by A. J. Downey
“Humph, it doesn’t sound proper for a young lady to be in a man’s house alone like that. Not when he’s not married.”
I gave a gusty sigh, “Times have changed a lot, Grandma. Things just aren’t like that anymore.”
“Well, maybe they should be!” She sighed too, an echo of mine and said, “I just worry about you. That’s all.”
“I know, Grandma, and I’m fine. I swear, Mr. Parnell is a perfect gentleman.”
“Hah, they don’t make them like your grandfather anymore,” she said in a conspirator’s whisper.
“I don’t know, how gentlemanly was it that you almost got arrested for prostitution?” I asked.
“Allison Kay!” she cried. “That was only because he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to tell the policemen that I was his wife!” She and I broke out into a peal of giggles.
The story went that my grandfather was a troubleshooter for one of the city’s hotels. Nowadays, he would be considered hotel security or a bouncer. Anyways, a girl at the hotel had borrowed a few dollars from my grandmother, who had been a seamstress for one of the city’s tailor shops. So my grandmother, after work, went down to the hotel so the girl could pay her back and there they were in the hotel bar when the police had swept in to bust all of the prostitutes.
My grandmother had no idea that Maura had been, as she called it, ‘a lady of the evening’ and had been swept up right along with her. My grandfather let my grandmother be taken all the way to the paddy wagon and had stood outside laughing so hard as she’d screamed at him, ‘Mace! Tell them I’m your wife! Oh, my god, Mace! It’s not funny!’
It’s one of my favorite stories of them. She and I laughed and laughed about it until we had to wipe tears from our eyes. She looked at me with such fondness, her green eyes going milky with age, and patted my cheek. The guilt of having to keep her here overwhelmed me for a moment.
I smiled through it, and she asked me quietly, “What did you bring us this week?”
The change of subject was a welcome one, and I said, “Those chocolate peanut butter bars. We’ll have to go through your recipes… I am running out of ones I know.”
She smiled with glee and wrinkled her nose, shrugging her shoulder, and I swear let out the most adorable little cackle, and the sadness of a moment before left me.
When I got home that night, I brought out the recipes I had carefully copied out of grandma’s recipe book, which she had me bring her, along with a few other personal items. Her clothes, obviously, as well as photographs, a few important documents she wouldn’t live without, and some other things; I would bring a little more for her each trip, and it had become a habit of ours to sit with magazines and flower catalogs and cut out flowers for the wall beside her bed.
Back at the Point Side, there was a courtyard. Down, way down, in the center of the building which ringed it, there had been a fountain but it hadn’t worked for years and years and years. One summer, my grandmother had gotten together with a bunch of the neighbors and every payday for weeks each neighbor had brought home a big bag of cheap potting soil for her. She dumped them in the dry and empty fountain and ordered bulbs from a catalog.
She, my grandfather, and I had turned that fountain into a flower garden that summer, planting lilies and roses, tulips and daffodils, so that there would be blooms all year around. It was the nicest thing that the Point Side had seen in so long, and the good residents of the project loved her for it. It was one of the odd little things that even the thugs of the building, the gangbangers, and never-do-wells respected, mostly because when one of them fell, it turned into an impromptu shrine at one end with candles and pictures.
My grandmother tended her garden faithfully, and I tried to do what I could, but it had been Mr. Comey, the building’s super, who had been keeping it up for her when I just didn’t have any energy left to do it.
Anyway, the moral of my rambling story is that out of everything my grandmother missed the most out of her home here, her garden was it… aside from me, of course. Hence all the work carefully snipping catalog and magazine pictures for her wall. She said if she couldn’t go to her garden, she demanded that her garden be brought to her. So I did my best.
Now, sitting on my bed, I went through dessert recipes trying to decide what to make for next week. I landed on an old favorite and chewed my bottom lip. It made so much… I thought about it and looked at my tiny kitchen and then had a brilliant idea.
