The Maid: A Novel (Molly the Maid Book 1)

The gun is stowed in my vacuum cleaner. The ring is carefully wrapped in a tissue and tucked in the left cup of my brassiere, right by my heart.

I clean as many other rooms as I can, as fast as I can, using my manual sweeper rather than my power vacuum. At one point, I meet Sunitha in the hallway. She startles when she sees me, which is out of the ordinary. “Oh, so sorry,” she says.

“Sunitha, is something wrong?” I ask. “Are you short on cleaning supplies?”

She grabs my arm. “You found him. Dead. You are a very nice girl. Be careful. Sometimes a place seems as clean as fresh snow, but it’s not. It’s just a trick. You understand?”

I immediately think of Cheryl cleaning sinks with her toilet rags.

“I understand completely, Sunitha. We must always keep clean.”

“No,” she hisses. “You must be more careful. The grass is green, but there are snakes in it.”

And with that, she slithers a white towel in the air, and then drops it into her dirty laundry pile. She looks at me with an expression that does not fit the repertory of any I understand. What has gotten into her? Before I can ask, she pushes her trolley away and into the next room.

I try to put the odd encounter behind me. I concentrate on finishing as soon as I can so that I can skip out to lunch a few minutes early. I’ll need every minute.

It’s time.

I push my trolley to the elevator and wait for it to arrive. Three times the doors open and guests stare out at me, not making the slightest move to allow me to enter even though there’s plenty of room. The maid goes last.

Finally, the doors open and the elevator is empty. I have it to myself all the way down to the basement. I hurry out with my trolley and almost collide with Cheryl as I turn the corner toward my locker.

“Where are you off to in such a rush? And how can you be finished with all those rooms so fast?” she asks.

“I’m efficient,” I reply. “Sorry I can’t dally. I have an errand to run over the lunch hour.”

“An errand? But you usually work straight through your lunch hour,” Cheryl says. “How will you maintain your A+ Exceptional Productivity Score if you’re running all over the place at lunchtime?”

I’m very proud of my A+ Exceptional Productivity Score. Every year, it earns me a Certificate of Excellence from Mr. Snow himself. Cheryl never completes her daily room-cleaning quota, and my excellence bridges the gap.

But as I look at Cheryl, I catch something in her expression that’s always been there, but today I can read it plainly—the curve of her upper lip, the disdain and…something else. I hear Gran’s voice in my head giving me advice about school bullies.

Don’t let them push your buttons.

At the time, I didn’t understand that the buttons weren’t literal. I understand it now. The pieces slide together in my head.

“Cheryl,” I say, “I am aware of my legal right to take a break and will do so today. And any other day that I choose. Is that acceptable, or should I run it by Mr. Snow?”

“No, no,” she replies. “It’s fine. I’d never suggest anything…illegal. Just be back by one p.m.”

“I will,” I say.

With that, I’m off, zooming by her. I park my trolley outside my locker, grab my wallet, then race back up to the elevator and out the bustling front doors of the hotel.

“Molly?” Mr. Preston calls after me. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back in an hour!”

I cross the road and walk past the coffee shop directly in front of the hotel. Then I turn onto a side street. The traffic is slower here, with fewer people on the sidewalks. My destination is about seventeen minutes away. I can feel the heat rising into my chest, my legs burning as I force them onward. But no matter. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as Gran liked to say.

I pass a first-floor office where workers have assembled and are seated in rows, listening to a man in a suit who is gesticulating wildly in front of a podium. Charts and graphs appear on a screen behind him. I smile to myself. I know just what it’s like to be a proud employee fortunate enough to be receiving professional development. I look forward to Mr. Snow’s next professional-development day about a month from now.

I have never understood why some staff members complain about these events, as if they’re some kind of imposition, as if self-improvement and the chance to receive a free education on guest services and hotel hygiene isn’t a bonus of employment at the Regency Grand. I relish such opportunities, especially given that I was unable to pursue my dream of a post-secondary education in hotel management and hospitality. This is a bad thought, an unwelcome thought. I see Wilbur’s face flash in my mind and I have a sudden desire to punch it. But you can’t punch a thought. Or if you can, it does little to change reality.

