The Lakeside Hotel

     The time was many years ago. The place, Lakeside, California. The Lakeside Hotel was not your typical hotel. I’m not even sure they rented rooms. All I ever saw was the bar, the pool tables, and the jukebox. It was a cowboy atmosphere with a lingering tension in the air. You’d have to call the police twice before they showed up—and then, it was never just one.

    They came in pairs, sometimes trios, hands resting on holsters before they even stepped inside. No sirens. Just the crunch of boots on gravel and a creak of the old wooden door. By then, whatever needed breaking had already been broken, and the blood was usually mopped up with a bar towel that had seen far too many lifetimes.

    Locals called it “The Hotel,” but outsiders never really found it. Or if they did, they didn’t come back.

    There was always smoke in the air, even when no one was smoking. The jukebox didn’t play music so much as memories—Waylon, Patsy, and the occasional Springsteen track that felt out of place but somehow still fit. You didn’t dance in The Hotel. You leaned, you watched, and if you were lucky, you left with all your teeth.

    Nobody was very good at shooting pool, as you always had to keep one eye behind you, no matter how much you had riding on the game.

    That’s where I first met my wife.

to be continued