Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
It’s not that New York lacks places that need cleaning. It lacks
safe
places that need cleaning. Without a haven like this, who knows where I’ll end up tomorrow, the last night of the full moon. In desperate times I’ve broken into hotels and apartments, infiltrated hotels and motels, even hung around bus terminals with a long coat over my uniform. Once I almost got arrested for trying to mop the Brooklyn Bridge.
Alexi holds up one finger. “Good news, though. I’ve got a guy for you. Needs help.”
I squint at him. “What kind of guy?”
“Nice guy,” he insists. “Widow. Not a pervert, okay? Just needs a little help.”
I trust Alexi with my secret and I’d trust him with my wallet, but you’ve got to be careful with a curse like mine. Some guys get off on having a woman in a maid’s uniform visit them late at night. Leering can lead to groping, and groping can lead to me hitting someone hitting over the head with a mop. I prefer to avoid personal injury lawsuits.
“Nice old guy,” Alexi repeats. “University professor. I’ll give you his number.”
“Fine.” It doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice. “But first I’ve got some toilets to clean.”
Not only am I the most ambitious junior partner at Sidoriv and Puginsky, I’m the only partner the firm actually has. My bosses are Igor and Boris, two cantankerous old farts with hearing problems, high blood pressure and a fondness for cheap cigars. They’ve been partners in law for fifty years and closeted gay lovers for at least as long. Or maybe not so closeted. My father used to roll his eyes whenever he saw them, and wring his hands, and then say, “You’d think they could at least marry, have some children. A few seconds of poking and you’re done. For appearances.”
Most of the firm’s work is citizenship problems, workman’s compensation and landlord disputes for the economically disadvantaged Russians of Brooklyn. I like most of my clients. They’re loud and colorful, on bold new adventures in a foreign land, and the older ones bring us onion and cabbage pirozkhis. I also like being useful. America is full of predators who prey on immigrants the way my mom, during her werewolf nights, is a threat to stray dogs, feral cats, and luckless animals of the forest. Occasionally I do some criminal defense. My current client is an elderly cabbie named Vlad who tried to run over a couple of punks who stiffed him on a fare. I’m dead tired from scrubbing porcelain all night but I make it to the district attorney’s office on time for my meeting.
“It was attempted murder,” says the prosecutor.
“My client was upset and confused,” I reply. “He thought they were trying to rob him.”
“He braked, reversed, and then jumped the curb again.”
Vlad has big blue eyes that make you want to believe him, but if he ever gives you a hug, be sure to check your pockets afterward. He waves his hands around and speaks rapidly in Russian.
“He thought he saw a gun,” I translate.
“Your client is a menace,” the prosecutor says.
By the time we leave I have a pounding fatigue headache, and the wretched heat of the day makes my suit cling to me like wet leaves. Back at the opulent offices of Sidoriv and Puginsky—that would be four small ancient, cluttered rooms over what’s now an Indian grocery store—I gulp down a giant cup of iced coffee.
“She stays out too late,” Igor says, the unlit cigar in his mouth bobbing as high as his bushy gray eyebrows.
“She needs a social life,” Boris retorts, shuffling through a mound of folders. Both of them refuse to use computers. “Girl like her, who wants to be alone?”
At times like this, it’s best to ignore them entirely.
When I get home to my apartment I feed Alfred, the gray tabby I adopted after Jason left me, and crash for a few hours. The full moon rising in the east calls to me, invokes the change. Like all were-curses, it digs unyieldingly into my sleep. Some were-folk dream of woods dark and deep. I get bleach and moonlight, and oven cleaner that never works as well as it should, and those extendable feather dusters for use with chandeliers and ceiling fans.
It’s dark but still searing hot out when I knock on the door of apartment 501 in an old box factory on St. Mark’s Avenue. The door to 502 opens instead. Standing there is a handsome guy wearing green shorts and a Fire Department T-shirt. Dark hair, blue eyes, a physique to kill for—he could easily be Mr. January in that charity calendar the FDNY puts out each year.
And here I am, in my polyester dress and dorky flat shoes.
“I thought you were the pizza guy,” Mr. January says.
My face heats up. “No pizza here. Sorry.”
The door to 501 swings open to reveal a stooped-over old man wearing a baggy black sweater despite the heat.
