Welcome To Wherever You Are (3 page)

‘Nice to meet you,’ continued Savannah as the girls introduced themselves and shook hands. ‘I’m only kidding, Tommy’s a sweetheart really.’

‘Are you working tonight?’ asked Tommy.

‘Yeah, I’m picking up a few shifts later but I’m getting some sleep first. Have a good day, guys.’

‘That’s the first American accent I’ve heard since we checked in,’ Nicole continued as she and Tommy headed for the beach.

‘Yeah, we’re more geared towards Europeans than Americans. Euros are quite happy to stay in a hovel in a foreign country, and the Yanks are more up for experiencing this type of place when they’re abroad rather than on their own doorstep.’

‘Does Savannah live at the hostel?’

‘Pretty much – she’s friends with Peyk, that fella who crashed through your ceiling. She gets a room to herself and I only put people in there if we’re busy.’

‘And what does Peyk get in return for his generosity?’

‘Nah, I don’t think it’s like that. He’s an odd guy but he’s harmless, and Savannah doesn’t put up with any crap from anyone. She may seem sweet but I reckon she has her secrets.’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ Nicole smiled wryly.

Savannah closed her bedroom door behind her and locked it, pulling down the handle to reassure herself it was secure.

She slid her imitation Hermès handbag off her shoulder and placed it on the single unoccupied bed opposite her own. She unclasped the hook and removed a tightly wound roll of $20 bills, then moved towards two lockers and pushed one aside to reveal a jagged hole in the brickwork. She placed the money next to seven more bundles of notes before moving the locker back in place.

Then she put her fingertips under her hairline, removed her blonde wig and dropped it on a stool. She ruffled her mousey brown hair, and then from her bag removed a revolver and placed it under her pillow.

TWO MONTHS EARLIER – VENICE BEACH

Savannah clasped her hand over her mouth and ran towards the motionless body on the sidewalk as fast as her heels would allow, while Ron appeared from the entrance of a building several feet ahead.

‘What the hell?’ he began, as both reached the body at the same time.

‘I didn’t see him there, Ron,’ she cried, ‘they were trying to kidnap me. He knows where I am!’

Ron glanced around the street checking if anyone had witnessed the chaos, before grabbing the body under his arms, struggling to hoist it back to its feet.

‘Savannah, help me,’ he snapped.

Savannah involuntarily trembled as they dragged the person through an open doorway and into a brightly lit reception area, laying him on the floor. Ron turned the lock on the door and pulled down a roller blind.

The first words to come from the boy’s bloodied lips were followed by a desperate intake of breath, taking Ron and Savannah by surprise. ‘Am I dead?’ he asked.

‘Thank Christ,’ whispered Ron as he rolled the boy onto his chest. He removed the large canvas rucksack strapped to the boy’s back, as light from a fluorescent bulb above bounced off an object inside a small hole in the lining.

Ron stood the boy up and steadied him, watching as he struggled to focus his green eyes. The last thing the boy remembered with clarity was listening to a Coldplay track on his iPhone before something propelled him forward, so swiftly that his forehead smashed against the pavement before he had time to stretch his arms out and minimise the impact.

Meanwhile, Ron fished out the contents from the front pouch of the backpack, including a book he’d vaguely heard of from the 1990s called
The Beach
. Wedged into its spine was the bullet Savannah had fired moments earlier. The boy was still too dazed to question why a stranger he couldn’t see properly was hoisting his T-shirt up towards his shoulders and rubbing his cold, thin fingers across his back.

‘Lucky bastard,’ muttered Ron, and sat him down on a plastic chair.

The boy touched his forehead and felt the swelling. There was a graze to his cheek and grit embedded in his bottom lip. He rolled his tongue around his mouth to check his teeth were still in place. He looked at Ron standing before him, but everything was clouded by a shadow, like he’d overused a filter on an Instagram photo. He only realised there was a third person present in the room when the man spoke again.

‘Stay in your room while I clean him up, and hide that thing. Peyk didn’t give it to you so you could fire at anyone.’

Savannah didn’t question Ron’s orders and sprinted up the stairs and out of sight before the boy had a chance to remember her. His blurred vision was slowly dissipating and he scanned his new surroundings, unsure if it was the place he was searching for when fate threw him a curveball.

‘What’s your name, kid?’ Ron asked.

‘Tommy,’ he replied in a British accent, and pointed to a poster, peeling away from the wall opposite him. ‘What does “Welcome to Wherever You Are” mean?’

‘It means it doesn’t matter where you are, just as long as you’re somewhere.’

TODAY

Savannah rested her hands on her hips and looked critically at her reflection in a full-length mirror attached to the bathroom wall.

She was disappointed to see the dark circles under her eyes were still showing despite regular applications of foundation, and her cheeks were red and blotchy. She’d felt under the weather for much of the day and hoped the soya milkshake might give her the sugar rush she needed to wake her up. Instead, she yawned and headed back into her bedroom, setting the alarm on her phone for three hours’ time when her day would begin again.

She was unaware of the hand behind the two-way mirror that traced the outline of Savannah’s body, or the narrowed eyes that watched as she fell asleep.

From behind the blue metal fence, Nicole stared at a dozen or so men and women, bulging veins close to bursting point, as they went about their daily workout routines on Muscle Beach.

She’d read about the fitness fanatics’ Mecca in her guidebook, and was a little disappointed to find it was no more than a large concrete cage crammed with human gorillas vying for the attention of strangers to further boost their already swollen egos.