Mr. Parnell’s kitchen was huge and making these cookies required a lot of counter space for cooling. My grandmother and I couldn’t eat them all, and honestly, what better way to say thank you? I smiled to myself, and, a decision made, went to bed that night smiling.
The next morning was a flurry of activity. I nearly slept through my alarm! I dressed quickly, forgoing my shower, grateful that it was Monday. Every other Monday I tackled the monstrosity that was Mr. Parnell’s shower in his master bath. Best way to clean a shower? Get in it after applying cleaner and apply liberal amounts of elbow grease with a scrub brush… which was the plan, after cookies!
I grabbed my tote, with the majority of the ingredients from by the door and practically flew to work. I was a little disappointed that Ms. Franco, Mr. Parnell’s ‘second chair’, whatever that meant, was the one to come get their coffee that morning. I was also a little sad I wouldn’t get to see Mr. Parnell’s reaction to the cookies. I mean, I would be gone before he got to them.
The day dragged so slowly, but finally, it was time to put my master plan into action. I waved to Millie as I left, and stopped at the corner store for the fresh ingredients I would need before boarding my first bus.
Traffic was immense, but eventually I made it, smiling and waving to Mr. Clive as I made my way up the block.
“Hey, Ms. Ally!” he called back, and I let him open the door for me.
“Stand by, Mr. Clive. I’m going to make some cookies; I’ll bring some down for you and Mr. Jimmy on my way out.”
“Oh! Why, thank you!”
I took the steps two at a time and reached Mr. Parnell’s door, sticking my key in the lock. I would sometimes bring pastries from the café to Mr. Clive and Mr. Jimmy. They wouldn’t hear of just calling me ‘Ally’ so it’d become a sort of informal greeting over the last month or so to include ‘Mr.’ and ‘Miss or Ms.’ in front of our first names. It kept the snootier residents of the Calvert building happy and it just seemed… I don’t know… happier for us. Special, almost.
Everyone needed to feel appreciated and special sometimes. Even for the little things that everyone else just took for granted on a daily basis. Opening doors, holding elevators, assisting with bringing groceries to the door, building gardens out of defunct water features or, like Mr. Parnell, taking a chance on a girl he barely knew and giving her a job cleaning his expensive apartment.
I’d cleaned his kitchen enough times that I knew where everything was. I preheated the oven, laid the wax paper I’d brought in long sheets over his stone countertop, liberated his baking sheets from their cubby and set to work unpacking my grocery totes.
I spent the eight minutes between putting batches in the oven cleaning the easy things. The timer on my phone would go off; I would return to the oven, smoosh the Hershey Kisses into the center of the peanut butter cookies and then let them go for a minute more. Then out of the oven, rest for a minute, and off the sheet and onto the waxed paper to cool.
I put some on a plate for Mr. Parnell and set it on the dining room table with the simple ‘Thank you’ note card I had picked up from the dollar store. I put the rest into three different Tupperwares I’d brought. One for me and Gran, one for Mr. Clive, and one for Mr. Jimmy. I repacked up my bags, washed all of the dishes from my kitchen adventures and went in to tackle the main event: Mr. Parnell’s giant, stone-tiled shower.
I sprayed the special cleaner for it, stripped down and folded my clothes neatly on the corner of the vanity, and started the shower, stepping into it. I scrubbed, rinsing the walls
and floor as music played from my phone, laying on top of the pile of clothes. I hadn’t taken into account the time ‒ the cookies had drawn it out much later than I’d expected.
The next thing I knew there was a sharp clack of the shower door opening. I shrieked, jumping and covering myself, meeting Mr. Parnell’s tempestuous gaze. He kept his eyes fixed on mine, and they weren’t happy. At all. He snatched the towel off of the bar and threw it at me. I caught it reflexively.
“Get dressed, meet me in the living room.” His cold blue command rang off the tile, echoed in the space that he’d been in. He was already gone, striding through the door, turning sharply to leave his bedroom and march up the hall, his angry strides fading.
Oh, shit… what had I done?
