The Plagiarist Who Cleans Your House  by Martin Brick             

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           The box makes the job worth it. It took a good long time to find anything worthwhile in that house, but the box had value. Had to go up into the attic and found it in an old chair, underneath, amid the springs where the lining had torn open. How did I find it?  Easy. I looked and looked and looked.

            
            “Move on,” Sandy tells me. “You are rapidly approaching thirty. How long do you want to be cleaning people’s houses?  You’re too bright for that pointless shit. With a little effort you could find something really inventive and challenging.”  She probably wouldn’t have been quite so frank if not for the couple of margaritas, though, point taken. I’m looking at my near empty glass, desperately wanting another, but the cost is giving me pause. It’s one of those outdoor, white linen, seaside view places Sandy and Jordan always suggest. One of them will probably pick up the tab, especially if I display anxiety when the bill arrives. It’d be nice, once, to not have these thoughts, to swipe the old Master Card without even looking at the numbers.

            
            “And résumés are like bras,” Jordan adds. “Pad them. They’ll probably figure it out eventually, but by the time they do, no one’s in a position to complain.”

            
            Already a full margarita ahead of the girls, I sink the remains of my third and catch the waiter’s eye. It takes a second even though I know I am prettier than either of my companions. In a proper bar I’d have drinks stacked up like jets at O’Hare, each paid for with a smile and a wink. Sandy and Jordan, with their extravagant jobs —financial advisor and assistant editor, respectively —dress right for this café. The waiters respond to the cut of a blazer and the right heels.

           “There are perks,” I tell them. And I could explain the material perks. Clothes. Jewelry. DVD’s. Fine alcohol. I do not steal. I borrow. Case in point: the date I had with that hot screenwriter who thinks I’m a near-eastern rug merchant, because I read an article on the Iranian rug trade in a fancy magazine at one of my client’s homes. When I lied and told him October 23 was my birthday he wanted to do something special, but let’s face it, I’m out of really nice clothes. After three dates he’s seen all my good dresses. But the wife or girlfriend or whatever of this cinematographer with the ocean-view house is exactly my size. So I find a little black dress, earrings, and even gloves and a purse. They’ll be back next week, and she’ll never know. Okay, the cognac I drink is stealing. I can’t replace that.

            
            But, at any rate, I don’t want to bring up the hot screenwriter, because that would utterly derail our conversation. The real perk is the mysteries. “Everyone has one,” I explain. “And in my profession I can find them if I look long enough.”  Jordan owns her own bungalow and has a cleaning service come through once a week. I’m hoping to make her nervous. I’m hoping to make her think harder about what she keeps in her drawers and what she writes in her diary.

            
            “Have either of you two ever seen a fishbowl full of fingernail clippings?” I ask.

            
            “You’re kidding?”

            
            “I’ve seen it. And pathetic little scrapbooks commemorating fifth place ribbons in middle-school gymnastic completions, and skeletons of dead pets, and more nude photos than you can imagine. So really, Jordan that device you keep in your bedside table, it’s not going to raise any eyebrows.”

            
            She blushes. Like a tomato. I knew she would, when really, come on, it’s nothing.

            
            “This man, the cinematographer, he has this box of letters extremely well hidden in his attic. So while I’m buzzing on his single-malt scotch I finally find something. They’re letters from an old girlfriend. Like fifteen years gone, by the postmarks. So I’m guessing college, or pretty close to immediately post-college.”

            
            Sandy and Jordan drift and suck on their margaritas. Good. They need that.

            
            “The letters in themselves wouldn’t be such a find, but there’s one of those little beanbag ashtrays nearby and I find a bottle of semi-cheap whiskey hidden inside an old golf bag.  So I know there is ritual in this for the cinematographer. He goes up there and reads them from time to time. Judging from the letters, the girl who wrote them wouldn’t be too keen on his smoking.”

            
            “She’s a goody-two-shoes?” Sandy interjects, probably because she “smokes socially” which means she smokes when she thinks it will help get her laid.

            
            “You could say, but it is more like she’s optimistic. The most optimistic person I can imagine. Picture this with me…,” I ask the girls. “She draws on the envelopes. Little suns and fishes and trees. And she mentions children’s books as inspiration.”

            
            “Oh, vomit,” Jordan quips.

