“I’ve sort of figured out how I can be the most helpful to you,” I begin. Not the best opening line, but I work on momentum. “The kitchen’s in order. You still need a few things, and you could get rid of a few things, some of the extraneous appliances, but that’ll come with time. It’s a very nice kitchen, by the way,” I say with a smile. Honey, not vinegar. Works every time; he smiles back. Not a big smile, but it’s a definite turning up of the corners of his mouth. I press on. “I’d like to have the cleaning people come every day this week, and maybe next, too.”
“Sure,” he agrees.
“They’re not doing the best job they could be doing around here. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to keep an eye on them and possibly replace the service if they don’t keep up to snuff. I think they just might need a bit of supervision.”
“Great,” he says.
“I thought that, besides their regular duties, they could concentrate on the bathrooms as soon as I can schedule in the extra time.” I make a notation on my pad of paper as I pause. “It will probably cost more than you’re paying now.”
“That’s fine.”
“After the bathrooms I thought that maybe they could take the whole house on, a room at a time, and once it was all in order, have the floors stripped and refinished. They’ve gotten a little worn.”
“Sure.”
I’m thinking that now would be the time to ask for a raise if he wasn’t already over paying me. I’m thinking that if I suggested he goes walk in traffic, or take a flying leap, that would be just peachy, too. I bite my tongue because at the moment it’s exactly what I’d like him to do. I do NOT like talking to myself and when Tish answers me the way this, this person is answering me, I tend to get angry. Unfortunately I have to swallow that now because it will do me not one whit of good to get angry in this situation.
“I have the receipts from yesterday for you. Where would you like me to put them?” On the counter? In the office? Up your ass? My mind takes flight.
“I don’t know, the office, I guess.” He scrapes his fork across the plate to gather up the last of the crumbs with the sticky syrup and licks it off the utensil until I don’t think I’m going to have to clean it. “I don’t deal with that stuff. Juliette just has me sign the checks.”
“Okay. Well, maybe I’ll just keep a file for the receipts then, and give them to her at the end of the week.” I have a feeling that if I put them in the office, they’re going to get sucked into a maelstrom of clutter and never come out again.
“Okay.” He pushes his plate aside and lights a cigarette.
“Is there anything you DON’T want done around here?” He’s agreeable. What a complete shock. I’m beginning to become suspicious. He’s TOO agreeable. It feels like I’m being set up.
“Not really.” He fiddles with his smoke and takes a sip of coffee. “Well, the studio, you don’t need to do anything in there.”
The studio. To me that’s represented by a closed door that Juliette didn’t open. It already seemed to be not part of my jurisdiction. I didn’t ask Juliette about it, and she didn’t offer any information, so I’d forgotten about it entirely. I make a note to myself to not go in there.
“And the office.” He sighs and looks out the window, but offers me nothing more, so I make note to stay out of there, too. It’s a large, messy room here on the main floor near the front of the house. Juliette had sighed as she showed it to me, and closed the double doors on that room, too.
“Okay. No studio, no office.”
“That’s about it. The rest of the house is all yours,” he says with another tiny smile. Then he barks, only it’s not a bark, it’s a laugh. “In fact, I’ll sell it to you cheap.”
I laugh back, but I don’t think he’s making a joke and I don’t find him funny.
“You don’t have to answer the phone, if you don’t want to, either,” he offers. “I have machines, they can pick up the calls.”
He picks up his cup to drink and it’s empty. I get up and refill it for him before he can move, and he looks up at me from the corners of his eyes as I place a full cup in front of him. Now what’s that, what’s that look about? Does he think I might pour the hot liquid on his head? I was thinking more in terms of his lap, but manage to only get it in the cup.
“I’m usually not around most of the day,” he says as he sugars his coffee. “I golf in the morning, grab something for lunch, then have meetings in the afternoon. If I’m back before five it’s because I have to meet with Juliette here. That’s about once, twice a week.” He watches the milk make his coffee change color. “It’s not very exciting around here, but I guess Juliette told you that.”
“No, she didn’t tell me a lot, we just went over what’s generally expected of me.” I don’t want to sit there another minute. He’s making me antsy. I get up and clear away his plate, rinsing it and putting it into the dishwasher. “I’m going to call the pharmacy, then take some clothes to the dry cleaner and pick up the prescriptions. The dogs are in the yard. I hope you don’t mind that I penned them in the dining room, but they’re ruining the floors and they leave a lot of hair in the kitchen.” I rinse my own coffee cup out and put it in the dishwasher, too. I really should wash the dishes, there aren’t enough of them in there to warrant running the machine. I’m thinking that it might take days before there is. “I’ll be back in time to fix you something for lunch today.”
“You don’t have to rush,” he says.
“Well, then, there’s a cold chicken in the fridge,” I tell him, but I know I’ll be back in time to prepare anything he’d like. As much as I’d like to tell him to stuff it, I know that it’s not in my nature to do that. Not yet, anyway. “Do you want me to bring the dogs in?”
