VAMPING THE OC
The Roach Motel
Suspended
Seth slumped forward in the driver's seat of the Range Rover, his chin resting on the cool leather of the steering wheel. His arms encircled the wheel in a tight hug as though he needed something solid and familiar to hold on to. He felt all alone in this strange land of Chino after midnight. Ryan had fallen into a restless sleep beside him that had gradually changed to a deeper, quieter sleep as they drove. He hadn't spoken since he'd given Seth the address of The Chino Motel. Now Seth sat parked across the street from Ryan's "home" wondering what he should do next.
He'd missed Ryan's motel the first time he'd driven by it. It must have been disbelief that kept him from recognizing it in time to stop. After going around the block, he chose to park in the lot of a former Seven Eleven store that sat across the street from it rather than pull into the motel's lot. He felt the need to do a recon. Get the lay of the land before he committed himself to a course of action.
The old convenience store, in whose parking lot he now sat, had been converted into a neighborhood market. The Olivera Street Market appeared to Seth to be the only business still open for blocks on either side of The Chino Motel whose business did not skate on the thin edge of respectability or legality. Stores advertising tattoos and piercings stood alongside all-night pawn shops; psychics and palm readers offered a glimpse into the future; while card rooms and the ubiquitous vendors of lottery tickets gave their customers a chance to put their recently purchased foreknowledge to the test. Check cashing establishments, most of whose windows proclaimed the availability of prepaid telephone cards that were good for all Central American countries; adult book and movie rental stores that seemed to compete with their neighbors on the basis of how many XXXs they could squeeze onto their signs; and massage parlors that advertised the availability of Swedish, deep tissue, and topless massages 24 hours a day, dotted the street. The numerous bars along the street had placed loud speakers outside their doors and were sending music out into the street. Even inside the Range Rover Seth could feel the vibrations. The few respectable businesses that still made their home in this corner of Chino were closed for the night and seemed to exist as nothing but the rear guard of a dispirited army that had met the enemy and been vanquished by it.
This little bodega sat like an island of life and respectability in a sea of merchants purveying to the more exotic fleshly needs of the citizens of Chino and neighboring communities. Seth decided that respectability was, however, a relative concept here in this part of Chino. Every customer he'd seen exit the store in the time he'd been parked in front of it had left with at least one case of beer or a brown paper bag of suggestive shape. The sale of alcohol was at least a legal transaction with no moral stigma attached. He had noticed, however, that some of the persons returning to their cars with beer appeared to be far younger than the necessary 21 years of age. He had filed that interesting observation away in his memory for possible future usefulness.
Cleanliness in this part of Chino also seemed to be a forgotten civic virtue. The parking lot where he sat was strewn with trash. Some had been carried in by the wind from around the neighborhood but most had been deposited by the store's careless shoppers. Seth had already seen several examples of that tonight. A mental picture came to him of his Range Rover, fearful of coming in contact with the trash, lifting its skirts as it tiptoed across the lot like a car from an old Looney Tunes cartoon. The image brought a short-lived smile to his face. He looked over at his passenger and wished he could share it with him. He thought Ryan might appreciate it.
Although he hadn't seen much beside alcohol carried out of the store behind him, it apparently sold other things. Its dirty windows were festooned with large ads some new, others old and faded, in both English and Spanish advertising that fact to the neighborhood.
He really needed to decide something soon. He'd seen the store's night clerk come to the window several times and stare out at the truck. He thinks I'm casing the joint. Before long he's going to call the cops. He recalled the meeting he and Ryan had earlier that night with Chino's finest and doubted that Ryan wanted a replay of that tonight. He also guessed that it wouldn't be a good idea to have vehicle and personal identity searches go through the city's police computer twice in one night.
The store's clerk peered out the window again. Damn. How many robbers choose late model Range Rovers as their getaway car of choice? Hoping to allay the clerk's fears by showing him just how innocent and unthreatening Seth Cohen was, Seth, after checking on Ryan, locked the car and went into the store to buy himself a Mountain Dew.
