Saturday, July 9, 1994, 9:00 p.m.
Itās a weird feeling, starting a diary. I feel kind of embarrassed. Maybe I have diary prejudice, but I feel like writing in a diary is something you do in junior high, when you first discover boys and/or masturbation and you just HAVE TO TALK ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME!! Writing in a diary is a habit youāre supposed to grow out of. Starting one now, at nineteen . . . Iām like the girl who brings her My Little Pony collection to her college dorm.
Except now that Iāve said how uncool this is, Iām free to continue doing it, and now itās in a cool, ironic kind of way. Right? Also no oneās going to read this and Iām going to burn it when Iām done so . . . Just, if youāre reading this at some time in the future (because, I donāt know, Iām suddenly paralyzed and therefore fail to destroy it as planned), donāt waste your time. Nothing exciting lies ahead. Iām not writing this because Iām such a great writer or because I have something important to say or something cool to talk about, but just because Iām bored and lonely and broke and this is one way to entertain myself.
Right now Iām working as a cleaner. (See? Exciting stuff.) I work at a fancy hotel near Seal Harbor (which, if you donāt know, is on Mount Desert Island, which is in Maine). The jobās fine. It could be better. I took it because I wanted to get out of Boston for the summer. Itās so depressing being there, when all my friends go home and spend their vacation time with their families, and Iām still stuck working my shitty dead-end job. I figured, better to work a shitty dead-end job somewhere pretty. Somewhere with rich tourists who leave big tips so I can save up and maybe, maybe, get to college myself someday.
Itās not like I plan on working as a cleaner my entire life. Iām trying to save. Iāve saved almost three thousand dollars, but itās really slow. Every time I feel like Iām getting somewhere thereās some great disaster and everything goes to shit. Like, last year, I got kicked out of my apartment because the building wasnāt up to code or some crap, so then I had to find a new place which meant $$$ for a new deposit and everything. Good luck getting your old deposit back from a landlord of a building thatās just been condemned. Ha-ha.
Itās actually really nice here. The island is beautiful. Lots of walking trails and hiking and climbing and swimming. My job comes with a room (which is just as wellārentals here are $$$$$ārich people only need apply) and I share with a girl called Marta. Sheās all right. Kind of. Sheās crazy about some guy she left behind in her hometown and she mostly wants to just hang out in our room and play Mariah Carey on repeat and cry into her pillow. Fun.
So. I havenāt really made any friends here.
However . . .
I met a guy today. Not a guy guy. Not like a crush or anything. Iām not saying he wasnāt cute, because he was. Itās just that it wasnāt that kind of situation. I was working, cleaning his house, which isnāt exactly an ideal way to meet someone. BackgroundāIāve been making some extra cash by taking extra shifts cleaning private houses on the hotel. Most of the girls at the hotel do it. Rosa, the housekeeper, sets everything up. I donāt know if hotel management knows about it, or if theyād care if they did, but we all keep it on the downlow because that extra work is the only way any of us are going to see any real money this summer.
Anyway, today Rosa picked up me and Marta after our hotel shift and dropped us off at the job sheād set up for us. And the whole thing was kind of off from the beginning. For starters, the house was out in the middle of nowhere (most places Iāve been to up to now have been in townāawesome houses with ocean views). But today Rosa drove until we were way deep in the woods, taking a series of turns until I was completely lost. In the end she took a turn up a long gravel driveway and dropped us off in front of this house that was pretty much hidden. It was tucked back in the trees, and all we could see was stone steps leading up and glimpses of more wood and stone. It was spooky as hell and when Iām nervous I try to be funny.
āSeriously?ā
āWhatās the problem?ā Rosa has zero time for other peopleās problems. And honestly, Iām not a whiner. But I hadnāt been expecting a gloomy dump stuck in the middle of the woods.
āCome on, Rosa. Itās like a scene from a horror movie. Youāll drive away and Marta and I will go innocently into that house in our little maidsā uniforms and an hour from now weāll be running through the woods, fleeing for our lives.ā (We wear little gray dresses that are cut to fit and go barely to our kneesāmy theory is that the ocean isnāt the only view the guests at the hotel pay for.)
Rosa just rolled her eyes at me and kicked us out of the van. āYou have four hours. Six bedrooms. No time for horror movies. And donāt bother the family.ā She left us with the cleaning cart, but I donāt know how she expected us to get it up the steps. In the end we abandoned it in the driveway and took what we needed. It was a while before the door opened. A guy . . . the guy (tall, dark blond floppy hair, blue eyes) stood there. He blinked at us like heād just woken up from an afternoon nap. He said hey and I said hey back, like he was my buddy. I donāt know why. Maybe because he looked about our age. Maybe because he was wearing ratty shorts and a gray Nirvana T-shirt that looked like it had already been washed and worn a hundred times. I knew right away he was cooler than me. (NoteāIāve never listened to a Nirvana song in my life, and Iāve got the tape of The Bodyguard sound track stuck in my Walkman.) Marta was her usual happy self.
