The Summer Job

by Cesare, Adam

  The beast didn’t answer. He just took a step forward, closing the distance between them to about ten feet. She lifted the rock higher in response.

  Her hands were beginning to shake. The only sound was their breathing.

  The sun was higher now. What time was dawn these days? Was it seven o’clock? Earlier?

  The beast didn’t look particularly menacing. He wore white tennis shoes and had a face like a pizza delivery guy.

  He was the kind of delivery guy that Allison thought people tipped twenty percent because they didn’t want him visiting their apartment with a few of his buddies. It was only money and Allison had seen too many Lifetime movies. She’d had a very active imagination, especially since she had moved to the big city.

  The beast began to circle around her, earning the nickname she’d given him. She expected him to snarl, maybe drool a little, but he didn’t. He just stared, sweat beading on his forehead.

  Her weapon grew heavier and heavier the more she thought about it. Why did she stop training with the medicine ball? Because it was hard, that was why.

  She began to pivot with him, raising and lowering the rock, giving herself micro-rests.

  They both stopped moving with the gunshot. The clap was sudden and loud enough that Allison dropped the rock, missing her foot by an inch or two.

  In the still after the shot, she could hear animals scurrying around in the underbrush.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Roy,” a voice said. Allison followed the sound to Tobin, coming up behind Roy, the beast. “Unless you want me to blow a hole through your dress whites. I don’t want to do that. That would be all kinds of trouble.”

  Finally, a familiar face, Allison thought, remembering back to all the flirting she’d done with Tobin last night.

  The situation still didn’t make any sense. Tobin’s arrival also didn’t help explain the waves of pain radiating back from her nose and upper lip, but her current predicament felt better, infinitely better, than the situation that existed a moment ago.

  Tobin had a camouflage hunting vest slung over the plain T-shirt and jeans that he’d been wearing to go dumpster diving. He had a matching hunting cap pulled over his brown hair. Tobin’s strange redneck fashion sense made him look like a character in a Nicolas Sparks novel or a character in a movie based on a Nicolas Sparks novel. He was country without being threatening, a Toby Keith song made flesh.

  She noticed that Tobin hadn’t bothered with those bright orange safety tags hunters usually wore. This told her that he had a dangerous side.

  “Hands up and turn around,” Tobin said.

  Does he mean me? A sickly burst of fear sent a bubble of stomach acid up her esophagus.

  She put her hands up, but so did Roy.

  Roy looked just as tense as she imagined she did. Sweat had run down his forehead and was now sopping his thick eyebrows.

  “I said, turn around,” Tobin said.

  Roy did.

  “Winchester two forty-one. You know this gun, right?” Tobin asked. He kept the butt of the gun flat against his shoulder, but made tiny circles in the air with the barrel, keeping a bead on Roy while he did this.

  Roy didn’t nod, didn’t do anything but look a little more pissed off than he had when he was chasing Allison.

  “At this range, if I shot you in the belly, I’d liquefy your organs. It would kill you straight out. Shit. That would be it, wouldn’t it? That would be the big deal we were all waiting for. The starting gun.”

  “Yeah, that’s why you wouldn’t dare.” Roy said. No accent. He was so dark that Allison had expected an accent. Italian or Greek maybe? Like the guys that run diners.

  Tobin kind of smiled at this, faking confidence but not completely succeeding. Allison had seen that same look a few times on the boys that had tried to pick her up. Different context, but it was the same feigned swagger.

  Tobin took a couple of steps forward and placed the barrel of the gun flush with the palm of one of Roy’s upheld hands.

  Roy squinted, trying to remain composed.

  “Allison, right? “ Tobin said, not looking over at her, but addressing her for the first time.

  Allison couldn’t speak, wasn’t really decoding the words.

  “Could you just scootch over for me, Allison? Take a few steps to your right.”

  She did.

  Roy started to say something but Tobin shushed him and moved the gun a few inches up.

  Tobin lined the circle of the barrel up to the knuckle of Roy’s pointer finger and pulled the trigger.

