by Brandon Witt
“Do I still get the bonus?” Two hundred dollars was a fortune!
“Yes, of course. I just think there’s something more to the story.”
I laughed. “Nope. I haven’t even seen the guy. I just clean and leave.”
And against all things holy, Mrs. Martha West giggled like a little girl. “Very well, then. Keep up the good work.”
THAT AFTERNOON as I was labeling his groceries, I got a crazy idea. There was a computer in the study and I turned it on, found the word processing program, and quickly printed off a short note.
Dear Mr. P. Stanford,
• Thank you for the bonus.
• There is a rip in the lounge room cushion. Please advise what you would like done with this.
• The shop had no plain tomato paste, so I had to buy salt-reduced. I hope that this is an acceptable replacement.
Sincerely,
Your Housekeeper.
I ran it through the scan-and-read machine to make sure it would make sense; then I carefully printed a braille label and stuck it to the top of the sheet of paper. The label said, “From your housekeeper.”
I left the note with his mail on the edge of the counter.
The following day it was gone. In the laundry my note said:
Dear Mrs. Huntley,
• You’re welcome.
• I will take care of the cushion.
• The dishes felt unclean last night. Wash them again.
• Did you get my note about your perfume?
Sincerely,
P. Stanford.
I laughed.
Dear Mr. P. Stanford,
• The dishwasher is making a funny noise. Shall I call a repairman?
• I don’t wear perfume.
Sincerely,
Your Housekeeper.
Dear Mrs. Huntley,
• A repairman will come today between 10 a.m. and noon to look at the dishwasher.
• Don’t forget to pick up my dry cleaning.
• I need you to sweep the front veranda at least once a week.
• What do you wear then? Whatever it is, stop it.
Sincerely,
P. Stanford.
Dear Mr. P. Stanford,
• The dishwasher is fixed.
• I have checked the Housekeepers Inc. employee manual. There is nothing in there about your housekeeper being required to wear perfume. I have consulted with several people in my acquaintance and they assure me I do not smell offensive. What is it that is objectionable to you?
Sincerely,
Your Housekeeper.
Dear Mrs. Huntley,
• I never said “offensive.”
Sincerely,
P. Stanford.
I stared in confusion at the note I received Friday morning. Firstly, it was the shortest note I had ever received from the man. Secondly, it had no extra instructions whatsoever. I felt let down. Wasn’t there anything for him to complain about? Damn.
And what in the hell did he mean? I never said “offensive”?
MY THIRD week on the job at Mr. Stanford’s brought no news. He wrote me notes; I wrote back. He dirtied the house; I cleaned it. He didn’t complain to my boss, and neither did I. Mrs. West rang me twice to make sure everything was working out. I assured her it was.
The Gardie Tav was rocking all weekend, but there had been no sign of Luke since I ripped one at him. I wondered if that meant I had scared him off or managed to talk some sense into him.
The following Wednesday, things went south. Not in a bad way. I guess you could say things took a U-turn.
I PEDALED to work in the warm October sun. It was spring in Western Australia and that meant warm days and plenty of flowers. Bees worked hard in the gardens gathering pollen, birds fluttered in the trees feeding their growing families, and the soil took on this great smell that was warm and damp. In two months’ time, the earth would be hot and scorched, puffing for any hint of moisture, but for now the plants flourished.
The older suburbs where Mr. Stanford lived had been planted decades ago with rows of jacaranda trees. In a couple of weeks, they would all be dropping their leaves and producing bright purple flowers, but for now the trees were green and leafy. I rode under their canopy and whistled a tune.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as I wheeled my bike up the path to the Stanford house and propped it against the wall. It was perfectly normal when I put my keys into the front door and unlocked the deadbolt. Everything was distinctly standard.
The first inkling of something wrong came when I punched in the code on the alarm panel. All the appliances in Mr. Stanford’s house talked and the alarm was no different. Usually the device would beep at me three times and intone, “Disarmed,” at me. Today it beeped once and told me, “Deactivated.”
I stared at it in confusion. It looked normal. All the lights had stopped blinking as usual, but why had it told me “deactivated” instead of “disarmed”?
A clicking and a faint tinkle behind me in the hallway had me spinning around in fear. I turned to see an unfamiliar dog watching me warily. The dog was a golden Labrador, and although it wasn’t acting aggressively, I didn’t like the way its hackles were raised and the way it was standing in the doorway.
I held my hand out hesitantly and crooned in a gentle voice. “Hey, boy. What are you doing here?”
The dog didn’t shift an inch but my eye caught some movement in the hallway. I looked up and was staggered. Emerging from the bedroom was a half-naked, blond God wearing only cotton boxer shorts and holding his head in one hand as if it was about to fall off and roll down the street. The guy was so gorgeous and toned that I forgot to be scared at the fact that he was in Mr. Stanford’s house until he growled at me in a menacing manner.
The man, not the dog.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I licked my lips and tried not to stare at his chest. “The fucking housekeeper. Who the fuck are you?”
He looked at me then. His eyes were piercing blue but unfocused. He looked stunned. His voice was less abrasive and more stupefied when he answered. “You’re my housekeeper?”