āWeāre here to clean,ā she said, flatly.
āReally?ā He looked confused. I donāt think heād been expecting us. But then he shook our hands, so formally that I wanted to laugh, and introduced himself as Tom Spencer. He showed us in through a big entry hall into the kitchen, then disappeared back into the house. Which was way nicer than Iād been expecting, by the way. I mean, you could tell that whoever owned the place had lots of money.
Marta did the kitchen and I did the upstairs. Everything was fine until I got to one room that was pretty gross. Empty beer bottles, dirty clothes and dishes all over the floor, and a nasty smell. Like, none of that is new, but the rest of the house was pretty tidy so I wasnāt really expecting it. My interest in cute Tom in the Nirvana T-shirt diminished quickly. I cleaned everything up, took the dirty stuff downstairs, came back to dust and strip the bed.
The drawer in one of the bedside tables was open. There were two little baggies of coke inside and a small silver spoon. And the last of my interest in Tom died. (Iām not into coke and everyone Iāve ever met who is is an asshole.)
I stripped the bed and I found some porn magazines under one of the pillowsāa copy of Hustler, and a Playboy featuring Ronald Reaganās daughter Patti Davis. I put the Hustler back under the pillow (ick), but the Playboy promised an interview with Bill Gates, so I ended up sort of half-sitting, half-kneeling on the floor on the window side of the bed, flicking through the article. It wasnāt as interesting as Iād thought it might beāthere was a lot of blah about the information highway and democracy and washing machinesāand, look, pornās REALLY not my thing, but I was kind of curious about the Patti Davis pictures, so I turned the pages and had a look . . . and it was exactly at that moment that I heard footsteps approaching the bedroom. I swear, if Iād been doing anything else I would have reacted differently. But . . . you know what itās like when you know youāre doing something you shouldnāt and youāre just about to be discovered. You donāt think, you panic. I ducked down behind the bed, sliding my body halfway under. As soon as I did it, I knew I was acting crazy. I almost sat back up, but there was no time. The footsteps entered the room, the door was slammed closed, and the bedsprings creaked as someone sat down. I heard the sound of a phone handset being picked up and a number being dialed.
I should have stood up then and let him know I was there. I could have shoved the magazine far under the bed, and pretended I was dusting, or something. Instead I shuffled sideways until I was fully under the bed and just lay there. I breathed as quietly as possible, staring up at the bed slats and the underside of the mattress, and listening to one side of what sounded like a very angry phone conversation. Right away I knew I wasnāt listening to Tom Spencer. This guy sounded completely different. His voice was higher pitched, and angry. His first word was a barked out āWell?ā followed by a pause and then an angrier āJust tell me.ā After that I was distracted, because just above my head, between the mattress and the bed slats, was a gun. It was a handgun, a semiautomatic pistol. It was big and black and nasty and it sat there, just above my eyeline, while the conversation above my head escalated into an argument.
Eventually I figured out that the guy was talking to his momāonly because he said the word mom, like, five times. But honestly, otherwise I wouldnāt have guessed it. Iām not saying I never fought with my mother (who doesnāt?) but with him there was this tone. If sheād 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 wasnāt the only person in the room. That maybe heād suddenly go looking for his missing Playboy, which I was still holding (why? why?) clutched in one hand. So I wasnāt really all that focused on the one-sided conversation going on above me, until he started to get really angry.
āHow 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?ā
I couldnāt 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 really vicious.
āNo. You tell him to keep his mouth shut, you hear me, Mom? No one is to know about this. No one. Iām working on fixing this goddamn mess. You need to leave it to me. Do you hear me?ā
He told her to have his father call 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, Tomās voice, coming from outside the room, from somewhere down the corridorā
āMike? You okay?ā
There was the smallest, infinitesimal pause, and then I heard my strangerāMike, obviouslyāopen his bedroom door and say, in a cheery, upbeat, laughing voice that gave absolutely no hint that heād just screamed at his mom and kicked the shit out of his closetāāIāll be down in a minute.ā
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 pillow, 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 pulled myself together. It wasnāt the coke or the gun or the argument that scared me. Honestly. It was the combination of all three, how close I came to getting caught, but mostly how nasty Mike had been on the phone. I knew I couldnāt stay upstairs forever, but I didnāt 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 maidās uniform is that it makes you almost invisible. You wouldnāt believe the things people have done, right in front of me. Drugs and porn are the least of it....
