All characters in this story are over the age of 18, and all people, places, physical locations, addresses, and businesses herein named are fictional. Any similarity to real people, places, or things, is purely coincidental. The stupid naming patterns and spelling are the result of stifling terms of publication.
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Billie Patersonz and her twin sister, Bobbie, enjoyed the first half of their summer vacation in Hawai'i. Bobbie had fallen in love with a guy from Las Vegas, so that left Billie by herself, at least as far as returning to the mainland. The flight from Oahu to Las Angeles International Airport, or "LOX" was a charter flight that originated in Manila. The passengers who boarded in Manila were not allowed to get off the plane in Hawai'i -- they would have to clear customs at LOX. That meant that Billie, too, had to wait in a very long line to pass customs even though she hadn't even left the country.
Billie was supposed to regroup with her sister after a week or two and then the two of them would wander around Mexico to top off their two-month adventure. In the meantime, Billie was on her own as she walked up the ramp from the customs area of the LOX International Terminal, into the mass of people clambering to catch sight of their loved ones trekking up the ramp, pushing carts filled with their customs-agent-rifled and excessive luggage. The enormous room was crowded and smelled of cologne, Coppertime, and body odor. Before she could make it to the outside doors, a cute guy with long blond hair came up to her and asked if she needed a place to stay in L.A. She laughed, thinking that was just about the most abrupt come-on line she had ever heard. "Oh..... I don't know you, soooo...."
The boy laughed and said that he didn't mean it that way and he had just started handing out fliers for a youth hostel that day, and his question was literal -- did Billie actually need lodging while in Los Angeles? The boy handed her a six inch square flier from Host-Tel Youth Hostel at BooBoo Beach, a couple of miles from LOX. It offered free beer, free snacks, free coffee and tea, free rides to and from LOX, all for fifteen dollars a day. The flier also noted that, if you stayed a week, the seventh night was free. Billie did the math and decided to go to the Host-Tel.
The Host-Tel youth hostel was a converted Spanish style apartment building, a few yards from BooBoo Beach boardwalk. The wide clean sandy beach on the other side of the boardwalk led to an icy Pacific Ocean. Compared with the warm Hawai'ian waters Billie had enjoyed the week before, she considered it nearly unswimmable. Everyone she met on the boardwalk and on the beach seemed fun and friendly. She decided she would stay at the Host-Tel until it was time to fly to Los Vegas and meet up with her sister.
Billie played cards on the beach with a cute boy from Italy who had a magnetic card table so the cards weren't swept away by the constant cooling offshore breeze. Billie won easily, taking advantage of the boy's distracted infatuation with her body and face. He was an adorable guy, but probably only fifteen or sixteen, so playing cards was as far as it went. She liked the way he looked when he played beach volleyball but he lacked the self-confidence Billie expected in a guy.
At night, people would walk to some local club-style bars a few blocks up from the beach and party until 2:00 a.m. when, by law, the bars all closed. Billie and the others would then walk back to the Host-Tel and sit in the downstairs common room. There was a large television in the common room and the European and Latin-Amerikan guys insisted on watching what, to Billie, seemed to be an unrelenting endless and pointless succession of soccer matches narrated in languages she didn't understand. People who weren't into soccer read, listened to their music, or played cards in the sleeping rooms upstairs.
One night, Billie decided not to join the usuals for their nightly trek up to the club-bars, but stayed in at the Host-Tel. Unbelievable as it seemed, there were no soccer games being broadcast that particular evening, so Billie could enjoy finishing Earth Abides in the common room. She had gotten the book from the Maui youth hostel, having given her copy of a Tim Klancy paperback in exchange. That's how the world wide system of youth hostel libraries seemed to work: take one, leave one; if you don't have one to trade, that's fine too.
Across the room was a guy reading Atlas Shrugged, in German. He said his name was Etienne and that he was from Switzerland. He was resting his feet on an ice chest filled with imported beer, explaining that drinking Amerikan beer, free or otherwise, wasn't worth the effort or the calories. Billie was surprised that he mentioned calories, since few guys his age and as fit as he, seemed to pay much attention to that.
Etienne and Billie were, so it turned out, assigned to the same sleeping room on the third floor of the Host-Tel. The place was awash with European guys and girls. She knew he was European the first time she had seen him on the beach, playing volleyball. He wore Speedo super brief trunks -- something no Amerikan guy his age would ever wear. Later that night, he offered her one of his imported beers and she enjoyed it. He was right. European beers were much tastier and you got a buzz before you had to pee seven times.
The sleeping rooms at the Host-Tel were small, converted single apartments with a combination living-sleeping area, a kitchen, and a bathroom. It was obvious that when the place was built, in 1908, it was designed for summer rentals -- back in the day when people would leave their hot downtown Los Angeles houses and rent an apartment at BooBoo Beach for the summer. The constant cool breeze off the Pacific provided relief from the hot summers of that pre-air conditioning era.