We don’t meet in an office, we meet in a Starbucks. Juliette and I sit at one table while Tish sits at another with her book and a large juice and an even larger muffin. I’m having a double espresso. Juliette is having some jamocha something or other that takes longer to say than it does to drink. There are papers on the table that I’ve yet to look over, because Juliette has been too busy telling me how great I am.
I’m waiting for the catch. I decide to prompt it.
“Marilyn told me that nobody wants this job,” I say. Juliette is nonplussed.
“No, not really.”
“What’s the hitch?”
“The client.” She smiles and sips the frothy concoction in her cup. “Mr. McLean is going through a difficult time in his life. He’s been having a hard time of it for almost two years now.”
“Is he ‘dangerous’ or something?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Juliette shakes her pretty head, and gives me a quizzical look. “You don’t know about him, do you?”
“No, but I’m trying to find out,” I offer, along with my best smile.
Juliette settles back in her chair, lowers her voice, and proceeds to tell me about Mr. McLean and his troubles. The list of his woes is long and pitiful. By the time she’s done I still don’t have a clear picture of why he can’t keep a domestic employed. I’m usually pretty quick when it comes to assessing a situation, but I feel like I’m being kept in the dark. All in all, he sounds like the typical, spoiled, overindulged stars everyone reads about in magazines at the checkout in the market. Maybe I even have read something about this person, but I wouldn’t consider any of it noteworthy or surprising. I’m not overly impressed with celebrities, and celebrities of the whiney, complaining variety impress me less. I have no time for that, my life has been too busy full of surviving.
“Well, does he still have a drug problem? Is he violent when he drinks?” I want to know the answers to those questions, because I would consider those to be severe drawbacks. I’m not about to bring Tish into that kind of environment because I worked too hard all these years to keep her out of it.
“He’ll always have a problem, and yes, he’s backslid a few times, but nothing out of the ordinary. Emotional stress. He’s clean and sober right now. He’s been clean and sober for two months.”
“Is he unstable?” I’m not impressed. I’m not impressed with addicts at all, there’s something I find distasteful about it. But my mercenary side is screaming at me to ignore the faults and weaknesses of others. And if what Juliette is telling me is true, this McLean isn’t shooting heroin or smoking crack and I wouldn’t have to anticipate any middle of the night raids on the house or that I’m walking into some kind of drug lord’s den of iniquity. What it sounds like is some pathetic fool’s attempts at ‘cool’ gone to an extreme.
“No, mostly depressed, but he’s under treatment.”
Spoiled, addicted, morose, depressed. But not dangerous and not unstable or self-destructive. Non-violent, but temperamental. An overgrown kid. I can handle kids. I have one of my own and I’ve done a pretty good job with her. And I wouldn’t really have to be raising this one, just making sure his house was in order, his belly was full, and his jockey shorts were clean. Beyond that, I hoped he had a girlfriend to occupy himself with. Maybe HE likes to travel.
“Okay.” I shrug. “What about the living arrangements?”
Juliette takes off on another spiel about guest houses, pool houses, in house quarters, and I start to think that this guy has a house that has a lot of room. A LOT of room, maybe too much room. That could be part of the problem, too. Maybe this IS more than I wanted to take on.
“We can go out and have a look at the place, if you can spare the time,” Juliette says.
“Okay,” I repeat, because I have all day to check this out. Between the last dregs of coffee being drunk and the short walk to the curb outside I realize that I don’t even know where we’re going. “Where is this place?”
“Malibu.”
Malibu. Sure. Why not? Quiet, enclosed, private, secluded, intensely upscale and personal Malibu. At this point, I’m figuring that this is all just one big joke and I’m along for the ride.
“Should I follow you?” I ask when we leave the coffee shop. Juliette takes a look at my battered Honda, makes a little face, and shakes her head.
“I’ll drive,” she says.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
The house is enormous. There’s enough room in the place by my standards for several families to share. The hidden drive is parked up with vehicles and I think that perhaps someone should have called ahead. I wonder if it’s going to be all right to leave Tish in the car, but she gets out with Juliette and me, her mouth a little agape as she takes in the tall tiled roof of the stucco monster in front of us before I suggest she remain put.
“Company?” I ask.
“No,” Juliette insists, leading us to the front door.
Big house. Big door. She doesn’t knock, she lets herself in with her own key. My nose is assaulted with the stench of air freshener, dirty laundry, and wet dog. Within seconds I understand the problem. Mr. McLean is a pig. A pet loving pig. A pet loving pig with money to burn and no concept of how to take care of himself.
The furniture I can see is new, but scarred where the animals have gnawed or clawed at it. The tile and hardwood floors are scratched and cloudy. Pee. Dog pee. And dog hair. And dogs. Three big dogs. Three big dogs barreling over the scarred tiles and wood straight at us. And one little man sliding on the floors behind them in some vain effort at corralling them, a handful of leashes slipping from his grasp and landing at our feet.
The glitches are coming fast and furious at this point, and I’m thinking that it was good of Marilyn Ward to keep my options open for me.
