Read Motel. Pool. for Free Online

amateur.
    But all Jack wanted was a chance, dammit—the opportunity to prove he had that enigmatic star quality. Give him a good role with top billing and the camera would love him, the fans would love him. Everyone would love him.
    The worst of it wasn’t that Sam had promised him a chance—people broke promises all the time. And it wasn’t even how Jack had earned it—if he focused on how he’d paid Sam, he’d feel cheap and dirty and used. No, the worst of it was that without his shot at stardom, he was nobody. Nothing but a meatpacker’s son from Nebraska. Not special or desirable. Just… empty. He’d go back to Omaha and reclaim his job among the blood-and-shit reek of the plant. He’d rent some crappy little house, spend his nights watching TV and drinking, occasionally meet up with a stranger for a quick and furtive fuck. He’d grow old and die and never matter to anyone.
    He drank the second batch of beer.
    Somewhere nearby, a baby was crying. A woman spoke in low, angry bursts, and Jack couldn’t tell whether the voice came from another guest or someone’s television. He thought he heard the crunch and groan of two cars colliding, followed by the echoes of a scream, but when he looked out the window, the families at the pool were as jolly as always.
    If he stood in exactly the right spot in his room and pressed his cheek to the window glass, he could watch the sun setting behind a faraway bluff. The earth would spin, and soon, five hundred miles away, that same sun would sink into the Pacific. Those lucky few who owned houses in Malibu and Santa Monica could stand on their balconies and watch as the sky turned fiery orange and the sea swallowed the light.
    He was sitting in the darkened room, holding the almost empty whiskey bottle in one hand, when someone knocked on the door. It wasn’t Sam—Jack would have heard his footsteps. For a moment he considered pretending he wasn’t there. But the person knocked again, more insistently this time, and Jack rose slowly onto his bare feet. The floor sloped as if his whole world had tilted.
    “Hello, Jacky.”
    Doris Richards wore sunglasses despite the hour and a long fur coat, although the air had barely begun to cool. She smelled like Jack’s mother’s lilac bush, and her hair was done up in a new style—short but glamorous, with smooth curls. “You look like Grace Kelly,” Jack said, stepping aside so she could enter.
    “Grace Kelly’s mother, maybe.”
    As confidently as if she had lived there for years, Doris crossed the room and clicked on the light. Jack stood at the door a few seconds more before closing it. “Sam sent you?” he asked.
    “My husband doesn’t send me anywhere. He and I talked, and we agreed it would be best if I came.”
    “Best.” He leaned back against the door and scrubbed his face with the hand that wasn’t holding the bottle.
    “Baby, I thought you were smarter than this.”
    “’M pretty, not smart.”
    She laughed as if he were being very clever. “It’s possible to be both, you know.” She picked up an empty beer can and frowned at it for a moment before setting it down again. “You’re far too young for this.”
    Muzzily, he misunderstood what she meant. “I’ve been drinking since I was twelve.”
    “Not that. This .” She waved her arms in an expansive gesture that seemed to indicate the entire world. “Too young to know what you want.”
    “I want to go swimming.”
    “Jacky….”
    “I want to go swimming in my own fucking pool in my own house in Beverly Hills! I want my boyfriend swimming with me and he loves me and we don’t fucking care who knows it because I’m so goddamn famous it doesn’t matter! I want people begging for my autograph and girls fainting when they see me. I want my face on movie posters all over fucking Omaha and when everyone sees them they’ll say, ‘There’s Jack Dayton. Look what our boy has done for himself.’ I want to get so many goddamn Oscars that after a