Concrete Angel (31 page)

“What? Help who out?” Was Bud asking her to service a client? Give someone a blow job?

“A housekeeper, Eve! What did you think I meant. This old dude I know needs a housekeeper.” Bud shook his head. “Ever listen to what I’m saying? Anyway, his wife croaked recently, and he’s damn near helpless. She took care of everything, I guess. He’s coming in to see me for neck pain. Stress probably. Or grief. Grief can make you physically ache.”

His fingers absentmindedly massaged the air. It was kind of sensual. Bud had nice fingers, and she wished they were on her right now, sliding up her thigh, her stomach, her breasts, her back.

“Keep his accounts? Stuff like that?” she said, shaking off the image of Bud’s fingers, getting the gist of what he meant. “Or cleaning and cooking duties? I’m not the greatest cook on the block if that’s what he’s after.”

She flashed back to the time, nearly a decade ago now, when she couldn’t light her mother’s oven. Probably still couldn’t. Mickey’d been pretty undemanding with his steak and potato, night after night. Why couldn’t she get that lout out of her head?

Damn, it’d been a nice life for a while. She was never in over her head with Mickey. She knew his world—had been raised in it. This was his biggest appeal. His primary demands were sexual and she could handle that, especially after his first wife, who’d apparently limited their sex to Saturday nights, the missionary position, and nightgowns buttoning to her clavicle. She’d been a hot number for Mick after Racine.

Yes, it’d been nice hiding out with the tropical fish in her little row house, nothing more to do than keep eight-hundred square feet clean and broil a steak. She managed to buy a trinket now and then, stole one or two items when the clerk looked away, but on the whole she behaved herself. Yes, she had things well under control until she got knocked up.

But Mickey went crazy once Ryan came along. Racine had planted the idea in his head that his fathering days were over, that his low sperm count was the reason she couldn’t have another kid. So it had to be someone else’s baby—probably Hank’s. He was convinced a kid would take over the house too, make it smell, make it dirty. And make her fat, saggy, unattractive.

She missed those African violets, the tidy eight-hundred feet, the distinctive odor of the water in the tanks. Her skin had never looked so good. It was like living in a tropical rain forest. She should open a cosmetics business making use of what she’d learned. She had some business skills from her days at that stationary shop and her return business. That was the way to go. She was sick of working for men. Christine was showing signs of being a whiz at math, taking calculus this year. At least, the kid might make herself useful.

“The guy’s not after anything, Eve. The idea of a housekeeper hasn’t occurred to him. That’s where I come in. Oh, and you can easily take care of this guy’s cooking needs. Kowalski’ll be so thrilled to have a good-looking woman in his house, he won’t notice what’s on his plate. And who knows what you’ll come across. Looks rich to me—maybe something in it for us. Something beyond a weekly check.” Bud walked across the room and put his arms around her waist. “Watching you bend over in that shiny, black polyester number got me going. What’re you gonna do about it?”

Eve could tell as much as he pushed up against her. This was the thing about the two of them; they were in sync physically. Hank Moran had seen that she was financially secure, and Mickey DiSantis provided a locked-down stability. But she felt a link with Bud—and not just sexually.

But she could never play her hand that openly, and so she said, “Pretty much
anything
gets you going, Bud.” She shrugged him off anyway and squirted the mirror with glass cleaner.”I certainly don’t feel sexy in a uniform I’ve been cleaning in all day. Do my feelings count for anything?” She lifted her arm and sniffed. “Not pretty, Bud.” “Does it count for anything?” she repeated, “that I’d rather
not
—at least not here. That I’d like to be in the mood myself, feel sexy, too.”

She was lying, of course. She was as turned on as he was, but it didn’t do to show it. They’d done it in hotel rooms she’d been cleaning before, but she’d lose her job if someone walked in on them. Or if there was a recording device somewhere…

“So take a shower. We can both take a shower. Those little hotel soaps are sexy as hell. Slipping over your boobs, your thighs. They fit inside the nicest places.”

She whirled around, her uniform crinkling loudly. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then I’d have to scrub the tub again. No thanks. Take me dirty or not at all.”

She was beginning to sound like Adele, with her shower-less bathroom, her antiseptic approach to life. Adele only had to clean one bathroom a day though. All day long to clean an eight-hundred square foot house—nothing else to do. That life had been hers too—for a little while. That’s what no one understood. How hard this job was! Taking something on like this at her age.

She
was
beginning to feel like doing it. Having sex. Using those little soaps, maybe not in the shower though. Women were programmed to be turned on by erections, by images of strong fingers. Where had she read that?
Cosmo
? She couldn’t help it. Bud’s fingers aroused her.

“I like your attitude.”

Now he was pressing up against her hard enough to make strong contact without removing a garment. She pretended to shake him off, not wanting to make things too easy. He’d be here all the time if she was too easy. Being his own boss, he could schedule her in. Slip up here as her two o’clock appointment. And soon dinner at a nice restaurant might not be necessary. And sooner or later, she’d get caught.

Eve wasn’t supposed to close the door to the hotel room and shouldn’t have a man in here at all. Ever. It was in the hotel service manual in bold writing:

Hotels rooms are not to be used for any form of fraternization. Hotel rooms should be treated as if they belonged to the guest. The guest’s privacy and possessions are inviolate. The guestroom door must remain open when staff is inside the room for any purpose.