  There was that same boom as before, only this time it wasn’t followed by silence.

  “You fuck,” Roy screamed and pulled the hand to his chest, splotches of red already spreading on his white uniform.

  “Get out of here before I have to start some real trouble.” Tobin said. “And don’t go looking for your finger. That shit’s vaporized.”

  Roy did as he was told, skulking off in the direction that he’d chased Allison from. Back to town?

  Tobin held out his hand for her, propped the butt of the gun against his hip.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No, I’m hurt,” she was able to say, expecting the words to bring pain, but they didn’t. She was too numb.

  “Oh sweetheart, it’s okay. Let’s go get you fixed up,” Tobin said.

  He put his arm around her, not to seduce her but to comfort her. He smelled nice.

  After a few steps, he spoke again, “Allison, didn’t anyone tell you that there was a war going on?”

  Chapter Nine

  Disney doesn’t call their employees “employees” but instead calls them “cast members”. The idea was that all their employees played a part in transporting their customers to Fantasyland, making their dreams come true. In practice, though, the chipperness of most cast members should be read as unhinged by anyone over seven.

  Daisy wasn’t an employee of The Brant: she was a cast member.

  Thankfully, she seemed to be the only one. The rest of the staff was just that—staff. They worked, clocked out, and cashed their checks.

  There may have been a countrified sweetness to them, but they did not grovel at the altar of Ms. Brant like Daisy.

  It took less than a week for Claire to grow into the world around her. Her ability to assimilate so quickly scared her, but only a little.

  Allison had been right. The worst part had been learning to make a bed.

  Daisy had trained her in the proper use of the industrial washers, restocking the linen carts, cleaning the guest bathrooms, but she had neglected to demonstrate how she got the sheets so tight and the quilts so smooth. That was one thing Claire had to figure out how to do on her own (with help from a YouTube video entitled Best tips 2 make a bed).

  By the third day, Claire had memorized the schedule, which, it did not surprise her, featured more cleaning than she’d been told it would. Waking up at five thirty to fold the sheets and load up her cart with miniature shampoo bottles was tough, but it was getting easier.

  Around 9:30, Claire would clean rooms. She started at the end of the west wing, third floor, and consulted her chart until she reached an unoccupied room that needed cleaning. After the guest rooms on the second and third floors were done, she was finished for the day.

  Not a bad gig, considering that this early in the season she only ever had to clean four rooms. For the rest of the day she’d surf the internet in her room until she’d have to bring the cart out again for turndown service.

  In the two-hour span between prep and cleaning, Claire helped the cook with whatever he needed.

  Although Daisy would never say it—Claire bet she never even thought a bad word—helping Roy was the shittiest duty at The Brant.

  It wasn’t that Roy himself was that bad. He may have spoken more in grunts than words, but it didn’t come off as rudeness, just a stoic professionalism. He was tall, dark and gross-looking, so maybe it was the Lurch school of manners.

  What s
ucked about this detail was the mess. Claire didn’t deal well with being covered in food stuffs. If she was going out with friends and it was ribs for dinner, she’d need a stack of wet naps and would prefer to be seated closest to the restroom.

  Roy needed her help handling food. She would crack eggs, tenderize and batter chicken-fried steak, anything that he needed doing. By the time she was ready to wash and head up to the third floor, there was a thick coat of slime on her hands, apron and forearms.

  Roy wasn’t incapable of these things or above the grime, but he was injured.

  The morning Claire had arrived Roy had missed Ms. Brant’s line-up because he’d cut half a finger off chopping wood.

  By the end of the week, Claire was better at her job but her days were longer. The “rush” hadn’t been much of a rush, just a steady increase in occupied rooms until almost all of the second floor rooms were booked, rooms that needed their bathtubs wiped down, their pillows fluffed and their floors vacuumed.

  As a waitress, Claire was used to spending time on her feet, but it was the up and down of guest liaison-ing that exhausted her.