Seth studied the merchandise as he walked to the coolers at the back of the store for his drink. Some of the products on the shelves and produce were unknown to him. He thought he knew Mexican food after his years of takeout but apparently his Mom had always stuck with the Cal-Mex when ordering and hadn't gone for more authentic examples of Mexican cuisine.
His Spidey Sense went into overdrive as he wandered the store. The feeling of being watched was overwhelming and was accentuated by the video cameras placed strategically around the store and the notices proclaiming that "Shoplifting Is a Crime" and "Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law."
When he approached the counter with his soda he saw that the Asian clerk on duty had a fancy calculator, a notebook, and a huge science textbook open beside the cash register. "You must be able to get lots of studying done; it's so dead around here." Seth offered by way of showing an interest in and sympathy for the clerk.
"Yeah," was the clerk's only response as he gave Seth his change.
It had been so long since Seth had said anything and because he really wanted to try and establish a connection with the young man that would defuse his suspicions, he continued. "What time do you get off? I'm a night owl myself. In fact, I'm probably still up most nights when you get off." Seth offered him his best goofily friendly smile. "This would totally be my kind of job."
The clerk looked out the window at the $70,000 Range Rover parked in the lot and then back at Seth. The look he gave Seth sent him out of the store and back to his truck without another word. He thinks I'm either a condescending prick or else that I was coming on to him. Chalk up another conquest for the old Seth Cohen charm.
Ryan was still asleep when Seth let himself back into the truck. He really didn't want to wake Ryan if he didn't have to. Sleep was probably Ryan's friend unless, of course, he really had received a concussion at the restaurant in which case it would be so not like his friend. But Ryan had refused the hospital option so Seth had to go for the next best choice: getting him home to his own bed. He didn't know what he'd do if this proved to be the wrong choice. The conversation that would likely ensue if Ryan woke up and found himself at the entrance to an Emergency Room was not something that Seth wished to experience. He might not know about waking Ryan but he was absolutely sure that he wasn't going to leave him alone tonight.
Seth sipped his soda thoughtfully and watched life as it was lived on Olivera Street unfold before him. The nightlife that the businesses along this street depended on seemed to be in full swing despite it being after midnight and a week night. In the short time Seth had been parked here he'd seen two Chino police cruisers pass by. One of them had paid a brief visit to the motel across the street.
The Chino Motel received a fairly steady flow of people, mostly couples. Some arrived by car, some came on none to steady feet from one of the neighborhood bars, and others, having completed their business negotiations to each party's mutual satisfaction, made it there by both means from the busy corner just up the street from Seth's vantage point.
What Seth wanted to do was let Ryan sleep while he turned around and drove them both home to Newport. Ryan would wake up in the driveway of Casa Cohen and that would be that. Except that Seth doubted that Ryan would just calmly accept being shanghaied to the OC. He definitely didn't want Ryan angry at him. Even in his currently weakened state Seth felt certain that Ryan could kick his ass.
That wasn't what worried Seth the most about taking that action. He was more afraid that Ryan would opt for flight rather than fight. The fear that he would skip out for parts unknown, somewhere Seth couldn't find him or help him, was what kept Seth from going home. Ryan had done the flight thing before from the Crawford House. Seth didn't have a clue what that was about; but if Ryan had run once it was a likely response if he found himself unwillingly plopped down in cloud cookoo land.
Whatever it took, Seth didn't want Ryan in his present condition to be alone tonight out on the streets. The idea of someone walking on the streets of Newport this late at night was so preposterous that the city's ever vigilant police force would have Ryan in a lockup downtown before he could get more than a few blocks. With no one to look out for Ryan or vouch for him if he landed back in the legal system again, there was no way to know what might happen. He didn't know much of Ryan's history but he knew that that outcome would be bad. Seth looked over at his passenger. He knew what he needed to do.
"Ryan, we're here. I guess."
Seth's words had no effect on Ryan. Seth repeated them more loudly, "Ryan, we're here! At your motel."
Seth reached out and found the pulse in Ryan's neck without any problem this time. It seemed steady to him but his skin felt warm to the touch as though he might have a fever. But that made no sense at all. How could a concussion cause a fever?