As she and Tommy continued to walk along Venice Beach’s boardwalk, Nicole realised the creative and artistic beatnik generation who founded the area back in the 1950s and 1960s had long since departed. They’d been replaced by a hotchpotch of tacky tourist retail units interspersed with independent boutiques running parallel to the sandy beach. The other side contained an assortment of craftsmen and chancers sheltered under a canopy of 40-foot high palm trees. Their wares included toy planes and cars made from empty soda cans; Tarot card readers predicting customers’ fates; self-proclaimed experts in Chinese medicine offering acupuncture and neck massages; and fold-up tables littered with pamphlets promoting anything from political causes to the health benefits of hemp.

Tommy pointed out the handball and paddle tennis courts, the skate dancing plaza, the numerous beach volleyball courts and a bike trail that went past lavish beachfront properties on Ocean Front Walk where the wealthy and a sprinkling of celebrities had made their homes.

To describe Venice Beach as diverse was an understatement, Nicole realised, and she knew one afternoon wouldn’t be long enough to explore all the nooks and crannies that piqued her interest. Muscle Beach aside, she felt the area’s appeal.

After an hour of sightseeing in the 80-degree heat, Nicole and Tommy took a break and sat on benches under the shady arches of a café, eating over-generous portions of pistachio ice cream from plastic tubs. Not for the first time that afternoon, hostellers waved at Tommy as they passed by.

‘You’re a popular guy,’ began Nicole.

‘It’s a combination of my movie-star looks and manly physique,’ replied Tommy with a smile. ‘Or it’s that I’m the first face people see when they check in, so they remember me.’

‘I’d say it’s probably the latter.’

‘Yeah, thanks. So is this your first time backpacking?’

‘Is it that obvious? I’m more of a book it on lastminute.com, two-star hotel in Ibiza kind of girl. To be honest, I’m not even sure what the life of backpacker entails.’

‘The general consensus is you live out of what you can carry, you travel at your own pace and you sleep where you can.’

‘Like tortoises.’

‘That makes you “Me Shell”.’

‘Oh, you’re funny,’ groaned Nicole and rolled her eyes, despite being quietly amused by Tommy’s banter. ‘And what do people “do” at hostels?’

‘Meet other travellers, shag other travellers, smoke a lot of dope, drink a lot of beer, tell strangers their life stories, and then continue travelling knowing they’ll probably never see them again.’

‘That sounds fun . . . but kind of sad.’

‘I’m not going to lie, it can be both. I’ve been with some of the most incredible people one minute, and the next I’ve been at my loneliest. But I wouldn’t change the last seven months for anything, as it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure I’ve discovered parts of America most Americans haven’t even seen and the hostel, well it’s not the Hotel Bel-Air, but it’s become a rite of passage for backpackers.’

‘That’s what I told Eric, but I don’t think he believed me.’

‘Out of interest, how did you and your non-boyfriend end up on a road trip?’

‘That’s a conversation for another time,’ Nicole replied, looking at her watch. ‘I should be heading back.’

Tommy and Nicole took their ice creams with them and retraced their steps along the boardwalk back towards the hostel. She could tell Tommy had tried to mask his nervousness with cockiness, which she found endearing.

‘Are you coming to the party?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Is that tonight?’

‘Uh-huh, and the beer’s free.’

‘You really know the way to a girl’s heart, don’t you?’ Nicole replied, and realised she was actually beginning to sound like a cougar.

Savannah struggled to find a comfortable sleeping position.

So she abandoned her power nap after an hour and relocated to the kitchen to read about Kim Kardashian’s latest exploits in an old
In Touch
magazine another hosteller had left on top of a bin bag.

As she turned the page, she spotted a headline about handsome young actor Zak Stanley that should have been followed by a story and pictures. Instead, they’d been ripped out, and she wondered what was so interesting that needed to be kept away from everyone else’s eyes. She’d almost finished her take-out bowl of yesterday’s vegetable soup when Tommy appeared, grinning from his morning spent in the company of Nicole.

‘So, stud, how was your date?’ Savannah asked.

‘It wasn’t a date, we just went out for a walk and some ice cream,’ he replied, and poured hot water into the dirty crockery-filled sink.

‘How very 1960s – that sounds like a date to me. You like her, don’t you?’

‘She’s cool,’ Tommy smiled.

Actually, he did like Nicole and he liked her a lot. Throughout his American adventure, he’d kissed a handful of girls, but had only become intimate with two, which, according to conversations with other backpackers bragging about their globe-trotting antics, was way below the norm.

But Nicole was different from the other girls he’d met, and he enjoyed her company. She gave as good as she got, she had a sense of humour he appreciated and, of course, he was physically attracted to her. He estimated she was at least a decade his senior, and that only added to her appeal. But the main thing he’d learned from sharing space and personal thoughts with total strangers was that he was attracted to personality above all else.

However, Tommy wasn’t naive, and identified two issues that could stand in the way of something blossoming between them. The first went by the name of Eric who, even in their brief encounter, made it clear that he was unamused by Tommy’s presence. And the second was that Nicole was only planning to stay in LA for a few days.

It dawned on Tommy that Nicole hadn’t actually given much away about herself despite their afternoon together. He didn’t know where she was from, what she did to pay her bills, what she had given up to go travelling, or why.

Peyk came in, wandering around the kitchen and looking up towards the ceiling tiles.

‘What are you up to?’ Tommy asked.

‘Looking for wires,’ Peyk replied without making eye contact.

‘For fun?’

‘For Ron.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘For it’s none of your business.’

Peyk frowned, squinted at something and then nodded. He pulled a joint from behind his ear and lit it on the oven’s electric hob. He took a long drag and then offered it to Tommy and Savannah who both shook their heads. So Peyk blew a smoke ring and left with a wide grin spread across his face.

Out of sight, he took out his basic, text-and-call only mobile phone, typed in the words ‘we’re back in business’, and hit send.