            
            “Right, and she waxes on sublime pleasures, like her grandmother’s cabin and starlight, and she swears she knows the difference between oak wood smoke and poplar wood smoke and cherry wood smoke. So what are you picturing?”

            
            “Definite elementary school teacher,” Sandy says. “She’s probably really good at making bulletin boards.”

            
            “Granny dresses,” from Jordan with less derision. “This is a girl who isn’t asexual at all,” she credits. “The girl swoons. Might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but she swoons.”  There’s a hint of a smile.

            
            “Right,” I explain. “And there is this one particular letter. The two of them have been apart for just the right amount of time. There must be some formula for figuring this out, but there’s an amount of time away, when you are your most desperate and lonesome, and not yet resigned to the distance. So she sends him this letter that included something torn out of, I don’t know what this would be, like a camp counselor’s handbook or something, but it is instructions on how to fold a piece of paper into a tiny boat. You know the kind?  With a peak in the middle?  Looks vaguely like a sombrero but pointy?  Right?  Well, there are instructions on how to fold one of those, and then the letter says some crap like, ‘I miss you. Hope you miss me too. When you do, take this letter, fold it up, make a little ship and sail to me. Sail it little sailor boy. My lighthouse light will be shining. Dream with me… this all can work. I know it can.’”

            
            Sandy and Jordan both burst into a fit of giggling. “That is just so pathetic,” Sandy chides. I look hard at Jordan, thinking maybe I can pull her back if she really stops to think about the girl’s perspective.

            
            “The saccharine will kill you on that one,” she ekes out among laughter.

             
            “It is… like that, isn’t it?” I respond meekly. “This is the perk of my job. Bet you don’t get something so amusing?”

            
            I guess I had probably had too much scotch at the time I read the letter, but it made me tear up. And I started chuckling when I thought that this cinematographer’s long lost sweetie was probably stone sober when she wrote that, but then again, judging by the bottle of Old Crow, he’s rarely sober when he reads those letters, so if In vino veritas holds any water, there must be something vaguely profound in the little boat theory. And I guess it got me, because I cried thinking about how much he must think he lost in never fully hooking up with this poor little Ed. major. ‘This is true,’ I found myself whispering. ‘This is so very true.’  Good god, I needed to sober up before reporting back to the office. But I decided I had found something worth taking.

            
            “What’s the most pathetic thing you’ve ever done for love,” I ask my companions as I catch Sandy nudging Jordan with her toes in an effort to share the view of a busboy’s backside.

            
            “I pretended I was interested in avant-garde art once for this Romanian sculptor,” Jordan offers. “Which was funny because I could look at a pile of twisted wire and say ‘I sense Postmodern condition – everything is connected but where is the starting point?” and he would shout ‘Yes!’”

            
            “Not for sex,” I tell them, “for love.”

            
            “Was he the one with the piercing on the… you know?”

            
            “Yeah, that’s the one.”

            
            “Do you ladies hear me, for love?”

            
            “Didn’t that get in the way?”

            
            All the way lost, they’re exchanging best of/worst of experiences with the male organ. I slip into the bottom of margarita #4.

            
            “I wrote a letter to my hot screenwriter, stealing the little boat idea. Outright. I found some boat-folding instructions on the Internet and folded them in, and took the very words verbatim… ‘Sail it little sailor boy…, lighthouse light….’ Stolen. And there is that part of me that laughs, thinking maybe he’ll eat it up, and this part of me that, I don’t know…”

            
            I’ve got this open wound that no “proper” job is going to heal. Tequila is a temporary analgesic, but really I’d like my friends to listen and second my opinion. But they won’t, so I’m seeking a support group in people’s attics and under their beds.

            
            “There’s part of me that says, if he likes this, then it’s all worth it. Like I stole this for you.  It’s good. I feel good. Feeling good counts for a lot. That’s why we buy records, right?  That’s why we go to restaurants and pay several times what the ingredients cost, right?  Feeling good. Right?  And you’re a housekeeper getting barely a living wage. And you find shit hidden in an attic. That must have monetary value, right?”  Sure. You’ll make sure it does.

            
            “What were you saying?  We digressed.”

            
            “You’re a financial advisor, Sandy, don’t you understand value?”

            
            “The value of what again?”

            
            “Here comes the waiter again,” Jordan interrupts. “Smile, we’re due for a free one.”

            
           “Maybe I’ve already had a free one,” I say, hoping to be enigmatic, but it’s wasted.