Seth hoped that the deep sleep that had overtaken Ryan was only the okay, well deserved variety caused by exhaustion and not the sleep of a concussion, serious consequences arising there from, that should have him breaking traffic laws on the way to the nearest hospital. He hoped that sleep could solve all of Ryan's problems.
Seth considered how to proceed. If The Chino Motel maintained even a pretense to respectability, they wouldn't just give out a key to a guest's room to anyone who asked for it. He would need to find Ryan's key if he was to get him into his room. "Ryan's got to have a room key," Seth said out loud to the car. "And since it doesn't look like The Chino Motel goes in for the electronic key card thing, Ryan's key probably has his room number on it as well." Seth looked at his friend's sleeping form and wondered how to go about finding it.
Seth considered Ryan's jeans clad legs and then looked away. He reached into the backseat of the truck and grabbed Ryan's backpack. He fervently hoped that Ryan would be okay with him going through his things. He glanced doubtfully over at the sleeping boy. I could be in so much trouble. But if his key was in the backpack he'd be in loads less trouble than if he did a pat down search of his new friend while he was asleep.
He held the backpack in his lap and stared at it for a moment before starting. The outside pocket yielded the rubber ball Ryan had been squeezing when Seth first saw Ryan sitting outside of the YMCA, a partially smoked package of Marlboro Lights, and a disposable lighter. He also found two cards inside the pocket: a card from a local Starbucks store (They have Starbucks in Chino?) with eight punches gone toward a free drink and a discount card from Borders Books.
Finally there was a package of condoms which sent Seth's opinion of Ryan's coolness up a notch. It wasn't like Seth didn't own any condoms. He had a wide selection of styles secreted in the back of his Seth Only, Do Not Touch comic book boxes. They had been purchased against the day when Summer finally succumbed to the inevitable. While he waited for Summer's willpower to crumble he tested the various brands for user satisfaction and rapidity of deployment and their packaging for ease of opening under low light conditions. Seth studied the brand Ryan used. He suspected that his new friend had more practical knowledge of such things and decided he would add this brand to his supply. Seth carefully returned everything to their place in the pocket.
The inside of his backpack yielded the t-shirt, neatly folded, that Ryan had changed out of at the restaurant. Seth set it aside in amazement. It would never have occurred to him to fold up a dirty shirt. There were also a journal that Seth resisted looking in, the workbook he had distributed in class tonight, and a small artist's sketch book produced, he noted, by the same manufacturer that made the expensive, much larger ones that he kept hidden at home under his bed. The ones at home were filled with his sketches for the graphic novel he planned to publish some day. He opened the sketch book at random and found an excellent drawing of an old Spanish mission church that he didn't recognize. The caption at the bottom of the page read: St. Therese, Chino, California, October 15, 2003. He closed the sketch book and laid it with the other books from Ryan's pack.
Digging deeper he came up with a pencil box that contained pens; a gum eraser; the ubiquitous, yellow, #3 Ticonderoga pencils; and artist pencils. At the very bottom of Ryan's pack he found a paperback book. There was no illustration on the cover. He had to hold it up to the light that came in from the street light to read the title, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. Seth squinted at the book and then looked over at this passenger. He shook his head. He'd learned things tonight that confirmed his early impressions about his new acquaintance but just as many that confused and confounded his expectations. But nowhere in the backpack had there been the room key he needed.
Seth repacked Ryan's backpack and returned it to the backseat. He turned to his still sleeping passenger. "Okay, I can do this. It's not going to be at all weird, or minty, or anything." Seth reached across the divider between the two bucket seats and gingerly patted down Ryan's left leg. As Seth gently fingered the contents of Ryan's pants pocket through the denim trying to determine what he was carrying in that pocket, Ryan moved and Seth's hand froze. Seth remembered to breathe again when Ryan showed no other sign of waking. I am not doing anything wrong. He told himself. He hoped Ryan would see how funny this all was when he told him about it five - no - ten years from now.
