[ESSAY][01/21/26]Frankie Lou
by Violetta Balkoff
Frankie Lou hated her “Midnight in Barcelona” flavored vape.
“It’s evil, look,” she told me in the bathroom line.
She handed it over. “Midnight in Barcelona” looked like it had been run over by a car. But it still worked, so she still hit it.
She was wearing nothing but her friend’s clothes—a white silk slip and a white lace bra. She combed down her oily bangs in the bathroom mirror. She was beautiful. That goes without saying.
“I’m so dead right now,” Frankie Lou told us, “I haven’t slept or eaten in days.” Emma said, “That’s not true. You woke up, like, an hour ago.”
They had just returned from a Chateau Marmont bender, but that didn’t mean the bender was over. Skiing in the dense August heat, Emma asked Frankie Lou if she looked fat.
Frankie Lou said to Emma, “Don’t ask me any questions. I’m not a person right now.”
Frankie Lou had fallen asleep on the hotel pool chair for 16 hours and woken up with a sunburn. Her scalloped burn line showed that she had fallen asleep in the same borrowed lace bra she had on. She complained about the pain as a thinly veiled way to brag.
This wasn’t their first time, but it could be mine. Frankie Lou told me that all I needed was to know a guest at Chateau.
Emma said, “But it’s dangerous. You never want to leave.”
The only guest I’ve ever met at Chateau was a man who was the same age as my dad. Sitting beside us during dinner at the hotel restaurant, he tried to impress me and my friends by talking about modernist art and European history. My friends loved to humiliate him using their Ivy League education and beauty. He had a room, and he wanted us to see it without saying those words. Driving home from Chateau that night, I imagined what it would be like if we had.
Maybe I’d wake up 15 hours later than anticipated on the pool chair. Peel myself off the nylon cushion. Pretend I hadn’t paid for my stay. Snort the hair of the dog that bit me. It feels naive to believe the dog wouldn’t bite me too. I guess I just need to know someone there.
VIOLETTA BALKOFF is a non-fiction writer based in Los Angeles.