Coming Home

by Lydia Michaels

  Once her dainty, completely ornamental white apron was tied at her waist, she pinned the small accordion cap in front of her bun. Hoisting the last of her items into the tight metal locker, she tucked the bulge back and forced the door closed, moving her fingers just in time for the latch to catch before her cumbersome belongings could be regurgitated onto the floor. Looking left, then right, she spun the built-in combination lock several times until convinced her possessions were secure. Everything she owned was in that locker.

  By the time Scout made it to Tamara’s office, other maids were already on the move with their carts. Behind her, some employees were just arriving. Quickening her pace she turned into the office labeled Housekeeping General Manager and greeted her GM with a smile.

  “Good morning, Tamara.”

  “Good morning, Scout.” She smiled, her teeth clean and perfectly straight.

  Scout had an odd obsession with hygiene and frequently noticed people’s teeth and fingernails as some sort of personal grading system.

  “Here’s your list for the day. Bridget’s out so I put you on the penthouse suites if that’s okay,” Tamara said.

  Like she’d admit if it wasn’t. “That’s fine. I’m happy to help.”

  “Good and while I have you here, your paperwork was sent back from Human Resources. You forgot to fill in your social when you did it. They’re going to need that in order to process your paycheck this afternoon.”

  Crap. Parker had done her paperwork. Tamara’s curvy frame twisted in her fancy leather chair as she reached into a paper tray. She slid the familiar paperwork across the desk and Scout forced her hand to remain steady as she picked it up.

  There was nothing condescending about Tamara. She was in her midthirties and seemed to be one of those pleasantly chubby women who chronically dieted and would never truly recognize the beauty they held within. Scout appreciated her easy pleasantness and genuine candor.

  Her eyes raked over the application. Parker’s penmanship was neat and bold. Scout admired the confident way his letters stroked in tidy order across the small blank spaces.

  “What did you say was missing?”

  “Your social security number. See, there, on the top right. Just fill that in and you’ll be good to go and I’ll have it sent back before payroll cuts the checks this afternoon.”

  Tamara wore a floral-scented perfume and Scout couldn’t help breathing in the bouquet without a touch of envy. It mixed nicely with the fragrance of her hair and skin.

  She found the blank spot she was referring to. Nine little blank lines needing to be filled.

  “Why do they need this?”

  “For tax purposes mostly.” Her fingernails were painted red. Scout self-consciously tucked her clipped nails into the shelter of her palm.

  She didn’t have a social security number or if she did she’d never been told what it was. She could’ve been honest, but honesty in this situation would only delay and complicate things. The key to fitting in was being as low-maintenance as possible.

  “Do you have a pen I could use?”

  Tamara handed her a pen and Scout squatted low at the corner of the desk. Her fingers deliberately formed the numbers. Scout was very aware of how unpracticed they appeared next to Parker’s well-developed words. Quickly, she made up three groups of numbers she could remember in case she had to recall them for something in the future. One-three-six, because it was the number of her locker. Twenty-two for her age. And nineteen hundred because it was the address printed on the awning out back of Patras. If they checked it and realized she made it up, she’d act like it was an honest mistake and figure out what to do when and if that time came.

  “Here you go.” She slid the paper back to Tamara.

  “Great.” She grinned, slipped the paper back in the tray she pulled it from and handed Scout her assignments for the day.

  “You’ll need to use your badge to access the penthouse floors. Level thirty’s all individual entry, so once you get off the elevator your normal house key will work, but from there you’ll have to use the private bank of elevators located just outside of the private ballroom on thirty-one. There’re four master penthouses on the thirty-second floor. Three of them are vacant this week so you’ll only need to attend Suite C. Each has its own elevator that will deposit you directly in the room. I usually have the girls take only what they need with them. The master suites have a supply closet your general house key will open, where you’ll find a sweeper and basic supplies to replenish the amenities. Here’s the keycard for Suite C. Make sure you deactivate them at the end of the day.”

  It had taken the first week to lose the knot in her stomach over starting a new job. By the second week Scout found her rhythm and acquired a keen understanding for how long a room took to clean and freshen. She’d never done a penthouse before, let alone a master suite. Scout wasn’t even sure what a master suite was. Forcing a calming breath into her tightening lungs, she maintained an expression of capable confidence and took the list and keys from Tamara.

  The idea that she had no clue about the pace she’d need to keep that day terrified her. Scout needed this job and she’d have to hustle her ass off in order to get everything done before the end of her shift. She usually sat on a bench down the street for her lunch break, being that she never packed a lunch, but today she’d work straight through her entire shift in order to make sure she finished in time.

  Not until ten o’clock did she breathe relatively normally again. She completed her first circuit of common-area maintenance. The upper floors were much like the lower ones. There were more seating areas and therefore more furniture to dust, but for the most part they took the same amount of time. Although the suites were larger than the typical rooms, they were pricier too. That meant fewer guests. Tamara must have realized that when she made the schedule for the day.

  By Scout’s third suite she had herself timed at twenty-two minutes per room, but there were only fifteen rooms she was responsible for on level thirty. That would leave her with two hours to complete the penthouse master suite C.

