One
People leave a lot of really strange things behind at hotels. In the five months I’ve worked at the Grand Palms Maui, I’ve come across some truly weird items—a rubber gorilla mask, a notebook with nothing but carpe diem written over and over in tiny block letters, a pair of dentures floating in a glass of water.
And now, a cat.
“Here kitty, kitty.” I’m down on my hands and knees, trying to coax the poor thing out from underneath the bed. One of the housekeepers heard meowing when she was cleaning the room, and for some reason my mom decided I was the best person to deal with the situation.
The door to the suite opens. I know it’s one of the other staff, probably Leo, coming to check on me, because this is taking way longer than my mom thinks it should.
“Howzit, Marty. Any luck?” Leo asks.
Luck. That’s not something I have much of these days.
I shake my head. “It hasn’t moved.” All I can see are two wide green eyes staring at me through the darkness.
“Maybe this will help.” Leo’s knees pop as he kneels down beside me. He holds out an open tin of tuna, and the cat immediately comes out from beneath the bed. She’s small, with the same pale gray hair as Leo, and she’s wearing a pink rhinestone collar.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he says, gently stroking the cat’s back as she dives into the food. “Who could leave you behind?”
“Karl and Dana Hudson, that’s who,” I reply, silently cursing them. “They were the last guests in this room. They checked out this morning.”
Leo shakes his head. “I guess there’s no point trying to track them down, then. They’re probably already on a flight to the mainland.”
Maui has a lot of feral cats—seriously, they’re everywhere—so it’s not exactly a mystery how this cat ended up here. My guess is that this couple decided to “adopt” her during their luxury vacation, thinking they were doing her a favor. And now that they’ve returned to reality, they’ve left her behind for someone else to deal with.
Leo sighs and turns to look at me. He catches sight of my face, and his eyes widen. I scowl at him as his lips pinch together, like he’s trying really hard to hold in a laugh.
“It’s not funny,” I snap. I’ve lived on Maui my entire life; I always wear sunscreen. But I clearly didn’t apply enough to my face yesterday, because I got a wicked sunburn. Which would be bad enough, but I was wearing sunglasses, so while the rest of my face is the color of raw beef, the skin around my eyes wasn’t touched. I look like a raccoon.
Maybe I’d be able to laugh about it too, if this were the only crappy thing that had happened to me lately. But it’s just one more thing in a long, long list of things that have gone very wrong for me over the past several months.
A few examples: my computer crashed and wiped out an essay I’d spent a week working on, the morning it was due; I dropped my phone and cracked the screen, and two days after I had it repaired—using the money I was saving for a new laptop—I dropped it again; I was knocked off my surfboard in front of this creepy guy Hunter, and when I came up for air, the top half of my bikini was missing; and I caught my prom date making out with another girl in the back of our limo.
The cat finishes the tuna. Before she can dart back under the bed, Leo scoops her up, cradling her in his arms like a baby. His navy Hawaiian-print shirt is immediately covered in cat hair. Management makes him wear it, along with stiff khaki pants, even though he’s the hotel handyman. Khakis aren’t the most practical choice when you’re unclogging toilets or fixing a broken air conditioner, but Leo doesn’t complain. Leo never complains.
“So now what?” he says.
“Now I take her downstairs, I guess.” I stand up and smooth out my skirt, which is more habit than necessity—I’m stuck in the same stiff khaki material as Leo, and it never wrinkles. God forbid our guests lay eyes on someone in a wrinkled uniform.
“Your mom isn’t going to be too happy to have a cat in housekeeping.”
I frown. He’s right about that, but I don’t know what else to do with her. “She sent me up here. She’s going to have to deal.”
Leo rubs underneath the cat’s chin and her eyes drift closed. She starts to purr. “I’d take her home, but Beth would kill me. She made me promise not bring home any more strays.” His voice raises an octave as he says, “You should have a name.”
“Don’t get too attached. She’s probably just going to the shelter.” I feel mean saying this in front of the cat, but it’s either the shelter or back out on the street.
If Nalani were here, she’d tell me to take the cat home. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I took something from a guest’s room. But I know better than to ask my mom if I can keep her cat. She’s not exactly Team Marty right now.
“She looks like a Libby,” Leo says.
“If you say so.” I straighten the bed’s immaculate white duvet and glance around to make sure everything is perfect for whoever is checking in next. The people who can afford to stay in the Grand Palms are rich—not just regular rich, but incredibly, unbelievably rich—and they have super-high standards. Although the room is simple—white and airy, like being inside a cloud—everything in here easily costs more than my family makes in a year.
The room still smells like tuna, but hopefully no one will notice. I pick up the empty tin, and Leo and I leave the room. He follows me down the hall, still cooing to the cat. The carpet is so thick, I can’t hear our footsteps. When we reach the elevator, he sighs and passes Libby to me before punching the call button.
“Don’t just dump her, okay, Marty?” he says.
I nod, but I’m not sure why he thinks I’ll have any say in the matter. He’d be better off talking to my mom himself, but I think he’s scared of her. Most people are. My mom is the floor supervisor, but from the way she acts, you’d think she runs the entire hotel.
Leo pats the cat one more time, then ambles off down the hall. Libby squirms in my arms like she wants to run after him, and I tighten my grip. The last thing I need is for her to jump out of my arms and take off. I’ve already wasted too much time trying to catch her.
The elevator dings and the mirrored doors slide open. I stand back as two guys around my age step out.
I flinch. Great. Guests my age are the worst. There’s nothing more awkward than having to serve someone who could be sitting behind you in history class. Most of the time we ignore each other—only for different reasons: me, because I’m quietly dying inside; them, because they don’t really see me. After all, I’m just the help.
“We need to talk to the locals,” the guy with a messy black pompadour says to his friend, a scrawny kid with closely cropped dark hair. “They’ll know where the best waves are.”
Surfers. Well, wannabe surfers. I see this a lot. Rich kids who come to Hawaii with the idea that they can conquer our waves. They won’t get very far talking to any of the locals. We’re friendly, sure, but there’s a definite line between the places we recommend to tourists and what we save for ourselves.
Libby starts to wriggle again and lets out a sorrowful meow. The black-haired guy’s eyes flick to her and then to me. He’s good-looking, in an early Elvis, rockabilly kind of way. Skyscraper tall with thick eyebrows and full lips and ears that stick out slightly. Exactly my type. And so, when he smiles at me, a jolt goes all the way through me, right to my toes. And if my face wasn’t already burned, there’s no way he’d miss me blushing.
Oh my god. My face! He isn’t smiling at me; he’s smiling at my ridiculous sunburn!
I duck my head, anger and humiliation coursing through me. I’m in such a hurry to get away from them, I don’t notice the elevator doors have already started to close until I bump right into them. Libby digs her claws into my arm and I let out a scream.
“Are you okay?” the guy calls, but I pretend not to hear him. The doors have slid back open and I quickly escape inside the elevator. Mercifully, it’s empty and the doors slide shut again before he can check on me.
My heart is pounding. It’s fine. This is a big hotel, I reassure myself. I probably won’t ever see them again.
But given the way my luck has been lately, I know the odds of not running into them again are not in my favor.
I sag against the back wall of the elevator and close my eyes. How much worse can this day get?
Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer Honeybourn
