He almost shot my face off. Fuck this! Fuck it. It was a bad idea and I should have known that from that start. I should never have left my comfy room at Whammy's and I sure as shit never should have gone looking for Mello. For some unknown reason I was deluded enough to think that he'd actually want me around. That we could pal around like old times causing mischief and not getting caught. This person that I'd encountered wasn't Mello as I remembered him from our school days. Four years certainly did things to people. Especially four years spent apart after thinking you'd gotten to know someone so well. I was wrong… nearly dead wrong, heh.

I ran out of that old warehouse as fast as my tar-coated lungs would allow. Which, looking back, was not all that fast. I'm pretty sure Roger could have outstripped me… though, Roger isn't a geezer to be underestimated. He's kinda like Wammy was I guess. All sorts of secrets.

The encounter with Mello's bullets certainly got me thinking. Maybe I never really knew Mello at all. Wait a sec… of course I never really knew Mello. One of the very first things I ever noticed about him when we'd met so many moons ago was just how tightly he guarded himself. In our years of what I had taken for friendship I had become comfortable believing maybe, just maybe, Mello would open up to the person I considered to be his best friend. And now I had this gilded memory over what our friendship actually was. That… and now I needed new goggles.

My goal for today was simply to find a nice place to stay before heading to New York. I found a little locally run motel to crash for the night and stow my crap until I did. Taking my computer and some of my other favorite electronics I decided to do some work. And by work I mean setting up viruses, taking them down, playing world of warcraft, napping, and seeing who else was willing to pay money for the awesome and unmatched skillz of Trilobyte, the master hacker. Nothing interesting today. Just some guy who wanted me to retrieve information that he accidentally saved on his wife's computer. Not worth my time. One time a guy who I'd done work for wanted to get back the money he paid me and he tried to hack into the account I had him send it to. I let him get so far as to the page displaying just how much I had tucked away. He tried extracting that amount and every time he did, he was actually depositing it from his own account. So, the idiot didn't catch on to what was happening until after the third try. Ha! Well, now I have an extra bit of cash to line my coffin with.

The next flight back to New York was actually taking-off at 8 a.m. Considering it was 2 a.m. when I found this flight I decided that the best course of action would be to sleep until I woke up (whenever that might be) and take a flight when I felt like it. Yup, fool proof. You are a genius, Matt, tried and true.

I woke up at about 4 p.m. the next day. Odd time of day if you think about it. I didn't feel like searching for flights again. I did feel like searching for food. Almost getting your face shot off does that to a person.

I love diners. They've got an anonymous atmosphere to them. No one knows who you are or what you're about when you go into a diner. You know what to expect from the food… expect nothing because in a diner it can be as hit or miss as shooting at someone. Ok, maybe I'm still mad about that getting shot at thing. Who really expects to get shot at though?

The server waiting on me was a cute girl in her mid-twenties. Maybe she was a grad school student paying off loans. Maybe she was a high school dropout with waiting tables as her only available option for work. I didn't know and I didn't particularly care but she was easy on the eyes if you know what I mean. Real natural looking. A rare sight this close to L.A. I ordered a steak sandwich with a side of onion rings with a wink. I'm not normally that type of person but I wasn't really feeling myself. I was feeling sorta out of body actually. Almost like I was watching someone else do the things I was doing. I was flirting with this girl with absolutely no intention of following through. I just wanted to get my mind off of other things. Like seeing death in Mello's eyes.

I'd never killed anyone. I'd never imagined that Mello had either. Considering the position he was in and the determination he has, I realize that I don't really think things through realistically. How can Mello have changed this much? So much meaner, so much fiercer, cooler somehow… scarier too, though less volatile. Maybe having a gun means you scream less. Most of all, he didn't want me around. I wonder what happened to him in those years. Somehow, I get the feeling that I might never find out.

My sandwich was everything a diner sandwich should be. Quickly made, fried and filled with grease, and just the thing for making sure you never want to eat whatever it was you just ate ever again. I wandered around the town a while before heading back to the dinky motel for yet another night of spotty sheets and unidentifiable weird smells.

What was the date anyway? I looked at my wristwatch and read November 7th. I don't know why but I felt like hanging around for the next three days or so. Why not? L.A. is a cool place afterall.