on Tobler Drive.”
She shuddered like she’s had enough.
“Okay. Okay. Fifty bucks for the night.”
She slapped three twenties into the slot under the glass. A panel slid across so I could remove the cash and leave change without fear of human contact, but I held it open.
“I’ll need ID.”
She glanced at the nicotine stains on the ceiling, saying, ‘You’re kidding? In this place?’ As eloquently as if she’d said the words out loud.
“Sorry. State law.” One of the few ordinances my employers enforced. They needed to know where to send collectors when customers generated excess cleaning and repair surcharges unpaid on departure.
She looked into her wallet and back at me, stumped, cornered, and I blurted out the universal Alhambra disclaimer, “Our records are private and confidential and will not be revealed without a court order,” quickly adding, “And, well, I have been known to blur the scan and misspell names,” with a sick grin to cover the flash of guilt because it was a lie. I’d never done it before, but her eyes flashed with something that made me think of a deer in the headlights. Don’t get me wrong, discomfort when we asked for the driver’s licence was universal, no-one wanted to leave a trail at the A, but her unease was different. Sharper, more anguished, deeper than the usual embarrassment or self-disgust.
I swapped her change and a key to one of the less disgusting rooms for her ID. I left the scanner cover open. Yeah, I had done that before, by accident, so I knew the image would be blurred beyond recognition, and sent it back to the woman without looking. By that stage I didn’t want to know her name or why she wanted a filthy room in the depths of Swampside. She grabbed her card and scrammed with a flash of a smile that was half fright and half grateful. 
I called after her, “The a lift’s…’ but she wasn’t listening.
After some thought, I wrote Janet Arbuthnot and a fake address by her room number in the register—Arbuthnot, if you’re wondering, wrote one of our text’s that semester, Women and Leadership: A Feminist Perspective—and shook off my lingering doubts about that woman in this flea pit as I went back to my term paper. She’d paid. She’d be gone by the morning. No-one would question the register entry or call up the scan, but after half a dozen attempts to type a coherent sentence, I shoved my laptop aside.
I rationalised what the Alhambra facilitated by looking down on the despair I saw as self-inflicted wounds, poor choices, but I wasn’t immune. I’d come to understand there’s a cliff edge desperately hard to judge where foolish but voluntary pursuit of mental release becomes addiction. Where turning tricks for easy cash becomes quicksand ringed with predators you can’t escape. Even from my lofty heights of moral superiority I’d chewed my fingernails through a few nights contemplating what went on in the rooms above and my part in putting the more innocent parties there. Praying they’d make it out to another day.
But the ones who’d previously haunted my conscience were too far gone to care who knew they’d checked in to the Alhambra. This woman wasn’t. Whatever brought Janet to the A, had to be bad. Skipped bail? Had she stolen from someone scary? And my dumb chivalry for a passably attractive older woman had made me an accomplice. I tasted iron as I stood over the registry seeing a cop or a mobster pointing at Arbuthnot and staring me down. Stupid, stupid idea. It was too late to make it an incomprehensible scrawl or leave the register blank. I made black coffee, placed it carefully and tipped it over the page. The damned stain only drew attention.
I wasted four hours of study time agonising over more and more lurid horrors. Nothing happened, of course. It never does when you worry yourself sick. It’s the mistakes you didn’t notice that blow up in your face. I never saw Janet again and had filed it safely under weird Alhambra experiences not to be shared in the college canteen room when, nine days later, it happened again.
Another thirty-something, lone woman shaking like a frightened rabbit, this one dressed for the mall in ironed jeans, t-shirt and exercise top. She put her driver’s licence in the slot with her cash but trapped it with rose-painted fingernails when I tried to slide the panel. 
“You fudge the register, right?”
I don’t know what I said, if anything, but her relief when I nodded, too dumbstruck to protest, is imprinted on my brain.
Another wasted night loomed while I kneaded the tight spot under my ribs and tried to think what to write in the register. Another feminist icon? No-one looked last time, but what in hell was happening? Had a network of housewife crime lords fixed on the Alhambra as a bolt hole?
Hammering shook the front door fifteen minutes later and I kicked myself for thinking the worst. She wasn’t another Janet. It had been a coincidence she asked about the register. This would be her lover. Or her dealer. I ground my jaw at the thought this school mum might be a junkie, but I’d seen it before.
I buzzed the lock to a mousey guy fixing a grin to his chops that didn’t want to be there.
“Sorry, son. I went out and forgot my damn key.”
“Okay, which room was that?”
“Here’s the thing,” he jammed his fingers into his hair. “I forgot that too. The name’s Holland.” He strained to see the register off to my right. “My wife made the booking. Rachel Holland.”
Spikes shot up and down my spine. That sounded awfully like the the name on the card I tried so hard not to see when I put it through the scanner with the cover raised. The wronged husband? The guy she stole from?
“Call her up,” he said. “Get Rachel to come down.”
I lifted the register with a flourish to make sure he couldn’t read over my shoulder and asked, “Sorry, sir. I can’t see any Hollands. What time did you and your wife arrive?”
His grin tightened into something feral. He slammed the counter with his open palm. “Just tell me who’s checked in tonight. Since seven.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t reveal any details of our clients.”
“Bullshit!”
“Unless you have a warrant.”
He went to his pocket and I flinched—that security glass is tough but it won’t stop a bullet. He came up with his wallet, pulled out a photo and slapped to the glass. “Her.”
“I can’t help you, sir.”
He added a hundred dollar bill. “You didn’t look at it. Look at it, boy!”
I took a deep breath and let my fingers wander to the Ka-bar. The lady in the head and shoulders portrait was the school mum, beaming, hair up in a cocktail dress and pearls.
“Don’t know her, sir.” How well do we know anyone? “Are you sure you have the right hotel?”
He growled, high pitched like a weasel, but snatched back his cash and photo, looked around the reception as if she might be hiding under the plastic couch, grunted and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
I gave it a minute, held my knife by my thigh while I slipped out to peek into the parking lot. He was by the pool fence, fists planted on his hips, staring around the U of windows on two levels. A pimp enraged that his girl was cutting him out? He didn’t look like a pimp, but he sure looked capable of violence. I locked myself back into reception and called Rachel Holland’s room. It rang out. I dialled again.
“Hello?” A whisper.
“This is James from reception. I don’t want to frighten you.” Any more than you’re already terrified. “But a man calling himself Holland asked after you in reception.”
“Oh my God.”
“He’s in the car park out front.”
A clunk as the telephone receiver landed on something hard, a scurry, then the phone being lifted again.
“It’s him. Is there a back way out?”
“Yeah, sure, the fire escape, but unless you climb the fence you have to come out around the front.”
“What do I do?”
“Call the cops. I’ll call as well.” Because the police did not prioritise the A short of shots fired.
“No. No. He can’t know I came here. It will make it worse.”
“I can’t say if he knows you’re here or he guessed. I didn’t tell him, and either way he has no idea which room you’re in.”
A fraught silence.
“Best if you lock the door and block it.”
A sharply indrawn breath.
“Look, maybe, well, maybe I should come up to your room.” With my knife. Jeezus, Jimbo, what the hell are you thinking? “I could lock you into reception with me.”
“No. He might see me. Somehow. Thank you, but no.”
“I’ll call when he goes.”
“Thank you.”
The man called Holland stalked around the pool for half an hour before he left.
I rang her room.
She didn’t answer.

