It’s even worse than I thought.
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror in the tiny coffee shop where Adam brought me. I knew I had leaf paste on my shirt, but I didn’t realize quite how much. There are chunks of leaves dotting the sleeves of the shirt, all over my back, and stuck to my butt. My skirt, at least, isn’t white. So I can just wipe that off and it’s good enough. But the shirt is a lost cause.
Moreover, I look like a woman who just slipped in a big pile of muddy leaves. There are a few flakes of detritus on my neck and chin, and my dirty blonde hair has become partially unraveled from the elaborate French twist I learned how to execute from a YouTube video. I remove the clips and shake it loose, knowing I’ll never be able to re-create it without step-by-step instructions from Yolanda the Hair Guru.
I turn on the faucet for the sink. The water is ice cold, of course. I wait a few seconds for it to heat up, but I’m not that lucky today. Instead, I have to splash cold water all over my face. Unfortunately, that makes my cheap mascara leak like I’m the Bride of Frankenstein, so I have to wipe it all off. I wore a lot more black eye makeup when I was younger, but I still wear a fair amount, and without it, my face looks pale and plain. But I don’t have any in my purse, so there’s not much I can do about it.
I start splashing water on my muddy shirt. It gets the dirt and the leaves out (mostly), but now I’ve got dark wet splotches all over me. Also, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the wet fabric is see-through.
Goddamn it. I can’t go out there like this. Not when this is potentially a job interview. Or potentially… something else. Whatever it is, I look totally inappropriate.
There’s a rap on the bathroom door. I’ve been in here for too long and someone else needs to come in. “I’ll be out in a minute!”
“It’s Adam,” the voice says from behind the door. “I’ve got something for you.”
I crack the door open just enough that I can see his eyes peeking through. He’s holding something in his right hand.
“It’s a shirt,” he says. “I got it from my car. I could tell yours was wrecked.”
I reach my hand through the gap and take the shirt from him. It’s a T- shirt in a size small. It’s pink. I’m guessing it’s not his.
Before I can ask, he says, “It’s my wife’s.”
“Oh!” I say. But what I’m really thinking is: oh.
Of course he has a wife. He’s a nice, thirty-something guy who looks great in a suit. Of course he has a wife. Those guys are never single. I hadn’t noticed a ring, but to be fair, I was distracted.
This is a good thing though. Because if he legitimately has a job for me, the last thing I need to do is muck it up with a pointless flirtation. I’m terrible at flirting anyway. If he’s happily married, that will be off the table. And I can focus on a new job and getting my life back on track.
“Thanks, Adam,” I say. “I’ll be out in a minute.” “Take your time.”
I lock the bathroom door and take off the white shirt. I roll it into a tiny ball and stuff it deep inside my purse. Then I slide on the pink T-shirt. I turn left and right, admiring my reflection. It fits me like a glove—it’s very flattering. Thank you, Mrs. Barnett.
Before I go out, I reach into my purse and pull out a tube of red lipstick. I apply a fresh layer, which brightens up my pale face. Yes, he’s married. But still.
The diner is cramped, and Adam snagged a booth that seats only two people. He’s already ordered us coffee, and there’s a cup waiting for me in front of the empty side of the booth. His eyes light up when he sees me, and he gestures for me to sit down. I take a second to check out his left hand, and sure enough, the simple white gold wedding band is there. How did I miss that?
“I got you a cup of coffee. Hope it’s okay. There’s cream and sugar on the table.”
I slide into my seat. “I take it black.”
Bitter and black. That’s the only way I ever drink coffee.
“Same here.” Adam lifts his cup of coffee and takes a long sip. He shudders. “What a day, huh?”
I nod. I know I’ve had a shit day. But I don’t know what sort of day he’s had so far. Is it just that the person he was supposed to interview didn’t
show? Something in his expression makes me think it’s more than that, but it seems like it might be off-limits to ask. I don’t want to be rude, especially since I’m now counting on this guy to keep a roof over my head.
“Do you want anything to eat?” he asks. “My treat.”
I’m starving. I’m currently on the poverty diet. All I ate for breakfast this morning was a banana. I have eaten spaghetti every night in the last week for dinner, which means I only had to buy that one box of spaghetti and one can of tomato sauce, totaling $5.39. But the last thing I want to do is stuff my face in front of a potential employer. The coffee will have to be enough. “No thanks.”
He stirs his coffee with a spoon, even though he hasn’t added any cream or sugar. He tugs on his tie with his other hand. I don’t know why he looks so nervous. He’s the one offering a job. In this economy, it seems like anyone offering a job is in pretty good shape. I’m the one who’s about to be homeless.
Of course, I don’t know what the job is. Maybe it’s something really awful. I try to imagine a job I wouldn’t be willing to do for a reasonable salary. I would clean toilets. I would shovel snow for him on the coldest day of winter. I would take out his trash.
I wouldn’t eat his trash. If that’s the job, I wouldn’t take it. I suppose that’s where I draw the line. No eating of garbage.