"Coins," he murmured to himself. "Damn." The key must be in Ryan's other pocket. This presented certain problems. He could, he supposed, get out and go around the car and get at Ryan's pocket by opening the passenger door. He glanced around at the activity on the street. But what would that look like to anyone who saw him? If he were lucky, no one in this neighborhood would notice or find it noteworthy to see someone going through the pockets of an unconscious man in an SUV. There was, however, the already suspicious clerk in the bodega to consider. He'd made such an impression on him that he didn't think he wanted to risk it. He momentarily considered trying to get at them from the back seat of the Range Rover. Gee, if he were Reed Richards it'd be a snap. Mr. Fantastic wouldn't have a problem.
If he really didn't want to wake Ryan unnecessarily, he'd somehow have to crawl over him, without waking him up, to get at his pocket and the room key. Ryan's breathing remained deep and regular. It held none of the indications of pain or bad dreams that had unsettled his sleep at the start of this trip. Seth tapped his lips with his fingers in thought as he considered the geometry of the problem he was presented with.
He reached down to the controls on the side of the driver's seat and sent the seat gliding back as far as it would go. Next he angled his seat back to the same position as the passenger seat. Now, at least, he had a chance to make this work.
Seth removed his wristwatch and placed it on the dashboard. His shoes came off next. He turned onto his side facing Ryan. Carefully he lifted his left leg over the central divider and the Rover's damn gear shift. Life would have been much simpler if his Mom had bought a model that had the gear shift on the steering column. As it was, if he ever hoped to have a relationship with Summer that was more than merely platonic, he needed to handle this maneuver with great care.
Seth's right leg rested on the console straddling the gear shift while he held himself up off Ryan by the strength of his right arm. The gear shift pressed into his groin. This was, he reflected, the closest he'd gotten to any hot car action since he passed his driver's test. His left hand searched for and caught hold of the hand grip above the passenger door. He paused there suspended above Ryan while he decided how to proceed. He'd seen jocks at Harbor doing one-armed push ups to impress each other in gym; but he never thought he'd be trying to do the equivalent maneuver, in the front seat of his Mom's SUV, over the sleeping body of a guy. The only person he'd ever daydreamed about performing the automotive contortions d'amour with had been Summer Roberts.
It had taken a lot of hours of raising and lowering the sails on the Summer Breeze to allow him even to attempt this. He brought his left leg down slowly until his knee rested on the edge of the seat between Ryan's legs. This relieved some of the pressure on Seth's arms, which was good. It also had the effect of putting his knee into Ryan's crotch as the sleeping boy's body slid forward as his knee depressed the seat. This was not good. It was, in fact, so not good that Seth couldn't think of a word to describe how not good it really was. He could feel the blood rush to his face. The SUV's AC suddenly didn't seem to be having much effect on the heat of the Chino night.
Seth brought his left hand down onto the armrest of Ryan's door from the roof of the cab where he'd used it to brace himself. He and a sleeping Ryan faced one another, their faces only inches apart. It wasn't that he was like smelling the guy or anything but the odor of coffee and cigarettes, lingered on Ryan's breath. A Cologne that hinted of evergreens and spices overlay Ryan's own muskier scent. Ryan wears cologne! Seth wondered why that surprised him. His boss was a very classy lady in spite of heroccupation. It was probably a gift from her or one of her employees.
As he straddled Ryan, his left hand poised in the air above Ryan's leg, Seth hesitated. How was he going to do this? He could do an 'itsy-bitsy spider' routine and walk his fingers lightly down Ryan's leg looking for the key (which would be weird) or he could slide his left hand slowly down Ryan's thigh (which would be even weirder.) His final choice was to do a manly pat down. This last choice had the advantage of being the least sexually ambivalent of the possibilities. It had the major disadvantage, however, of being the one most likely to awaken Ryan. Gee Ryan, it was nothing personal. I needed to find your room keys; so you see, I had a really good reason for copping a feel while you were asleep.
