Running Cold: A Novel, page 7
I grabbed the clean sheets off the cart and stepped into the suite. Ceci Rousseau was at her desk, looking downright regal in a purple angora sweater and cream wide-leg trousers. Her laptop was open. I snuck a peek at her screen to see she was playing bridge.
“I’m going to start in the bedroom,” I said.
“As you wish.”
The king-size bed looked barely slept in. The covers were folded down on one side, and the other side was untouched. I felt a pang of sadness when I realized that’s what my bed at home would have looked like if I were still there.
As I stripped the bed, a pair of fuzzy socks dropped onto the floor. At first I thought Mrs. Rousseau must have kicked them off in the night. But then I realized they were on the wrong side of the bed—the neatly made side. How did they get over there? It dawned on me that this might be a test to see if I actually changed the sheets, or just pretended to. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I’d failed.
As I plucked the socks off the floor and laid them on the high-back chair, I wondered why a woman with Lady Ceci’s refined taste would want to spend her days holed up in a hotel in Banff, all dressed up with nowhere to go. It’s not like there was culture here. Yes, there were a few art galleries but not like in Paris or New York. There was a theater but no thespians of note, a concert hall but few concerts. There was an annual film festival, but that was only for a week, and mostly attracted outdoors people and hippies. Didn’t Lady Ceci have any friends? Who did she talk to all day? Was there a secret society of people who live in hotels that I didn’t know about?
I finished the bed, then balled up the dirty sheets and started back toward my cart. But as I crossed through the living room, Mrs. Rousseau called out to me.
“What’s your story?” she asked without looking up from her bridge game.
“I’m sorry?” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, and I thought it better not to guess.
“Well, you’re obviously quite pretty. What are you doing cleaning hotel rooms?”
I didn’t know what being pretty had to do with one’s station in life. But I offered a plausible and partially true response.
“Just wanted to spend some time in the mountains.” I took in her high cheekbones and neck as graceful as a prima ballerina’s. I imagined she was stunning in her day. No wonder she considered looks to be a currency. In that department it was obvious she had once been quite wealthy.
“Oh, please,” she said. “I see that ring on your finger. Is he a monster?” The question was so horrific I thought I must have misunderstood it.
“Who?”
“Your husband. You’re here to get away from him, am I right?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “My husband is not a monster.” And then, to explain the squeak in my voice: “He’s dead.” It was the first time I’d spoken those words out loud, and they stung like a belly flop. I thought she would offer her condolences, like any decent human would, but decency wasn’t her thing.
“Not very kind of him to leave you so poor you have to clean toilets.” It was a cruel thing to say, crueler still because it was true. I summoned Olympic-gold-medal strength and looked her square in the eye.
“I can take care of myself.” And there was no squeak in my voice this time.
“Meh,” she harrumphed, and she went back to her game while I went back to work. She was wrong about Jeff. The unkind thing he’d done was not leaving me poor. I was fully capable of supporting myself. What was unkind was that he’d left me to forever wonder why he did it. What had hurt him so badly that he woke up and decided he couldn’t go on? And how could I live the rest of my life without ever knowing if it had something to do with me?
I hadn’t told the police about all our money being gone, but I wondered if I should. What if Jeff was being blackmailed? That would explain why he would deplete the accounts without telling me. And if what he had done was really bad, it would explain why he’d ended his life too.
I wiped down the mirror and shook off the thought. I had always known Jeff to be scrupulous, at least when it came to business.
As for our marriage, I wasn’t so sure.
CHAPTER 15
Izzy
Guilt makes you do all sorts of reckless things—betray friends, lie to cover your tracks, spend money you don’t have. Images of Lady Macbeth scrubbing imaginary blood off her hands assaulted my senses as I explained to my boys why Mommy was going to be away for a couple of days.
“Auntie Julie is going through a hard time,” I said as I tucked them into their beds and smoothed unruly curls off their Kewpie doll faces. “So Mommy is going to go visit her.”
