Free Blank by Lippe Simone Page A

false starts, particularly when confronted with corks, the kitchen staff of Milo’s restaurant took to spontaneous binge drinking with an enthusiasm well beyond anything for which Honor could have hoped. They opened and sampled and in some cases emptied at least one of everything. Soon the atmosphere was a dangerous mix of shared curiosity and aggressive evangelism as the kitchen staff forced new taste sensations on one another but from Honor’s perspective the chief development was an overarching lack of focus. They had completely forgotten about her.
     
    Honor sashéd between the indifferent drinkers like a hostess excusing herself momentarily to see to a doorbell and left Milo’s staff cocktail soirée in the store room. Immediately she found the door she wished she’d found about a quart of bourbon earlier — the door marked “lobby”. In fact the door led to a little office, the very office that had been Darryl’s entire world for most of his short life, and from there Honor found her way back to the foyer. Apart from Darryl who, sadly, no longer registered on the census, the foyer remained empty and that suited Honor to a nicety because she had lost her taste for adventure and, more particularly, for the consequences which seemed so often to fall hard on the heels of adventure. She no longer wanted fast cars or caviar. She wanted to be home and safe and, ideally, armed.
     
    Crossing the lobby Honor was captured by the mirror behind the bank of phones and had in that moment the sort of epiphany that rarely comes in adult life — she realized that she wasn’t Chinese. The photograph on her license had been of a dark and mysterious oriental girl but the face in the mirror was heavily influenced by generations of breeding beneath the sunless skies of Ireland and reflected back mainly inarguably red hair and a round and robust face, generously freckled under a neon sunburn.
     
    It had been Honor’s plan to get back on her Harley and go to the Beverly Hills address that she remembered from her driver’s license. But the license wasn’t hers and the address wasn’t home and, issues of identity aside, the street had become a primitive war zone. In the time that Honor had spent on the worst group date in history the sun had begun to set and the nascent communities of police officers and golfers and religious nuts had become militantly partisan and were beating each other to death.
     
    The policemen, unaware that they were wearing sidearms, were hitting the Hare Krishnas with garbage can lids and newspaper vending machines and the cultists were fighting back with whatever was at hand, mainly tambourines. A substantial platoon of businessmen in shiny suits was trying in vain to force its way into the many occupied cars trapped on the street and a pair of store mascots — a caterpillar and a butterfly — had managed to set themselves on fire. Across the street the cinema and stores and offices had been invaded in spite of the previous impenetrability of picture windows and, most disturbingly, revolving doors.
     
    There were no women among the warriors and so all that remained to fight over was food and anything that resembled food but the fighting was never-the-less fierce and ominously well-organized. Honor mused briefly on the effect of introducing a female into the melée and decided, for the moment, to hold her ground in the hotel. There were cars everywhere and her motorcycle was only yards from the hotel entrance but the frenzy stood between them and Honor like an acid storm. She needed another exit and she needed a vehicle. With these fundamental truths she returned to the labyrinth behind the reception desk.
     
    The kitchen staff had spilled into the hall and begun the vomiting phase of the binge drinking process and posed no serious threat. Honor found what she needed in the lost property room and returned to the restaurant and then the kitchen. The kitchen was windowless and dark and the emergency