“Can we put these guys outside?” Juliette asks the man.
“I’m tryin’,” he answers.
I can’t help myself. I see a problem, I try to fix it. My whole life has been like that. So without a thought I pick up a leash from the floor and grapple with the first available dog, an overweight bulldog, and manage to attach the chunky beast to the lead.
“SIT,” I say. “Down, boy, SIT!” And I push the back end of the dog down until it does just that, looking up at me with a line of drool running from the corner of his mouth to the floor. This is one ugly dog. He cocks his head to the side and the drool stream grows into a small puddle near his paw. Then he gets up and ambles away.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
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“You’re hired.”
She’s hired. I don’t care who she is, if she has a criminal record longer than my arm, if she’s a fugitive from the law, if she smells like garlic, I don’t care, she’s got the job. Anyone who can get Tank to behave is someone I want working for me.
“Funny, A.J.,” Juliette says in that voice that means the situation is anything but.
I know that I’ve said the wrong thing in the wrong way, but I smile anyway and nod at the strangers in my house.
“This is Siobhan Murray, the person who’s interested in the position,” Juliette tells me. “And her daughter, Letitia.”
Siobhan. Letitia. Funny names. I’d shake their hands except mine is wet with dog spit and stuck over with dog hair and I’m grossing myself out just looking at it. So I wipe it on the back of my pants, and from the look on the lady’s face, I’ve grossed her out, too. The girl just giggles under her breath.
“Sorry. Dogs,” I say as a kind of apology.
“I’m going to show Siobhan and Tish around a little, while you take the dogs outside,” Juliette announces.
“Great. Be right back,” I say as I get the other two dogs leashed and start taking them for a drag to the back patio. I get Tank along the way and let all three of them out. I love them to death, but today I wish they were somewhere else. The training schools never really worked on any of them, and they’ve all done time in doggy boot camp. Right now they’re in the bushes again, and I guess that’s better than having them under foot at the moment.
I should have let Sarah take them with her. She wanted them and I was willing at first but that left the house so freakin’ empty that I couldn’t stand it, so I took them back after the first night they were gone with her. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I used it as an excuse to go over to her new place and see what it was like. And I took the dogs to piss her off for not forgiving me. As if I deserved forgiveness.
Tank is pulling out the plants that edge the lawn.
I deserve these damn dogs.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
There are a lot of rooms and levels to this house. Although the front of it faces the street, the back of it is built into the side of the hill it’s on. There are stairs and landings and landings that are big enough to be rooms. There are some spectacular views right out to the ocean, which seems closer than it is, but really isn’t farther than a good walk downhill. Coming back would be an entirely different story.
There are terraces and patios on three levels, and a pool at the foot of the backyard. There’s also plenty of room for the dogs to have a decent kennel built for them, and I wonder why there isn’t one.
In every corner there are puffy piles of dog hair and evidence of them having the run of the house. There’s more evidence on the upper floors of the dog’s being allowed, even encouraged, to relieve themselves in the house. Between that and the general clutter, I’m beginning to think that Mr. McLean isn’t too bright, along with being not very clean.
I want to fumigate. I’m betting that there are fleas in here.
“It’s pretty big, but he’s not using most of the place,” Juliette drones in my ear. She’s been selling me since we began the tour of the house. Selling me on the size, hinting that there might be a little more money in it for me, that maybe the benefits could be enlarged. She’s been trying to convince me that this job is worth my while, worth my time, and she may be right on those points but I’m wondering if it’s going to cost me my sanity.
Tish, on the other hand, is in awe. I think the sheer size of the place is blowing her away. By the time we make our way back downstairs and into the kitchen, I can hear her brain making plans. When we pass through a door into the ‘servant’s quarters’, which is really it’s own small apartment with a private entrance, two generous bedrooms, a living area and two spare rooms for other staff but Juliette stresses that they could be for our use as well. Tish is ready for me to sign on the dotted line.
“There’s another apartment out over the pool house, if you’d be more comfortable there,” Juliette tells us. “That’s furnished, but this can be furnished, too. Whichever you prefer.”
I would prefer a moment to think. Alone. With a cigarette.
When we walk outside I see that I’m not the only person with that idea.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
I can’t seem to do anything right today. I just wanted to take a moment to have a smoke in the yard before going inside and trying to start over with this lady, Chevron? Chevy? I can’t remember her name, can’t pronounce it. Instead, they meet me in the yard on their way to the pool house. I guess Juliette showed her enough of the house, hey, if she wants to take this job and stay in the pool house that’s fine with me. I don’t blame her. She looks like a very tidy sort of person and the house is anything but today. Why sit in the middle of garbage?
I don’t bother following them, I’m not any help with this. In fact, I’m thinking maybe I should have cut out today instead of begging off golf and hanging around to do this. Juliette could have easily taken care of it and all I need to do is sign on the dotted line and hand over a couple of checks to seal the deal.
If she wants the job.
She HAS to want this job.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
