WANTED:
Housekeeper wanted for a species diverse household. Duties include planing, shopping for, preparing and cleaning up after the evening meal as well as light house keeping in common areas only. Payment includes: room and board and as a small salary. Perfect for a student attending Local University. Campus is just a short walk out the front door and across Hyde Park. Residents would provide a security escort to and from evening classes, if required. Contact Bazur at 555-2972 for more information.
——-
“How are you going to get this past your mom?” Jenn demanded.
Vinny sighed, put down her coffee and leaned back in her chair. They were in the coffee shop in the student union building. It was nice. Its was summer, so the fireplace wasn’t running, but the coffee was better than at the Starbucks across the street. She stared at the vaulted ceiling and carded her fingers through her long, chestnut brown hair. Then she sat up, put on her professional face and said, “It’s simple logistics. Chem 403 requires a night lab. It runs from 7:30 until 10:30. While the busses are still technically running, it is down to slow service so-”
“It’s going to take you two hours to get home.” Jenn finished.
Vinny nodded, “I can’t even get on the bus until almost eleven. Plus I have a transfer in a bad part of down town at 11:30 where I have to wait twenty minutes for the next bus to come. Then I don’t get home until 1:00am and I have to be back at The U for Math 476 at 8am. I can’t afford a car. Hell, I can’t afford school if I lose my scholarship. I certainly can’t afford to get a place closer to campus. This is perfect.”
“Depending on how much house work there is.” Jenn pointed out. “Some people are total slobs.”
Vinny nodded. “But I won’t know that until I go for an interview and find out.”
“Assuming you get an interview.” Jenn looked hard at her friend. “You already applied, didn’t you?”
Vinny gave a head wiggle/shoulder shrug and grinned a tight lipped smile.
Jenn pushed her glasses further up her freckle covered nose as she grinned back. “Have you told your mom?”
Vinny’s smile faded. “There isn’t any point. If I don’t get the job or the house is a disaster, or if the people are creepy, then I just don’t say anything and we… try to come up with a different plan. Fall term doesn’t start for two months, so if it doesn’t work out, I have a little time.”
Jenn nodded, slowly. “That’s fair. But what happens if you turn up for your interview and it’s a pack of werewolves and they eat you?”
Vinny gasped, “Jenn that is so speciesist!”
Jenn shook her head, “OK, then, what if you turn up and its a bunch of human men who are rapists and ax murderers? The point is, how are you going to be safe?”
Vinny’s grin turned conspiratorial, “You could come with me to the interview. That way you would know where I was and could call the cops if I’m not out in twenty minutes. Or if you hear screaming.”
Jenn narrowed her eyes. “When is the interview?”
Vinny looked at the clock, “In about an hour. But it is just across the park so we have time to finish our coffees.”
“Vinny!”
“Look, I already walked past the place. It’s one of those big houses on University boulevard. The really pricey ones facing the park. There is even a park bench basically right across the street from it. “I’ll buy you a fritter and a tea to go and you can hang out and snap chat how you are a good friend while I have my interview. It’ll be fine.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
—-
It was an imposing three story, red brick manor. It was across the street from the park, which meant it must have million dollar views. Plus the university area was pricier to start with. The whole building was intimidating.
Jenn whistled, “Well, you know whoever lives there can afford to hire a maid.”
Vinny nodded. She took a deep breath. “Wish me luck!” she said, before striding confidently across the street and ringing the doorbell.
The man who answered the door was somewhere over six feet tall. The way he filled out his jeans and t-shirt suggested he had a serious gym habit. He was also a gargoyle. His skin was a light cement grey and he was taking the phrase chiselled features to a whole new level.
Vinny blinked, but recovered quickly, “Are you Mr Bazur? I’m Vinny. I’m here for my interview.” She held out her hand.
He hesitated, then carefully shook it. His skin was more leathery than Vinny was expecting. She also knew that gargoyles, by preference don’t wear clothing. There was no need. Their hide was impervious to the elements. He was dressed for her comfort, not his. That was something to think about.
“Come in. I’ll show you around first, then if you have any questions, we can go from there.”
Vinny nodded and stepped into an entry way that was like something out of an old Hollywood movie. There was patterned carpet, a good sized foyer with a circle table, then a grand wooden staircase leading up towards a landing with a big bay window. There was wainscotting. There were decorative pillars. None of it was new; it looked like a well cared for antique. They took the doorway to the right. “This is the dinning room. We actually eat here. There are six of us, you would be number seven.”
To the left of that was a set of pocket doors that opened to a pantry with a sink that they walked through to the kitchen. It was, old but clean. There was a gas range and a farm house sink with a built in porcelain drain board. “The job includes planning and cooking supper. We are on our own for other meals.”
“Any special diets?”
