by Julia Kent
“Shannon!” Guido calls out, racing to my side.
Now, hold on there. I never told him my first name. But that takes a back seat to the fact that I am staring at the chandelier-topped canopy and a Range Rover the size of my parents’ house is about to squish me like a bug.
Guido and his valet friends rush over to me, and four sets of man hands lift me up, making me feel like I’m in one of those romance novels where the woman has more men touching her than she has holes for them to occupy.
“I’m fine,” I protest, struggling to control my own body and realizing it’s useless. Like synchronized swimmers they set me upright, someone grabbing my carryon and computer bag, another picking up all the items that rolled out when I fell.
Including Mom’s vibrator.
“Um,” Guido says as he hands it to me. It’s the one Mom picked out, with a tip shaped like a J, from the Alphasex Series. The one Josh wants to order in purple. But it’s pink, so...
“How did that get in there?” I squeak out, and I’m serious. I have no earthly idea how it got in my laptop bag. Maybe Chuckles is playing an elaborate joke.
A vague memory of Mom in my closet that day after the sex toy shop in Northampton. J?
Oh. My stomach roils.
J for Jason. Mom got me one with a D on it, too. I crane my neck, twisting around, eyes on the ground. Where’s that one? If one vibrator magically appears in my bag, I’m sure there are more.
“I’ve seen some crazy tips before, but…” Guido jokes. I shove the damn vibrator in my bag and decide that the best way to handle this with grace and dignity is to walk away without another word.
“I hope your stay is a pleasant one, Ms. Jacoby! You can believe all the buzz about The Fort,” he says as I walk away. I swear he winks. And in the recesses of my professional mind I think:
Reminded me to have a pleasant stay? Check.
Sigh.
Chapter Fourteen
Another valet, Mike, removes my luggage from the trunk of my car and escorts me into the lobby. “Lobby” is an understatement.
The first wonder of the modern world is more like it. Grey Industries couldn’t come up with something this fine if they tried. I can tell James McCormick has stamped his touch on this place in the most subtle of ways, from the enormous Persian rug that covers a quarter of the lobby to the old world map imprinted in the arched ceiling, a deep cupola made of highly polished oak and bronze highlights screaming with his style. It looks just like his office at Anterdec Insustries.
All of the lights are dimmed, with sunshine from the skylight adding just enough to make the lobby ethereal. I feel like I’m in a steampunk mystery, the blend of old-world flavor and modern technology so exquisite I could be in a slightly different dimension, couldn’t I? Just tilted enough to be between two possibilities.
Check-in goes smoothly—Mike disappears with my luggage—and I’m assigned to room 1416, which means climbing into one of the elevators of doom. You know the kind. Major hotels have them. You punch in your floor number and the smart elevator system tells you which one to go on. Inside, there is no panel of numbers for floors, because the system is designed to assume that you are a pathetic, stupid human with inferior reasoning skills, and that the engineers (almost all male) who designed the system are smarter than you.
Which means that if you get on the elevator and a harassing asshole is on with you, you’re stuck in elevator purgatory until the Machine of Superior Intellect decides to spring you out of your misogynistic prison.
I ascend to the fourteenth floor without incident, noting the condition of all the common areas (pristine), then enter my room. The bed is covered with fine chocolates from a Swiss company that uses slave-free chocolate, and the towels are twisted to form a gorgeous rendering of the Mona Lisa in 3D.
I plop my carryon on the bed, and the valet has already delivered my rolling bag. One of the first steps I take in any hotel room I enter is to check out the balcony, if there is one. The thick black-out curtains take some serious muscle to pull apart, but the work is worth it. A stunning view of the city rolls out before me. Opening the sliding glass doors, I let the wind whip through my hair and carry my worries away.
A gentle knock at the door compels me to open it. Mike is standing there, smiling. He looks nothing like Guido, and resembles Merry the Hobbit mostly.
