by Brandon Witt
“South Street?” I had a horrifying vision of me riding my bike ten kilometers through the rain trying to balance twenty-five kilos of dog food under my arm.
“Yeah. You drive car and he pay you petrol.”
“But I don’t have a car.” Could I ride and still get paid for the petrol?
She shrugged. “Not my problem. You talk to Mista S’anford. Ha ha ha.”
I was glad something amused her.
AFTER OUR shopping trip, Mrs. Lee introduced me to the world of blindness. Mr. Stanford’s groceries needed to be carefully opened and placed in labeled Tupperware containers so he knew what each one was. All the tinned and bottled items needed a label. In braille.
And boy oh boy was that fiddly! There was a special labeler where you could find the letter you wanted, line it up with the correct braille symbol, and then push the button, and the machine would print it for you—one fucking letter at a time. Mrs. Lee had me make a label for pineapple and man, that word is long! I’m sure she picked that one on purpose instead of peas.
I left Mrs. Lee to work the machine while I washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. I put the groceries away, referring to the photographs in the instruction manual to get it right.
Mr. Stanford had a whole bunch of neat gadgets to help him get around in the world. There were devices to hang on the edge of your coffee mug to tell you when to stop pouring the water, the kettle and telephone both spoke to you if you pressed a button, a special reader could tell someone the color of something that you pointed to and (my favorite) was a machine that could scan a page for text and read it back.
I got in trouble from Mrs. Lee by playing with that one. I put Mr. Stanford’s bossy letter in the scanner and had the machine read it to me to make sure I hadn’t missed any pleases or thank-yous.
I hadn’t.
Mrs. Lee came back the following day to make sure I was alright with all the jobs, but after that I was my own man. It wasn’t bad as a job—boring and repetitive, but I could make my own schedule and play my music as loud as I wanted and no one complained.
On my first day without Mrs. Lee, I had an unexpected visitor drop by the house—Mrs. Martha West. I was cleaning the shower when I heard the doorbell go, so I made my way through the house and opened the door still holding my rubber cleaning gloves, unsure of what to expect on the other side.
“Mrs. West,” I exclaimed.
“Mr. Manning. May I come in?”
I stepped back and allowed her into the house. “Sure. Come on in. Was there a problem or something?”
Her heels clacked on the wooden floor as she made for the kitchen. She was obviously familiar with the house, and I saw her look around, inspecting for dirt on the floor and dishes in the sink.
I tried again, hoping that her appearance didn’t mean I was fired already. “Is everything okay?”
She ran her hand across the top of the sideboard and scrutinized her fingers for dust. “Everything is fine, Mr. Manning. It is usual that I pop in on my employees to check that everything is satisfactory with them and that there are no issues. With Mr. Stanford being such a… particular client I wanted to make sure any problems were dealt with swiftly.”
“Oh. Fair enough. I haven’t any problems. Has he complained about me already?”
“Actually, no.” She looked happy about that. An awkward silence developed between us then, and I was unsure what to say. It wasn’t my house so I couldn’t really offer her a coffee or anything, and she was actually interrupting me from doing my job. I tapped my rubber gloves against my jeans and waited. Finally, she caved first. “Okay, then. Unless you have any problems, I’d best be on my way.”
She turned and marched back toward the front door. I strolled after her. “Actually, Mrs. West? I have one question. When do we get paid?”
She paused at the door. “Thursdays. I believe you’ll find your first wage in your bank account this afternoon, Mr. Manning. Good day.”
I locked the door behind her and broke into a grin. Yes! Payday! I could maybe splash out and buy something decent for dinner. I laughed to myself as I realized that something decent would probably mean baked beans on toast.
FRIDAY THERE was a note waiting for me in the laundry.
Dear Mrs. Huntley,
• There is a parcel waiting for me at the post office. Make sure you pick it up when you do the shopping today.
• The meat you bought last time was adequate. Buy it again.
• I have left an extra list of items I need from the chemist.