“Why did she leave?” they asked. And I didn’t know the real answer, so I didn’t have to lie.
“She just needed some time away.”
I kissed them good night, then switched off the light.
Packing for Banff was easy and hard. Easy, because I only had one drawer of winter clothes, so I didn’t have to agonize over what to bring. Hard, because I only had one drawer of winter clothes, and the contents weren’t up to the task. The weather forecast was for temperatures in the single digits. No way my puffer from Old Navy could handle that.
“Just borrow stuff from Julie,” my hub said as he walked into our room and saw me staring into my half-empty suitcase. I felt a rise of irritation. There were four dress sizes between Julie and me. Was my husband cruel? Or just clueless?
I thought about backing out, but it was too late. We’d gotten the plane tickets on Christa’s points, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask the other girls to pay half the rental car and hotel instead of a third. Plus I was already a liar. I didn’t want to be unreliable too.
I couldn’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on clothes I would wear only once, but I couldn’t travel to Canada in cotton separates from Target either. I didn’t even have a hat that covered my ears. As I scoured the web for bargains in the wee hours of the night (with none to be found), it suddenly occurred to me that I knew someone who owned high-tech layers that would fit me. And I could take them without asking because he’d never know.
I dropped the boys at their half-day preschool and drove to Jeff and Julie’s. The sun was warm through my windshield, yet I had goose bumps all over. I didn’t know why I was nervous. Julie had asked me to look in on the place. Plus the house was about to be my listing, it would be irresponsible of me not to stop by.
“Shoo!” I said to my nervous thoughts as I unclipped my seat belt and got out of the car. As I started up the front walk, rosebushes nipped at my arms. I made a mental note to ask the gardener to cut them back, then another mental note to make sure Julie still had a gardener.
I reached the end of the pavers and stepped onto the stoop. A spiderweb clung to the hanging fixture overhead. I’d take care of that later with a swat of the broom. Just because it was the only sign of life didn’t mean I would let it linger.
The hide-a-key was in its usual spot under the planter. I let myself in just as I had the morning Julie left but pocketed the key this time. Now that the house was empty, it was foolish to leave the key in such an obvious place. Not that right under one’s nose was necessarily a bad hiding place. As Jeff and I had dared to presume, sometimes it’s the only place a person didn’t look.
I closed and locked the front door behind me, then stood in the foyer for a long, solemn beat. It was ghostly quiet. Even the air was mournful. My eyes combed the space. The flowers on the kitchen island were starting to wither. Vibrant pink petals had shriveled and darkened. To match my heart, I thought . . . then pushed the thought away. I had no right to pine for Jeff. He was never going to leave Julie. All I’d lost was a fantasy.
I didn’t try to stop my tears as I gathered the flowers and tossed them in the green bin. Then I cleaned the refrigerator. I didn’t know how long Julie was going to be away, but I didn’t want her to come back to sour milk. I was hurt that she’d left without so much as a goodbye, but I also admired her for it. Friends were great, but you were a fool to think they would ever put your needs in front of theirs. I’d proven that.
I took out the trash, then headed upstairs. I knew where Jeff’s clothes were. I’d looked in all the dresser drawers when I moved Julie into the spare bedroom. Looking at Jeff’s belongings was the next best thing to looking at him, and I’d pored through those drawers to mourn as much as help.
The good thing about high-tech outerwear is it all looks the same. Nobody would recognize that black Marmot down jacket as Jeff’s, everybody has some version of it. His long underwear would be . . . well, long. But again, the sleeves that stuck out from under my sweater would look the same as everybody else’s. I had no use for the peekaboo slit in the crotch, but no one would see that part. I only needed three pairs of merino wool socks, but I helped myself to four. I also took a plain black beanie, a fleece pullover, and a pair of waterproof gloves.
I didn’t linger. Yes, it gave me a little thrill to run my hands over flannel shirts I’d once fantasized about sliding off Jeff’s gently sloping shoulders. But these clothes connected him to Julie, not me. That cashmere sweater he’d worn to that party, that suit he’d worn to that reception, that polo he’d worn the night he proposed . . . those were Julie’s memories, not mine. I may have gotten a tiny taste of him when he was alive. But in death, he was all hers.