“Everything to your liking, Ms. Jacoby?”
I know the drill. I slip him a five and assure him all is well. He tips his hat to me and walks calmly down the hall.
My nineteen-page (nineteen-page!) list of instructions for the twenty-seven-page evaluation tells me exactly what to do for the night I’m here. If you mystery shop a lower-market chain of hotels you typically get your room free, about $25 in pay, and reimbursement for one dinner and a tip for housekeeping.
This place involves:
Valet parking
Tipping the bellhop
Drinks in the bar (two, minimum)
A full dinner from room service, from appetizer to entree to dessert
Breakfast buffet in the morning
Housekeeping tip
A massage in the spa
Tipping the bellhop on check out
Valet parking tip upon checkout
This is how the other half lives? If so, how do I join them?
But that’s not all.
Like relationships, you learn way more about customer service by testing them via problems. Any hotel or restaurant can run smoothly when it’s quiet, when they’re fully staffed, and when nothing’s gone wrong.
The true test of a business is how its employees react to crisis.
Even manufactured crisis.
And my job is to manufacture a series of them, starting with the bathroom. I read the instructions, which were written by Amanda:
Facilities and Engineering: Create a problem with a fixture in the bathroom, a problem great enough to require a service call from one of our facilities workers. For instance, separate the chain from the ball in the toilet tank, or remove the nut that secures to one of the bolts on the underside of the toilet seat. Tuck the loose nut under the wastebasket.
The goal is to test the friendliness of the front-desk clerk, the response time of the facilities worker, and whether their service is friendly and efficient.
Okay. Standard operating procedure for a hotel mystery shop. I’ve done this tons of times before. My old standby is a little more creative than these suggestions, for I typically just make it so the toilet handle doesn’t connect to the flushing mechanism.
Easy peasy.
I make the call first, eager to get this out of the way so I can move on to drinking at the bar…er, to the next task for my job. The hotel has an ice bar—an entire nightclub carved out of ice. The hotel desk clerk (Celeste) takes my call in stride, apologizes for the inconvenience, and at 3:56 p.m. promises that someone from their maintenance department will respond within ten minutes.
Great. I have ten minutes to break something. I’m Shannon; how hard can that be?
Something buzzes in the next room. My phone. I search the room and my eyes locate it, but it’s not lit up. No text.
Bzzzzz.
Weird. What could be buzzing like that?
My carryon starts to move of its own accord, edging toward the end of the bed. I open it and—
A giant, carved J stares at me. It’s pink.
Oh, yes.
Mom’s Special Surprise.
The Power button appears to be jammed, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get it to pop up and stop vibrating. My fingers worry the little button, and in frustration I bang it—hard—against the edge of the desk.
BZZZZZZZZZZZ.
I appear to have whacked it into hyperdrive. If it were the Millennium Falcon then Chewbacca would be turning all the thrusters on for Han Solo.
That sounds soooo dirty.
The vibrator is buzzing so loudly I’m sure the people in 1414 can hear it loud and clear. Removing the
batteries should do the trick. I turn the cylinder over and—
Screwdriver needed.
Damn.
Tap tap tap. Someone’s at the door.
“Maintenance!” a man’s voice calls out.
I look at the clock. 3:58 p.m. Great. Of all the times for me to get the overachieving hotel maintenance dude. The only one on the freaking planet. I race into the bathroom and shove the top of the toilet tank off with one hand. Not being strong enough, I set the vibrator on the counter.
BZZZZZZZZ. That only amplifies the sound.
Tap tap tap.
“Ma’am? It’s maintenance. The front desk sent me,” he says, a little louder. His voice is muffled and my hearing is slightly obscured by the rush of panic that makes the room start to spin. I break into a sweat as I grab the vibrator to stop the roaring sound and reach inside the toilet tank to loosen the chain from the handle. In mere seconds, I manage to do it, but as I stand up from my crouch I lose my balance and—
Splash!