My stomach rumbles as I walk. I have no lunch, didn’t pack one in the morning as I have so little in the cupboards and could barely eat breakfast anyway. I had hoped to find some perfectly untouched crackers and perhaps a small pot of unopened jam left on a breakfast tray outside one of the rooms, maybe even a piece of fruit that I could wash and discreetly tuck away. But alas, today’s guests have left me very little. In total, my tips are $20.45, which is certainly something, but not enough to placate an angry landlord or fill a fridge with anything but a few scant basics. Never mind.

The honey comes from the hive. The bees tend to the honey.

It’s Mr. Snow’s voice in my head this time. On the last professional-development day, he covered a most important topic: How the Hive Mentality Creates Greater Productivity. I took notes in a fresh, new journal, and I have studied the details at length. In his hour-long lecture, Mr. Snow talked about teamwork, using a most compelling analogy to do so.

“Think of this hotel as a hive,” he said as he looked out at his staff over his owl glasses. I was listening intently to his words. “And think of yourselves as bees.”

I wrote in my notebook: Think of yourself as a bee.

Mr. Snow continued. “We are a team, a unit, a family, a colony. When we adopt a hive mentality, it means we are all working toward the greater good, the greater good of the hotel. Like bees, we recognize the importance of the hotel, our hive. We must cultivate it, clean it, care for it, because we know that without it, there will be no honey. In my notebook: hotel = hive; hive = honey.

At this point, Mr. Snow’s lecture took a most surprising turn. “Now,” he said, gripping both hands on the podium in front of him, “Let us consider the hierarchy of roles within the hive and the importance of all bees, regardless of rank, working to the best of their bee-bilities. There are supervisory bees (here, he straightened his tie) and there are worker bees. There are bees that serve others directly and there are bees that serve indirectly. But no bee is more important than any other bee, do you understand?”

Mr. Snow’s hands balled into fists to highlight the importance of this last point. I was scribbling furiously, recording every word as best I could, when suddenly Mr. Snow pointed at me in the crowd.

“Take, for instance, the example of a maid. She could be any maid, anywhere. Within our hotel, she is our perfect worker bee. She toils and travails to ready each honeycomb for the arrival of honey. This is a physically demanding job. It’s exhausting and mind-numbingly repetitive, and yet, she takes pride in her work; she does it well each and every day. Her work is largely invisible. But does this make her lesser than the drones or the queen? Does this make her less significant to the hive? No! The truth is that without the worker bee, we have no hive. We cannot function without her!”

Mr. Snow pounded the podium to underline his point. I looked around and saw many eyes upon me. Sunshine and Sunitha, who were in the row in front of me, had turned and were smiling and waving at me. Cheryl, who was a few seats away, was leaning back, her eyes slits, her arms crossed. Rodney and some of the waitresses from the Social were behind me, and as I turned to look over my shoulder, they whispered to one another, laughing at some joke I’d missed.

All around, employees I knew (but most of whom had never spoken to me) were looking my way.

Mr. Snow continued. “We have much to improve upon in this organization. And I’m increasingly becoming aware that our hive does not always operate as a cohesive unit. We create honey for our guests to enjoy, but sometimes, the sweetness is skimmed off the top and isn’t shared equitably. Some of our hive is used nefariously, for personal gain rather than for the common good….”

At this, I stopped taking notes because Cheryl began dry coughing in a very distracting manner. I turned around once more and saw Rodney sinking into his chair.

Mr. Snow carried on. “I’m here to remind you that you’re all better than that, that we can strive for something more together. That our hive can be the greatest, fittest, cleanest, most luxurious hive of any bees anywhere. But it will take cohesion and cooperation. It will take a commitment to the hive mentality. I’m asking you to help the colony, for the colony. I want you to think about pristine professionalism. Polished poise. I want you to clean this place up!”

