With a Little Help from My Friends

I’d been so out of things lately, that when Quinn had mentioned ‘a get together of a few friends’, she had actually meant that ‘few’ meant a few hundred – atleast, I think that’s all she invited. With Quinn the way she was now, and only after being around her for a few hours, I realised things had changed since I’d left – I had to learn quick, and fast, how to deal with it. Of course she’d changed - with me gone for months at a time, only to come home for a couple days, it was stupid to think I’d come home to find everything the same. I’d come home just in time to notice she’d grown into the typical teenager – a compulsive liar, and totally vicious.

Oh yes, things had changed a lot.

It was like reality had slapped me square in the face and yelled ‘THIS IS IT. THIS IS LIFE!’ and pointed directly at my kid sister gyrating her tiny self around the livingroom like a party queen. She was full of life, so bubbly, and smiling widely as everyone who passed her stopped to say hello, and it seemed the whole world tonight was paying attention to her. She had become one of those girls – the ones you’d see in teen movies, the ones who everyone loves and is the most popular girl in school who girls envied, and boys lavished their attentions on. And her first appearance in the movie would be her walking down the halls in slow motion, strutting down the narrow space with her head held high, and the confidence of a girl who’d conquered high school – just to establish the fact that this girl had everyone eating out of the palm of her hand. Realising that my sister was that girl made me want to puke and laugh at the same time. It was irony at its best – little Quinn Urie, at seventeen the high school ‘It Girl’, whilst at seventeen, nobody knew my name, and when they addressed me, they always called me Branden, or Braden, or Brendan.

Never Brendon.

Suddenly, I found myself wishing – wishing I actually made an impact on someone’s life at her age, wishing that my house wasn’t full of idiot kids, wishing that I was somewhere else – somewhere far away, I added, when I saw a kid Ralph into one of my mom’s favourite vases. Just like that, the idea dawned upon me – me, sinking slowly in my misery and my parents’ old couch in the loungeroom, watching the house get trashed by seventeen year old strangers.

Why couldn’t I be somewhere else?

I could be anywhere – Sydney, Tokyo, Paris, Rome – and nobody could stop me. I’m not seventeen anymore, I’m a full grown man, a full grown man still living with his parents, but still altogether a full grown man. And no sooner had I assured myself that, then I had packed my bags afresh and kissed my sister on the cheek goodbye. Even though she had pushed me away and given me a look of utter contempt and disgust, I could only laugh as I headed out the door with my bags to find the cab I had called up only minutes earlier.

I wasn’t the one who had to answer to mom and dad’s wrath when they found the puke in the vase and would shortly discover she’d had ‘a few friends over’.

Nobody except Quinn knew I was there, and I laughed all the way to the airport – I was not ready to come to grips with my family just yet. Yes, a much needed vacation was in order, so that I could mentally prepare myself for when I finally do come home.

* * *

Not a lot of people seemed to be going on holiday today, most of the people who attributed to the crush at the entrances and exits at the terminals were families coming to pick up their own. There was lots of hugging, and expectant expressions, and kids running around restlessly, and more than a few haggard looking business men and women traipsing around to the other side of the airport, where the bar was located. Even though this was Las Vegas, the stream of tourists was slowly thinning, and mostly locals and people in suits were breezing through the airport. Usually, I’d be expected at the airport, and so I’d be mobbed by girls in black jeans with posters and CD’s in their clutches, but since nobody was expecting me, and since nobody seemed to recognise my face, I could finally let out a breath of relief. I was slowly beginning to warm to the idea of becoming a nobody again. It felt nice, actually.

So when I finally decided on where I was going – to Paris, what better place to start than there, right? – I was completely and totally relaxed, sitting in first class with a pillow underneath my head, and my iPod fully charged. All I needed now was a nice drink, and I’d be all set.

“Yes?” A voice inquired from behind, and who should I turn to see, but Miss Bitchy from the flight before. There was a slight sneer gathering on her dainty face, as I asked for a bourbon and coke, and jokingly offered to flash my I.D to prove my age. “That’s not necessary,” She said stiffly, her dark blue eyes narrowing on my face, “I’ll be right back with your drink, Sir.”

I smiled what I thought was a charming smile in response. She ignored that and disappeared through the back of the plane to gather my drink. She reappeared just as I’d selected my in-flight film, plonked the drink on the tray in front of me, and disappeared again to the back of the plane. I didn’t see her again until the end of the flight, when the attendants were ushering people out of the plane and towards the arrivals terminals.

