Page 15 of Take Her

How long did people work when they actually had a job?

What was that Dolly Parton song?

Goddammit, maybe Rhaim was right—and also I couldn’t reasonably be expected to do math at ten-fifty-five at night.

“I’ll text you. And I’ll make sure you get overtime for all of this,” I said.

He gave me another worried look—I wasn’t familiar with him, but he knew my father, and anyone who knew my father was afraid of him. “I’ll be sleeping right here,” he said, pointing to an empty parking space behind us. “You just let me know when you’re ready to go home.”

I felt bad, but the idea of having backup was too tempting to resist, even if he was a stranger. “Okay—thanks,” I said, and finally stepped out, walking beneath bare lightbulbs over to the only building door inside the garage. My middle-of-the-night concierge service wasn’t over yet—there was a man in a cleaning uniform there, waiting for me, the same man who’d hired me, after clearing it with Rhaim.

“Sorry about this,” I said, coming up to him, after letting myself inside with my keycard.

“Yeah, me too,” he said dryly. “But something made me think I should onboard you in person.”

“Don’t you have a family?” I asked, embarrassed for the both of us as he led us down a narrow hallway.

“I do—and I need to stay employed. I have two kids with braces right now.” He turned to eye me—I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and Timberland boots I’d had Amazon insta-deliver for the occasion—and he was dissatisfied. “I’m not sure what’s going on between you and El Lobo, but I also can’t have you fucking this up for me.”

El Lobo? The wolf?

Rhaim?

I was bemused to be getting to use my rudimentary Spanish at this late at night without being in a bar ordering tequila.

And in my attempt to put him at ease in my anxious haze, I said the exact wrong thing. “How hard can it be?”

The man’s expression went entirely flat. “How many minutes does it take to mop a thousand cleanable square feet of floor with a fourteen-inch flat mop and dual-chamber bucket?” he quizzed me.

“I—I don’t know,” I said.

“Yeah, you don’t. Remember that,” he said, exhaling roughly while shaking his head. Then he regathered himself. “Come on. Let’s go get you a uniform.”

He took me to a locker room facility, showed me how to get inside with my key, and waited while I changed into one of the waiting uniforms they’d gotten back from being cleaned. After that he assigned me a rolling trash bin, cleaning supplies, a mop bucket, and we went up into the building.

“I’ll show you how to do one first, watch you do one, and then I’ll set you free. I don’t expect you’ll be able to do everything tonight—so we’ll break it up after that. I’ll do odds, and you’ll do evens.”

“One person...does the bathrooms for the whole building?” I was mystified.

“One person who you’ve briefly put out of a job, yes. They’re on paid vacation this week now—just like Rhaim is.” He handed a set of thick gloves over. “I told them not to leave town, though.”

His condescension was palpable. “I’m tough,” I said, realizing half a moment later that no one who is actually tough ever has to utter those words.

“We’ll see.” He shrugged one shoulder, and held the door open for me.

I was tough, but it also was late, and I hadn’t done this many deep squats or kneeling exercises since my volleyball coach wanted to punish me for tripping another girl on purpose.

Carlos—I’d found out his first name after we started—explained everything as he went through, and once I could do things up to his high standards, he left me to my own devices.

It was gross, but it wasn’t disgusting. And, unlike my time in boarding school, no one was here threatening to put me in to a toilet physically. I’d been in plenty worse places, and the way I saw it was I could either pretend that it was beneath me—which it wasn’t—or get over myself and do a good job.

Plus, all the lights in the bathrooms were nice and bright, which helped me stay awake and made me feel safe—especially once I realized they had good acoustics and I could listen to music on my phone to sing along with. Soon, YMIR, Des Rocs, and Friday Pilots Club were playing at blasting volumes, and I was actually enjoying myself.

It was about to be game over: Lia One, Bathrooms Zero.

I’d been too thoughtless to bring myself a lunch, because taking breaks to eat in the middle of the night made no sense to me, but Carlos showed me where the vending machines were—and was nice enough to spot me the change for a Snickers, because I hadn’t brought my purse either.

In fact, the only thing I’d really packed—other than the coffee, which I’d pounded down hours ago—was my pride.