Chapter Eight
On Sunday, her one day off, Ana got up early. She fumbled in the dark to turn off her alarm clock before anyone else could hear it and, in her haste, knocked over an alabaster bowl holding potpourri and sent a picture frame tumbling to the floor.
“Shit,” she mumbled in the dark.
Ana sat up and turned on the lamp on her nightstand. She silenced her alarm and then sat there for a moment, holding her breath, listening.
For such a large home, Ana felt she scarcely had any more privacy than she’d had growing up in her parents’ house, with eight people sharing two bedrooms and a single bathroom.
Here, there were always people milling around: maids cleaning up after her, a chef preparing her meals—poached eggs doused in hollandaise sauce and freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast every morning.
Even her room wasn’t a private space. The maids came in at least twice a day: once in the morning to get her laundry and make the bed, and then again in the evening for turndown service.
It made her feel lazy, like an overgrown child, to have other people doing things for her that she was perfectly capable of doing herself.
She was used to a certain level of utility, self-sufficiency, independence.
To have that taken from her felt stifling.
If someone had told her only a month ago that this would be her life now, she wouldn’t have believed them.
She had never had a hunger for grand things. That had always been her cousin Rosie.
Rosie, who after high school had moved to Los Angeles to study hospitality at Santa Monica City College.
She worked night shifts as a clerk at the front desk of the Duchess Hotel in Beverly Hills.
The Duchess was a historic landmark. Shirley Temple had learned her famous stairstep dance on the grand staircase of the Duchess’s lobby.
Clark Gable had jumped into the hotel pool, still dressed in his tuxedo, at an Oscars after-party after winning Best Actor for It Happened One Night.
In the ’60s, the Rat Pack were spotted so regularly at the Sunset Lounge, the Duchess’s restaurant, that they reportedly had their own designated booth.
All that glitz and glam did nothing for Ana, but Rosie was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
She used to tell Ana stories about the brief but electrifying encounters she had with the celebrities who stayed there.
Once, she had checked in Brooke Shields, and Miss Shields told her she had nice hair.
Another time, she had delivered an extra set of towels to Keith Richards’s suite, and he had answered the door stark naked, with two women in his bed.
Clint Eastwood had stayed there while filming Every Which Way but Loose, and Rosie was responsible for giving him his wake-up call every morning at 4:00 a.m.
“Just think, Ana,” Rosie had told her once teasingly, over one of their frequent phone calls, “you’re talking to the voice that starts Clint Eastwood’s day.”
Rosie was an only child, something Ana had always envied about her.
Ana was one of six, sandwiched between two older sisters and three younger brothers.
She’d shared the attic with her sisters, where the walls sloped on both sides, so you could only stand up straight when you were standing in the middle, and there was a dusty single-pane window that never let in enough light.
Ana existed on hand-me-downs from her sisters until she was old enough to work and put aside some of her own money.
Everything she owned was inherited, worn, starting to pill under the arms from too many washes.
Nothing ever fit her just right; nothing was exactly to her taste.
But her cousin Rosie had her own room. A proper room with four straight walls and two windows that let in unending light.
Rosie’s mother, Ana’s aunt Magdalene, took Rosie shopping for a new set of clothes before each school year started, and Rosie had her own closet with things that she had picked out herself, that no one had ever worn before her.
Rosie was two years older than Ana but closer to her in age than either of her sisters, so Ana spent as much time as she could at Rosie’s house growing up.
Rosie’s father owned a cattle ranch, and they would spend their time helping with chores, watering and brushing the horses.
On the weekends, they would play house in Rosie’s bedroom, build forts with old linens, and whip egg whites with Aunt Magdalene in the kitchen for the tres leches cake they’d eat after dinner.
When they were older, Rosie was the one who taught Ana how to curl her lashes and pluck her brows.
When Rosie moved away to college, Ana felt a hollow ache beneath her ribs, like a piece of her was missing.
Ana still felt that familiar ache when she thought of Rosie, but it was different now.
It’d grown sharper edges. She stared at the receiver on her bedside table.
She wished it was that simple, that she could pick up the phone and call her cousin, tell her of the strange life she was living now.
No one would understand it better, no one would appreciate it more, than Rosie.
But, of course, that was impossible. She hadn’t talked to Rosie in years.
When Ana was sure that no one in the house had heard her, she threw back her bedcover and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, being careful to step over the shards of the alabaster bowl that littered the floor.
She would clean it up later. For now, she had a plan she had to get to; she had to move quickly.
Ana couldn’t help but feel that she’d accomplished very little in her first two weeks here. It was too dangerous to go snooping around during the day. If she was going to make any progress, she could do it only when everyone else was asleep.
It didn’t help matters that Saoirse had required her constant vigilance.
Ana had to stay one step ahead of her at all times.
On Ana’s second day, she’d gone into town and bought a second set of toiletries, which she kept in the bottom of a large vase near the fireplace in her room.
She didn’t touch the toothpaste or the shampoo or the lotion she’d left out on her bathroom vanity—she’d heard stories of the itching powder in the night cream and the green dye in the toothpaste that had befallen her predecessors.
She was sure that the maids helped Saoirse with her missions of sabotage, so Ana set out to befriend them.
She learned their names, sought them out in the kitchen or laundry to chat, and, while she helped them fold linens or dry dishes, asked them about their family, their friends, their interests, and shared her own stories.
Familiarity, friendliness, a sense of compassion would—in time, perhaps—save her.
It was the only means she had at her disposal, for any bribe she could scrape together, Saoirse could match tenfold.
Still, every night before she got into bed, Ana stripped the sheets and remade it to ensure there were no reptilian surprises awaiting her. On her third night, she found a tarantula under her pillow.
Her younger brother Alejandro had a pet tarantula named Harold.
They called him Harry for short. Despite their scary appearance, Ana knew tarantulas were docile creatures who rarely bit people, and if they did, the bite was next to harmless.
Alejandro kept Harry in a glass aquarium, but he was always getting out, and Ana had, on more than one occasion, found Harry in the pantry or the garage and coaxed him back into his cage.
So Ana handled this intruder with ease, shuffling it into a spare hatbox that she found above her dresser.
The next morning, she set it free in the garden, where it was sure to find an abundance of grasshoppers to feast upon.
Ana said nothing of the encounter to anyone, just as she had never mentioned Saoirse abandoning her on the beach.
Let them wonder what had become of the spider; let them puzzle out why their itching powder had no effect, why her teeth weren’t stained green.
No matter what they threw at her, she would remain calm, collected, and self-possessed. She would not be bested.
With Mrs. Talbot, Ana contrived to be subordinate, to never give her reason to be displeased with her. She had not won either Mrs. Talbot or Saoirse over yet, but she had managed to at least keep her head above water, which was no small feat.