There was a tote bag on a hanger. I plucked it off and stuffed my loot in it. I was about to head back downstairs when morbid curiosity got the best of me. I’d been afraid to peek in the bathroom the day I moved Julie’s things into the guest room, but the cleanup crew had come and gone since then, so why not look now?
I told myself I was peeking in out of necessity. I was Julie’s Realtor, I had to see what needed to be done to the place. But in truth there was something more nefarious luring me in there. I wanted to see where he’d done it. If there was anything left of him. A strand of hair. A drop of blood. A wisp of his soul.
The door was closed. I noticed as I approached that the handle was broken, drooping toward the ground like a fractured bone. I extended my hand toward the door. It wafted open on buttery hinges. I met my own eyes in the mirror. They asked me what I was doing in here. I looked away.
There was a faint smell of bleach. The walls and tile had been scrubbed clean. I bent over for a closer look at the floor. Was that a hint of pink in the grout? Did I really want to know?
I backed out into the bedroom. As I turned to go, my eyes landed on the nightstand. A book about organic chemistry told me it was Jeff’s. There was something else on that nightstand too. I hadn’t noticed it before, but its sleek profile caught my eye.
It was his cell phone.
I didn’t think there would be clues about our affair in his texts—as far as I knew, there was only that one incriminating thread, when I texted that we needed to talk, and he texted back the time and place. And hopefully he’d deleted the exchange, as I had.
I knew his passcode—it was Julie’s birthday. I’d seen him enter it when he paid for our coffees. I didn’t want to look now, because if I did, I wouldn’t have an excuse to look at it later. Not that I thought there would be photos of us. But it couldn’t hurt to check. Julie didn’t have anything left of Jeff but her memories. I didn’t want them ruined by something she found on that phone.
So I plucked it off the nightstand and tucked it in the tote.
CHAPTER 16
Julie
By day five, I had settled into a routine: get up, work out, eat, shower, clean, scavenge for food, sleep, repeat. If I was lucky enough to get a tip, I would buy myself a proper dinner, either at the hotel or somewhere in town. Cold weather makes you hungry, and there was never enough food to fill the abyss where my heart used to be.
I had never done this type of work, and the experience was eye-opening. I was raised to think we humans were put on earth to accomplish things—build buildings, cure diseases, break barriers, achieve greatness in our chosen pursuit. But what was greatness? I always thought being great meant being better than everyone else. It’s what drove me to ski faster, shoot sharper, even (dumb as it sounds) get my assigned rooms cleaner than any chambermaid before me. But if you’re chasing greatness, you’re always running toward a moving target—today’s “great” is tomorrow’s performance to beat. Love, on the other hand, doesn’t run from you, it only expands. How different might things be now if I’d devoted myself to growing love instead of trying to be great?
I spent some tip money on a ham-and-cheese sandwich, restocked my cart, then continued my rounds. As I cleaned a window that opened to an endless sky, I thought about what it would be like to stay at this job forever. Some people worked as housekeepers their whole lives, quietly lifting people up with sparkling floors and clean beds. Whose contribution to society is more important? The record breaker? Or the person who makes you feel comfortable wherever you are?
I did my assignments in a slightly different order today and found myself at Mrs. Rousseau’s suite an hour later than usual. We hadn’t exchanged more than a gruff “good afternoon” since she’d nearly made me cry, and I dreaded the twenty minutes I spent in her company. I dared to hope that this time she wouldn’t be home. People don’t come to Banff to sit in their hotel rooms, I told myself . . . momentarily forgetting that Ceci Rousseau wasn’t most people. She was constantly trying to test me—leaving money out to tempt me, hiding things under furniture to make sure I moved it when I vacuumed. The socks in the bed were not an isolated incident. At first I wondered if she was evil or just bored. But then I got my answer.