“Ah, Miss Tania,” my client says. “So nice that you came.”
I’m waiting for Mr. January to misinterpret the situation and make a snarky remark, but he just smiles. “Hi, Mr. Federov. Thanks for the mushroom noodles. All the guys liked it.”
Federov waves his hand. “It was just the extras.”
“It was a four-quart casserole dish,” Mr. January tells me. What a great smile. “Ask him for some of his fruit cake.”
“Off with you.” Federov sounds gruff and pleased at the same time. “Come in, girl.”
Mr. January leans against his door frame and watches me go into Federov’s apartment.
The place is small but has high ceilings and windows from its factory days. The air conditioner rattles but doesn’t do much for putting out cold air. Textbooks and foreign novels cover three old bookcases, and bric-a-brac of a long life litter and small tables—photos frames, tiny vases, hundreds of glass figurines. Lots of lovely dust.
“Alexi says you are very good,” Federov says, sitting in a lumpy armchair. “That I should not ask questions. That if I ask questions, you will not return. That I should feel free to sleep away the long hours while you toil.”
I nod. The raw, pulsing need to clean is making my head hurt.
Federov looks at me shrewdly. “You do this of your own free will?”
“Yes, sir.”
“For so little money?”
If I had my way, I wouldn’t charge at all. Taking money for my curse just makes it all the worse. But a cleaning lady who only works while the moon is full would raise even more eyebrows if she refused to take any wages for it. My salary here will go straight to charity.
“The money’s fine, Mr. Federov. Can I get started?”
“Hmmm,” he says. He’s thinking about whether to trust me. I might be a harmless housekeeper, or I could be a thief and murderess here to steal his secondhand books about the Bolshevik Revolution.
Finally he shakes his head. “Such a pretty girl, such a situation. Please proceed.”
He turns the TV to some late night show with canned laughter and hip young guests. I inspect the premises. The bathroom is tidy enough for a man’s apartment, but the grout in the old porcelain tile has gone gray and there’s an impressive ring in the bathtub. The bedroom closet is jammed with clothes that smell like old cologne and which need to be thoroughly ironed. In the kitchen I find my true calling: a refrigerator filled with spills and crusted stains, a sink full of dirty dishes and coffee cups, an oven that hasn’t been scoured in years. I’m sure there are roaches lurking in the cabinet by the hundreds.
I think I’ll pass on that fruit cake.
By dawn Federov is asleep in his chair and his apartment is cleaner than it’s been in years. The moon is waning, so I won’t see him again until next month. But that means I won’t see Mr. January, either. Which is a good thing. I don’t need an incredibly handsome complication in my life right now. The district attorney still wants to charge cabbie Vlad with attempted murder; Boris and Igor are feuding daily over Igor’s nephew, the no-good troublemaker who wants to borrow money again; Alfred swallows something which makes him get constipated and feverish, and I have to take him to the vet for two days of X-rays and kitty laxatives.
I’ve just finished hauling Alfred back into my apartment when my throwaway cell phone rings. It’s the one I give to clients but I don’t recognize the number.
“Hey,” says the guy on the other end. “It’s Mike Hennessee. My neighbor Ivan Federov gave me your number.”
It’s Mr. January.
“Oh, hi.” I get Alfred’s carrier on the floor and swing open the door. He shoots out like a cannonball, knocks over a lamp, and plunges behind the sofa. The big white lamp breaks into a dozen pieces on the floor. I never liked it anyway.
“Everything okay there?” Mike asks.
“Just one unhappy cat. What can I do for you?”
“I was looking for someone to help me clean my apartment. Ivan said you did great.”
Here’s the thing: now that the moon is now longer full, I’m about as interested in cleaning as I am in knitting. Which is to say, nice for other people but not for me. I probably won’t do my own dishes for a week. Besides which, I really don’t want Mr. January—er, Mike—to see me in full blown housekeeper mode.
“I’m really not available,” I tell him.
He sounds genuinely disappointed. “Oh.”
Alfred makes a plaintive mewling sound from under the sofa.
“Okay,” he says. “What if I said I was lying, and I don’t want you to clean my apartment, but maybe go out for beer and pizza? Unless you’re not a beer and pizza kind of lady. Maybe wine and cheese. Or Thai and whatever goes with Thai food?”
This is a mistake. It can’t end well.