11
Yale…
When I unlocked my door, the first thing I realized was that the alarm panel didn’t make so much as a sound. The second was that it smelled fantastic in here. Ally’s bag sat beneath the panel – which was unusual. She was never here when I came home.
“Ms. Blaylock?” I called out softly, and went to my dining room table. A plate of cookies rested on the corner I usually left her money on. I set my briefcase in the chair and plucked the white card off the table where it sat beside the plate of cookies.
Thanks, all lower-case letters in silver foil emblazoned on its front, decorative scrollwork above and below it, classy, simple, elegant… drawing attention to the one word. I opened it to equally-beautiful and delicate cursive writing done in blue pen.
Mr. Parnell,
I wanted to thank you for sending your friends to help me move. I know it was you, and we don’t have to talk about it. I just wanted you to know that I know and that I am grateful. I am also grateful that you took a chance in helping me, in giving me this job. There aren’t enough words, really, and ‘thank you’ doesn’t really seem to be enough… so I baked you these cookies. They’re peanut blossoms, my grandmother and I make them every Christmas. They’re special in our family.
Yours,
Ally Kay
Shit. I rolled my lips together and set the card down.
“Ally?” I called out a little stronger and made my way down the hall, towards my room, to investigate her whereabouts. I heard the shower running, music playing from my bathroom, and pushed open the door.
The shower was running; the glass steamed giving a blurred glimpse of Ally’s lean figure. I felt my body immediately respond and I scowled hard. She was rinsing the shower wall, and I let my annoyance, my irritation, and, I admit it, my desire for more, carry me across the tile floor. I jerked open the shower door and she shrieked, dropping the wand and putting up both arms, one of her elegant feet coming up completely off the shower floor.
I liked the fear response. Loved as the panic and unknown welled in her brilliant, too-wide, green eyes.
I couldn’t let myself go down this road!
I snatched the towel off the bar as she let herself relax in shock. She didn’t hide her body from me when she did that, and I couldn’t let myself look. I threw the towel at her and she caught it, holding it against her chest, those beautiful, perky tits of hers – the reality was so much better than my imagination.
“Get dressed,” I growled. “Meet me in the living room.”
It was an effort of will after that to turn away, and stride back the way I came. I wanted to stand there and drink her in with my gaze, go over every fine detail, every freckle, every hair; every soft curve. I wanted to admire her like a fine piece of art‒ but I couldn’t. I was her boss.
I went past the kitchen, between it and the dining room table, to the bar along the window. I plucked a rocks glass from where it rested upside down on its silver, circular platter and set it on its base. I poured a generous measure of whiskey into that glass and downed it in a bid to fortify myself; then I poured at least two fingers more.
Capping the decanter, I moved past her offering of thanks and cookies, pausing slightly, the knife of indecision twisting in my chest. I swallowed hard, and went over to my favorite chair, lowering myself into it to wait.
I heard her before I saw her, my back to the room as it was, the tall wing-backed chair I sat in hiding her from view. I sighed with impatience when I heard her stop and said, “Come here.”
Her sneakers tapped lightly across the hardwood and she edged cautiously into view. Her eyes were too wide, her chest rising and falling in rapid breaths beneath her light gray, loose and flowy tank top. The armholes of her top, gaping to her hips, revealed that she wore a black sports bra beneath it. Her legs, encased in black leggings, didn’t want to seem to work for her, and she trembled. I glanced over her black low-top Chuck Taylor knock-offs. She was too poor to be able to afford the real thing, and I let out a frustrated breath.
I met her green eyes which were welling up, just short of spilling over. I let no sympathy play over my features. Instead, I moved my gaze from hers to the end of the coffee table directly in front of me. A silent order to sit. I wanted to see if she would follow non-verbal cues as well as she seemed to follow both my written and verbal commands.
She swallowed hard and moved quickly to sit. Her hands gripped the end of the table, knuckles mottling white; her eyes on me; her knee bouncing as she tapped her heel against the floor with sheer nerves.
