Lead the Way (5 page)

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              Eva is startled awake.  Her alarm clock is going off.  It is nine o’ clock.  She rolls out of bed.  She doesn’t want to get up, but Gillian will arrive any second.  She walks slowly to the bathroom with her eyes closed.  She brushes her hair, so she doesn’t look like a complete slob, and brushes her teeth.

When she is finished brushing her teeth, she beelines it for the coffee maker.  She is in desperate need of a jolt of caffeine.  She went to bed early, so that she would be fresh and ready to go when Gillian started.  She wanted to have a full battery, so she would have patience and understanding when dealing with her new employee.  She gets cranky when she is tired.  Usually Rosa can tell when she isn’t quite herself and stays away from her.  Gillian doesn’t know her well enough to be able to judge her moods, so she won’t be smart enough to stay out of the line of fire.

She sets up the coffee maker and glances at the clock on the wall.  It’s now nine-twenty a.m.  Gillian is late.  Eva’s blood starts to boil.  What kind of person is late on their first day of work?  It leaves a bad taste in Eva’s mouth.  She decides that she is not going to hold it against Gillian.  Maybe she got lost or is stuck in traffic because of an accident.  She is not going to jump to the conclusion that her new employee is lazy.  She is going to give her the benefit of the doubt. 

The security guard calls up from downstairs.  Gillian has finally arrived and she is forty-five minutes late.  Eva makes a mental note to check her attitude.  It’s going to be hard for her to hide her annoyance, but she will make her best effort to try.  When there is a knock on the door, she plasters a smile on her face and sets her happy personality into place.

“Hello.  You must be Gillian.  Come in,” she says, after opening the door.

“Yep, that’s me,” Gillian says, brushing past Eva, knocking her shoulder.

              Eva could swear that Gillian rolled around in an ashtray before she came to work.  She can’t be sure, but she swears that she got a whiff of booze when Gillian spoke.  Gillian looks like she just rolled out of bed.  She has definite bed head and is dressed in what appears to be last night’s party dress.  She carries a pair of stiletto heels in her left hand and her purse with a broken strap in the other.

              “Late night, last night?” she asks in shock. 

She can’t believe that Gillian has shown up to work in the state she’s in.  She’s got to be hung-over and feeling like crap.  She wonders if she should offer her some aspirin.  Eva feels like sending her home, but she remembers when she was young.  There was a couple of times she showed up to work in probably a worse state then Gillian.

              “You would not believe the night I had.  Things didn’t turn out quite the way I planned them to.  I’m sorry I’m late.  Where do you want me to start?”  Gillian says, looking around the apartment as she speaks.

              “Well, you can put your things in the closet.  I have some clothes you can change into, if you like.  I can’t imagine that wearing that dress all day is going to be comfortable.”

              “Oh, thanks.  That would be great.”

              “Okay, just give me a second and I will pull something together.”

              Eva grabs a t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants from her closet and gives them to Gillian.  She waits while Gillian goes to the bathroom and puts them on. 

“They fit perfectly,” she says when she comes out of the bathroom.

              “Okay, well, the first thing I’ll have you do is cook breakfast.”

              “Sure.  What would you like to have?”

              “I would like scrambled eggs and toast.”

              “That’s pretty simple.  I can do that,” Gillian says, pulling open different cupboards looking for pans.  Eva shows her where the pans are and sits down to read the newspaper.

              When Gillian is finished, she presents Eva with her breakfast plate.  “Thank you,” Eva says, folding up the newspaper and placing it beside her plate.  She picks up her fork and she is about to dig in, when she takes a hard look at her eggs.  They’re runny and her toast is burnt.  She groans inside and thinks of Rosa.  Rosa would never present her with a plate of food that looked like this.  Rosa would be completely embarrassed and ashamed.  Gillian obviously doesn’t feel the same.

              Eva, again, decides to let it slide.  The food is edible at least.  It isn’t the greatest breakfast that she’s ever had, but she eats it and keeps her mouth shut.  She is really trying to give Gillian a chance, but things aren’t going as well as she would have liked.  She would have a much better feeling about things if Gillian had shown up wearing the prescribed uniform, clean, and was able to cook a decent egg and toast a piece of bread. 

              Eva decides not to write her off completely just yet.  She will see how Gillian cleans and how well she does with the deliveries that she wants delivered.  When she is finished eating breakfast, she gives the dishes to Gillian to load into the dishwasher.  Eva watches her and Gillian has no problem completing the task. 
Thank God, she can at least do that
, Eva thinks, pouring herself another cup of coffee.

              Eva has been so consumed by all that has gone wrong with Gillian, that she hasn’t even noticed any nervousness.  The thought that Gillian is a stranger coming into her home and has the potential to harm her, hasn’t crossed her mind once.  She hasn’t felt an ounce of fear and she hasn’t felt the usual feeling of wanting to jump out of her skin.  There has been no sweating palms or trembling.  She sees Gillian as non-threatening and that is a good thing.  It may be the one thing that helps her overlook all of Gillian’s job imperfections.

              “Gillian, I’m going into my office to write for a while.”

              “Okay.  I’ll just keep cleaning.”

              “Perfect.  If you need anything, just knock on the door.”

              “Okay, I will.”

              Eva is happy to escape to her office.  She needs to engross herself in her latest story.  She just wants to escape the madness that has been her day so far.  Once she steps inside her office and closes the door, she’s steps into a brand new world.  She is able to forget about the past and live through the characters that she puts down on paper.  Writing has been the most therapeutic thing that she has found so far.  She powers up her computer and gets ready to get lost.

