Watchingme?
I don’t turn to check, but the thought tickles the back of my neck, sending goose bumps all down my arms. The urge to move closer to her makes me squeeze the handle of the shop vac until my knuckles go white.
I let go and hand Emmett the nozzle. “Okay. Let’s start in the corners. A house this old is never perfectly level.” I flip the on switch and the roar of the shop vac gives me refuge. Not from Millie. From myself. From this tension that just might pull me in two.
She’s a client,I remind myself as I watch Emmett try to wield the giant hose. He jabs the nozzle into a puddle and looks up at me in silent wonder when it disappears.
“Whoa!” he shouts over the shop vac.
I nod. “It’s powerful,” I yell back.
Millie moves then and my eyes track her. She’s smiling as she leaves the kitchen, headed for the laundry room.
She pulled away when you touched her in the yard. Don’t even think about it.
But I am thinking about it. Sometimes, it’s all I think about.
I force myself to focus on the eight-year-old, who is now attacking puddles like they are enemy Pokémon.
A couple of hours later, the floors aren’t exactly dry, but drying, and with the blast from the industrial fan, they should be totally dry in an hour or so. Emmett found the chore entertaining for about ten minutes. The twins each took a turn and then, with ninja-like skill, disappeared, so at the end, it’s just Millie and me.
“The wood isn’t going to warp?” she asks as we shut off the vac for the last time.
I shake my head. “Nah. Cypress resists warping. Think about UL’s Cypress Lake,” I say gesturing in the direction of the university where the student union overlooks the oversized pond. “Those trees live in water. You really couldn’t have had a better wood under the circumstances.”
“You went to UL?”
The way she’s smiling at me, I can’t believe I ever thought she was somefresaIce Princess. But that’s what I’m used to. All of Valencia & Sons customers are at least middle class. Some of them are crazy rich. And many, rich or not, let me know in unspoken ways they out-class me and my crew.
The way they talk without making eye contact—or avoid face-to-face meetings altogether—seems to reinforce who is doing the serving and who is being served. Upstairs/downstairs shit. It doesn’t matter what I’m charging them and what that must suggest about how much I make or what my net worth might be.
It’s nothing jaw-dropping, but I do okay.
If I felt like it, I could say it’s because I’m Chicano. But it’s not just that. If someone is going to look down their nose at me, they’ll do the same to the white guys on my crew or the subcontractors I hire now and then. Maybe it’s because we work with our hands. Maybe these customers think we’re uneducated. Or stupid.
We’re not.
Not even the guys on my crews who’ve never finished high school. You can’t be stupid and wire a kitchen hood. You can’t be stupid and float sheetrock. You can’t be stupid and plane a door. All of these things take care, attention, and knowledge. And if you do them wrong, a house could fall down around your ears or burst into flames when you aren’t looking.
But whatever they think, when clients won’t get off the phone while talking to you, won’t look up, won’t use your name to address you, I don’t care what century it is, you feel like a servant.
Millie looks me in the eye. Not only does she use my name, but she knows Sam and Donner’s names, and she uses them. I’ve never seen her in this house with a phone in her hand. Not around me. Not around the kids.
That’s got to be a conscious decision, right?
All these thoughts pass through my mind as I answer her question.
“I went to UL freshman year to save money, and then I transferred to LSU where I graduated,” I say. And then because I want to know, “Where did you go to school?”
“I spent two years at Tulane on the pre-health pathway, and then I got accepted to LSU’s vet school.” Her smile grows as she tips up her chin. “We both finished at LSU.”
“Go, Tigers.” Stupid, but what else could I say? That she has a D.V.M. while I just have a B.S.?
Millie tilts her head to the side, wearing an amused look. “You have to admit, as a mascot, tigers are way better than a swell of swamp water or an irate French descendant.”
I frown.What the hell is she talking about?
At my expression, she laughs, her hips swaying just a little. “Think about it. Tulane’s mascot is the Green Wave. After some dumb song from 1920? Why?” she asks, her voice choppy with laughter. It makes me smile hard. I’ve only seen her laugh a couple of times. It’s not something she lets herself do too often. But when she does, her body loosens. That line that seems to live between her brows disappears, and she just…shines.“And what is a Ragin’ Cajun, anyway? I don’t think anyone knows because at UL games, they trot out a bulldog named Ragin.”