There were at least a dozen more rules about guestroom behavior and she’d broken most of them. She walked over and kicked the doorstop away. No one would be checking into this room for another two hours—the entire hallway had emptied out after a dentists’ conference ended that morning. Maria, scheduled to clean the other end of the floor, had sneaked out fifteen minutes earlier to meet her boyfriend for lunch. She wouldn’t be back until tomorrow probably.

“Not our finest performance,” Bud said, buttoning his shirt fifteen minutes later. “You were thinking about remaking the bed the whole time—admit it. Wondering if any hairs had gotten loose. Any bodily fluid.”

He didn’t offer her a hand in remaking the bed. She’d never known a man willing to lift a finger with household tasks. Wasn’t sure she’d respect a man with a dishtowel in his hands.

“I’ll have to make it over from scratch,” she said, examining the sheets. “Something got away.” He shrugged. She sprayed it with a can from her cart and waited for the spot to dry.

“So tell me more about this guy,” she said, “the one who needs a housekeeper. How needy is he? Not in diapers, is he? Not some randy old goat? I wouldn’t have to read to him, change his diapers or his dressings?”

“You’re gonna like Charlie,” Bud promised. “He’s in great shape. Only lonely, a little lost.” He paused. “And rich, I think.”

She spent one more week working in the hotel. Having behaved herself for several months, she took advantage of a farewell tour and came home with bags of junk. Stuff she took from rooms she’d never cleaned, items left in the restaurant, a few things from the coat stand in the ladies room. None were worth reporting by their owners, she hoped. They were the sort of objects a guest wondered about later and couldn’t remember whether it was left on the vanity, on the back of the door, or under the bed in Philadelphia. Maybe it was forgotten on the airplane. The kind of stuff a person meant to call or write the hotel about but didn’t get around to. Glitzy but cheap. Hotel gift shop merchandise. Items from the souvenir shop at the Liberty Bell or in Independence Hall. No one but Eve would miss such things, want them badly enough to pursue it. It made her feel good for a change. Like she’d shown the The Philadelphia House something.

Things started to take shape in her new place after that. It didn’t look so bare. She placed the new tin of bath powder on the bathroom shelf, her new traveling clock on the table in the living room. The box of candy, she put under her bed. No sense letting Ryan develop a sweet tooth. The rest of the stuff, she stashed.

M
r. Kowalski had lost his wife three months earlier from the ubiquitous protracted illness that sapped the spirit of devoted spouses like Charlie. Months of appointments, horrific treatment, nausea, bed trays, hospital stays.

He answered the door Eve’s first day of work looking like a soldier who’d spent years on a scarred battlefield. He was neat, soft-spoken, ramrod straight. His house, outside Philly, was a virtual time capsule of the early nineteen forties.

“Carol redecorated when we moved out here,” he told Eve as he showed her around. “It was her lifelong dream to have a stone house in Jenkintown.”

He was seventy-two but seemed older. Certainly older than Adele Hobart, who flitted around her house like someone in the prime of life. Eve immediately thought about setting the two up, but Charlie Kowalski was a Catholic. Her mother was biased and would never go for it. As far as Eve knew, Adele hadn’t had a single date in the nine years since Herbert died. She wasn’t about to start with a Catholic.

Anyway, it was far too soon for Charlie Kowalski to look at another woman. He spent most of the day following Eve around, telling her about his wife.

“I met her coming out of a bakery on Ogontz Avenue,” he told her. “She had half a loaf of rye tucked under her arm. It was right in the middle of the depression. They sold half-loaves in those days.” His eyes got watery. “I don’t know why they don’t do it now. A single person can’t eat a whole loaf before it goes stale, and freezing it—well, it’s not the same.”

“I used to shop there,” Eve told him, ignoring everything he’d said about Carol. She’d already learned how to head off these weepy interludes. “At Hansens right? I got my ex his éclairs there.” Christ, had she really schlepped there on a bus to get Mickey pastry? What an idiot she’d been.

He smiled. “They make the best Charlotte Russe.”

“The dessert with lady fingers?”

He nodded.

The two of them hit it off right away. You couldn’t help but like Charlie. He was a basset hound who’d lost the object he was meant to track. It was the easiest job she’d ever had. With a little effort, she probably could get
him
to make
her
lunch.

“Look, I’m not much of a cook,” she’d warned him the first day on the job. “If some kind of gourmet meal is important…”

“I’m not much of an eater,” he said. “Food allergies—and I just don’t have much of an appetite.” He gave her a long list of the foods he couldn’t eat. “It’s probably better to work out two or three dinners and rotate them. I get my own cereal for breakfast and have a ham sandwich on rye and some Charlie’s Chips for lunch. So if you can come up with two or three dinners, we’re in business.” He paused. “Food’s not so important—not anymore.”

She knew this was an invitation for her to ask him what
was
important, or
why not
anymore, but she let it pass. How much sympathy did this guy expect? She could tell
him
some pretty sad tales. Much sadder than his probably. She’d bet anything he’d never been in a nuthouse or in a courtroom. And definitely not in jail.

“Food makes you fat, costs money, and takes too much effort between the shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Better to skip meals whenever you can. I can make a meal or three out of an angel food …”

“Now my wife,” he interrupted, “was a full-figured woman.”

And he was off on a lengthy tribute to his wife again—what a marvel she’d been in the kitchen. Much the same kind of food Adele had made for Herbert Hobart—rib-sticking meat, plenty of carbs.