You Can’t Sleep Here.
Sleeping on the stoop in the alley presented its own set of problems.
First, the doorway wasn’t quite as large as I’d hoped. I would have to sleep with my head on one step and the rest of my body on another step.
It was May, so the weather was warm enough that I didn’t need my biker jacket. I took it off and made a pillow from it, which was bulky and full of metal studs and zipper parts. It didn’t occur to me to turn it inside out. So I put the leather under my head and repeatedly got my hair caught in the zipper. I kept trying to find a space on the leather, failing, and getting poked with metal pieces.
Also I couldn’t stop thinking that in a few hours, someone was going to open the back door and I would be kicked in the head. So I wasn’t really drifting off comfortably.
I was, rather, trying to pass out in a place that made passing out very challenging.
I was lying there, prodded by metal and clenching my eyes shut tight, trying not to think about being kicked in the head in the morning, when I saw the light.
I mean literally, I was bathed in a very bright light. Was I dead? Dying? What was that? I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t; it was blinding. It was so bright I thought it could be sunshine. Was it morning already?
Then the light went away. I opened my eyes. The light reappeared, blinding me. I heard a voice.
“What are you doing?” said a man. A big, hovering man whose shadow stood behind the light.
“I’m trying to sleep,” I said. I thought this was perfectly clear.
“You can’t sleep here, Miss,” he said.
I sat up a little and looked at the shadow. It was becoming clearer: this wasn’t just a man. This was a policeman.
“But I live here,” I said. “And I can’t get in.”
“Don’t you have a key?”
I considered this. “No,” I said. “The door’s just always open.” I had no idea if Larry had a key to the hotel. I only knew he always unlocked the room.
“You still can’t sleep here,” said the policeman.
“But I don’t have anywhere else to go,” I said. “I threw rocks at the window and tried to wake up my boyfriend but he’s not waking up.”
“Please don’t throw any more rocks,” he said. Even in the dark, I could tell from his tone that he was rolling his eyes.
“I’m not throwing them anymore!” I said. Did he not understand I was just trying to sleep? I had given up on the rocks forever ago!
“Good,” he said. “You’re going to need to find somewhere else to go tonight. You can’t sleep here.”
“Okay,” I said, struggling to get up. It wasn’t that comfortable anyway. The policeman waited until I started walking away. Then he got back into his police car, which he’d been casually driving down the alley just looking for misfits like me.
Either that, or someone had complained about the idiot throwing rocks.
I walked several blocks, found some grass – probably someone’s backyard – and passed out there – no jacket pillow, no cement. In the morning, or possibly at noon, I found my way back to the Pitcairn Hotel where the front door was wide open, and our room was unlocked.
I had a home again.