At this point, I bounded out of my chair and onto my feet. I had fully expected that the entire staff would recognize Mr. Snow’s glorious conclusion and would spontaneously burst into applause. But I was the only one on my feet. I was standing alone in a room that was pin-drop silent. I felt myself turn to stone. I knew I should probably sit, but I couldn’t. I was frozen. Stuck.

I stayed that way for a very long time. Mr. Snow remained at the podium for a minute or two. Then he straightened his glasses, grabbed his speech, and marched back to his office. Once he was gone, my coworkers shifted in their seats and started talking among themselves. I could hear the whispers all around me. Did they actually think I couldn’t?

Molly the Mutant.

Roomba the Robot.

The Formality Freak.

Eventually, the reception-desk penguins and porters, the waitresses and valets got up in their little cliques and began to drift away. I remained where I was until I was the last bee in the room.

“Molly?” I heard behind me. I felt a familiar hand on my arm. “Molly, are you quite all right?”

I turned and saw Mr. Preston standing in front of me. I searched his face for clues. Was he friend or foe? Sometimes this happens. I’ll freeze for a moment because everything I’ve ever learned is gone. Erased.

“It wasn’t about you,” he said.

“I’m sorry?” I replied.

“What Mr. Snow was saying about how this hotel might not be so squeaky clean, how some employees skim off the top. That wasn’t about you, Molly. There are things happening in this hotel, things even I don’t fully understand. But you don’t have to worry about that. Everyone knows you do your best every day.”

“But they don’t respect me. I don’t think my coworkers like me at all.”

He was holding his cap in his hand. He sighed and looked down at it. “I respect you. And I like you very much.”

As he looked at me, the warmth in his eyes radiated out. Somehow, that look unlocked me. My legs became mobile again.

“Thank you, Mr. Preston,” I said. “I think I should get back to it. The hive never rests and all that.”

I broke away from him and went straight back to work.

That was months ago. Now, I’m standing outside a storefront a few blocks away from the hotel. My legs are stuck again, just like they were that day.

I already went in the store. I showed the man behind the counter the goods; he offered me a price. I accepted. In place of what was there before, in the cup of my brassiere, resting against my heart, there is now a thick wad of bills wrapped in a tissue.

I check the time on my phone. This whole transaction, including the walk here, has taken me twenty-five minutes, which is five minutes less than my original estimation, which means I’ll arrive back at work approximately five minutes before one, when, as Cheryl so kindly reminded me, the second half of my shift begins.

My stomach twists, like the dragon that resides there just flipped its tail and sent acid sloshing everywhere. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this; maybe it was wrong.

I catch my reflection in the glass. I remember Mr. Black’s sallow, downturned face, the dark bruises he inflicted, the pain he has caused.

The monster in my belly curls into a tight ball and lies down.

What’s done is done.

A lightness descends. I fill myself with breath. I marvel at my reflection in the glass—a maid, in a crisp, white dress shirt with a starched collar. I adjust my posture. I stand tall in a way that would make Gran proud.

Beyond my reflection are the goods on offer in the shop window—a shiny saxophone in a red velvet case, some solid power tools, their cords neatly wrapped into figure eights held tight with elastic bands, a few tired, old cell phones, and some jewelry in a display case. In the middle of the case is a new addition, a ring, a man’s ring, a wedding ring, encrusted in diamonds and other jewels, gleaming, an object of obvious and rare luxury—a fine treasure.

I could tell the shopkeeper felt sorry for me when he handed over the agreed-upon sum. The tight lips. The smile that wasn’t a smile. I’m beginning to understand the nuances of smiles, their cornucopia of meanings. I save each smile in a dictionary that I keep alphabetized on a shelf in my mind.

“I’m sorry things didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped,” the shopkeeper said. “With your man, I’m mean.”

“With my man?” I replied. “On the contrary,” I say. “For the first time in a long time, things are going well with him. Very well indeed.”