We got to the motel in July, a few days after the 4th, and there was still scuff marks on the asphalt of the nearby streets where illegal firework had gone off, and every once in a while you would see Sparklers leftovers on the sidewalks that lined State College Blvd. We had no jobs, since Seattle was pretty far away. But we were still on the west coast, and just as long as we kept the summer alive and the California hope in our hearts, we felt we did not have to worry too much. Jake was applying at every fast food restaurant on the boulevard, and he got a few call backs but minimum wage wasn't where we wanted to be. We had a combined $450 bucks to our names when we arrived off the bus. Literally, off the bus, from the MTA in Los Angeles, which took us to Disneyland, which lead to a bus down a small street onto State College Blvd. So we had to condense our money.
It was tough, and the loud nights would be pretty scary, and if you dared to look out your window on any weekday or weekend, you'd see something to freak you out. It was as if when the moon came out, every hooker in Orange County began to line the street with their seductive ways, and at some hours of the night, they didn't seem to care if they were being discreet or not. Jake swore he seen a police officer take one of the girls in his car and pulled off to a side street for some action and then dropped her off when he was done.
âI swear, I just seen it,â he said, whispering in our room, which was getting so hot, not having a working AC for a few days. âThe cop didn't arrest her. He even paid.â
âYou're delusional. Stop eating Joaquin's brownies,â I told him, kind of believing what he was saying. Not because it sounded truthful, but maybe because a part of me wanted it to be true. I don't know why. It was all pretty weird those nights.
As the nights began to become increasingly self aware of itself, I began to notice less and less how weird the nights were. I would hear a scream and a bunch of arguing following that scream, and eventually a few slammed doors, and all of this became second nature. I got to the point where I was so used to it, I didn't even flinch when I heard a gunshot. But that was the night it all changed. A month into our stay at Motel Tampico, Room 7 was the sight of a murder investigation. A room right below us, to the right, and it was not that I didn't care about the gunshot, it was just that I was programmedâin a wayâto ignore it. All the cheap sex slaves and hookers and the drugs kept me numb to the worst out there, and being in this motel for a little over a month made me feel so less afraid than I probably should have.
The Anaheim Police Department flooded the parking lot the very next morning, and the place had been yellow-taped off. I was told to stay in my room, which wasn't a problem for me, since I wasn't going job hunting that day. Jake had left early in the morning with a neighbor to score some coke in Huntington Beach. âThe surfer's got the best stuff this side of the 5 freewayâ is what the neighbor said to convince Jake. So he was gone and I was alone in the room, watching Maury re-runs, and trying to stay cool with a portable fan. My iPhone had been shut off for three weeks by that time, and I was no longer aware of anything that had to do with social media. It wasn't a part of my world anymore. And with my parents having just kicked me out for sleeping with Jake in my bedroom, I pretty much was alone in the world for a few hours that Sunday morning, as the police took evidence from the room.
It seemed the police found enough to call for a city wide investigation: a couple of condoms taken out of their package, but not used; a dead body (a woman, age 19, blond hair, ID unknown at time of locating the body) and a used bullet shell. The gunshot I heard was the one that punctured the woman's head, and the wound was said to be at point blank range and one of my neighbors said they peeked inside the room and they said blood was on the walls and that a Jim Morrison poster was on the wall too, and Jim's eyes were following you wherever you went in the house. When I heard this, I freaked out, thinking of Jim looking at me in that dim lit room, probably smoking a bunch of pot and drinking a bunch, listening to Lana Del Rey or The Weeknd.
Jake got back from the beach and was high. I told him the updates on the motel room below us, and he started to get paranoid. Really bad. He locked the front door and shut his phone off (which is funny because his was shut off when mine was shut off, but he turned it off, literally). Jake was starting to go through a mental checklist of any suspicious person he seen around the motel that might have been involved in the shooting. That Friday, as the news trucks came and did their reports, he scanned his mind for any clues or leads. He was going in full paranoia mode, but he stopped every once in a while to do some cocaine lines with me and we both started to feel very on edge and practically renovated the room within the last few hours of the afternoon and as the night came, that Sunday evening, we both sat on the edge of our bed and watched Modern Family until we fell asleep.
The next morning Robin Williams was found dead in his home, just as every news channel broke the news. Every channel was showing montage after montage of his movies and it was really too much for us to handle. We both freaked out. We grew up with his movies and felt a certain disdain about the unfortunate events happening one day to the next. We cried that Monday, both Jake and I sobbing in each others' arms, trying to make sense of all of this. As the investigation team ran their course downstairs, in Room 7, we sat upstairs, crying in our bed, and it all felt like too much. I tried to get something to eat at Taco Bell, and even one of the TVs in the dining room was showing clips with Robin Williams, with the sound off, and it seemed to add some sort of eerie vibe to it all. I walked out, losing my need for food for the rest of the day. That was pretty much every day that followed for a week or two after that terrible Sunday and Monday. Each day seemed to go through the next day in a very dreadful mannerâeach hour taking forever and ever. During the day, we wanted the night to come, and when the night finally came, we couldn't wait to go to sleep.