Baruz froze. “Tristan is a vegetarian, Derick is … not. They are both raw foodies, so they will give you a list when you are grocery shopping. Other than that, they will take care of themselves. As for the rest of us, you cook, we will eat.”
“Tell me about Tristan and Derick.”
Bazur sighed. “Tristan is a minotaur, Derick is a werewolf.”
Vinny nodded slowly. “Are there any humans in this house at all?”
“You would be the first.”
“Oh.” She thought about that. “What is the grocery budget like?”
“$1000 a week, which sounds like lots, but we are big eaters.”
“What are you expecting the work load to be like? The ad said it would be a good job for a student, but you are already talking about an hour and a half a day to prepare food, and wash up afterwards.”
“We have a rotation for dishes.”
Vinny frowned. “And does that work? Because I don’t want to be ready to start supper and find out I have to either chase down who ever didn’t clean up or wash them myself before I start the next meal.”
“I am expecting the workload to be about two to three hours a day. If we are more work than that, we will have a meeting and you can share a list of chores that you need us to do. We all do our own laundry. Housekeeping would be cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming and washing the floors, dusting, and organizing dinner.”
“Ok. Tidying where?”
“The common areas.” Bazur replied. “We are each responsible for our own rooms.”
“And I get a room in the house?”
“You get half the third floor. There is a private bathroom up there. It would be yours exclusively.”
Vinny thought about that. “Let’s see the rest of the house.”
The kitchen opened on to the back entry way, which had a door on each side. The first opened onto a beautiful back yard. “Tristan is in charge of landscaping.”
Heading back inside, Bazur pointed to the opposite door, “That goes to the basement. It isn’t finished. You don’t have to worry about that, but I will show it to you if you want.”
“Maybe next time.”
The last door opened into a TV room. There were three large couches, a HUGE TV and a collections of gaming systems. The coffee table was clean, but there were drink rings.
“How long did it take you to clean before the interview?”
Bazur coughed. “A while. But everyone is responsible for their own mess, you just need to vacuum around it.”
The next room has a fireplace, a set of french doors leading outside, one of which had been modified to include a doggie door. It also had a futon and a dresser. “This is Derick’s room. He’s the only one of us who lives on the main floor. He’s a werewolf.”
“The raw foodie who isn’t the vegetarian?” Vinny suggested. Bazur nodded and kept moving.
The last corner of the house had a library/ music room, complete with a grand piano. “We don’t really use this room, except to walk through to the TV room. You don’t have to worry about it. Want to see upstairs?”
Vinny nodded. As they climbed the stairs, Bazur explained, “You don’t have to do anything with any of the bed rooms, so this floor is just vacuuming the hallways.” He opened the first door to show a room with a bunch of plants, a display case full of trophies, and a mattress of on the floor. “This is Tristan’s room. He was a professional on the rodeo circuit.”
Vinny felt her eyebrows go up. “Wow… um…. Not many people would admit to that.”
Bazur shrugged. “You would find out anyway, if you google his name.”
Vinny wondered how she would explain to her mom that one of the guys was a minotaur retired from the rodeo circuit when that was basically code for bull riding porn.
Bazur continued. “He doesn’t really like to talk about it. He’s a little shy.” Vinny choked at that. “So if you don’t bring it up, he won’t either,” Bazur continued, ignoring Vinny’s faux pas.
“Right! Next room is Dren’s. He’s gelatinous.” Again, no bed, this time it was a clawfoot bathtub that didn’t appear to be connected to anything. There was a wooden chair. Everything was hard surfaces, including the exposed floorboards.
Bazur closed the door and opened the next one. This was even more empty, it looked like something out of a haunted house. There were spiderwebs everywhere. “Thea is a Drider.”
The following room was the most normal looking. No dresser, but a desk and chair. An armchair near the window with a floor lamp for when it was dark. There were a stack of books on a side table next to the chair. And a lovely, antique wooden bed with a patchwork quilt. Bazur looked around, “Oh! Sorry, Kevin. I didn’t know you were home! This is Vinny. She’s interviewing for the housekeeping job.”
Vinny looked around the room and didn’t see anyone. “Um, hi?” There wasn’t any response.
“Sorry, Kevin doesn’t always have the best manners.” Bazur closed the door.
Vinny whispered, “Bogeyman, right? He was under the bed?”
Bazur made a face like he was trying not to laugh. “Mimic. He was the bed.”
“Oh.” Vinny felt like her brain had shorted out and she was running on autopilot. She barely registered the next room being a large bathroom that was probably a converted bedroom. It had a floor drain, a huge tub and a walk in shower.
The last bedroom was on the other side of the staircase from Tristan’s room was also a corner room facing out to the back yard. This one had been decorated in military memorabilia. “This is Kogan’s room. He’s a semi retired Marine. He works for a security firm.”
Vinny nodded, and waited.