• You have changed your perfume. I don’t like it.
Sincerely,
P. Stanford.
I read the note twice and with glee, ran it through the scan-and-read machine, just to hear it out loud. The man was a menace. I laughed at his last demand—You have changed your perfume. I don’t like it. It actually wasn’t a demand at all, just a statement of fact.
I was impressed that the man noticed the change in smell from his housekeeper, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, even if I wanted to. Since it wasn’t an order from His Royal Highness, just a statement of fact, I decided that it could be ignored.
I completed my morning tasks and rode to the shops for his groceries. It was a bit of an effort to get them back, but I noted down my “mileage” on my timecard that I would send to the office at the end of the week. I sat and labeled his stuff, vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathrooms, did the dishes, and tidied up. At three minutes after three in the afternoon, I locked the door and left stuffy Mr. Stanford to his grumpy ways and rode home.
I still had my job at The Gardie Tav on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, so I rested for a while before heading down to start at 6:00 p.m. The sign on the roof of the building claimed its name as “The Coolgardie Tavern,” but no one called it by this name. Charlie Lombardo owned the establishment and worked the bar. He was a decent boss. My job was sort of fractured—I did what needed doing. During the first three hours of my shift, that usually meant clearing tables in the restaurant and washing dishes. As the restaurant crowd dispersed, I wiped down tables and stacked chairs, preparing the way for the dance floor. I helped the DJ lug his gear, hauled rubbish out the back to the bins, scrubbed pots and pans, made sure the lighting was working, and carried clean glasses to the bar. By 10:00 p.m. the place was usually rocking. The DJ would play dance music, and patrons would flow through the doors, looking for alcohol, dancing, and a good time.
Although Charlie hadn’t hired me as a bartender, I had learned how to pour a perfect beer and how to make some basic drinks. The faster we could get the drinks served, the faster the money would flow through the till, so Charlie roped me into serving when things got pumping.
At midnight I was taking a quick breather in the car park out the back when Luke came strolling up. We’d known each other at school, not that we’d been friends or anything. I hadn’t seen the guy for nearly eight years before I’d started at The Tav three months before. The guy was a Tav regular and thought he was my fucking best friend.
“Jake! Hey, man. Long time, no see.”
I swigged another mouthful from my water bottle and smiled. There was nothing wrong with him; I just didn’t know why he suddenly decided to be my best buddy. “Hi, Luke. Yeah—I haven’t seen you since Sunday’s shift.” I was being sarcastic but that was normal for me. It was a given.
He laughed like a freakin’ hyena. I guess that answered the question of whether he was drunk or not. He sat on the metal pole beside me and looked over the sea of cars in the parking lot. “So…. How’re things going?”
“Good, man. I scored myself another job this week. One I can work during the day. Fuckin’ aces. I need the money.”
“Yeah? Cool.”
We watched a group of young, skinny girls pile into a car and drive off. “So how ’bout you? How was work this week?” I knew he worked as a courier driver.
“Good, man. I didn’t get any speeding tickets. That’s always gotta be a
good week.” We laughed. Then he asked me about my family. “So how’s your sisters? Your mum?”
I sighed. “Same shit, different week.”
He grimaced along with me. We’d grown up in the same suburb—the suburb you didn’t live in unless you had to. All the kids at school were dirt-poor, mostly from broken families, and mostly their parents had some sort of issue—mental, gambling, drinking. I remembered Luke with bruises at school, not that I would ever mention it to him. I remembered his dad too. Although it may’ve been his stepdad or just the man his mother had living in the house. The man was a giant, with big, meaty paws. If it was him who caused Luke’s bruises, I’m astonished that skinny Luke survived.
As if reading my mind, Luke scoffed, “Yeah. How the hell did we survive that shit, man? My youngest brother just got sent up this week. The weasel. Twenty-six months this time. The guy is twenty-one and he’s spent more of his adult life in prison than on the outside.”
“It’s choices, Luke. Simple choices in life.”
