“Go all the way out the door,” Trinity instructed me as I cleaned the carpet to the threshold, stepping myself onto the sidewalk outside. “Then unplug and we’re done.”
I yanked out the cord, pulling the vacuum over to my side, and shut the door. “Now what?” I said to Trinity, who was wiping a smudge off the outside of the window.
“We put the cart back, deal with laundry, and fill bleach bottles for tomorrow. Then we get the hell out of here before anyone asks for anything else.”
She led the way back to the door that said STAFF ONLY, opening it. The room inside was narrow, with a row of washers and dryers tumbling the sheets and towels we’d collected earlier. I followed her to a small countertop, lined with spray bottles. All of them were labeled with names, some in recent marker, others faded almost to the point of being unreadable. ESTHER. DAWN. MARIKA. CARMEN. It made me aware, suddenly, that the one she’d given me off the cart said nothing.
“We’re possessive about our bottles,” she said, clearly having noticed this. She pulled a huge container of bleach off a shelf. “If you find one you really like, you have to claim it.”
“Aren’t they all the same?”
She screwed off the top of her own. “At a glance, yes. But there are subtle differences. Tautness of handle, for example. And some have an adjustable spray, but others don’t.”
Again, I looked at my own bottle, which I was still holding, and gave it a quick squirt. It did feel a little loose.
“You don’t get your own for just one day,” she told me, filling up her TRINITY-marked one with water. “They’re earned, not given.”
“It’s a spray bottle,” I pointed out.
“Not here,” she replied. “Here, it’s a badge of honor. Now hand that over so I can refill it.”
I did, then watched as she filled it up with the same mix of water and bleach. Then she put it on the shelf with all the others before placing her TRINITY one beside it.
“How long have you been doing this?” I asked.
“Officially? Since June. But I started helping clean when I was Gordon’s age,” she replied. “Bailey and Jack, too. We didn’t have a choice, same as with the Station.”
Family business, again. My dad had his own practice, not that I’d ever worked a day there. I’d spent my summers at various camps and traveling with my father or Nana. None of my friends worked real jobs yet. But things were clearly different here.
“A lot of people have passed through, huh?” I said, again scanning the names.
“It’s a lake town,” she replied. “Nobody stays for long unless they have roots here.”
We put in some more sheets, then folded a load of towels before she pronounced us finished for the day. As we walked down the sidewalk toward Mimi’s, we passed a family of guests heading up from the dock. The dad was pulling a cooler stacked with beach toys, the mom carrying a beer in one of those foam insulated holders. Their kids trailed along behind them, bickering and smelling of sunscreen.
As they all disappeared into room six, which we’d left pristine, I wondered how long it would take for them to messit up again. Already I was tired. But thinking about this made me exhausted.
I was too wiped out to go out to the raft that afternoon, even if someone had invited me. Which they didn’t.
“Lake North Pavilion at eight, then over to Colin and Blake’s,” Bailey reported as she came down below the house with her plate, joining Trinity and me at the picnic table there. Mimi, also worn-out, had asked Oxford to pick up two buckets of fried chicken for dinner and was eating hers in front of the TV. There was no sign of Jack anywhere, at least not so far.
“That’s the plan?” Trinity asked.
“It’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“Sounds more likeyourplan,” her sister replied. “Lake North and yacht club boys.”
“Anyone who doesn’t like it doesn’t have to come,” Bailey said, putting her glass of milk down with a thunk. “Nobody’s got a damn gun to their head.”
“Let me guess,” Trinity said. “You’re snapping at me because I’m not the only one who expressed a lack of enthusiasm.”
“I’m not snapping at you,” Bailey replied. “I’m just tired of putting things together every night only to have people bitch and moan.”
“Summer just started, Bay.”
“Exactly. Too early to be so damn picky.”
They were both silent for a moment, during which I tooka bite off my own plate, wondering if it was possible to have any meal in this house without some sort of friction. Finally I asked, “Did I meet Colin and Blake?”