  By one o’clock she was left waiting for one guest to get the hell out of his room so she could clean it and then she’d be finished with the thirtieth floor. Scout hovered for a few moments and decided it would be better to come back after she finished the master suites.

  She rolled her cart to the service elevator and returned it to the lower level with the rest. Collecting a small basket from the shelf, she quickly packed it with shampoo, conditioner, soaps, and anything else she might need while up there.

  Scout’s anxiety returned as she found the private elevators on the thirty-first floor. Unlike the other guest elevators, these were quite lovely. There were four of them, simply numbered with the letter dedicated to each individual master suite. Each one was made of glass and lined with delicate brass bars. As she stepped into the one labeled C, she felt like that bird in a gilded cage from one of the stories Parker had read to her.

  The ride was only a few seconds to the thirty-second floor. The gilded cage opened with practiced ease and Scout stepped across the threshold to a frosted glass-paned set of French doors.

  She knocked lightly.

  “Housekeeping.”

  When no one answered, Scout slid the private keycard through the lock and slowly turned the knob. The level of luxury the room announced at first sight was sweltering. She found it difficult to breathe among the thickly papered walls, richly upholstered furniture, and heavily padded carpet.

  Silently, she walked down the long, private corridor.

  “Hello? Housekeeping . . .”

  No one was there, but she found comfort in her own familiar voice. Looking down at her shabby shoes, her self-esteem faltered for a moment. Such opulence. Such contrast.

  Chandeliers dripped from beveled fixtures on the twelve-foot ceilings. Antique settees and decorative si
de tables created various sitting rooms. There was an enormous private bar, somehow dwarfed by the mammoth window facing the east.

  Approaching the window slowly, the effect was dizzying. It felt as though she were an angel spying on mortals below. It was a powerful and jarring vantage point to hold. She was on top of the world. Well, on top of Folsom, but still . . . this was the highest she had ever been.

  There was an identical window facing the north. A unique executive desk was the centerfold of that backdrop. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with the personal items she noticed scattered on the floor around the grand desk so she let them be.

  Moving to a pair of double doors, Scout discovered a bedroom. It wasn’t as extraordinary as she’d expected. The bedding was of a finer quality than the typical guest rooms at the hotel, but a slight wave of disappointment washed over her because it was somewhat ordinary in comparison to the rest of the penthouse.

  Then she discovered another set of doors.

  Pressing them open, she gasped at the audacious splendor that was obviously the master bedroom. It was a palace. A king-size bed shaped like a sleigh was the central piece of the room. The decadent bed was draped in heavy silk blankets reminding her of something from a story called Arabian Nights that Parker had read to her.

  Velvet pillows littered the floor and plush, heavy satin draped from a spherical sconce above the bed. The canopy gathered at the wall in several places, held by thick golden ropes with tassels the size of horsetails, and cascaded like a waterfall to the black marble floor.

  Her hand coasted over the luxurious textures and her body hummed with excitement. Never before had she seen such a display of exquisiteness. Turning, she noticed a set of three French doors leading to an oval granite balcony complete with heavy metal furniture softened by more sensual fabrics.

  Her feet glided over the plush carpet and her fingers closed around the heavy pewter knob. The color scheme was flawless. Warm earth tones blended with spicy cinnamons and sultry reds.

  Scout’s fingers moved over the plush cushions reverently, almost sensually, fondling the sumptuousness. What must it be like to sit on such bursting softness? She couldn’t quite understand how such material survived the elements.

  The air was much cooler at this altitude. Cautiously, she walked to the dense, stout columns making up the wide granite railing. The balcony was the size of a regular guest room.

  As she stepped to the edge, her heart raced. Wisps of hair came loose from her bun and whipped across her face in the blustery, uncontained wind. From such heights there was neither rhyme nor reason to the breeze, nothing barricading or stifling its power.

  Overwhelmed by the magnitude and quite aware of her insignificant part in this grandiose world, Scout quietly panted, her heart somewhere in her feet as she tried to fathom the height, scale, and intentional point of power she occupied in those brief seconds. It was a completely unfamiliar feeling, staring down at the tiny people bustling about their lives on the pavement below.

  Scout tried to imagine the person entitled to stand in such a position of supremacy, but her mind came up short. She had no image of reference for such an omnipotent being. All guests of Patras were wealthy, but whoever stayed in this master suite was a king.

  She saw the guest as a master of the world in her mind, yet he or she remained faceless, and without detail. Power was the only characteristic she was sure of.

  A sudden stab of unease had her stepping back from the edge. Never had she felt so out of place. Wealth to this degree was beyond her comprehension and she was defenseless against it, outnumbered and small, meaningless. She suddenly wanted to be done with this place.

  Scout quickly returned to the warmth of the room and pulled the heavy doors shut behind her. Like a trespasser on the run, she sought her supply basket and headed toward what she thought to be the supply closet.

  Get done and get out.

  There were three bathrooms in the master suite, each one more lavish than the last. She began with the largest one and quickly worked in a clockwise motion around the restrooms until the marble fixtures shone like jewels. Next she made the beds, fluffed the pillows, refreshed the soaps and towels, and dusted the furniture.

