Free Unnaturally Green by Felicia Ricci Page A

smacked my lips together through morning breath so strong I could smell it on myself.
    The next fact?
    Marshall wasn’t there.
    I miss him.
    I sighed, then thought that, in a way, it was good he couldn’t catch me in this jet-lagged, morning-breath-ridden stupor.
    I flopped over on my side, feeling my head pulsing.
    Ugh. I hadn’t slept well.
    Third fact?
    My new home was a 10’ x 15’ room at the Hotel Whitcomb, a medium-rise building across the street from Wicked ’s theater. I’d booked the hotel for the next two weeks, securing a special company discount. Back in New York, when I’d imagined my future stay here, “hotel” had meant jumping on the bed, ordering room service, and swimming in shallow, reflective pools. But my imagination had gotten a little ahead of itself.
    The Whitcomb brooded with a heavy and somber gravitas, like an old-fashioned prison, or any location shot from The Shining . Apparently the building had some kind of historical significance I can’t really remember. There was something about this on a plaque near its revolving doors, right next to another plaque warning pregnant women that the building could give them cancer.
    My room was at the end of the hallway near the elevators, directly next to the ice machine. Being there at first seemed like it would provide a pleasant sense of community, what with people’s constant coming and going. But I took it all back last night, as I tossed and turned to the sounds of ice clattering into trays and elevator doors opening and closing every few minutes, accented by the shrill ding of the arrival bell.
    Still, I knew it was temporary. And at least, come tomorrow, I’d have more important things to worry about than whether I’d run into Jack Nicholson’s creepy finger-talking son on his tricycle.
    Like being in Wicked , for instance.
    I was due at work at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow. Today, I had the day to myself.
    What to do?
    On the airplane ride over, I’d started blogging about my Wicked adventures, as a kind of public diary—mostly to get me to sit down and keep track of the experience, and to ensure that Marshall would read it and pine for me from afar. That morning I drafted a quick follow-up post from my hotel room, then  decided to head out and explore the city.
    Because I have an abysmal sense of direction, closely akin to a  baby’s, I thought it wise to allot most of the day to getting a handle on my surroundings. Even though Wicked ’s theater was across the street, it would not be unheard of for me to get lost the next day on the way there, wandering into, say, the state of Washington.
    I trotted out of the lobby onto Market Street, a well-known landmark whose name, to me, evoked commerce, industry, and progress. I’d been to San Francisco twice before (when I was peddling medical software, actually, for the dreaded day job), so I knew all about how this central thoroughfare cut through the entire city, from South West to North East.
    How brilliant that Wicked ’s theater sits on this illustrious street , I thought to myself, in a strangely formal interior voice.
    Stalling on the red brick sidewalk, my first instinct was to turn left—so I turned right, since when it comes to directions my first instinct is usually the opposite of how one should proceed. After a few strides I felt the wind whip across my neck, and so zipped up my coat and burrowed my face in my scarf. As I would soon discover, San Francisco’s weather had a daily identity crisis, unable to commit to hot or cold. Its air was dry, fleeting, impossible to hold onto, two-faced in the shadow and the light. That afternoon it was cloudy with patches of sun and gusts of frigid wind—an upgrade from New York winter, but certainly not what I’d pictured as sunny California.
    I crossed the first intersection next to the hotel as the Wicked marquee glided past me on my left, a road sign beckoning me to veer off and approach. But I pressed on, maybe because I was intimidated,