              She’s not sure how long she’s been sitting at her computer when she decides that she needs a break.  She’s pretty sure that it’s been a couple of hours.  She wants to clear her head and figure out the next scene in her story before she types it onto the screen of her computer.  Plus, she wants to check on Gillian.  She’s sure that she should have heard something from her, at least once, while she’s been in her office. 

When she opens the door and calls Gillian’s name, there is no response.  She stands in the doorway of her office and listens.  It doesn’t take long before she hears what sounds like snoring coming from her guest bedroom.

“What the heck?” she says out loud, making her way to the bedroom.

What she finds, she is not happy with.  Gillian is laying down, fast asleep with a duster clenched firmly in her right hand and drool running down her face.  Eva doesn’t know whether to wake her or just let her sleep.  She decides to just let her sleep.  She doesn’t have the energy to get into a long discussion about why you shouldn’t be sleeping on the job.  She is sure that Gillian already knows everything that she could possibly say to her.  She decides to just save her breath.  Plus, she wouldn’t mind some more peace in quiet for a while.

She makes her way to the kitchen to make herself lunch, a job Gillian should be doing, but it is probably better that she isn’t.  After the breakfast fiasco, Eva is afraid of what Gillian would put in front of her.  She decides to make herself something quick.  She decides to make her go-to-meal of grill cheese.  She imagines that if she asked Gillian to make her one, it would come back burnt to a crisp.

She is taking her last sip of juice, when the silence is broken by Gillian’s voice.  “Oh my gosh, Ms. Taylor.  I am so sorry.  I don’t know what happened.  I have no idea how I fell asleep.”

“My guess is it involved you lying down on the bed and closing your eyes.  Call it a hunch.” 

Eva regrets the words as soon as they are out of her mouth.  She doesn’t want to be a bitch to Gillian, but her behavior is starting to be more than Eva can take.  She thinks that she has given Gillian more than enough opportunities to show what she is capable of.  So far, Gillian has failed miserably.  So far, she gets an ‘F’ for effort.

“Ms. Taylor, I swear this is not how I usually am.  I’m usually a model employee, I promise.  I just had a bad night.”

“I’m sure that you are, Gillian,” Eva replies, not believing a single word coming out of Gillian’s mouth.  “Look, just finish dusting and when you’re done, I have some packages that I need you to deliver.”

“Okay, I’ll do that.  Again, I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.  Just clean,” Eva says, picking up a piece of mail and opening it.

She’s working through the mail, letter by letter, when she hears a loud crash.  It sounds like glass breaking.  She runs in the direction that the noise came from and finds Gillian standing in the hallway.  She stands over a vase that has fallen off its pedestal and now lays in several broken pieces. 

“What the hell happened?” Eva exclaims.

“I was dusting it and it accidentally fell on the ground,” Gillian replies, her face red and sweaty.

“Gillian, do you know how much that vase cost?”

“I have no idea.  I’m guessing a lot.”

“It cost over ten thousand dollars.  The cost of it is not the problem, though.  The problem is that my grandmother gave that vase to me, and it’s one of the only things that I have from her.”

“Oh my gosh, Ms. Taylor.  I feel so terrible.  I honestly don’t know what happened.  I was trying to be so careful.”

“Gillian, it’s been a long day.  You just go home.  You’re tired anyway.  Just get your things and head home.”

“Okay, if you want me to.  I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay.”  Eva watches Gillian leave, as she picks up each piece of the broken vase.  She hopes that the breaks are clean enough that she can possibly have it professionally put back together.  She doubts reconstruction will work, but she has to at least try. 

Her grandmother meant the world to her and she doesn’t want to part with the

vase.  Her grandmother was her best friend and she was absolutely devastated when she passed away.  Her grandmother left her a few of her personal items in her Will and she treasures each piece. 

The breaking of the vase hurts.  Every time she walked past the vase, she would think of her precious grandmother and it would make her feel better.  She doesn’t want there to be an empty spot in her hallway where the vase used to stand.

              She puts the pieces of the vase in a closet.  She will leave reconstruction for Rosa.  Rosa knows how much that vase means to her.  When she takes it out to be fixed, she will treat it like the prized possession that it is.  She makes her way to her office to make a phone call.

              “Gratitude House Cleaning.”  It’s the perky secretary again.

              “Hello.  May I please speak to Stacey Brooks, please?  It’s Eva Taylor.”

              “Please hold.”

              It takes a few minutes for Stacey to answer her call.  “This is Stacey.  Eva, is there a problem?”

              “I hate to have to do this, but I would prefer it if Gillian didn’t show up tomorrow.”

              “Why?  What happened?”

              “It doesn’t really matter the reason why.  We just didn’t mesh, if you know what I mean.”

              “Well, I’d be happy to set something else up for you.”

              “Thanks, but no thanks.  I won’t be requiring your services any further.  Have a good day, Ms. Brooks,” Eva says and quickly hangs up. 

She doesn’t want to listen to Stacey Brooks try and worm her way into more of her money.  When she initially called, Stacey told her that Gillian was the best of the best at their company.  If Gillian is the best, she’s afraid to see what’s next in line.

              She’s back to square one.  Gillian didn’t get to delivering her packages and her mail.  There are things that she needed to have delivered today to avoid late fees and uncomfortable conversations.  Gillian being incompetent has thrown her schedule totally out of whack.  Things are now backed up.

              The conversation that she had with Gabriel runs through her mind.  He volunteered.  She contemplates whether or not to give him a shot.  He couldn’t possibly been any worse than Gillian and Rosa wouldn’t have recommended him if she thought that he couldn’t do the job properly.  Rosa knows her better than anyone does. Eva is convinced that there is no way that Rosa would put her in an uncomfortable situation with Gabriel. 

              She picks up the phone and starts to dial.