I nodded and had no idea why, but I lied (I seemed to lie a lot around him). “I do. Yes, I have someone at home to help me.” I looked at him and saw his shoulders slump slightly, and for some reason, I felt compelled to quickly correct myself. “No. I don’t. No one lives with me. I live all alone,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re not very good at answering questions with a straight answer, are you?”
“I am,” I defended myself.
“No, you’re not. I ask you why I should employ you, and you have nothing to say. I ask you how much you’re worth, and you have no idea. Then I ask you if you have someone to help you and, at first, you do, and then you don’t.”
“Mmmm,” I mumbled to myself. He had a point.
“So?” he asked again.
“No. I have no one who can help me get the thorns out of my feet, unless I ask my dodgy neighbor who is permanently on crack, or meth, or E, or cocaine or . . . shit, I have no idea what drugs the guy does. But trust me, he does them. Then there’s the other neighbor who I’m currently avoiding because I never brought his bike back and I’m just hoping he’s not going to kill me or steal my TV for retribution, because I’m living in some strange gangsters’ paradise, or something like that.” I stopped talking, thrust the bag back at him and started taking my shoes off. “Fine. Do it.” I pushed my feet in his direction and hoped to hell they didn’t smell.
He watched me for a few seconds and then looked down at my feet and started picking at them with the tweezers. I sighed. I couldn’t figure out whether this was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me—letting my new boss pick thorns from my feet—or whether this might actually be the nicest thing that anyone had done for me in a while.
What was I thinking . . . it was weird.Fucking weird.But then again, lying on my CV, changing my name, assuming a character and dressing up in disguise to get a job I had no idea how to do, was weird . . . so what the hell had I been expecting?
“I’m done,” he suddenly said.
I reached down and ran my hand over the soles of my feet, and they felt completely smooth. “Thanks.” I was actually very grateful to have those tiny thorns out, they’d been getting more and more painful as the day had progressed.
He walked around to the front of the car and climbed in. He turned and scowled at me. “This isn’t a taxi.”
“Right!” I climbed over the armrest in the middle to get to the passenger seat.
“The back does have doors, you know.”
“Sorry,” I said. The car started and we drove off in total silence until we finally arrived at my place.
“Thanks for the lift.” I reached for the door handle.
“Wait. I better come with you. It doesn’t look safe out there.”
I chuckled under my breath. “I think I’ll be okay walking to my door, it’s only a few meters away.”
“What about all your dodgy neighbors?” he asked.
“Uh . . .” I turned and looked at him curiously. “Are you being serious?”
“Yes. When a staff member says a neighbor is possibly trying to kill them, or steal their TV, I take it seriously.” His tone was deadpan and I couldn’t work out if he was joking, or had really taken me seriously. Not that he shouldn’t, I mean, there was a slight possibility that “Little Mike” could come looking for his bike in a very bad mood.
“Okay. Fine.” I opened the door and climbed out. “Personally, I would be more afraid of leaving my expensive car here unattended, but hey, that’s just me.” I walked towards the building, fully expecting him to leave. Poor rich guy wouldn’t want his big, beautiful Porsche to get stolen. But he didn’t leave. Instead, he jumped out of the car and followed me all the way up to the door.
I took my keys out and started fiddling with the lock. There was a trick to opening the door; sometimes it involved kicking it. Luckily for me, Ramona González had been trained in martial arts. Finally, the door flew open and his face fell as he looked inside.
“How long have you lived here?” He looked into the dark hall with its solitary flickering light. The light had been flickering for months now, and no one had bothered to fix it.
I shrugged. “Too long.” The move here was meant to be temporary. I was only going to live here for a short time, while I saved some money to get a better place. But that hadn’t really worked out. I guess I should have known that; my life was dotted with many examples of things just not quite working out the way I’d planned. But things had become particularly tough after my mother died. When she’d gotten sick she hadn’t been able to work for a while. Her bills had piled up, including the medical bills, and since I was the next of kin, legally those bills fell on me to pay. I’d managed to settle a fair amount of them when I’d been working on the show, but since being unemployed, I hadn’t managed to keep up with the regular payments, and now the bank was phoning me more often than I would like. That was why I needed this job so badly.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he took a step towards me and stared. The look on his face stole my breath. “I asked you what you were worth?” He pointed into the dark corridor behind me. “I think it’s got to be a bit more than this, don’t you think?”
“Um . . . uh . . .” I stumbled on my words. Completely shocked.
He gave me one last strange look and then he turned and walked away. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said over his shoulder, before climbing into his car and driving off.
I stood there staring at him with the strangest feeling I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