Drop the giant pink vibrator into the toilet.
The J stares up at me, a bit of a blur as it motorboats inside the bowl.
The distinct sound of the electronic key being shoved in the slot of my door happens in slow motion, the sound like a series of guns in a firing squad being loaded, then locked on me.
I crouch down again and shove my hand into the tank to grab the vibrator, scanning the room for something I can use to mute it. Snatch it out of the toilet and wrap it in a towel? Maybe. Best plan I have.
But the door to my room opens and a familiar man’s voice calls out.
“Hello?”
“I’m, uh…” I try to kick the door closed to buy time, but all I accomplish is a slow slide on the tile in my heels, my skirt dragging up to show the edge of my panties. I’m elbow deep in the toilet bowl, my hand smothering my mother’s sex trophy meant for my dad.
And then a very familiar face appears with two highly amused, sparkling green eyes.
He looks at me, eyes scanning my half-acre of leg and thigh, my arm buried in the toilet, and says:
“We have got to stop meeting like this.”
Chapter Fifteen
Declan’s face, his eyes, his voice, that saucy grin do not compute with the blue workman’s shirt he’s wearing. Red embroidery on a yellow name tag says Alfred, and he’s wearing Dickies work pants with tan construction worker’s boots.
He looks like any generic guy from my neighborhood back home. Like the dads of my friends. Like my male friends grown up now, in their early twenties, working in auto shops and framing houses.
“Layoffs at Anterdec got you working with your hands?” I say, leaning against the toilet bowl like it’s all good. Casual. Nothing to see here. Just drowning a sex toy to put it out of its misery.
“I thought I’d develop a new skill to fall back on.” He cocks one eyebrow and leans forward to see what I’m doing. “You drop your phone again?”
“Yep!” I chirp. “Sure did! Silly me, you know how I—”
Ring!
I changed my ringtone to that antiquated tone that sounds like a rotary phone.
Clearing his throat, he states the obvious because hey, that’s what you do when you corner a woman who is insane: “Your phone is ringing.”
“I’m not exactly going to answer it like this, now, am I?” I snap.
“Why don’t you get up and…hmmm,” he says, assessing the situation. His head turns to look in the room, then over my legs at the toilet, hands planted on his hips as he judges the situation and determines that there’s something wrong with finding me in a compromising position with the toilet.
“Are you drowning a tiny pink pig in the toilet?”
“Science experiment!”
Ring!
Does he have to look so damn hot while he’s dragging out this moment of impending humiliation and doom? It’s bad enough to be caught with my hand in the toilet—again!—but this time I’ll pull out my mom’s battery-operated boyfriend and go through the triple embarrassment of being turned on by the tight hang of his work outfit along his hips, how the cloth contours to those muscled thighs, the way the shirt is unbuttoned just enough to show his sprinkling of chest hair, and how the short sleeves showcase biceps that used to slide under my body and prop me up for his mouth as he—
Grabs my arm and pulls it out, dripping and buzzing from a gasping sex toy.
“You were drowning a…that? What the hell is that? A Barbie doll?”
I toss it at him. What do I have to lose at this point?
He sidesteps it neatly and it lands on the rug, turning to the left like a drunk driving in a roundabout.
“Definitely not a Barbie doll,” he says, laughing.
“I stopped playing with those a long time ago,” I say.
“I see you still have your favorite toys, though,” Declan replies. “And why a ‘J’ on the tip? No ‘D’?” he says, leering.
All I can do is glare. My heart is buzzing in my chest like a—well, you know—and he’s looking at me like I’m a human being again. Like he likes me. Like he actually wants to interact with me.
“Why are you here?” I demand.
“The front-desk clerk said the toilet was broken.” He holds up a small toolkit. “We have a completely different set of tools for malfunctioning vibrators.”
“There’s a protocol for that?” I gasp. Wow. And I thought I’d seen it all as a mystery shopper.