He shook his head at me sadly. “Did we have any hope at all? Any of us? Am I going to be driving that effin’ truck for the rest of my life, earning minimum wage?”
I stood and stared him down, suddenly and inexplicably angry at his apathy to life. “It’s choices, Luke. You have the choice to go to work and then turn up here every fucking night and drink your pay away, or you could be stuffing the money in the bank and saving it to buy yourself a house. There’s a fucking mining boom happening up north, man! Go and get yourself a fucking qualification and work your butt off to get yourself some money. Don’t be a dickhead all your life.”
He scowled back at me. “Yeah? Do you have all the answers, Jake? How come you aren’t up north earning the big bucks if you know it all?”
I took two steps away from him. “I did, man. I earned a fuckin’ fortune. But then I had responsibilities down here and had to quit. I’ve been eating Vegemite sandwiches and plain pasta for weeks just to survive so that I can pay off a debt that wasn’t even mine in the first place. And what the hell have you been doing? Getting drunk. You’re just like my mother and your mother. You blame the wrong person. It’s not the government’s fault or your mother’s fault or even your boss. It’s you, Luke. It’s all you.”
I turned and banged my way back in the rear door of The Tav to finish my shift.
BRIGHT AND early Monday morning I was on my bike pedaling my way toward Mr. Stanford’s. My ears were still ringing slightly from the music of the previous night. We had a new DJ in and he played his shit loud. But despite being tired and partially deaf, I was in a good mood. I had two jobs and I could maybe see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
I was whistling as I opened the front door, but then I stepped inside and took in the mess awaiting me. “Shit!”
Mr. Stanford had left a mess of party proportions for me to wade through. A pile of dishes were in the kitchen sink, there were dirty glasses and plates all over the kitchen and the table in the dining room, the lounge cushions were flung all over the room, and one cushion had been torn, its white stuffing strewn throughout the house. Empty beer bottles were in odd places, crumbs had been ground into the carpet, and I could see a couple of half-eaten slices of pizza gracing the floor.
I wandered into the bedroom and found it in disarray as well. Sheets, blankets, pillows, towels, and clothes had been pushed against the wall in a heap, presumably to leave a clear path for the blind man to navigate from the bed to the walk-in closet and to the bathroom. The bed was obviously unmade with only a sheet splayed across the bare mattress and a blanket on top.
There was a definite scent of sexual intercourse in the air.
“Shit! Someone had a social event in here on the weekend!” I laughed at my naiveté for thinking that a blind man couldn’t or wouldn’t have sex. I had no idea what the guy looked like as there were no photos or pictures in the house, but from his uptight attitude I’d pictured the man in his fifties with some sort of OCD—a bit like Jack Nicholson in that movie. Maybe I’d need to revise that image.
I walked into the laundry and noted that the mess and chaos hadn’t actually made it to all the rooms—the study and the other bedroom were still neat as a pin. Someone had been in the laundry, though—someone other than Mr. Stanford. Two doors on the cabinet were wide open and cleaning products had been pulled out but not put away. A pile of dirty towels lay on the floor.
Despite this, Mr. Stanford had managed to still leave me my orders.
Dear Mrs. Huntley,
• Concentrate on clearing the floor today so I don’t trip over again.
• You may leave your other set tasks for another day.
Sincerely,
P. Stanford.
Usually the notes would send me into laughter. (Please note, I do not giggle. I don’t.) This note, however, did not. There was still no sign of a please or thank-you, but instead I zeroed in on the first line: so I don’t trip over again.
Again.
Whoever had been in the house with Mr. P. Stanford this weekend was no friend. No friend would leave such a mess for a blind man. The risk of him actually doing himself serious harm was quite great. Whoever Mr. Stanford had partied with was not a compassionate person. They were selfish and ignorant. And it made me angry.