+++++
​
I usually went straight to school from work, but that day I went home for a shower and a couple of straight bourbons having checked the lot carefully for Mr Holland before I went to my car. Guys like that can be stubborn.
So, when I arrived at college after my Thursday shift, a shout, “Excuse me!” had me reaching for my knife in reflex although the call was shrill and came from a shaggy sheep of a woman with a flower patterned scarf in her grey hair disembarking from a whale of a sedan that had come to a halt behind me. 
“Germaine Hernandez,” she said, brandishing a card.
I took it with trembling hand, expecting it to identify her as a government agent and it did, in a sense. Germaine Hernandez, it announced, was Director of the City Women’s Refuge.
“Thank you, for helping Rachel Holland,” she said, “and Marion Marchent.”
I handed the card back. “Who says—”
“I’m afraid to say I followed you here from The Alhambra Motel. You’re the night clerk, aren't you?”
“Whatever. I did nothing.” 
“Oh, no, you did much. You gave them no-questions-asked security and refused to give Rachel away under enormous pressure.”
I shook my head. “I can’t give out customer details.”
“Sometimes women like Rachel and Marion need a haven, a break, respite for a night or to start their journey out of a toxic relationship. We all know most people in your situation would side with the man, but you didn’t.”
“Isn’t that what your refuge is for?”
“Yes. But we’re swamped and it’s the first place controlling, abusive men look to take out their frustrations. We have a small network of what I suppose we would call safe places. I wanted tyou to know what you’re a part of.”
“Oh, no!” I threw up my hand and turned away. The next guy after Holland, or the next, might not take no for an answer. I didn’t need that anxiety and the A was no place for desperate women!
“Please. James, please, I—”
Except The Alhambra Hotel was already the place for the damaged and scorned of every size, shape and colour, and I couldn’t forget the fear in Marion Marchant’s eyes, or the relief in Rachel Holland’s. Damn that stupid saviour complex.
“Look, okay, but we have to come up with something better than Janet Arbuthnot.”  

+++++

Our city is a jungle full of pain. Three women arrived in the next fortnight. I switched the Ka-bar for a concealed carry licence and a Smith & Wesson and checked in many, many more Marions and Rachels over eighteen months until word of the Alhambra Motel’s unlikely secret spread to too many people who shouldn’t know and we retired the arrangement by mutual consent. I don’t know how many exactly, you’d better believe I didn’t count.


Image by Rochelle Parry from Pixabay