“Stop that,” I said shortly, though I kept my voice even and controlled. I didn’t yell, but I did keep my tone stern. She immediately ceased the nervous movement, and it was everything in me to quell the rising erection in my slacks.
“Please, don’t fire me,” she said quickly, and the tears did spill then, her eyes growing luminous. She went from gorgeous to achingly beautiful then, and I couldn’t tell you what that did to me.
I took a fortifying sip of my whiskey and betrayed no emotion. Instead, I plucked my handkerchief out of my suit’s breast pocket, shook it out and leaned forward, offering it to her.
“On the contrary,” I stated, a decision made – once again against my better judgment. “I have a proposition for you. A rather indecent proposal…”
12
Ally…
Dread coated my insides like tar the entire time I was drying off and getting dressed. My heart pounded against the inside of my ribs, and my face felt hot. My chest squeezed tight as I tied my shoes, and finally, I stood up, as ready as I would ever be to face the music.
Oh, shit… I’m fired. He’s going to fire me and I won’t be able to pay for Grandma and I don’t know what I’m going to do!
I felt sicker and sicker with every step I took up the hallway, and I didn’t immediately see him. He was sitting in the wingback chair that faced away from the kitchen and my approach. He swirled some whiskey in a glass and said coldly, “Come here.”
Yep. I was fired. Totally. Epically. Fired.
I went around the side of his chair and stopped, equal parts dejected and humiliated. He raked that icy glare over me from head to toe and shifted in his seat, as if unsettled.
He’s disgusted with you… I mean, wouldn’t you be? I thought.
He let out an angry sigh and my gaze bounced from the floor to his, my eyes hot and tight, my vision blurring with unshed tears. He captured my gaze with his and jerked it to the coffee table in front of him in a clear bid for me to sit. I moved quickly to comply, but couldn’t hold still. My knee bouncing rapidly as I tried to do something, anything, to keep myself together; to keep myself from bursting into ugly wracking sobs, to stop myself from throwing myself on his mercy and begging him not to let me go.
“Stop that,” he snapped, and I forced my leg to immediately still, but lost the battle with my tears. I felt them slick down my face, spilling across my skin in twin heated lines. One of the tears splashing onto the top of my thigh and soaking into my legging.
“Please, don’t fire me!” I blurted, and apparently lost the battle when it came to not begging, but I didn’t have any pride. The Point Side projects had stripped that from me a long time ago.
His gaze wandered over me, so cold it burned where it touched and he took a nonchalant sip of his drink. When he lowered his glass, he let out a breath and reached into the breast pocket of his suit, shaking out his handkerchief and holding it out to me.
I reached out and took it as he said dryly, “On the contrary. I have a proposition for you. A rather indecent proposal…”
I wiped my eyes and looked up, bewildered. Did I hear him right? Am I not fired?
“What?” I asked, still not believing what I heard, waiting for him to repeat it.
He pursed his lips and they twisted slightly with impatience as he searched my face. “You’re not fired,” he said for my benefit, “I would actually like to increase your pay.” I took a breath to speak, and he raised a finger, “No. Hear me out.”
I resolutely closed my mouth, half afraid he would ask me to sleep with him. I didn’t know if I could do that. If I would do that… not for money. That wasn’t the woman my grandmother had raised me to be, at all.
“I would like for you to clean like that all the time. I will double your current rate.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, confused and was surprised that I didn’t find myself readily denying him. Instead, I asked, “Like, would you be home?”
“No.”
I frowned, perplexed, and shook my head, not that I was saying no, but more in that I had no idea where this was coming from and I didn’t get it, so I asked him, “If you’re not home, how would you know if I did it? Like, how would you know I cleaned naked? The cameras?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No. In fact, I will show you precisely where they all are and how to disable them upon entry into the condo.”
I blinked and blurted, “But then how would you know I was doing it?” Somehow I was more concerned with the how and why and what of this scenario than I was with losing my job if I said no.