Then I process what she’s said. “Wait, what’s an NDA? It’s not some weird sex thing, is it?”
“Non-disclosure agreement. The agency makes you sign one and sometimes clients even have their own that they make us sign, too. Like, we won’t talk about anything or anyone we see in the house. Can’t take photos, can’t talk about their homes outside of work, stuff like that.”
“Sounds serious,” I admit, wondering what type of clients are on the agency’s roster, to require such discretion. But then I would sign my soul over to the devil himself if I could make all that money in three years. Melody shrugs before stuffing her compact back into her bag.
“Eh,” she is now finger combing her hair and sliding her feet into her shoes. “The houses are beautiful, I rarely see the owners, and I’ve never had a problem. Just mind your business, clean and get paid!”
Standing, she smooths her dress and beams at me. “Let’s pack you up!”
Within five hours, the few items in the house we had were bagged and curbed, to be picked up by the local shelter. Though I wasn’t sure the needy would even want my mom’s old pots and pans, her couch and TV. But still, I needed the house empty.
Every possession I owned I packed into the biggest suitcase we had. On top of my limited wardrobe, I added my mother’s photo album of she and I during my childhood and her afghan from the couch before zipping it closed.
Standing on the walkway between the house and Melody, it feels metaphoric and I say a quiet goodbye and get into her car.
“This is a good choice,” she says to me, throwing the car into drive as dusk settles in around us.
“I think so too,” I say, throwing my mom’s old house one last glance before resting my eyes.
I never thought becoming a maid was the first step to a better life, but life is funny that way, isn’t it?
1
Britta
Grabbing the liner from the laundry basket, I lifted it up and cinched it tight before hoisting onto my hip and dropping it down the chute to the basement. Melody was down there unloading our caddies, putting away the various cleaners and unused towels. We had a routine in each house we worked at, an order in which we did things. It made work quicker and more efficient.
In this house, the house on the hill—as it so appropriately was built atop a very large hill—was my favorite. It was the easiest to clean, too, but that’s not why it was my favorite.
I loved the design.
Externally, the entrance at the bottom of the hill was a large, black iron gate with a keypad entry. You couldn’t even see the house until you’d made your way up the winding driveway. Lots of foliage, shades of viridian and various types of trees kept it hidden, but after making it past the second gate, there it stood, unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
Modern, rectangular shapes sitting seemingly haphazardly on top of one another, the home was nearly all windows, framed in white. Externally, columns of natural toned bricks were the only contrast to the white and it was flat on top, no standard roofline or visible chimney outlet. Inside the house was nearly all walnut wood, whites, and creamy bronzes. Windows and doors invisibly bled into one another, as they were all made of glass and furnishings were modern, with either sharp or completely fluid edges, the two ideas fusing together in a square, tall-backed couch sitting on top of a soft, shape-shifting long-haired rug. All marble floors throughout, the entire home was always perfectly in order. It smelled like fresh paint and new linens, though Melody told me she’d been cleaning it for years and it always smelled and looked exactly the same.
In totality, the house was, to me, perfect.
But there was more. Another thing that made it my favorite of the ten houses I worked each week. Though I’d never met, spoke to or even seen the owner, I found myself deeply curious.
I’d never met the man living in the house on the hill. Still, though, I had grown very curious and extremely interested in him over the last few months.
I was embarrassed of the fact that I seemed to be developing a crush on a stranger; I didn’t even tell Melody. She was my cousin, closest friend, coworker—pretty much the only person my life. And I hid the crush from her. I don’t really even know why I hid it from her. She was a romantic at heart, she wouldn’t have teased me about it. But still, I just couldn’t.
My interest in the man living in the house on the hill all started about two and a half months ago, a little after I’d first started this job. I was emptying the bin in the 3rd floor office and a piece of paper fell stray, the words on it facing up, staring at me.
I didn’t want to read them, those words written so clearly and perfectly in sharp black ink. But before I could crumple up the paper, my mind had cheated me and I’d absorbed them. I couldn’t stop myself.
I remember my first vacation
I remember my first heartbreak
I remember my first drink
I don’t remember my first kiss
I remember everything
It was a poem, I guessed, and though I didn’t know what it was about or what it was for but something about those few sentences grounded me to that office—right in that spot with the empty bin in one hand, the crumpled paper in the other. From that moment on, I couldn’t help but be drawn to him. And ever since that morning, my body stood on pins and needles when I cleaned that house, both dying to and utterly terrified to meet him.
The man who wrote the poem. The man who remembers everything, except his first kiss.
I’d imagined