No fucking way!
I tried to grapple with the idea of the super-handsome, young guy in front of me being stuffy, old Mr. Stanford. The guy in the hallway looked to be thirty—no more than thirty-five at the very, very most. As I stared at him in disbelief, several things became apparent to me.
Firstly, the dog in the hallway must be his guide dog that he took to work (or wherever he went every day), which gave greater credence to the fact that this must be Mr. Stanford. Secondly, the guy’s eyes, although startling blue, were staring at the wall slightly to the left instead of at my face, which indicated to me that he was, in fact, blind.
But the last thing that occurred to me was that the man, no matter how gorgeous he was, looked as sick as a dog. Well—not his guide dog who looked to be in the best of health, but…. Shit! You know what I mean. He was still holding his head as if warding off a headache of mega proportions, and now that I looked closer, his nose was red as if it had been wiped a hundred times with a tissue.
He was waiting for my answer, but I still had to make sure. “You’re Mr. Stanford?”
“Yes. Patrick Stanford. And I’m still waiting to find out who you are.”
“Oh. Sorry. Jake Manning. I’m your housekeeper. Shit, man. Get back to bed before you collapse. You look terrible.”
Now that the introductions were made—kind of—I relaxed and walked toward the man. The dog sniffed me once and seemed satisfied with my presence, so he took off to the back of the house. Patrick Stanford, however, hadn’t moved. “Who are you? You can’t be my housekeeper. Her name is Mrs. Huntley.”
He was holding on to the wall as if it were the only thing keeping him upright. Close up he was even more beautiful—and even more noticeably ill. I touched his—yummy!—nicely naked bicep and turned him gently back to the bedroom. “You need to keep up with the news, Mr. Stanford.
Mrs. Huntley got sick of your crap ages ago.”
He allowed himself to be pushed into the bedroom where he collapsed face-first on the bed. He lay there for a minute giving me a lovely view of his tight arse in cotton before he curled up and pulled the blanket over him. He hacked out a couple of coughs and finished it up with a glorious snort. “What was your name again?”
“Jake.”
“Jake? Well, Jake, you can go home again. I’m sick. I don’t need you today.”
I laughed as I collected three empty glasses from his bedside table. “Yeah, whatever.”
He frowned in my direction, his blue eyes missing my face and looking over my shoulder instead. “I mean it.”
I pulled the quilt up over his shoulder and made for the door, chuckling. “I can’t. My boss is a real arse wipe and would totally freak if I didn’t do the dishes.”
He coughed in response, and I went to the kitchen. The bottle of orange juice was in the fridge, but its lid was missing. I looked around and found it on the floor. Not placing the lid back on the bottle was extremely unlike the Mr. Stanford I knew, so I figured the guy must be really sick. I poured a glass of the orange liquid and took it back to the bedroom. The man in the bed was blind but he wasn’t deaf. He heard me coming and turned his face in my direction.
“Here,” I said as I placed the glass on the cabinet next to the pillow. “It’s orange juice.”
He sniffed and reached out a hand, searching for the container. I watched him dispassionately. He found the glass and struggled to sit up before taking a long drink and sighing with satisfaction. I didn’t move. He tilted his head toward me. “What?”
I shook my head at his attitude. “I was just waiting for your manners, man.”
“My what?”
“Your manners. You know? Please, thank you, sorry? Do those words feature in your vocabulary at all? Shit. I just brought you a glass of juice and the least you could’ve said was thank you.” I realized I was getting a bit loud and pissed off with a man who was technically my employer. But fuck it. He was a rude bastard.
“Oh.” He looked abashed, which made me feel a little better. I saw him swallow before he muttered, “Thank you.”
“See! And it didn’t hurt one bit,” I crowed. I crossed my arms and scowled down at him. “Now, do you have anyone you can ring to come and look after you?”
“No.”
“A girlfriend? A best friend? A mother?”
“No. No one. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” His voice had a definite croak to it.
“Ha!” I laughed at his blatant lie. “Have you even had breakfast?”
He shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”
I strode over and pulled the blanket back over his shoulder again. The sight of his naked flesh was turning me on and usually I would’ve left it so I could have a good perv, but the guy was sick. He needed to keep warm. “Too bad. You’re going to have to eat or else you can’t get better.”
I spun and went to leave when he called me back.
“Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you staying?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Let the dog out, then.”
I sighed in exasperation and crossed my arms across my chest so I could glare in his direction. “Manners.”
“What?” He looked confused.
“Manners, dude! Remember? Please and thank you?”
“Huh?”
I rolled my eyes. “You. When you’re talking to people you need to say ‘please.’ So how about you ask me to let your dog out again, and this time put a please on the end and I’ll think about acting on it.”
“Oh.” Had no one ever told this guy these basic things? Had no one ever stood up to him? Patrick wiped at his nose with his finger and said, “Can you let the dog out? Please?”
I smiled. “Sure. What’s his name?”
“Gregor.”
“Excellent. I’ll be back in a bit. Don’t go anywhere.”