Bazur sighed. “He’s an orc.”
Vinny considered all of this. “So… six men living in one building. How much porn had to get taken down/put away before I arrived?”
Two doors down, Kevin burst out laughing. Bazur looked uncomfortable. “Some. But everyone keeps it in there own rooms.”
“Only one bathroom so far. How does that work?”
“Um… there is another one on the main floor that we skipped.”
“That bad?”
“No! Not too messy. It’s just, um, where we hid the porn.”
“Ah.” Vinny was quiet for a moment while she tried to digest all of that. Bazur was looking nervous. “How many people have you interviewed so far?”
“Fifteen.”
“How many left before they saw their room?”
“Ten.”
“What about the other five?”
“One didn’t pass the criminal record check. Two stopped returning my calls, one actually started but was so unpleasant about the level of diversity that we had to let him go.”
Vinny was slightly surprised at the male pronoun there.
“And the other two?”
“One left after the meet and greet due to… Kevin’s lack of manners. One started sexually harassing Tristan.”
Vinny nodded slowing. “You keep talking about Kevin being rude. What did he do to the one he ran off?”
“He was a chair and she sat on him.”
“Oh.”
Vinny’s mind was racing. She wanted to know if that was an on going issue in the house. And who was going to be the person who would walk her home from night classes. And what kind of porn was hiding in the downstairs bathroom. Although, maybe she didn’t want to know. And she was completely torn between wanting to go home and google Tristan and never, ever wanting to know that about her prospective employer. She realized she hadn’t said anything in long enough that she was being rude.
“Let’s go see the top floor,” she announced.
The top floor was basically the attic. The room at the front of the house had a balcony. It was the biggest bedroom so far. It had been somewhat divided into zones. There was a bookcase and a desk in an inside corner, the sleeping zone was next to a fireplace and separated from the small area with a weight bench, yoga mat and free weights. It was Bazur’s.
Out of his room and around the corner there was a reasonably sized bathroom that smelled faintly of bleach. “This will be your bathroom if you take the job. It was mine, but I’ll be sharing the main floor one. We all agreed it wasn’t fair to … um, make you share with us.”
The last room was hers. The ceilings were vaulted. There were huge closets under the eves. She had a gas fireplace, and hardwood floors and huge windows looking out over the gardens. There were heavy velvet drapes that ran across the whole wall where the windows were looking like old fashioned theatre curtains. She experimented pulling them closed. They slid easily and completely darkened the room.
Bazur coughed. “Yeah. This room faces east, so the curtains keep you from having light in your eyes at dawn. Also, there is a bit of a draft in the winter. They help with that at night too.” He pointed to the radiator. “Hot water heat comes all the way up to here, and you can use the fireplace if you need extra heat.”
“That is an awful lot of stairs to get furniture up.”
Bazur stopped looking so dejected. “We would all help. It won’t be a problem,” he assured her.
Vinny went over and sat on the window sill. “Assuming you offer me the job, what is the salary?”
“Um… We thought that at max it would be three hours a day, times, thirty days in a month, is 90 hours, approximately. Call it $15 an hour, would be $1350 less room and board would be… oh… $500?”
Vinny swallowed. “Is that a question?”
“It’s nearly double minimum wages,” Bazur said defensively.
Vinny nodded. “My math is – my folks are currently covering room and board. I have a weekend job, that gives me time to study during the week. It doesn’t sound like I will have much time for that with this job. My current take home is a bit more but I would need to take a cab across town to get home from my night twice a week. Plus, whatever you say about the idea that you will eat what I cook, you have three different diets I would need to cater to and the fridge is pretty small. I bet I would need to shop for groceries every second day.”
“Why don’t you come for dinner on Friday? You can meet everyone and we can talk logistics?”
Vinny sighed. “I may be twenty three, but I also still need to convince my Italian Catholic mother that this is a good idea.”
Bazur nodded. “Kogan can take care of that. He’s catholic, he’s in security so he has the stats on crime rates for women waiting for cabs and buses on campus after dark. He… mature enough to put her at ease and promise to drive you to mass every Sunday if she wants.”
Vinny nodded slowly. “I don’t have a problem with Tristan’s last job but-”
“You can honestly say he is a landscaper. Unless your mom was heavy into rodeo three years ago, she won’t know.”
Vinny considered this. “Do you want to just cut to the chase about the salary, or are we going to dance around first?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
Vinny shook her head. “You said $500 like it was a question, which would suggest you are willing to negotiate. It’s close enough to $600 that we could back and forth for a while, but you have six people living here and I would bet that your target price point is everyone chipping in a hundred dollars a month not to have to cook or scrub the toilets.”
Bazur chuckled. “Yeah. So, six hundred a month, if you pass the meeting everyone test and if we all get mom approval?”
“Ok. Just don’t let her sit on Kevin.”
