by Don Lee
She made a quick scan of the suite as she walked through it. It was quite tidy. Mallory Wicks was no slob. She seemed considerate, even. There were no towels or trash on the floors. She hadn’t tossed the pillows about. She’d pulled the sheets and duvet back over the bed. She’d left the tip envelope on the coffee table and written “Thanks!” on it in an emphatically cheerful looping script.
Jeanette collected the rubbish, took the trash to her cart, and replaced the wastebasket liners. The two glass ashtrays on the terrace had already been changed by the floor attendant, who was responsible for lighting, cleaning, and replenishing the logs for the fire pit. She stripped the bedding, making sure no linens touched the carpet to save on wear and tear, and went through the exacting task of making the bed.
When she was done, she debated what to do with the sweater that was on an upholstered chair: to fold it and tuck it into a dresser drawer, or hang it in the closet. Trying to discern Ms. Wicks’s preferences, she opened the closet. There was another sweater inside, folded, on a shelf of the built-in red mahogany organizer. She glanced at the labels of the clothes.
There was so much a housekeeper could learn about guests without ever meeting them, just from how they left their rooms and their possessions. Very intimate pieces of information about their lives—their personal habits, health, attitudes about hygiene, hobbies, financial and marital issues. From books on the nightstand, Jeanette could tell when someone was going through a divorce or was looking to diversify a portfolio or travel to Sri Lanka or start a diet. From medications, she could see if someone had high blood pressure or cholesterol or needed painkillers. From boxes on the counter and wads in the trash bin, she could see if a woman was menstruating, and, from containers or tubes, what method of contraception she was using. From creams and solutions, she could infer a guest’s skin or hair concerns. From clothes, she could glean tastes in fashion, weight problems, athletic inclinations, if people cared about the quality of their underwear and socks. It was an ethnographer’s dream. Yet the novelty of making such deductions had worn off for Jeanette. She didn’t have much curiosity about her guests anymore. This was different, though. She was interested to see how a celebrity lived, even a B-list one (or had Ms. Wicks been relegated to the C list?). There hadn’t been many celebrities at the Centurion since Jeanette had begun working there—a few athletes, but no one from Hollywood.
Mallory Wicks’s size was, depending on the garment, either a 0 or a 00. The items in the closet were casual, sporty. Ms. Wicks was clearly here to play golf, not make a scene. Still, everything was expensive. She had Coach luggage, a Kate Spade clutch, and one of those Hermès Birkin bags that were all the rage, costing between ten and forty thousand dollars. There were Emilio Pucci boots, Christian Louboutin flats, an Isabel Marant gabardine blazer, and Stella McCartney pants. She was trendy, but not a trendsetter. All the brands had been deemed hot in the celebrity and fashion magazines that Jeanette subscribed to.
The same could be said for the products and makeup on the vanity in the main bathroom. Her things were laid out neatly, but not obsessively in rows, not evenly spaced, not perfectly aligned, as Jeanette was wont to do. She had the famous La Mer moisturizing cream that went for two thousand dollars a jar. Moroccanoil Body Butter and a lot of the Japanese SK-II skin-care line. Edward Bess and Tom Ford lipsticks. Daylong sunscreen. Kérastase shampoo. Chanel Gardénia perfume. She had an exfoliant, a couple of collagen and whitening masks, a swath of makeup brushes. Condoms and a vaginal lubricant in a drawer (was she expecting a visitor, or were they for unforeseen contingencies, always prepared?). A prescription bottle of the antidepressant Zoloft. Nothing terribly exotic. Ms. Wicks didn’t indulge in any of the zany beauty treatments that other celebrities had adopted, like mayonnaise in the hair or Preparation H under the eyes.
She had a tube of tretinoin cream, Retin-A, for wrinkles, which Jeanette had asked a dermatology in San Vicente to prescribe for her not too long ago, only to discover at the pharmacy that her insurance didn’t cover it. They considered it a lifestyle drug, and it would have cost her $147 out-of-pocket for the generic version. She chose not to get it.
