The pool is shaped like a heart, the hotel like a castle. It’s close to Warner Bros, the Burbank airport and LA’s lesser theme parks. I booked it because I thought I’d feel safe here. And the hotels in Beverly Hills are too expensive. In the lobby of this one: a chandelier made of fake antlers, a display case of three-hundred-dollar crystal crowns, two white and pink thrones, for selfies. “Boutique,” I read online before I booked. But everything feels dated.

I hurry to the elevator bank, look around, punch the up button too hard. Somewhere between here and the pool I lost the woman and the girl. Without them, all I want is the safety of my own room, solitary and dark. The doors ding open, shut, open again, on a floor that feels deserted, coated in a deep purple light cast by tinted lamps, absorbed by purple carpet. The hallway is intolerably long, lined with door after door of possible disappearances. I imagine my body dragged across the threshold, swallowed. But maybe this is what I want, a violent disappearance. I breathe for a count of three to get my nerve up, then speed walk to my room with my key card out and ready. Inside, I turn every lock, catch my breath, taste mildew. Even the mold is air conditioned, the whole room so cold the carpet’s damp, or feels like it. The furnishings are ornately carved, like a princess’s, the way I remember Fairy Tale Land, everything medieval, but also plastic, worlds like pages out of a child’s bath-time book, whimsical and water-resistant.

The bathroom fan rattles. I drop my bikini bottoms, unlace my top, let it fall, then glance at the mirror, always startled by what I see. Dimples, ripples, reminders of masks and knives and wrist ties. A certain willful proximity to death itself. I give myself a conspiratorial look, the kind of look you give a friend who asks how you are when obviously you’re shitty. And shut the light.

In the bedroom, I bend to the mini fridge, remove a bottle of wine. My own, not the twenty-dollar, two hundred milliliter the hotel provides. I came prepared. My wine bottle, my vape pen, nineteen bars of Xanax, thirteen Ambien, fifty Vicodin. And six gel caps, prefilled with magic mushrooms, a drug I’ve never tried. My dealer threw them in with my last order. “Nature’s medicine,” he said. I think he’s worried about me.

The screw cap snaps. The bottle pours. My glass is paper, made for coffee. I set it on the bedside table, wrap myself in a robe and climb into bed, turn on the TV. The word “breaking” runs on a reel across the bottom of the screen. Twenty-four-hour news, the same story that’s been told for days. A powerful man, his desire, his violence, the world’s permissiveness.