Page 40 of Famous for a Living

My breath catches in my throat.

Just beyond a row of small cabins is a cliff, and off that cliff is a view like I’ve never seen before. A winding river far below snakes toward the cluster of mountains I saw from a distance yesterday, but here they look even more staggering. Gargantuan. I feel like I’m at the end of the earth. Or perhaps in a Tolkien movie. Like at any moment I’ll see a wizard breaking through the clouds, riding on the wings of a giant eagle.

“Unbelievable,” I breathe.

I slip my phone out of my pocket and begin alternating between pictures and video. More for research for myself at this stage, to remember what I’m looking at when brainstorming a posting plan. Because I will be back, without question, for this million-dollar—no, billion-dollar—view. As I snap, something occurs to me, and as I turn in a semicircle searching for an answer, I come up short. “Where’s the road?”

The break between the trees is only a couple feet apart. There’s no route, as far as I can tell, wide enough for vehicles of any kind.

Zaiah doesn’t answer. I turn back around and see he’s already gone.

I move toward the cabins, and as I step onto the small porch of the first, Zaiah comes out, a bundle of wood in his hands.

“C’mon,” he says gruffly, as though I should’ve been following him all along.

I follow him inside the first of the ten or so cabins, and the second I get inside and get a full breath, I cough. I can’t help it. It’s like my lungs are desperate to expel the moth-ridden conditions around me.

I cough again, almost certain I’m breathing the dust of moth skeletons. How is it possible that this is worse than the cabin I’m staying in? There is no heat, or heater for that matter, in sight. Zaiah has taken off his gloves and squats at the hearth, working to make a fire in a hole in the wall that looks like a blackened pit of ash. There is nothing in the single room of the cabin except two wooden slats in the corner, which, I presume, are supposed to be some sort of bunk bed. One tiny window faces the front of the area, with old chicken wire covering the window. No kitchen or bathroom in sight.

Just . . . a room.

“This is the jewel of Kannery Park?” I say, dumbfounded.

He hunches over as he arranges wood inside the small, vacant fireplace. “Not every place has to be covered in marble.”

I frown at the memory of the way he looked around my apartment the first time he came. He had stared at the marble floors, counters, and walls of my kitchen as though I had willingly chosen to recreate a psych ward. As though he wanted to ask if I was allergic to a little color.

I purse my lips, then frown at another glaring thought. How on earth am I supposed to attract people to Kannery National Park when this is their golden goose? This?

It’s impossible.

I might as well be creating a resort account for a cemetery.

The task seems insurmountable, but I lift my phone and begin taking pictures.

Dark floor made of ancient (and not ancient in a good way) wood. Snap.

Log cabin walls that look a hundred years old. Snap.

Creepy window trying to lock you in via chicken wire. Snap.

I take a step toward the bunk bed frames, camera raised, and halt. Ohhh no. No thank you.

Immediately, I step back.

I must’ve made my disgust audible, because Zaiah shifts his weight on his heels. Turns to look at whatever caused me to fumble backward. When he doesn’t see anything, he stands. Moves to the bed frames.

“Ah,” he says, when at last his eyes catch on it. He steps up to it and, to my horror, picks up the perfectly intact skin of a four-foot-long snake. The snakeskin dangles all the way down to the floor.

Then, to even fresher horror, he grins with absolute delight. Like he was just walking along on his merry way and stumbled into the best pop-up shop of his life. He unzips his canvas backpack and carefully winds the skin inside.

He sees my expression and pauses. “Do you want to see?”

If it was possible to recoil deeper into the wall, I would.

One side of his mouth tilts into a smile. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with a skin. What you should be afraid of is that where there is a snakeskin, there is quite possibly the snake.” He points to the wall behind me. “And just my opinion, but I probably wouldn’t stick too close to dark corners if you care.”

It doesn’t help that just at that moment something grazes my leg. And yes, more than likely it was just some wood sticking out of the wall, but I wasn’t about to take the chance.