He nods and says dryly, “Yes. We just grab an EpiPen and shove it in there as hard as possible.”
My turn to size him up. I’m standing here with a dripping arm (again), toilet water soaking my sleeve (again), and Declan’s in disguise like he’s dressed up as a superintendent for some very pervy Halloween party.
“Why are you answering my maintenance call?”
He seems surprised to be asked. “Amanda didn’t coordinate this with you?”
“Amanda?” I say dumbly. “Amanda Amanda?”
“Is that really her last name? Cruel parents,” he says with a low whistle.
“No, her last name is not—quit changing the subject!” I demand, turning away. My jacket is ruined, so I slide out of it to review the current state of my clothing. White silk business shirt—one arm wet. Jacket wrinkling rapidly on the floor—needs to be dry-cleaned.
Suit skirt split just like the first date—business dinner—whatever you call it.
My life is one big repeat, isn’t it?
And here I am, all twitterpated because the ex-boyfriend who inexplicably dumped me is giving me some attention.
My life is one endless loop.
I can stop this, though. I can make choices that don’t let other people do this—whatever this is—to me. Declan thinks he can waltz in to my hotel room dressed in uniform and smile and make me go weak in the knees and I’m just going to take the table scraps he’s throwing my way like a good little doggie.
Ruff ruff.
“Why are you dressed in that uniform and responding to my service call?” I demand again.
“Because Amanda suggested that as part of measuring and following customer service standards to aid in marketing pushes with conventions, I perform some small version of that reality TV show, Meet the Hidden Boss, and go undercover in my own company’s property.”
I frown. “Didn’t some CEO here in Boston do that recently?”
He nods. “Mike Bournham.”
Bournham. Playboy. A sex tape that went viral. Something about a poor, naïve administrative assistant.
Utter disgrace and a resignation from him.
“That went soooo well for him, didn’t it,” I say with as much sarcasm as I can.
Declan shrugs. “Amanda was convincing.”
I get the feeling she didn’t have to push much. A flicker of emotion in his eyes shifts the tenor of the room, the bathroom instantly small in the blink of an eye. I’m washing my arm now—both arms—and all I want to do is get him out of my room so I can take
a shower and cry.
BZZZZZZZ. As if reanimated by Dr. Frankenstein himself, the damn vibrator goes into high gear. I stomp across the bathroom, nudge Declan aside, and kick the damn thing as hard as I can.
When I was in middle school, for three years, I played goalie for my soccer team. Haven’t done anything more athletic than that in a decade, but my feet must remember how to point the toe and scoop up for a serious drop kick, because that vibrator catches my toe and grabs some serious vault and air, sailing across the room, high over the bed, and flying through the open sliding glass doors, over the balcony railing and—
Down fourteen stories into the street.
We can hear the screech of tires and men shouting, then a few blares of horns.
Declan and I must look like a pair of owls, eyes wide and blinking.
I am speechless.
Declan’s not.
“Good that you don’t have a dog.”
“Huh?”
“Because that could have been one game of fetch gone terribly, terribly wrong.”
“You’re making sick jokes after that just happened?” I point to the balcony. People are screaming at each other in the distance.
“Is there a more appropriate time to make sick jokes?”
“Why are you here?” I demand in a voice with more munition in it than I thought possible. I’m shaking with overwhelm, adrenaline, embarrassment, and excitement.
He starts to answer me. Repeatedly. Four times, in fact. I count each one, and with each new false start I feel a tiny rosebud, tight and contained, start to unfold inside me. One millimeter.
Just one tiny budge.
“I told you,” he says in a rush, clearly flustered now, arms crossed over his chest, eyes hooded again. His hair is longer—like in my dream, but still fairly short. Not the rakish, hedonistic man I conjured in my subconscious. In my bed.
Bed.
My eyes flick over to the enormous king bed in the middle of my room, covered in more pillows than a sultan’s sex den.
