although she has no idea if it’s a good or abysmal one. She’s never played a game on a phone. Never truly used one, never swiped her index finger in that languid way that is oddly sexy.
The girl doesn’t reply, which makes Brooke wonder if she heard. She’s probably been told not to talk to strangers.
Brooke opens the bathroom door, winces at the vista inside. Toilet paper clogs the toilet and cloys the floor at its base. A puddle of brown water sits in the sink, which appears to be stopped, although it has no plug.
She closes the door so customers can’t see her ministrations. She knows Maria’s shift started an hour ago; so much for their friendship.
She snaps on the gloves—powdery condoms for the hands—and works on the sink first, moving the masses of clumped food until water begins to drain again. It looks like somebody tried to make multiple scones go down the drain. She sprays cleaner until the air is toxic in the small space.
She hadn’t brought the mop and has to go back for it. “It’s nasty in there,” she says to Maria. She’s learned after years of being the new girl that if she doesn’t stick up for herself, she gets the worst tasks.
Maria doesn’t answer, restocking napkins.
“Did you go in there?” Brooke presses.
“Just clean it. Don’t make it a Sixty Minutes investigation.”
“Next time, maybe you can take care of it when you see it.”
“The employee of less than a week doesn’t call the shots.”
Brooke considers a few rude responses, but doesn’t want Maria’s daughter to hear. She goes into the bathroom with the mop and wheeled bucket, moving the gray water around until it’s soaked up. She regards the toilet and gives it a flush, terrified it will overflow, mop at the ready. Thankfully, the mass disappears.
Brooke sprays down the commode and wipes it dry with paper towels. She never kneels to clean a toilet; it’s always done from afar, standing. Unlike her mother, she’ll never have to concentrate on a stranger’s toilet, giving it her all. Her mother had made her promise she’d never work as a maid.
“Please tell me, mija, you’ll only clean your own home. No one else’s,” she’d said. Her mom had wanted higher education for her, not foreseeing the lackluster grades her daughter would pull off in the land of fruit and plenty. She in fact had a quite specific job in mind for her: attorney.
“How proud I’ll be to see you in your suit in the courthouse,” her mother would say. “You will tell all those men how the law works, and they will listen to you.”
Brooke checks herself in the bathroom mirror before opening the door. She looks pretty good for someone who has disappointed her mother and innocent defendants.
When she emerges, she sees that Anthony is at the counter. To her credit, Maria looks embarrassed on her behalf, as if she wished she had cleaned the bathroom after all. She gives Brooke an apologetic smile.
Nothing to do but walk toward them, pulling the clattering yellow mop bucket with her.
“Just can’t seem to let go of that mop, can you?” jokes Anthony as she gets closer.
“At least no clowns are making puddles in the doorway today,” she says with a smile.
“Ouch.”
She puts the bucket away and notices that he’s still standing there.
“Were you not helped?” she asks.
“He forgot he wanted coffee,” shoots Maria, and he blushes.
He blushes!
And, perhaps predictably, Brooke feels warmth spread across her cheeks, too.
“A large Americano?” she manages to ask.
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll bring it to you.”
It’s time to take a chance, she thinks. When she brings him his drink, she pulls out a chair and sits down at the table with him.
“I would ask if you want to get coffee sometime,” she says. “But that would be silly.”
A grin launches across his face, and she feels a resulting lurch in her heartbeat. “How about dinner?” he says.
“That sounds good.”
“Tonight? When you get off work?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come back a little after five for you.”
“Okay, that’s great. I’ll see you then.”
There’s nothing more to say. They made their plan, and she should go back to the counter. She wishes she had started with some small talk before cutting to the chase, because now she has to get up and go. He bites his lip, apparently feeling the same awkwardness, and she stares at that row of white teeth indenting the soft flesh before he realizes she’s looking and closes his mouth.
As soon as she rises, she feels guilt descend on a reverse trajectory. He’s a good guy—a guy who blushes! And bites his lip. She shouldn’t bring him into her weird underworld of evading people who want to kill her.
He’s too sweet. She should take it back. Why did she ever sit down next to him? It was all because of Maria and her daughter and the bathroom.
She looks over at the girl now, immobile as a statue staring down at her phone. Poor thing.
JULY 4, 2002
That day the lake had sparkled with a blue Brooke had previously only seen in ads. Even the color of the water was affluent, different from the brackish blue-brown of the river that sidled through town.
The Carr family lawn ran lush and rolling down to meet the lake, except for two terraces built for a croquet court and a massing of wicker chaises with fat cushions—such decadence to have something soft outdoors that could be ruined by unexpected rain. Brooke’s own backyard, spattered with patches of grass painful on bare feet, held only plastic versions of Adirondack chairs, easily tipped by wind.
“My dad’s putting steak and shrimp on the barbecue for you,” the elder Carr boy had informed her. “Because you never have it.”
What a kindness, but she didn’t understand the sneer that accompanied his words. So guileless she was, that his cruelty didn’t penetrate.
“Your mom’s not as pretty as our mom,” said the younger one. She’d always remember his name, Ezekiel.