  When Scout went in search of the vacuum, she accidentally found a clothing closet. The sheer volume of clothing baffled her. Suits. All men’s suits. A large silk robe the color of onyx hung on the inside of the closet door and as she leaned close she could smell a delicious trace of some sort of masculine fragrance in the material.

  There were so many clothes. Over twenty pairs of expensive shoes, shined to a point that she could see a distorted reflection of herself in each toe. She added large feet to the powerful, faceless guest occupying this space.

  It occurred to her that this was more than just a hotel room, more than just a temporary penthouse. This was the apartment of some very wealthy long-term guest. She wasn’t sure what gave away the resident’s permanent status at Patras, but once it crossed her mind that this guest was more than some wealthy mogul passing by, she became certain of it.

  The suite didn’t smell like the other rooms in the hotel. It had a warm unique scent of its own. There was an astounding amount of lived-in subtleties she’d first overlooked, the amount of papers tucked here and there, the clothing, the wooden hamper in the master bath. She wasn’t sure what to do with that.

  Curious about the mysterious resident, Scout wandered to the large desk in the sitting room. She debated organizing the papers that seemed to have floated thoughtlessly to the floor in no particular order, but her better judgment told her to let them be.

  There was a calendar with notes jotted in every square. She tried to read the thickly scrolled handwriting, but it was in cursive and she was hopeless with those peculiar, curly letters.

  Her fingers grazed the shiny pewter letter opener. It reminded her of a dagger. She lifted it, testing the heavy weight in her hand and smiled when she discovered a pearl set in the hilt and something engraved beneath the gem. She wasn’t sure what the one loopy letter was, but she thought the other was a P.

  She turned the substantial tool, handling it this way and that and admiring the effect the subdued sunlight had on the pearl. As she turned to better see the scrolled detail of the handle, her apron brushed across a sheaf of papers and to her horror, the pages went fluttering to the floor. They coasted and furled in their descent, losing any sense of order and mixing with the papers already matting the floor.

  “Shit!”

  She quickly tossed the heavy dagger to the desk, wincing when it landed with an obnoxious clank on the soft wood surface, and dropped to her knees. She wasn’t sure what the papers were or if they went in any sort of order. Scout tried to pinpoint similarities in the typed words to tell the difference between the pages intended for the floor and the ones she’d accidentally knocked over, but they all looked the same to her.

  She tried to sound out some of the words, hoping to see some clue that told her where they belonged, but the words were all very long and unfamiliar other than the occasional the or and she recognized. Her fingers trembled as she panicked, and then she heard the beep of the front door.

  “I don’t care what he thinks he’s entitled to. His lease locks him in for one year and reoccurs indefinitely until either he or I give written notice of change. And even then he’s responsible for a minimum of six months’ notice,” a deep, booming voice shouted.

  Scout froze on the floor, shaking, pages clutched in her moist palms as she trembled with dread. Staying low, kneeling slightly hidden by the clawed foot of the mahogany desk, she jumped as the voice bellowed, “I don’t fucking care what his reasons are! He can pack up or ride it out, but he’s responsible for the next six months and that’s after he gives me written notice. Until I have that, he’s pegged.”

  The voice got closer and she held her breath. The bang of a cabinet made her fli
nch. There was a clank of something glass followed by the soft chink of what sounded like ice filling a tumbler.

  Scout froze. Don’t even breathe.

  “Well then he better have a good lawyer, Slade, because I’m not fucking around here. I gave up a two-point-six million-dollar tenant to get him in there on time. He dicks me now and I promise he’ll be the one getting fucked in the end.”

  The sound of ice moving over liquid and trickling over glass, then, “I don’t fucking—”

  The room was suddenly submerged in silence. Too quiet. Terror gripped Scout’s heart and she slowly looked up into the most intense set of black eyes she had ever seen.

  “I’ll call you back,” he said and slipped his phone into the pocket of his suit.

  He was stunning. Dark hair clipped close at the sides and slightly longer at the top with the tiniest beginnings of silver peppered by his temples. Deep olive skin, a straight nose, and two menacing, black slashed brows scowled down at her. His jaw was strong and shadowed with coarse black hair.

  He was tall, much taller than her and likely taller than most men. Her heart raced as she took in his cuffed shirt adorned with sharp snaps at the wrists; long, expensively dressed legs, and her hunched, terrified reflection shining back at her from the toes of his dress shoes.

  “Mind telling me what you think you’re doing?”

  There was nothing friendly about the way he spoke to her. Scout frantically tried to say something, but her brain had short-circuited and all of her words seemed to have fallen from her head.

  “Answer me.”

  She jumped at the sharp lash of his voice and lost her balance. She’d been crouching so long her foot had fallen asleep and her knees had gone stiff. As Scout caught her balance, she inadvertently landed on her knuckles. Her fist closed over his paperwork and crinkled it slightly. She might’ve whimpered, but she couldn’t hear over the heartbeat suddenly roaring in her ears.

  In two swift steps his legs ate up the distance between them and he was standing over her, still scowling.