LOOKING AFTER a sick person was nothing new to me. Hell, I’d looked after my mother through hundreds of hangovers, and that was just the beginning. My sisters would often look to me when they got colds and flu when they were growing up. I was their big brother. I was the responsible one.
I let a grateful Gregor out the back door and went searching through Patrick’s cupboards. His kitchen was empty of any sort of medication apart from painkillers, Band-Aids, and first aid cream, so I stomped into the bedroom and through to the en suite to search. Patrick hadn’t moved.
“What are you looking for?” he croaked from the blankets.
“Cold and flu tablets. Antihistamines. Throat lozenges. Anything to help you. Have you taken anything for your flu?”
“No.”
“Huh. I didn’t think so. Damn. I’ll have to dash down to the chemist and buy you some. Are you allergic to anything?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll go in a minute. Breakfast first.”
I made him two eggs on toast and cut the bread into bite-size pieces. He had a plate guard thing that stopped his food from being pushed over the edge, so I clipped one on and found a tray before taking it to him.
“Come on, dude. Sit up. I have your breakfast here.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“What a pity. You’ll just have to force it down.” I’ll let you in on a little secret—I don’t do sympathy much. Whatever. Call the Sympathy Police or something.
“I don’t want it.”
I stared down at him, not that he knew. “You have two choices. Either you can sit up and eat under your own steam, or I’ll sit here and shovel it in for you. And believe me, every time you scream it’ll give me a great reason to shove a mouthful in.”
I was completely bullshitting him, but he didn’t know. He groaned and pushed himself to a sitting position. Once he was upright, I snagged a pillow and laid it across his lap before placing the tray on top. He searched across the tray with his hand, so I helped him out. “Here’s your fork. On your plate are two eggs on a piece of toast. I cut it up for you into little bites so you just need to scoop. Dig in and I’ll be back in five minutes. Gregor needs his breakfast too.”
I left him to feed himself and poured biscuits into a doggie bowl for a happy Gregor. He looked to be a great dog and I patted him a couple of times and left him to feed himself as well. I stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, then went back to check on the patient. The empty plate was still on the tray but the whole thing had been placed on the floor and Patrick was curled up on his side once again with his eyes closed. I pulled the quilt over his shoulder for a third time.
“I took some money from the grocery purse. I’ll ride up to the chemist and pick you up some stuff that will make you feel better. Okay?”
Patrick didn’t open his eyes. “Ride?”
“Yep. Ride. Maybe when you’re better I’ll let you have a go on my trusty bicycle. But for now have a quick nap and I promise I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Shopping for a cold was a matter of experience—cold and flu tablets from the chemist, two different varieties of throat lozenges (one with menthol, one without), Vicks for the chest, tissues with eucalyptus in them, honey and lemons to make tea, aspirin, nose spray, and all the ingredients for chicken soup.
Gregor came to greet me as I fumbled through the door with bags of groceries.
“Jake? Is that you?” Patrick’s feeble voice came from the direction of the bedroom.
“Yes. It’s just me. I’ll bring you something in two shakes.”
The man was still curled up in a miserable heap when I came in with the items for his cold. “Hey,” I called as I walked in. “I have a bunch of things for you to make you better. But you need to sit up again. Sorry.”
I wasn’t exactly sorry to be seeing his naked chest again. I felt a bit discomfited at perving on a guy who couldn’t tell, and a guy who was as sick as a dog at the same time. Discomfited, yes, but not sorry enough to stop. He
was a mighty fine figure and I needed eye candy. It made my day. He was thin and stringy without bulgy muscles that came from religiously working out. No, this guy was naturally gorgeous. And maybe with a little help from the treadmill in the sunroom.
When he was upright, I told him to hold out his hand. I placed two tablets in his palm and passed him water to wash them down; then I watched as he swallowed. “Good. They should kick in soon, and you can get up and have a shower. Now, here. These are throat lozenges that will help your sore throat and clear your nose too.”
He fingered the packet. “How did you know I had a sore throat?”
I laughed. “Mate, sore throats are kind of a requirement when you have a cold. Suck on one and I’ll make you a nifty label for the box in a bit. Now put your hand out. These are tissues with eucalyptus in them, which you can probably smell. They help heaps.”
He grabbed the box and sniffed loudly. “I can’t smell a thing at the moment.”
“Diddums. Once again a requirement of a cold.” I reached over and patted him on the shoulder in mock sympathy. Yeah—okay! I did it to cop a feel as well. Hey! What can a man do? With all that exquisite, pale flesh on display? I pushed gently to get him to lie down again and pulled the covers up.
“I’ll be back in a little bit. Just call if you need me.”
I left him for half an hour while I put chicken soup on the stove to cook, but then I came back to coax him out of bed.
“Come on, big guy. Up, up, up. Go and chuck yourself in the shower and feel nice and clean while I change the sheets.”
“What?”
He seemed a bit better, less sniffy anyway, so I ripped the covers off him and yanked his leg. Yeah—okay! I was copping a feel again. Sue me! “Out. I have to put new sheets on the bed.”
He looked horrified. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because I’ve been sweating all over these sheets and they’re gross.”
