Eventual y I figured out that the guy was talking to his mom—only because he said the word mom, like, five times. But honestly, otherwise I wouldn’t have guessed it. I’m not saying I never fought with my mother （who doesn’t?） but with him there was this tone . If she’d been there in the room and he was talking to her like that, in person, I think he might have hit her. I was freaking out the whole time I was there, sure that at any moment he was going to realize that he wasn’t the only person in the room. That maybe he’d suddenly go looking for his missing Playboy, which I was stil holding （why? why?） clutched in one hand. So I wasn’t real y al that focused on the one-sided conversation going on above me, until he started to get real y angry.
“How could he have been so fucking stupid? I could have told him that guy was a crook. But he never fucking listens to me, does he?”
I couldn’t hear what his mother was saying to him, but whatever it was he got angrier and angrier. He never raised his voice above a loud hiss, but the tone of it got real y vicious.
“No. You tel him to keep his mouth shut, you hear me, Mom? No one is to know about this. No one. I’m working on fixing this goddamn mess. You need to leave it to me. Do you hear me?”
He told her to have his father cal him, immediately. Then he slammed down the phone and let fly with a stream of swear words so ugly that I swear I blushed. He stood up and he kicked the closet door, once . . . then again. The third time he kicked it I heard the door splinter and give way. I heard a muttered fuck, and then another voice, Tom’s voice, coming from outside the room, from somewhere down the corridor— “Mike? You okay?”
There was the smal est, infinitesimal pause, and then I heard my stranger—Mike, obviously—open his bedroom door and say, in a cheery, upbeat, laughing voice that gave absolutely no hint that he’d just screamed at his mom and kicked the shit out of his closet—“I’l be down in a minute.”
He closed the door and stood in absolute silence for a long moment. He gave the closet one last, vicious kick. Then he opened the bedroom door and disappeared down the corridor. As soon as I heard his footsteps on the stairs, I slithered out from under the bed, so fast that I bumped my head and scraped my forehead. I shoved the Playboy under his pil ow, gathered up the dirty sheets, and got out of there. Then I went and stood for a while in one of the empty bedrooms, until I had calmed down and pul ed myself together. It wasn’t the coke or the gun or the argument that scared me.
Honestly. It was the combination of al three, how close I came to getting caught, but mostly how nasty Mike had been on the phone. I knew I couldn’t stay upstairs forever, but I didn’t want to go downstairs with those sheets under my arm. In the end I waited about ten minutes, before deciding that it looked more suspicious to be standing there alone in an empty room than it did to get on with my job.
One of the good things about wearing a maid’s uniform is that it makes you almost invisible. You wouldn’t believe the things people have done, right in front of me. Drugs and porn are the least of it.
Husbands smuggling their mistresses into the house; a wife getting it on with her best friend in the pool house. One time this incredibly beautiful woman—you know, the ex-model trophy-wife type—sat for at least half an hour at her kitchen table flicking through a magazine while I cleaned her filthy kitchen. And for the entire time she picked her nose and wiped her finger on the linen tablecloth. I reminded myself of al of this as I went downstairs with the dirty sheets. I’d left the laundry bags in the laundry room and I had to go through the kitchen to get to them. There were two guys in the kitchen as I went through: Tom Spencer, and a shorter dark-haired guy I figured was the angry Mike from upstairs. They were deep in conversation. I ignored them and they ignored me. I went into the laundry room and stuffed the linens into a bag. The door to the kitchen was open and I could hear what they were saying pretty clearly. Mike was trying to convince Tom Spencer to take a trip north with him, to Canada. He was doing a good job of sounding chirpy and lighthearted, but Tom was unenthusiastic. He changed the subject.
“Did you talk to your mom?”
Mike didn’t even hesitate. “Sure. She said to say hi.”
I tied the laundry bag and started back through the kitchen, just as Tom said—“You’re so lucky. I real y envy what you’ve got with your parents.”
Tom turned to look at me as I came into the room, so he didn’t see Mike’s response to his statement. I saw it though. And—I swear I am NOT exaggerating—it was a look of such naked, murderous rage that I actual y took a step back. The look was gone as quickly as it had arrived, disappearing behind a bland smile.