“Beer goes with Thai food,” I say.
The restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall establishment in what was once a bookstore and which will one day probably be a coffee shop or internet café. Everything in the city changes constantly. Mike Hennessee shows up wearing a blue shirt that matches his eyes and shows off the long muscles in his arms. He probably gets those muscles from carrying children out of burning buildings or lifting wrecked vehicles off elderly pedestrians.
“Most of what we do are medical calls,” he says when we talk about his work. “Heart attacks, diabetics, sometimes a woman in labor.”
I’ve bypassed the Asian beer on the menu for an icy watermelon drink. It’s about a zillion degrees outside, and if I keep my arms just right maybe he won’t notice the sweat stains under my arms. Not that I was worried about this date, but I changed blouses three times before leaving the house and swapped my shoes twice. My best friend Maryanne is on speed dial, ready to show up and help me escape if Fireman Hennessee turns out to be a crackpot or serial killer. So far, so good.
“How long have you been a fireman?” I ask.
He stabs at some basil eggplant. “Four years, three months and a week.”
“In my experience, people who count aren’t always the happiest at what they’re doing.”
“When I was growing up I wanted to be an actor,” he says. “Three years of casting calls cured me of that. Now I get twenty-four hour shifts, lots of spaghetti dinners, and people who throw up on me. But what about you? The cleaning business is okay?”
Already we’re in tricky territory. “It’s just moonlighting. I like meeting people.”
He nods. But he doesn’t look convinced. “It’s just . . . look, Tania, I know some cops, some lawyers. You can trust me. If you’re in trouble and need some help, they’ve worked with cases like this before.”
Now I’m confused. “Cases like what?”
His gaze is intent and serious. “Your English is very good. I mean, you could pass for a local. And Ivan, he’s a good guy. But lonely. I know how these things work. They get you a visa, they promise you all sorts of jobs, you get to America and now you’re making house calls that last all night long—”
The realization that this handsome guy thinks I’m part of a sex trafficking ring makes my Pad Woon-Sen go right down my windpipe. Suddenly I can’t breathe at all. Before I can make the universal sign for choking, Mike’s out of his chair. He wraps his arms around my mid-section and levers his fists under my ribs. He smells nice, but this is not how I imagined ending up in his arms. One Heimlich thrust later, I’m ejecting broccoli and wheezing for breath.
“You okay?” he asks, breath warm in my ear.
“I’m going to throw up,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
I lurch off to the bathroom, sure that everyone in the restaurant is staring at me, and when I find the back door next to the kitchen it’s an opportunity for escape too good to pass by. I feel humiliated and sick and I’m sure I have brown sauce on my face.
So maybe it isn’t nice to leave him like that, but I don’t know any happy couple who started off with the misunderstanding that one of them was a Russian sex girl. Luckily Mike doesn’t know my real name or where I live. I throw away my cell phone, tell Alexi that I need a new client, and spend the next few weeks buried in work. Vlad the murderous cabbie gets a break when the two punks get busted for trying to rob a hack in Astoria. Igor and Boris stop fighting about Igor’s useless nephew and instead start arguing about Boris’s niece’s son, who is in trouble with the IRS for several years of back taxes. My friend Maryanne starts dating a police officer; he’s got a friend and we could double-date, she says.
“I’m never dating again,” I tell her. It’s not worth the trouble. I wish my were-curse turned me into a superhero or asset to society but that’s the thing about Old World curses; they’re not useful at all. Mom transforms into a wolf but in her animal stage she doesn’t drag children from swollen rivers or rescue Alzheimer patients who’ve wandered away from home. She eats things, and licks herself, and sheds hair all over the carpet. I can mop up a crime scene but not tell you who the perpetrator was; I can scrub smoke stains off walls but I don’t save people from blazing infernos. I just clean.
Maryanne sighs over the phone when I turn down the double date. “You have to get over this Jason thing.”
“I’m just not interested,” I say. It’s not like I think about Mike every night, wishing we’d met under other circumstances. Or that I checked with some friends and found out that he’s stationed at Engine Company 234, and was honored last year for volunteer work getting homeless people off the streets during the winter.
“Meet us for drinks tonight,” Maryanne says. “For me. Just this once.”
Tonight’s the full moon. I’ve never told her about the curse, and now doesn’t seem like a good time to try.