“So I’m sure you want to hear about the job,” he finally says. “Cut to the chase, right?”
“Well…”
He smiles crookedly. “You’d be working for me—at my house. Well, technically you’d be working for my wife.”
I take a sip of coffee and shudder much the way he did. Wow, this stuff is high octane. “Your wife?”
“Yes.” He plays with his wedding band, turning it in circles around his fourth finger. “Victoria has… she’s been ill.”
My heart sinks. “I don’t have any nursing training…”
“Oh, you wouldn’t need that.” He takes another swig of coffee. “She’s got a nurse to help her in the morning. And she’s got me at night. But when I’m working, I want somebody around to keep her company.”
She has a nurse who comes in every day? It sounds like this woman is pretty sick. I’m dying to ask what happened to her, but I feel like that might
be rude. And he’s not volunteering any information. If he wanted me to know, he would tell me. If I take the job, presumably I’ll find out.
“She’s alone all day,” he explains. “I work from home, but I can’t be with her twenty-four hours a day. I just want somebody to spend time with her. Maybe read to her. Sit with her during meals. Just be a friend to her.”
“You’re hiring me to be your wife’s friend?” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
Adam’s ears turn slightly pink. “Well, when you put it that way…” “Sorry,” I say quickly. “I shouldn’t have said that. What you’re doing
for your wife is… nice. You don’t want her to be lonely.”
And I mean it. I don’t know what’s wrong with his wife, but it’s obvious he cares about her. He’s willing to pay somebody to be with her while he’s working. If something happened to me, I’d probably end up in some nursing home or something.
“You said you work from home,” I say. “What sort of work do you
do?”
I expected him to say he worked in computers, since that’s what most
people who work from home seem to do. But then he surprises me by saying, “I’m a writer.”
“You’re kidding!” I take a sip of my coffee. “Anything I would have heard of?”
He shrugs. “Maybe.”
I’m not much of a reader, so he could be a bestselling author and I wouldn’t know it. Presumably, he does okay if he’s able to pay me to be his wife’s friend. Or else, he’s got a big inheritance. Or maybe Victoria has the money.
“Anyway…” He rakes a hand through his dark hair. “There’s one other thing about the job…”
I raise my eyebrows. Uh oh, here comes the catch. Let me guess: I have to perform my duties while completely naked. “Yes?”
“It’s not local.” “Not… local?”
“Victoria and I live out on Long Island.” I frown. “Where in Long Island?”
“All the way out.”
“Like the Hamptons?”
“Montauk.”
I stifle a groan. Montauk is at the tip of Long Island. Like, as far as you can go without being in the Atlantic Ocean. It would take me over two hours to drive there from my studio apartment in Brooklyn. And that’s if I had a car, which I don’t. I suppose I could take the Long Island Railroad. I can’t even imagine how long a ride that would be.
“That’s a bit of a trip,” I admit. “And I don’t have a car.”
“Right.” He stirs his coffee cup again. “That’s why… I mean, if you took the job, you could live in our house. Rent-free, of course. And you can use Victoria’s car for whatever you need.”
My mouth falls open. I hadn’t expected him to offer that. Of course, it makes sense. If you live out in Montauk, you can’t expect to find somebody in the city to come work for you unless you offer accommodations.
“That’s very generous,” I say.
He offers that crooked smile again. “Work is keeping me very busy lately, and I hate the thought of Victoria being lonely all day. And I need to find someone before the winter sets in. The snow will make it more difficult for me to arrange interviews.”
This job would solve all my problems. I’d have money coming in. I’d have a place to live. I’d be able to start crawling out of the hole my medical expenses left me in. I could start fresh. It would be amazing.
But for some reason, every fiber of my being is crying out for me to tell him no. It’s that same sense of impending doom I had outside. That if I take this job—if I go out to that house in Montauk—something terrible will happen to me.
Not just terrible. Worse than terrible. I can’t take this job.
“We should probably discuss salary,” he says.
I clear my throat. There’s no point in continuing this discussion. I have to tell him no. “Listen, Adam…”
“Would fifteen hundred dollars a week be okay?”
My mouth drops open. Is he serious? He can’t possibly be. He’s going to give me a free room and board and fifteen hundred dollars a week to hang out with his wife? How does he even have the money to pay me that much? It sounds too good to be true.
But if it’s true, that money will change my life.
“And I can arrange health insurance too,” he says quickly. “Also, you’ll have Sundays off. And… two weeks of vacation? Is that enough?” When he sees my expression, he adds, “Three weeks. Three weeks of vacation.”
I think I’m going to choke on my own happiness.
There’s no reason not to take this job. Yes, my gut is telling me to turn him down. But so what? Freddy used to say to me that I always thought something bad was going to happen to me. Doom and Gloom Sylvia. But to be fair, I was right a lot. Bad things did happen to me. I’ve gotten burned so many times, it makes sense I’d be wary of an opportunity that seems too good to be true.
This job is a chance to turn things around. “When do you need me to start?” I ask.