Jeanette looked at her face in the mirror. The lighting from the wall sconces was bright and warm yet unforgiving, displaying every imperfection. Her complexion was wan. She would turn forty in November, but appeared older. Her eyelids were papery. She had crow’s-feet, and there were two furrows between her eyebrows, as well as horizontal creases on her forehead. She really needed to wear more makeup, she thought.
With rubber gloves on, she pulled hair from the drain traps and sprayed hot water on the shower tiles and let three inches of water collect at the bottom of the tub for a few minutes (ten degrees of heat doubled the effectiveness of cleansers). She scrubbed every inch of the bathtub and walls, shined the brass fixtures, and cleaned the toilet, inside and out, before moving on to the vanity and sink. The housekeepers had sponges and cleansers in different colors for the tub and sink (yellow), toilet (pink), surfaces (green), and mirrors (blue), with matching cotton cloths for wipe-downs and drying. She positioned the provided L’Occitane amenities, which were unused but had been knocked askew, in their proper order (conditioner on the back right, shampoo on the front right, shower gel on the front left, body lotion on the back left), folded the toilet paper and fanned the Kleenex, resupplied the towels, and washed the floor. She repeated the same procedures in the half bathroom.
Then she began dusting, working clockwise (and from top to bottom) around the suite so she won’t miss anything. Starting with the door, she dusted and wiped the knob and frame, the credenza and dining table and chairs, the bedroom closet and shelves and hangers and rods, the picture frames and mirrors, the lamps and bulbs (turning the seams on the shades toward the walls), the nightstands, the TV, the dresser, the main room sofa and chairs and tables. On and on it went, including the HVAC vents and windowsills and the chaise longues and patio table on the terrace.
She straightened the furniture and refilled the stationery supplies. Then she swept and vacuumed, moving this time from the farthest corner of the bedroom to the door. After noting on a Charisma slip that Ms. Wicks liked her sweaters folded and stored in the organizer, Jeanette closed the windows and sheer curtains, drew the drapes halfway, switched on the HVAC, and turned off the lights. She checked for anything she might have missed, then pulled shut the door. In the hallway, as they were instructed, she closed her eyes for three full seconds, took a deep breath, and then reentered the suite, trying to see it as a guest would, and rechecked her work. At last, she closed the door and moved on to the next room, tucking into her apron the tip envelope, into which Mallory Wicks had inserted a fifty-dollar bill.
Holding a wedding at the Centurion Resort was exorbitant, but there was one more affordable option—the “Intimate Wedding” package. The site fee included a bluff-side ceremony with folding mahogany chairs and a complimentary hotel room on the night of the wedding, with a rose-petal turndown and champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries awaiting the bride and groom. Everything else was extra. The major caveat was that the wedding could only involve a total of ten to thirty participants and had to take place between Monday and Thursday, excluding holidays.
Unbeknownst to Jeanette, Franklin had come to the Centurion to officiate an intimate wedding—a last-minute replacement for a justice of the peace. Jeanette ran into him in the corridor outside the fitness center, where she had gone to grab a cool-down towel and a sports drink for a guest, and where he had gone to use the restroom after the ceremony. The coincidence brightened her mood, yet at the same time she was embarrassed to be seen by him in her burgundy and gold uniform, particularly since he was dressed quite elegantly.
“That’s a nice suit,” she told him.
“You think?” he said. “It’s new. I don’t think it fits me exactly right. I didn’t want the slim cut, but the salesgirl—woman—talked me into it.”
“You look very dashing.”
; “Now you’re making me blush,” he said, which made Jeanette blush, too.
They were flirting again, she thought. Was it so outlandish to presume that a man like Franklin might have a tiny bit of attraction for a woman like her?
They talked about the wedding. It had been held at noon—a funny time, but the couple had wanted to do it under the gazebo, and that was the only hour it had been available. Neither the couple nor their families were from Rosarita Bay, and they did not have a connection to the First Unitarian Universalist Church or any other UU congregation. They had found Franklin through online reviews and one of two little websites that his son Lane had built for him. The other website was for his services as a celebrant at funerals. It hadn’t seemed appropriate to offer the two services on the same website.