  It was good though, the increased effort felt like therapy. She was scrubbing extra hard, making sure that she removed all the dead skin from the inside of her soul.

  Changing clothes at the end of the day helped, too.

  Claire now spent most of her waking hours in her uniform: white tights under a knee-length green dress with a white apron on top and green half-sleeves. Her custom dress took two days to complete, the seamstress adding one final touch: her name embroidered on the apron. Claire in green thread on the left breast, over her heart.

  Before she’d slipped on the dress for the first time, Claire stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. Even though guests were asked not to smoke, there was a ceramic ashtray in each room. Claire placed hers on the edge of the sink and then ran her fingers over her skin.

  There was a small clink as she removed each piercing and dropped it into the ashtray.

  They were only a few small hoops and studs, but taking them off made her feel lighter, sleeker. Warning: Small Parts May Present Choking Hazard.

  Without her metal, Claire Foster no longer posed a choking hazard.

  She wondered how long it would take for the holes to close completely, wondered if some of them ever would.

  The tattoos wouldn’t ever come off, but she didn’t want them to. Claire didn’t regret them. They would be the only thing left of Silverfish once she let the streak in her hair go un-bleached.

  Her job title was a misnomer because the only task that Claire didn’t do at The Brant was deal directly with the guests. She would still see them from time to time, but she wasn’t undergoing this transformation because of them.

  It wasn’t because Ms. Brant told her to either. Although she seemed conservative in many ways, the old woman hadn’t mentioned Claire’s appearance.

  Claire was doing this for herself, affecting change that she was in charge of.

  Starting fresh.

  *

  When compared to Claire’s drunken post-grad life, everything about working at The Brant was strange. But there was one aspect of her work at the hotel that would have been considered peculiar by anyone’s standards.

  There was one room on the third floor that Claire didn’t clean.

  “You don’t have to take care of this room. He’s my responsibility,” Daisy said, covering her mouth, like she was blocking her words from the peephole of Room 31.

  “Who?” Claire asked, and found herself being shushed by Daisy.

  Daisy took her by the arm and walked her to the end of the hallway before answering.

  “Father Hayden lives in that room, poor thing,” Daisy said. “I see that he gets everything he needs.”

  “Who is Father Hayden?”

  “He’s the town’s priest, or was, or still is,” Daisy said. For the first time since Claire had arrived, Daisy seemed unsure of herself. Daisy probably never had to give this part of the tour before. It seemed to Claire that she was getting to see something closer to the real Daisy now. She was a woman-girl unrehearsed and insecure, one who was unsure of all her answers, of herself.

  “Well, let me back up here. Did you see the church on your ride in?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Claire said. They may have driven by it, but churches weren’t something that Claire kept a constant lookout for. If Daisy had asked her to spot an Arby’s, Claire could have given her a more definitive answer.

  “That’s because it burned to the ground some years ago. Now we only have a lot where a church used to be.” Daisy said. She was back in full storyteller mode now, not as sharp as she was as a tour guide, but close. “Father Hayden was still inside when it went up.”

  Daisy paused and stared at Claire expectantly. Claire realized that this was the point in the story where she was supposed to gasp. Instead she said, “That’s terrible,” and Daisy continued.

  “Third-degree burns all over his body. The flames seared his eyes so he’s blind now. His ears are gone, but he can still hear a little, I think. Ms. Brant says he’s deaf, but I don’t know if that’s correct. Poor thing.” Daisy seemed to be reveling a little too much in these details, using a strategically placed “poor thing” here and there to free herself from the accusation that she enjoyed describing this freak show. Daisy didn’t seem like the kind of girl who hit the movies every weekend, so she had to use real world gore to fill her enjoyable violence quotient.

  “The doctors said that he wouldn’t survive,” she continued. “But Ms. Brant wouldn’t believe them, and she was right. She sought out specialists and those doctors brought him back from the edge. She paid for everything too. Kind of gives you a new perspective into your boss, right? She cares so much about Mission and its people.”

