Читать книгу The Murderer's Maid - Erika Mailman - Страница 14
ОглавлениеJULY 11, 2016
The days pass in a slow, loud way—the clatter of plates, the endless screech of the espresso machine. Brooke meets the other employees, their shifts spread so they are all just one hour under full-time so Jane won’t have to pay benefits.
It’s a rainy Monday when a guy comes in and shakes his umbrella in the doorway, creating a pool of water that Jane mutters will cause accidents and thus litigation.
“Go mop it up!” she says urgently to Brooke.
“Sorry,” the guy says as Brooke approaches with a mop.
“It’s okay.”
He gives her a nice smile. He’s in his early twenties like her, wearing a gray raincoat over black pants and nice shoes. His conservatively-cut hair is brown, and he’s clean-shaven, his jawline looking a little raw. More than anything, he’s handsome in a serious way; he looks like a male model in an eyeglasses ad. He’s devoid of the rough edges that define her—the way a stranger can tell you once ate dinners constructed of saltines and peanut butter, and fielded playground queries about a missing, unnamed father.
Unexpectedly, he seizes the mop, cleaning up the puddle himself. “My mom taught me to clean up my own messes,” he says.
She’s speechless for a second.
“Next you’ll be making your own latte,” she says, and he laughs.
“No, I trust that to your expertise.”
He hands her the mop and for the moment before she turns away, he holds her gaze. He sees her. She’s never dated a white man before; they seem to order their espresso drinks without noticing the person on the other side of the counter. Either that, or the glance is purely sexual. His attention seems interested, curious.
“I haven’t seen you here before,” he says. “You’re new?”
“I’ve only been here about a week.”
He nods. “I was on a business trip when you started. I’m Anthony,” he says, extending his hand.
It literally takes her a second to remember the name she’s using here, and she nearly stutters on it. “Brooke. Nice to meet you. Let me put this away and get some coffee for you.”
She turns and retreats to the counter, buzzing a little from the encounter. She returns the mop to the bucket and washes her hands at the small sink. The mop always emits a sour smell when wet, as if milk has formed the majority of its addressed spills.
Anthony has disappeared by the time she looks up to take his order, but a moment later the bathroom door at the rear of the café opens, and he comes out. He must’ve been disgusted by the mop, too, perhaps regretting his impetuous move to take it from her.
“What can I get started for you?” she asks.
“A large Americano.”
“Sure.”
By the time she’s made his drink, there’s a line behind him, so he takes it without anything more than a quick “Thank you” and goes to sit down. She’s disappointed by the abrupt ending, but what did she expect? She looks over at him sitting near the windows, his profile outlined against the rain-battered glass.
Over the next few days, Anthony comes daily to get his Americano and sometimes an orange-cranberry scone. He greets her by name and always a few minutes of small talk, but nothing more arises.
She doesn’t think their brief interactions are worthy of note, but the third time he walks away from the counter, her co-worker Maria crosses her arms and gives Brooke a secretive smile. “Girl, he’s been coming here every day since I started working, and he never so much as looked at me. He must like girls who are more quiet.”
Brooke smiles but doesn’t meet her eyes. Maria’s sexuality is as open as her eyes, mascara applied so heavily each lash operates independently. Her low-cut shirt offers up her breasts, pushed up for view by a bra whose cup tips are visible, supportive caves for the serpent tattoo.
“Go and talk to him,” says Maria. “Take a rag and clean the table next to his.”
Brooke shakes her head.
“You’re crazy, chica!”
“No.”
“Have you ever dated a white guy?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s nice. They’re so like . . . If they don’t see you as a domestic, then they’re super nice because they’re psyched to have someone with hot Latin blood.”
Brooke rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, you laugh, but it’s fun. I highly recommend it.”
Across the café, Anthony lifts his head from his phone and looks straight at Brooke. He smiles, then looks back down.
“Oh, my God! He didn’t hear us, did he?” breathes Brooke.
“No way. It’s too noisy. Plus, what are the odds he knows Spanish?”
“He looked right at us.”
“Correction; he looked at you. And it’s because he’s burning to drape your gorgeous raven locks on his pillow.”
Brooke lets out a howl of laughter and sinks down behind the counter, out of view of the patrons.
“Don’t you think so?” asks Maria.
Unfortunately, Anthony leaves forty minutes later with nothing more than a smile and a two-finger wave. Brooke looks over at Maria, and they both shrug.
The next day, the café’s not too busy when Brooke arrives. She sees a few tables where moms sit chatting while their kids doze in the strollers parked next to them. A man types away on his laptop. A little girl sits by herself playing a game on an iPhone, and Brooke wonders why she’s not in school.
Behind the counter, Maria’s wearing a Beyoncé tour shirt with the sleeves and neckline scissor cut. She looks Brooke up and down in her cropped khakis and black V-neck. “You need some jewelry.”
“Good morning to you, too,” says Brooke.
“You’ve got to try a little harder.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re actually very beautiful, chica, but no one would ever know it the way you carry yourself.”
Brooke doesn’t say anything, just sets her purse down and washes her hands.
“Like, that guy yesterday? If you just showed 1 percent of effort, he’d ask you out.”
“Maybe I have someone already.”
Maria’s eyes widen. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I don’t.”
Maria mock hits her.
“But I don’t need a matchmaker, and I don’t want advice, okay?”