“No, they can stay out there,” he said.
“I’ll feed them on my way out then.” I take out three cans of dog food from the pantry and line them up next to my bag before leaving the kitchen for the trek up to the master suite. I’m not going to bother calling in the prescriptions, I’ll just take them to the pharmacy and wait.
The bedroom is in a shambles, and I think that’s the way I’ll always be finding it so I might as well get used to it. I scoop up clothes from the floor and strip the sheets from the bed. I did the same thing yesterday, but today the cleaning people will make the bed and I know that they haven’t been changing the sheets, just pulling them back into place. The mattress cover is stained and should be replaced. I didn’t find another one mixed in with the linens yesterday, and I don’t find one today, either, so I add it to my purchase list. For now, I’ll run this through the washing machine before I go, and the dryer when I get back, and it should be ready when the cleaning crew arrives. I also make a note to check all the other bedrooms for signs of disuse and abuse.
The pill bottles are on the counter. I mete out the dosage for each and leave the loose pills on the counter in a water glass, with a note so he’ll know that they’re in there, then pocket the bottles to take with me. There are an awful lot of them. Marilyn Ward had alluded to this, and Juliette had been a little more forthcoming, but I’m not completely sure what all these pills Mr. McLean is taking are for. I’m at a loss as to what a recovering drug addict might be taking, or why, and seeing as no one is telling me a lot of background information I decide, then and there, that I’ll just ask the pharmacist for a run down.
I pass Mr. McLean on the stairs.
“I’m going now,” I tell him, “are you sure there’s nothing else you need?”
“No, well, yes, could you take the Jeep today?”
“Take it where?” I ask.
“Take it wherever you’re going, I’m using the Lexus today. The Jeep needs gas, and I haven’t used it in a couple of days. Fill it up with anything.”
“Fine,” I say, but he’s already moved on up the stairs. For the sheer annoyance factor I feel like taking my own car and leaving the Jeep sit there.
Obviously, this was not the best time to engage in a dialog with this man.
I need to get some air and about as far away as possible from this man.
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I’m not a morning person. I’m SO not a morning person. My mind doesn’t turn on until hours after I wake up. It didn’t used to be that way, I used to be able to jump out of bed, or just out of a sound sleep, and hit the ground running. But I’m not that way now. I find it hard to focus, I find it hard to get out of bed. That’s why Rene’s always calling, or just showing up. Sometimes he has to practically pull me out of bed. Sometimes I don’t say a word to him until we’re on the third hole.
We miss a lot of tee times.
I know that Shi was trying to talk to me, and I know that she was trying to make some sense to me, and I just couldn’t make myself think of all the things she was throwing at me. Later. Tonight. Around ten at night I’ll be clear about it all. That’s a good time for me. In the morning I really don’t care about anything. If I don’t care about it, I can’t talk about it. Breakfast was nice, though. It was really good and I’m so frickin’ full right now, because I didn’t need that last piece of toast, but it tasted great. I could go to sleep again. But my bed’s stripped bare. Right down to the mattress. The blankets are on a chair and I might as well take a shower.
I have absolutely nothing to do today. Not a thing. I was supposed to do a benefit tonight and I’ve cancelled. I can’t do it. I can’t do it because Sarah is going to be there and the last time we ran into each other at one of these events it was a disaster. Man, I had no idea she was gonna show up that night, that she had kept the invite, and if I had I wouldn’t have gone. Instead we ended up having to do a red carpet photo op and pretend like everything was okay when it couldn’t be farther from okay. And a night that I planned on having some time to myself in a crowd, where I could kind of lose myself, well, that got fucked over big time. Left early. I’ve cancelled other things since then, because I just don’t want to ‘run into’ her. Not that I don’t want to see her, I do, just not in public, not where we’ll be seen together, because we’re not together. If it looks like we are, people ask questions about the wedding, and I don’t like to talk about the wedding. Not with outsiders, hell, not with insiders, either.
Now I know why I woke up in such a shitty mood. I had forgotten about tonight. At least I thought I had. I guess not. Now it’s right at the front of my mind.
And what the hell is this? My pills are in a water glass and there’s a note from Shi. I wish she hadn’t done that, they’re all mixed up in the glass. But I guess it’s okay, she wrote down what I’m supposed to take. All of them. She only put the morning ones in there. Guess she’s coming back before I have to take anything else. I keep the afternoon half-a-pill in my golf bag, and shit, she should have renewed that, too, well, I can call it in and she can pick it up with the rest of them.
I swallow the pills with a glass of tap water that tastes disgusting. No one told me about California tap water. There are, there are THINGS in it, floating in it. I have bottled water in the house all the time, when I remember about it. I guess I should tell Shi about that, because it’s the one thing I don’t like to run out of. I’d write it down right now, but I don’t have anything to write with.
I think I’d better get a pad myself.
I’ll get Shi to get me one. If I can remember it.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