Yes, I was upset at the mess I had to clean up—but I could let that go. It was my job after all. It’s what they paid me for. But the callous disregard for a man’s safety rubbed me the wrong way. Mr. Stanford might be rude and bossy, but in the past week he had become my rude and bossy man. I took pride in completing the tasks set before me in a manner he couldn’t find fault with. It had become a game in a way—see if he can find a mistake.
So I rolled up my metaphorical sleeves (my shirt was short-sleeved and didn’t need to be rolled) and got to work. I started in the kitchen, stacking dishes in the dishwasher and setting it running. I filled bags with rubbish and food scraps and scrubbed at stains on the floor.
When the lounge room was all in order and the kitchen in better shape, I started on the bedroom. I hauled sheets and blankets to the laundry to be washed, unraveling the tangle on the floor that had been kicked aside.
That’s when I found it.
A butt plug.
A blue silicone butt plug.
Of course I knew what one was. I was a gay man, wasn’t I? I’d read porn magazines and checked out the ads. I’d never seen a butt plug in real life, but I sure knew what one was.
Now the question I had running through my mind was: who actually used this? Did this belong to Mr. Stanford’s sexual partner? Or did it belong to him? Did he use it on himself?
I only knew about gay men using the device, but now that I thought about it, it could be used for both sexes. And there’s no reason why a straight man couldn’t use it. So was Mr. Stanford straight or gay? Did this even belong to him?
I picked up the offending instrument using a towel and took it to the laundry. I wasn’t sure if cleaning sex toys was in the instructions left by Housekeepers Inc., but I was sure going to look when I found wherever the manual had been chucked. In the meantime, that little blue silicone puppy was not going near any of my clean sheets or clean surfaces!
I ran hot water into a bucket with some disinfectant and plopped it in to soak, all the while pondering what to do about it.
By finishing time, the house was mostly clear of debris. Piles of washing still graced the laundry floor, but the other rooms were clear of potential hazards. I hadn’t got around to dusting or vacuuming the other areas of the house, which were both on my “To Do List for Monday,” but Mr. Stanford could go and jump.
The butt plug was still soaking in the laundry and I left it, unsure of what to do with it. Did the man even realize it was missing? Where did he keep it, anyway? Did he have a drawer full of sex toys or something?
Tuesday morning I let myself into the house and raced to the laundry for my morning dose of humor.
Dear Mrs. Huntley,
• There are two letters to post. I left them on my desk.
• Good job yesterday.
• I still don’t like your perfume. Change it back.
Sincerely,
P. Stanford.
I held the paper up in disbelief. Good job? Holy fuck! The man gave me a compliment! Break out the champagne. Call the newspapers. Shout it from the roof.
Of course, he canceled out the compliment with the following line. The man still didn’t like my perfume. Well, guess what, mister? It isn’t perfume. What you can smell is good ole men’s deodorant!
I smiled and looked in the bucket. The blue butt plug still floated in its merry way. There was no way the man could get me down while I had possession of his sex toy!
My surprise was doubled when two hours later I received a phone call on my mobile from Mrs. Martha West herself.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Manning. This is Mrs. Martha West.”
“Oh, hi, Mrs. West. Just call me Jake.”
“I am ringing to ask what in the world did you do, Jake?”
Ahh…. “I’m sorry?” Oh, God! Did she know about the butt plug?
“I have just got off the phone with Mr. Stanford. He tells me he wishes to give his housekeeper a two hundred dollar bonus this week. So I am ringing you, Jake, to find out how in the world did you manage to make that man happy?”
I laughed out loud in relief. This was a turn of events that I was not expecting. “Nothing much, Mrs. West. I just cleaned his house.”
“You must’ve done something more than just clean!”
I chuckled and lowered my voice to speak in a confiding manner. “Let me just say, Mrs. West, that Mr. Stanford is a party animal. I guess he’s grateful that I cleaned up the mess without complaining.”
Mrs. West hesitated. “Oh. Hmm.” I was pretty sure the woman had cleaned up some doozies after clients in her lifetime. She would understand.