His fingers slowly moved down Ryan's leg, barely brushing the fabric of his pants. The keys are in that pocket. Seth drew back his hand and rested it back on the door's armrest. Now came the really hard part, extracting the keys from said pocket. Seth slowly slid his left hand into the slash of pocket in Ryan's pants and had the keys in his fingers when he froze. The soft, regular rhythm of Ryan's breathing had changed. Seth turned his attention from attempting to pick Ryan's pocket to studying him. He found it impossible, however, to tell anything about Ryan's state of wakefulness because of the sunglasses he still wore.
Suddenly a hand pressed down on top of Seth's. Startled, Seth's right hand slipped off the console and he collapsed on top of Ryan.
"Seth?" Ryan breathed his name softly onto the back of his neck. Seth felt the hairs on the back of his neck stir and he shivered.
Seth lay perfectly still. "Hey Ryan, good to have you back among the living." God, I'm lying here with my head on his shoulder. I am so dead!
A pause followed, that seemed to stretch on interminably, before Ryan continued. "Seth, your nose, it's in my ear. And your knee…"
"Right." Seth didn't wait for him to finish that thought. His voice dropped an octave. "Like totally unacceptable touching between two staunch heteros, got it. Giving you back your personal space."
"Seth. Your hand."
"Yes, removing same and moving self and all other bodily appendages from all embarrassing and inappropriate places." Seth levered himself up and away from Ryan and scrambled back across the console. He collapsed into the driver's seat breathing hard. The exertion and the adrenalin rush of fear he'd experienced when Ryan spoke left him momentarily speechless. He wondered absently why the interior of the truck wasn't brighter. Surely his face was so red that he must be radiating light in the visible spectrum.
"Do you want to tell me what that was all about?" Ryan asked quietly. "We don't know each other well enough for you to be trying for second base." Seth thought he saw by the dim light coming in from the street a very faint smile on Ryan's lips.
"Man, no base stealing was being attempted here. No sirree. Cohen men are known far and wide for their lack of any physical prowess. We are like the anti-jock. I was just looking for your keys. Your room key to be specific. Needed key to get you into your room. See, we're here." Seth gestured out the window. "Chino in all its grandeur."
Ryan eased his body up from where it had slid down in the seat and checked out Seth's words. It looked to Seth as though Ryan shrank into himself as he took in the nightlife visible across the street.
"Thanks. I can make it from here. You don't have to go any farther." Ryan started to open the door.
"The Seth Cohen taxi service provides door to door pickup and delivery. No reason for you to risk life and limb trying to cross that street." Seth lowered his voice as though sharing a secret. "You know, the people out there don't seem to have much respect for traffic laws."
Ryan settled slowly back into his seat. It was awful, Seth thought, not being able to see Ryan's eyes. He didn't have a clue what Ryan thought about what had just happened. Did he think it was funny, in a slapstick kind of comedy way, or funny, in a weird homophobic way? Had Seth lost what might be his best chance at having a friend? Ryan didn't seem to talk much under the best of circumstances but he did have an expressive face. Seth had found in the short time he'd known him that he could tell a lot about what Ryan was thinking from merely observing his face. Seeing his own face reflected back at him out of the depths of Ryan's glasses didn't convey any useful information to Seth about what his passenger might be feeling or thinking.
He watched as Ryan's thumb slowly traced small circles on the soft leather armrest of his seat. The movement stopped and Ryan's head came up.
"What were you going to do after you got my key, Seth? You would have had to wake me up to get me to my room."
Seth sat unmoving, at a loss for words. "I guess I didn't think that far ahead. Sorry, man, for all that …" he made a broad, all encompassing gesture with his hands, "weirdness."
Ryan tilted his head as though studying Seth and then nodded.
"Take me home, please, Seth."
A.N. If all this seems too farfetched to believe, I offer in my defense Seth's attempt to fix the cable in the middle of a storm wearing a Spider Man mask. Seth over analyzes and over intellectualizes everything and never comes up with the simplest way to solve any problem. (Not meant as a criticism because it's me also but just an observation on a certain kind of mind works.) Besides, how else was I going to work Ryan's line, "Your nose is in my ear" into the story? It was too funny a way to deal with the problem for me to resist. Hope you didn't gag on the fluff.