echoing images

Mirrages shifting on the dark river in the night.
Reflections.
Cityscape.
Escape.
We're standing on the edge of the black river; it's glimmering.
We have drinks, both of us, and she keeps smiling.
A plane flies low overhead and she tells me she's afraid of flying.
I stare as another follows it almost immediately, the huge headlight on its nose borrowing a way through the dark, its strobe reflecting on the water, its engines echoinging in the night.
It passes overhead, disappears behind the curtain of a night time cityscape, escaped, but for the echoing after thought.
"Over the Rockies, going to California, our plane started to shake," she tells me, still smiling. "I was afraid."
"It can get scary." I drink.
"When was the last time you were in California," She asks and I'm surprised..
What an odd thing to ask, from a girl like her, I mean, a stranger.
I was born in California, she doesn't know. I stare at her. The air is cold, colder by the river.
"It's been a while." I say.
"Where are you from?" She asks.
I sigh, think. I don't know, how to answer I mean, so I drink harder, finish and toss the can off the ledge, to the edge of the shoreline below. Another plane flies in low.
"It's not here," I say.
Subconsciously there is a piano playing in my mind, a soundtrack to the situation, mysterious, random keys tapped in random order.
"You shouldn't be out here alone." She says.
My friends have left. I turn to the curtain of the cityscape behind me, bright, beautiful, draping the dark in light, reaching high. Another plane slips through the drapes. My friends have long gone behind them too, readying for the next act.
We follow in their footsteps, walk back together, her and I, and make it to the hotel. It's still cold as it was by the river, though we're three blocks away. The broken piano is still playing, added now with a trumpet that blares as I stare up at the 18 floors of the hotel in front of me. We find that the front door is locked. I am wondering why the hell the doors to the lobby of an 18 floor hotel are locked. A custodian lets us in, grins at me as she walks ahead and to the elevators. I figure out what he is thinking later.
A ding sounds, not from the piano in my head. The sound echos. The elevator doors open. It's a glass elevator. The doors close. We speed upwards. I watch through the glass as the world races by. I thimk its funny that this is all real. The doors open and we are on another floor. We find the room, 18something or another on the top floor. People are inside, all smiling. It's warm. I'm warming up. Earlier, before we walked in, we could hear the murmers of their conversation, but the words were unclear.
"There he is," A beat starts, drums. Trumpet and piano. My world is spinning. "Have some more," he says. I've never met him in my life, but he knows who I am.
"It was funny," Another one says. "We've been watching people in the glass elevators. One guy got in after another got out. The one before him had hit all the elevator buttons and we just watched as he stopped from one floor to the other. Then he got pissed and got out."
They laugh.
My soundtrack turns their laughs into a beat and it makes sense to me.
I go to the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror. I see that there is a red mark streaking on my cheek and touch it but realize that I am touching the face in the mirror, not my skin.
I walk out. Everyone is laughing. I see the river from the 18th floor window view of the room, reflecting the city.
Reflections and echos in my memory.
After thought images.
"Is this real? Is this it?" He asks me holding up a piece of paper with my name in black printed on it.