“No one ever wants my advice,” Maria grumbles. “Oh, by the way, the bathroom needs cleaning.”
“Oh.” Brooke smiles to herself; Maria’s friendship only goes so far. She saved the unpleasant job for Brooke. “I’ll just wait for that kid’s mother to come out of the bathroom.” She points at the girl—maybe a ten-year-old?—glassily looking at the phone screen.
“She’s mine,” says Maria. “Babysitter bailed.”
“You have a kid?”
“My pride and joy. Not too thrilled about how she came to me, but I’m sure glad she’s here now.”
She turns back around, effectively ending the conversation. Brooke grabs a pair of food service gloves and walks to the back. Maria’s daughter has long, beautiful hair. She’s a pretty girl, and her vacant expression reminds Brooke of herself at that age—back when her mom was still alive and she didn’t know how good she had it. She’d fight to stay up late to watch movies, sulk when not allowed, resist doing homework, all with a sour face. A few years later, the walls of the world would blow up and she’d be willing to kneel in snow for a year to have her mother back and treat her right.
It’s stupid to try to engage the trying-this-hard-to-be-disaffected, but as she walks past Maria’s daughter, she can’t resist giving it a shot.
“Great score,” she says although she has no idea if it’s a good or abysmal one. She’s never played a game on a phone. Never truly used one, never swiped her index finger in that languid way that is oddly sexy.
The girl doesn’t reply, which makes Brooke wonder if she heard. She’s probably been told not to talk to strangers.
Brooke opens the bathroom door, winces at the vista inside. Toilet paper clogs the toilet and cloys the floor at its base. A puddle of brown water sits in the sink, which appears to be stopped, although it has no plug.
She closes the door so customers can’t see her ministrations. She knows Maria’s shift started an hour ago; so much for their friendship.
She snaps on the gloves—powdery condoms for the hands—and works on the sink first, moving the masses of clumped food until water begins to drain again. It looks like somebody tried to make multiple scones go down the drain. She sprays cleaner until the air is toxic in the small space.
She hadn’t brought the mop and has to go back for it. “It’s nasty in there,” she says to Maria. She’s learned after years of being the new girl that if she doesn’t stick up for herself, she gets the worst tasks.
Maria doesn’t answer, restocking napkins.
“Did you go in there?” Brooke presses.
“Just clean it. Don’t make it a Sixty Minutes investigation.”
“Next time, maybe you can take care of it when you see it.”
“The employee of less than a week doesn’t call the shots.”
Brooke considers a few rude responses, but doesn’t want Maria’s daughter to hear. She goes into the bathroom with the mop and wheeled bucket, moving the gray water around until it’s soaked up. She regards the toilet and gives it a flush, terrified it will overflow, mop at the ready. Thankfully, the mass disappears.
Brooke sprays down the commode and wipes it dry with paper towels. She never kneels to clean a toilet; it’s always done from afar, standing. Unlike her mother, she’ll never have to concentrate on a stranger’s toilet, giving it her all. Her mother had made her promise she’d never work as a maid.
“Please tell me, mija, you’ll only clean your own home. No one else’s,” she’d said. Her mom had wanted higher education for her, not foreseeing the lackluster grades her daughter would pull off in the land of fruit and plenty. She in fact had a quite specific job in mind for her: attorney.
“How proud I’ll be to see you in your suit in the courthouse,” her mother would say. “You will tell all those men how the law works, and they will listen to you.”
Brooke checks herself in the bathroom mirror before opening the door. She looks pretty good for someone who has disappointed her mother and innocent defendants.
When she emerges, she sees that Anthony is at the counter. To her credit, Maria looks embarrassed on her behalf, as if she wished she had cleaned the bathroom after all. She gives Brooke an apologetic smile.
Nothing to do but walk toward them, pulling the clattering yellow mop bucket with her.
“Just can’t seem to let go of that mop, can you?” jokes Anthony as she gets closer.
“At least no clowns are making puddles in the doorway today,” she says with a smile.
“Ouch.”
She puts the bucket away and notices that he’s still standing there.
“Were you not helped?” she asks.
“He forgot he wanted coffee,” shoots Maria, and he blushes.
He blushes!
And, perhaps predictably, Brooke feels warmth spread across her cheeks, too.
“A large Americano?” she manages to ask.
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll bring it to you.”
It’s time to take a chance, she thinks. When she brings him his drink, she pulls out a chair and sits down at the table with him.
“I would ask if you want to get coffee sometime,” she says. “But that would be silly.”
A grin launches across his face, and she feels a resulting lurch in her heartbeat. “How about dinner?” he says.
“That sounds good.”
“Tonight? When you get off work?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come back a little after five for you.”
“Okay, that’s great. I’ll see you then.”
There’s nothing more to say. They made their plan, and she should go back to the counter. She wishes she had started with some small talk before cutting to the chase, because now she has to get up and go. He bites his lip, apparently feeling the same awkwardness, and she stares at that row of white teeth indenting the soft flesh before he realizes she’s looking and closes his mouth.
As soon as she rises, she feels guilt descend on a reverse trajectory. He’s a good guy—a guy who blushes! And bites his lip. She shouldn’t bring him into her weird underworld of evading people who want to kill her.
He’s too sweet. She should take it back. Why did she ever sit down next to him? It was all because of Maria and her daughter and the bathroom.
She looks over at the girl now, immobile as a statue staring down at her phone. Poor thing.