As the month drew on, in late August, we finally learned that the girl who was slain in the room below us was a prostitute who was working for a shady website online. She was an escort girl and was making a minimum of one hundred dollars an hour with each customer of hers. Her pimp (we later learned in a TV special titled Orange County Street Walkers) was overseeing at least eight or nine girls in the OC basin, from Fullerton all the way as far as Huntington Beach. He was a sloppy Puerto Rican dude who was in his mid-30s, and when his high speed pursuit made the news on a sunny Thursday afternoon, no one knew at the moment it was happening, except Jake. A paranoid Jake recognized his orange VW Beetle, a car he said he remembered driving in and out of the small parking structure here when we first arrived.
âThat's the damn car, I swear!â he yelled, as we watched live on the news.
âI doubt it,â I said. âWhat are the odds?â
âThat's why he's running. They've probably been looking for him. His freaking empire is probably collapsing after this whole murder investigation. Think about it...â
Jake made so much sense that afternoon. And he was right. The orange VW we seen drive all the way to a suburb in Pico Rivera was actually the man who was pimping out the girl in our motel. And he was the one who shot her as well. His mugshot was plastered on every evening news station, and his dark complexion made him a stereotypical Hispanic pervert in the eyes of all the gossip for the next few days. One lady we lived nearby upstairs said, outside a Walgreen's next to the motel, that she had seen the guy before. She said he was really mean to these girls, and he always seemed like he was hovering over them, and even though he provided room and shelter for them, she said he was always demanding and rude to them. The girls always looked pissed off.
âI always knew he was some kind of pimp, or guardian like that. Weird man,â she said, as she smoked a Parliament.
âThat's such a small world,â I said, in disbelief. âWho would have known?â
âSuch a shame for that young girl,â she said.
âI don't remember her,â I said. âMaybe she was new?â
âShe's dead now, and that's such a shame...â
"It sucks because Jake and I are the same age."
Even though there was a sort of conclusion to all of the terrible things that had happened that summer, it seemed to not lift the heavy spirit that hovered over the motel. One night in September, I had just gotten back from the beach with Jake, who was scoring cocaine from some surfers, and as I walked up past the Pizza Hut in front of the motel, I noticed the neon arrow, with the words MOTEL TAMPICO, and it seemed to almost point directly to the motel. But the arrow was pointing right to all the sin and the despair that waited for you there. It directed you more than invited you. Like it knew you were coming anyway, and it was so powerful because once you were here, it seemed almost an impossible task to leave. Jake was addicted to cocaine and started experimenting with heroine. I was always high and tried the cocaine sometimes when I felt too down and depressed.
By the time the fall came, Jake had completely drowned himself in heroine and he was found dead in the bathroom of our room by Christmas. Literally, on Christmas day. It was a terrible mess. The needle was still in his freaking arm, just like Philip Seymour Hoffman earlier that past February. Jake had told me he was going to try and stop heroine and slowly go back to just cocaine and then, eventually, maybe just pot. But he spiraled out of control with the surfers at the beach and then he started to deal with some local gang members who had ties to the cartel in Mexico. One morning he was beat up because he might have let it slip who he was scoring his drugs from to someone who should not have known. I stayed out of all deals and scoring. It was sad because he was getting super thin and pale as the fall weather took over. It got cold at nights and he would always shiver himself to sleepâwhen he did sleep. I was trying to stop him but I would always take a bump of coke instead.
"When does normal happen?" I remember asking Jake.
"It probably never does," he replied.
That were one of the last few words we spoke to each other.
I didn't go to his funeral because I called my parents one nigh and cried so badly, they flew in from Seattle and physically packed my bags for me. My mother was in tears as she packed my bags and found needles under the bed and in the drawers. All of them were Jake's stuff. His clothes were still in the dressers and even draped on a chair or two. It felt like he never left, really. He just didn't come home. That's what it felt likeâlike he just forgot to come home. And in a lot of ways, that is what happened. But I had to finally leave Motel Tampico. It was just too much. Jake and I had fled to try and make it elsewhere and we ended up failing to the highest extent. Both of us spiraled out of control and used our freedom for the worst avenues of pleasure and escape. We never dealt with our problems in California. We just hid them under the drugs and the night life of a sleazy boulevard that kept inviting us in for more debauchery. That was the last time I would be in Anaheim, I told myself as I boarded a plane in LAX, my eyes puffy from crying in the rental car on the way to the airport. The neon arrow that directed us to sin and explore and escape had haunted me for a few months after I left. But I was glad to be gone. It seems like a lifetime ago but it was only last summer.