“Housekeeping!” I announced as I knocked on the door. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand . . . Normally Lady Ceci had summoned me to enter before I even started counting. When I got no response, I felt my shoulders relax, relieved I could clean her room in peace.
I used my key card and stepped inside. My arms were laden with linens, so, as usual, I headed for the bedroom. When I walked through the open bedroom door and saw Mrs. Rousseau standing naked at the foot of the bed, at first I was confused. Her skin was the color of milk, not flesh. If not for the bright shock of red lipstick on her puckered scowl, her silhouette might have been camouflaged against the lath plaster walls. I had never seen my own mother naked, and the athletic bodies carved by hours in the gym looked nothing like the willowy mass of skin and bones standing in front of me. I was so surprised by the sight of her, it took me a full second to realize what I was looking at. And a second is a long time to be caught staring at someone naked.
“What are you doing! Get out!” Mrs. Rousseau snapped, then grabbed a pillow off the bed and hurled it at me.
“Sorry,” I managed, then stumbled backward out the door. My face burned with embarrassment as I tossed the linens back on the cart and pushed it toward the elevator on shaking legs.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I said to the closed elevator door as I frantically pressed the button. I didn’t think Mrs. Rousseau was going to come after me with a fireplace poker, though she’d arguably earned the right to take a swing at me.
Ding.
The elevator doors opened. My cart bumped over the threshold as I hurried inside. Should I tell someone? Lily? Remy? The head of housekeeping, who already disliked me for getting hired behind her back? I decided the best thing I could do was put my head down and go back to work. So much for winning the award for Banff’s Best Housekeeper.
I slunk into the next room on my list, making triple sure no one was home. As I cleaned toothpaste off the bathroom mirror, I prayed Mrs. Rousseau would be too embarrassed to report me. Fifteen short minutes later, when I was summoned to report to the front desk, I knew my prayers had been in vain.
“Julie, report to the lobby immediately,” Francesca, the head of housekeeping, said through the walkie-talkie on my hip.
“Copy,” I said, a little confused why Francesca wanted me to come to the lobby, because wouldn’t her office be a more appropriate place to fire me?
I shook off the thought, stowed my cart in a supply closet, and rehearsed what I would say: She didn’t answer. I assumed she wasn’t there. As I rode the elevator down to the ground floor, I checked my reflection in the mirror to make sure my hair and uniform were regulation neat. If I broke rule number one, I didn’t want to be guilty of breaking rules number seventeen and eighteen too.
The Banff hotel was a maze, as impractical and whimsical as an old English castle. Gargoyles glared at me from jagged eaves as I walk-jogged under their disapproving stares. My armpits were sweating in that polyester uniform, but at least my cardio training kept me from also being breathless.
As soon as I entered the lobby—
“There she is!” Mrs. Rousseau shouted, pointing at me with a coffin-shaped nail. She was standing not with Francesca, but with Remy.
I kept my head low as I approached. Mrs. Rousseau’s chin jutted up toward the sky as her stiletto heels dug into a carpet the color of blood. We had quite the audience—a couple coming in from the cold, a family admiring the gingerbread house, a bellman, Sydney from Sydney, and three other front desk clerks—all staring at me like I was a polar bear in the desert.
“Hello, Julie,” Remy said in that singsongy French accent. Working days and nights had aged him, but he was still handsome, even with the threads of gray running through his jet-black hair. That dark suit gave him Don Draper vibes, and I imagined, when needed, he could be just as ruthless.
“Hello, Remy,” I said respectfully. “Hello, ma’am.” By the way Mrs. Rousseau was looking at me, I thought she was expecting me to bow. And I might have, if I thought it could get me out of this mess.
“I believe you owe Mrs. Rousseau an apology?” Remy said, his voice rising like a question. I had anticipated this and offered a heartfelt one without hesitation.
“Mrs. Rousseau, I made an unforgivable mistake. Walking in on you like that was a horrific violation of privacy. I was careless, and I am truly sorry for the distress I have caused you.”
