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“Oh, thank you,” I said. If the basement was warm, the kitchen was an inferno. I don’t know how Juan Manuel does his job, standing for hours in the unbearable heat and humidity, scraping half-eaten food from plates. All that waste, all those germs. I visit him every day, and every day I try not to think about it.
“I’ve got your keycard. Room 308, early checkout today. I will clean the room now so it’s ready for you whenever you want it. Okay?” I’d been slipping Juan Manuel keycards for at least a year, ever since Rodney explained Juan Manuel’s unfortunate situation.
“Amiga mía, thank you so much,” Juan Manuel said.
“You’ll be safe until nine tomorrow morning, when Cheryl arrives. She’s not supposed to clean that floor at all—but with her, you just never know.”
It was then that I noticed the angry marks on his wrist, round and red.
“What are those?” I asked. “Did you burn yourself?”
“Oh! Yes. I burned myself. On the washer. Yes.”
“That sounds like a safety infraction,” I said. “Mr. Snow is very serious about safety. You should tell him and he’ll have the machine looked at.”
“No, no,” Juan Manuel replied. “It was my mistake. I put my arm where it shouldn’t go.”
“Well,” I said. “Do be careful.”
“I will,” he answered.
He did not make eye contact with me during this part of the conversation, which was most unlike him. I concluded he was embarrassed by his mishap, so I changed the subject.
“Have you heard from your family lately?” I asked.
“My mother sent me this yesterday.” He pulled a phone from his apron pocket and called up a photo. His family lives in northern Mexico. His father died over two years ago, which left the family short of income. Juan Manuel sends money home to compensate. He has four sisters, two brothers, six aunts, seven uncles, and one nephew. He’s the oldest of his siblings, about my age. The photo showed the entire family seated around a plastic table, all of them smiling for the camera. His mother stood at the head of the table proudly holding a platter of barbecued meat.
“This is why I’m here, in this kitchen, in this country. So my family can eat meat on Sundays. If my mother met you, Molly, she’d like you right away. My mother and me? We are alike. We know good people when we see them.” He pointed to his mother’s face in the photo. “Look! She never stops smiling, no matter what. Oh, Molly.”
Tears came to his eyes then. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t wantto look at any more pictures of his family. Every time I did, I felt an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach, the same feeling I got when I once accidentally knocked a guest’s earring into the black hole of a drain.
“I must be off,” I said. “Twenty-one rooms to clean today.”
“Okay, okay. It makes me happy when you visit. See you soon, Miss Molly.”
I rushed out of the kitchen to the quiet, bright hallway and the perfect order of my trolley. Instantly, I felt much better.
It was time to go to the Social, the restaurant bar and grill inside the hotel, where Rodney would be starting his shift. Rodney Stiles, head bartender. Rodney, with his thick, wavy hair, his white dress shirt with the top buttons tastefully undone, revealing just a little of his perfectly smooth chest—well, almost perfectly smooth, minus one small round scar on his sternum. Anyhow, the point is, he isn’t hairy. How any woman could like a hairy man is beyond me. Not that I’m prejudiced. I’m just saying that if a man I fancied was hairy, I’d get the wax out, and I’d rip the strips off him until he was clean and bare.
I have not yet had the opportunity to do this in real life. I’ve had only one boyfriend, Wilbur. And while he didn’t have chest hair, he turned out to be a heartbreaker. And a liar and a cheat. So perhaps chest hair isn’t the worst thing in the world.
I breathe deeply to cleanse my mind of Wilbur. I’m blessed with this ability—to clean my mind as I would a room. I picture offensive people or recall uncomfortable moments, and I wipe them away. Gone. Erased, just like that. My mind is returned to a state of perfection.
But as I sit here, in Mr. Snow’s office, waiting for him to return, I’m having trouble keeping my mind clean. It returns to thoughts of Mr. Black. To the feeling of his lifeless skin on my fingers. And so on.
I take a sip of my tea, which is now cold. I will focus once more on the morning, on remembering every detail…. Where was I?
Ah, yes. Juan Manuel. After I left him, I headed to the elevator with my trolley, taking it up to the lobby. The doors opened and Mr. and Mrs.Chen were standing there. The Chens are regular guests, just like the Blacks, though the Chens are from Taiwan. Mr. Chen sells textiles, so I’m told. Mrs. Chen always travels with him. That day, she was wearing a wine-colored dress with a lovely black fringe. The Chens are always flawlessly polite, a characteristic I find exceptional.
They acknowledged me right away, which, let me just say, is rare for hotel guests. They even stepped aside so I could exit the elevator before they entered.
“I thank you for being repeat guests, Mr. and Mrs. Chen.”
Mr. Snow taught me to greet guests by name, to treat them as I would family members.
“It is we who thank you for keeping our room so orderly,” said Mr. Chen. “Mrs. Chen gets to rest while she’s here.”
“I’m getting lazy. You do everything for me,” Mrs. Chen said.
