“I guess I’m going to find out, right?”
“Careful what you wish for.”
“Where do you keep the linens?”
“Kent, slow down, buddy.”
“Where do you keep the linens?” I repeated.
“Follow me,” he said.
Brom showed me to a closet filled with bedding all neatly folded. He started pulling stacks of sheets and pillowcases and piling them into my arms.
“Don’t change your mind now,” he said.
“Just don’t make me wear the maid outfit and I’m fine.”
I followed Brom to the first empty guest room, my arms loaded with what felt like half a linen closet. He kicked the door open and flipped on the light, revealing a room that was clean but clearly needed some freshening up. There was a thin layer of dust on every surface, and the bare mattresses of the three twin beds looked sad without their bedding.
“Okay,” Brom said, setting down his own stack of linens. “Watch carefully because I’m only showing you this once.”
He grabbed a fitted sheet and snapped it open, positioned one corner, then moved to the opposite diagonal corner and tucked it under the mattress.
“See? Easy. Opposite corners first, then the other two. The elastic does most of the work.”
I nodded, thinking this looked simple enough. How hard could it be?
Very hard, as it turned out.
Brom left me to tackle the second bed in the room while he started on the third. I grabbed my fitted sheet with confidence, shook it out dramatically like I’d seen him do, and immediately lost track of which corner was which.
“These don’t have labels,” I muttered, turning the sheet around in my hands. “How the hell do you tell which side is which?”
“The tag goes at the bottom right,” Brom called from across the room, not even looking up from his own perfectly executed sheet application.
Right. The tag. I found it and positioned what I thought was the correct corner on the top left of the mattress. I pulled the elastic around the corner and tucked it under, feeling rather proud of myself.
Then I tried to do the opposite corner.
The sheet was too short. Way too short. I pulled harder, thinking maybe I just needed to stretch it more. The first corner I’d done popped off with a sound like a rubber band snapping, and the entire sheet gathered in the middle of the mattress like a fabric tumbleweed.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
Brom snorted with laughter behind me. “You put it on sideways, genius.”
I turned the sheet ninety degrees and tried again. This time I got two corners on successfully, which felt like a major victory. But when I went to do the third corner, I couldn’t get the damn elastic to stretch far enough. I pulled. I yanked. I may have sworn some more.
“You have to lift the mattress,” Brom said, his voice thick with amusement. “You can’t just pull the sheet down.”
“That would have been helpful information before I started,” I grumbled.
I lifted the corner of the mattress with one hand while trying to wrestle the fitted sheet into submission with the other. The mattress was heavier than it looked, and I was at an awkward angle. I finally got the sheet corner tucked under just as my hand slipped and the mattress dropped.
Right onto my other hand, which was still trapped under there.
“Fuck!” I yelped, yanking my hand free and shaking it out. My fingers throbbed, but nothing felt broken. Just bruised pride and bruised knuckles.
“You hanging in there?” Brom asked, though he was clearly trying not to laugh.