The bride and groom had been high school sweethearts, Franklin told Jeanette, and worked together at a plant nursery in Menlo Park. “They seem like nice kids,” he said.
“Is the reception going to be here?” she asked.
“No, at Clotilde’s Bistro, later tonight. They asked me to come. They always ask me to come, and bring my partner. I don’t know why some JPs and ministers do it, even if they’re being paid. It feels fraudulent and invasive, crashing a party when I’ve known the bride and groom all of an hour, if that. So I usually decline, and when I do, the couples always ask me for any advice I might have for them.”
“What do you tell them?” Jeanette asked.
“What can I tell them?” Franklin said. “Should I tell them how hard it’s going to be? Should I say marriage is mostly about arguing over the quotidian, and that those things will wear away at your soul? Should I say I thought I’d do so much more with my life, but getting married and raising a family negates most possibilities and leaves you feeling like you’re not a man? Should I tell them it’s been almost three years since my wife has had sex with me? I figured out who Caroline’s been fucking.”
The word jarred Jeanette. There were guests walking by in the hallway within earshot, and one woman flinched and turned toward them.
“Who?” Jeanette whispered.
“Not Yadin,” Franklin said. “Gerry Lowry.”
The city manager? “But he’s the one who wants to outsource the library,” Jeanette said.
“Exactly.”
“You saw them together?”
“No.”
“Someone told you?” she asked. She was still registering the fact that he and Caroline had not had sex in three years.
“I downloaded our phone bills for the past year,” Franklin said. “One number kept popping up. Lowry’s. I tried to hack into her email but couldn’t figure out the password.
“But it doesn’t make sense,” Jeanette said. “If they’re having an affair, wouldn’t he arrange it so she could stay in Rosarita Bay?”
“That’s just it. I’ve never seen such enmity between two people, and I’ve never understood why. Now it jibes. It went bad, the affair. Either she broke it off and he’s disconsolate, or he ended it and she’s been harassing him, stalking him ever since, jeopardizing his marriage. Either way, he’s found a solution, a way to get rid of her. He’ll get them to privatize the library, she’ll lose her job, she’ll have to move. He’ll never have to see her again.”
The theory sounded implausible, if not preposterous, to Jeanette. “What’s Caroline say?” she asked.
“Apparently we’re no longer speaking. But I know what to do, I know how to make her talk.”
“How?”
“I’m going to the city council meeting on Friday and corner them,” he said to her. “I’m going to make them own up to the whole sordid mess.”
Jeanette couldn’t linger in the corridor anymore. She told Franklin she had to return to work. She picked up the sports drink and cool-down towel from the fitness center and placed them upstairs in No. 517, then rolled her cart to the next room on her assignment sheet.
Clearly Franklin had become unhinged. Gerry Lowry was tall and thin and slouchy, with a sour mien and awful dandruff. No one’s idea of an attractive man. Jeanette couldn’t envision any circumstance in which Caroline would take him on as a lover. Franklin’s plan to accost Caroline and Lowry at the meeting was demented. He would humiliate himself. He would humiliate Caroline. His standing as their minister would be ruined.
Later in the afternoon, Jeanette went down to the lower service level to resupply her cart and, while there, dropped by the employee cafeteria to grab a cup of yogurt. Several girls at the buffet table were discussing a second assault on a hotel maid in New York City, this time at the Pierre by an Egyptian banker, who had groped and propositioned a housekeeper on Sunday night. But the banker hadn’t been arrested right away. The maid had reported the assault immediately to the manager, but she had been told she would have to wait until the next morning, when her supervisor returned to the hotel, for anything to be done.
“That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” a girl said.
“Multiple lawsuits,” another said.
“They’ll get us those panic buttons for sure now,” a third said.
Jeanette hadn’t intended to sit down, but she saw Anna at a table by herself and joined her.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier,” she said to Anna. “I’m dealing with some stuff.”
“That’s all right,” Anna said. “What kind of stuff?”
“Nothing, really. Nothing important.”