  Claire didn’t know how to respond to that, so she just nodded. She didn’t want to let her cynicism leak in, but a small, dark, petty area in the back of her mind was giggling, amused at Ms. Brant’s impeccable handle on public relations. She’s at least gotten Daisy to drink the Kool-Aid.

  “After he got better, since he used to live in an apartment attached to the church and that’s not there anymore, Ms. Brant lets him live here in thirty-one. Rent free, of course.”

  “That’s really nice of her,” Claire said.

  “It is. He doesn’t have many visitors. It’s not that the people in Mission aren’t devout. Most of them can’t bear to look at him. It does take some getting used to, but I’ve been taking care of him for years now. I don’t mind it, even if it gets messy sometimes.”

  Somehow even that vague description gave Claire a vivid mental picture. She winced against images of baby-smooth scar tissue and weeping orifices.

  It was about fifteen minutes after this conversation that Claire asked Daisy about Tobin, hoping for some small talk to wash away the spooky and awkward topic of Brant’s crispy pet priest.

  Daisy might have looked less mortified if Claire had tackled her and tugged down her Spanx.

  “Why do you need to know about him? When did you even meet him?” Daisy’s voice was panicked for the first question and accusatory for the second.

  “The first night I was here, Allison had gone out for a smoke and I went with her,” Claire said, unsure what she had to be defensive about. Were Tobin and Daisy involved? Mission’s well of talent couldn’t be that shallow.

  Saying Allison’s name aloud still hurt. Aside from the occasional quick text, the bitch had dumped her.

  Daisy waited for the rest of the story, one hand on her hip, the other leaning against the linen cart.

  “He was going through the dumpster for recyclables and telling us about the town.”

  “I knew he was still doing that. I hear him sometimes,” Daisy said, more to herself than to Claire. “That’s all, you haven’t seen him since?”

  “No. Why? What’s wrong with him? He seemed nice enough to me,” Claire said, no longer staggered by Daisy’s
tone. She hadn’t transformed so much that she was going to allow herself to be intimidated by someone that so closely resembled one of Strawberry Shortcake’s less popular friends.

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a warm-blooded American male, as you saw, and I’ve certainly heard tales to prove it. But he and his friends get into trouble.”

  Claire remembered what Tobin had said and brought it into play now. She wanted the depth of her knowledge to shock Daisy. “Are you talking about the parties out in the woods?”

  If Daisy were in a costume drama, she would have put the back of her hand to her forehead and yelled “The scandal!” before fainting.

  It took her a moment, but when she regained her composure she spoke in a deliberate monotone. “He told you about those ‘parties’? I’m sure he was really slick. He is the handsome one. But did he tell you what they do at them? It’s all drugs and sex and shame. Building bonfires and hooting like animals. They’ve even tried to get the guests of the hotel once or twice. Ms. Brant says that they are the worst plague that Mission’s ever had to endure. And this is a town that survived a catastrophic flu epidemic at the turn of the last century, so that’s saying something.”

  Occasionally Daisy would talk in this hybrid dialect that was half her words, half Ms. Brant’s.

  “Kids partying in the woods? Doesn’t sound like much of a threat to me.” Claire tried not to sound so much like she was goading Daisy, but she was too into it at this point.

  Daisy looked to both ends of the third-floor hallway, realizing that they were having this conversation out in the open. She put a finger up to her lips and took a key from one of her apron pockets.

  “In here,” Daisy said, opening the door to room thirty-eight. “We can talk in here without a guest hearing us. I don’t know why we didn’t do this before.”

  Claire followed her into the empty room.

  “It would be okay if this were just a case of kids being kids, but it’s not.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, I don’t know too much about it, but I talk with everyone in this town—those kids excluded, of course—and what I hear is that there is a wino that throws those parties. I mean a grown man that lives out in the woods. The kids think it’s cool to have some dirty flower child supply them with liquor and who knows what else. Does that sound like a healthy relationship for an adult to have with a group of teenagers?”