It was strange, being abroad without a posse of people surrounding me – no cranky musicians, no managers talking into a cell phone a mile a minute, planning everything for us, no roadies running around checking that everything we left with had safely made the trip. I felt oddly exposed, and lost, as people were walking around me with a sense of purpose, heading to somewhere they needed to be, knowing what they were doing and where they were going – and here I was in Paris on a whim, just because I didn’t feel like coming home just yet.

I’d left the terminal and stepped out to catch a taxi. The streets were slick with rain, and some of it was lightly falling on my shoulders when I stepped out of the shelter of the arrivals bay and claimed one. The driver put my bags in the back, and asked me where I was headed. I didn’t quite know what to say, but then I decided I atleast needed a place to stay for my brief spell in France, and I told him to bring me to a decently priced hotel.

And off we went, into the slightly chilled night. We drove further and further from the airport, even though, as I looked through the windows of the car, I could still see planes gliding about in the night sky. Twenty minutes later, the car had come to a stop in front of a respectable looking building. He told me the fare and I paid him extra for bringing my bags to the front of the hotel, where the doorman had rustled up a bellhop, who had taken them into his care while I walked up to the reception to inquire about a room.

There was something alarming about the look the receptionist was giving me, as I crossed the large foyer to the tall bronze desk she sat behind. Her lips were painted a deep shade of red, and her dull brown hair was slicked back into a tight updo. She wore the same red blazer that the bellhop and the doorman wore, only in a more feminine cut that revealed her womanly curves. In her deep brown eyes was a look of sympathy, and as I neared her, the look spread from her eyes and into her face, settling into an expression that was a mix of embarrassment, regret and pity.

“I am deeply sorry, Monsieur,” She told me, standing from her post as I had reached only a few feet away from her desk. “But as you can see here,” she pointed to the lobby, which I hadn’t noticed was bursting with guests, “We are completely full. There are no vacancies.”

“Oh,” I said, and did the only other thing I could think of – which was bite my lip in thought. “Then, could you recommend another hotel, if it’s not too much to ask?”

The concierge nodded, and pulled out a pen and a slip of paper, writing a small list. She then handed it to me, and muttered some more apologies about the lack of vacancy, as if it were her fault that so many people chose to stay at the hotel she worked at. So off I went again, the bellhop behind me with my bags while the doorman rustled up another taxi. I tipped them and thanked them, and left for another hotel.

The next time, I looked into the lobby before I headed in, and since the lobby seemed to be an indication of whether or not there were any vacancies, things did not look so swell from where I sat inside the taxi. I told the driver to keep the meter running as I checked, just in case they happened to have a spare room. Even as I got out the car, the doorman shook his head when I looked at him curiously, and that one look was enough to tell me that I would not find what I was looking for there. Off we went again, to another hotel. Again, no vacancy, and again, we went in search of another. After checking numerous other places, it seemed as if all the rooms in the city had been booked. The driver was even beginning to take pity on me, when I had grown tired of chasing hotel after hotel, and wanted nothing more than a bed to rest my head on.

“No luck, eh?” He said, after the seventh or eighth hotel we checked. I shook my head in answer. “There might be one more place we could check.”

“Then let’s go,” I told him, and we’d pulled from the curb of yet another full hotel. The driver seemed to be taking me to the outskirts of the city, where suburbia had begun to take place. I looked at him questioningly, and knew he could see me through my reflection in the rearview mirror. He drove on silently and came to a stop at an old building made of brown bricks.

“Backpacker’s hostel,” He explained, “If there’s no rooms in the hotels, you are better off finding shelter here. If only for little while.” He had told me, in his broken English.

I nodded, knowing it was my best bet, and thanked him for taking me around after I paid him my fare. Sighing, I went into the hostel with my bags, noting the various other guests milling around in the dimly lit reception area. The man at the desk showed me to the last bunk they had available – one which was above a German student’s, the occupant seemed to be out for the night, as well as the other eight who shared the four other bunks.

I had climbed up into my bunk and settled into the scratchy, sour smelling sheets once I had made sure all the locks were locked on my suitcase - something the receptionist had urged me to do before submitting to my tiredness, and almost immediately, I fell asleep, despite the sense of foreboding that had seemed to follow me through Paris tonight – coming here didn’t seem like such a good idea, after all.

I wasn’t laughing anymore.