“I heard you got promoted to team leader.”
“Yeah.”
“Aren’t you happy?” Anna asked. “I thought you’d be ecstatic. When do you start?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Well, congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Anna told her.
“About what?” Jeanette asked. “The fitted sheets?”
“No, everything. Maybe I could use a little attitude adjustment. My QCs have been crap. I must have the lowest scores on Empower. Do you think you could watch me one of these days and give me some pointers?”
Despite her preoccupations, Jeanette felt pleased that Anna was seeking her help. “If you’ll give me some makeup tips sometime,” she said.
“Deal,” Anna said.
“Do you think I ought to do something with my hair?”
“You could use some shaping. Maybe do something different with your eyebrows, too.”
“I got assigned Mallory Wicks’s suite,” Jeanette said. “You should see all the beauty products in there, the clothes. It’s like she walked out of a page of InStyle.”
“I saw her in the lobby yesterday,” Anna said. “I was showing a guest the way to the spa. She was kissing some dude.”
“What dude?” Jeanette recalled the condoms and lubricant in the vanity drawer. Perhaps they weren’t for chance hookups, after all. Perhaps Ms. Wicks had had an assignation in mind, and that was why she’d extended her stay in Rosarita Bay, to rendezvous with a lover.
“I don’t know. Not anyone famous,” Anna said. “Just some guy, like a contractor or foreman or something. He was in a hard hat and a tie. It was bizarre. She was going at it. She was all over him. Right in front of everybody in the lobby. I wish I had a camera or my phone on me. I could’ve sold the picture to a tabloid. Don’t paparazzi make a lot of money for a single shot like that?”
“Only when it’s an A-list celebrity.”
“She had her tongue down his throat. It was something. It was just like in a movie.”
When their shift ended, Anna gave Jeanette a makeover in the locker room. She had talent as a cosmetologist. The transformation was subtle, not lurid or overdone, but Jeanette appeared very different—younger, more sophisticated. She wore the makeup home, careful not to splash water on her face as she took a body shower.
After she got dressed, she saw that Yadin had left a voicemail on her cellphone. She listened to it, then put the phone in her purse. On her way to the church, she stopped by the service stati
on on the corner of Highways 1 and 71 and washed off the makeup in the women’s room. She had mused that the makeover might impress Yadin, but now that he wouldn’t be at rehearsal, she felt too shy about unveiling her new look to the rest of the choir.
She was a few minutes late. She snagged a copy of Singing the Living Tradition from the stacks on the back table and hustled up to the group at the front of the sanctuary.
“Yadin coming?” Darnell asked.
“He can’t make it tonight,” she said.
Jeanette felt guilty now that she had not returned Yadin’s messages yesterday. He was no doubt miffed that she had not bothered to pick up when he’d called and texted and that he had driven all the way to San Bruno for nothing. They appeared to be in a standoff now. She was certain he wasn’t tired or ill. He was not coming to the church tonight to spite her, and she had to admit that he had reason to be annoyed with her.
They ran through two hymns for Sunday’s service, No. 389, “Gathered Here,” and No. 413, “Go Now in Peace,” before taking a break.
Jeanette stood by the coffee urn and sipped a cup with Siobhan, who told her that the police officers’ association—all eight members—had met and voted to recommend to the city council that they accept the proposal from the San Vicente County Sheriff’s Office. It would allow them the most job transfers as full-time deputies, and since the sheriff’s substation was nearby, no one would have to relocate.
“That’s what the council’s going to do, anyway,” Siobhan said. “I don’t know why they’re holding a special session about it. So they can watch people bawl about a decision that’s already been made?”
The county’s proposal would save Rosarita Bay half a million dollars a year by eliminating not only the payroll but also redundancies in infrastructure. They would no longer need the police station or a 911 call center or have to pay for booking and crime lab services, and the sheriff’s office would provide a detective for major crimes and a police dog, neither of which they had now. The proposal from the Pacifica Police Department would have cut a mere eighty thousand dollars from the annual budget and guaranteed just three jobs for the current officers.