CHAPTER SIX
As soon as she knocked, it took mere seconds for the door to be opened by a man who had the look of the butler. (She would later learn he was the assistant butler, since the butler was on front door duties). It was her first experience seeing a butler, in person, open a door.
She didn’t even have to tell him who she was. That was how efficient that house was being run apparently. He stepped aside and allowed her to walk in.
When she walked inside, she was amazed by how many people were rushing around in the servants’ quarters as if they were downstairs at Downton Abby.
“Follow me,” the assistant butler said as he led her down corridors after corridors. Then he stopped in an intersection of corridors, told her to go right and all the way at the end of that particular corridor was a door. That was where the other ladies were waiting.
“Wait what? What other ladies?” she asked the butler. But he had already turned to head back to his post.
And she had no time to delay. She was early for her appointment, thank God she thought as she hurried down that corridor. Her goal was to find a bathroom she could dip into right quick, pee, freshen up, and then go meet her new employer.
And quickly found a bathroom that had Unisex written on it, which she knew meant it was for men or women, so she hurried inside.
It also said Executive Unisex Restroom, but that was too bad.
Because of how long she and that assistant butler had to walk from the back entrance to that corridor up front where the bathroom stood, she had no time to waste.
But as soon as she entered, a white man in shirtsleeves and suspenders was standing at one of the two sinks, with his butt leaned against the sink and his dress shoes crossed, as he was thumbing through his phone.
When the man looked up from his phone, she stopped in her tracks.
This unisex bathroom thing was unusual for her and probably couldn’t work except inside somebody’s house, but he looked normal enough and she had no further options.
“I can’t hold it,” she said as she dropped her big Gucci bag where she stood and rushed into the nearest stall.
Grayson found it odd that she would just drop her bag in the middle of a bathroom floor like that, but within seconds he understood it.
She truly couldn’t hold it because she was peeing loud and long.
She even sighed relief, which made him smile.
And her peeing went on and on and on until she said something.
“Sorry about this,” she said to him from behind the stall. “Whenever I get really nervous I have to go and go like a big dog.”
He sniggled as he continued to read over an important text message.
“I’ll be out of your hair in a sec,” she added.
And sure enough, she finally stopped peeing, wiped herself he assumed, and then flushed and hurried out of the stall. She walked up to the second sink and began washing her hands vigorously. “That feels so much better,” she said to him as she looked over at him.
When he didn’t respond, she kept on talking. “I have a job interview.”
“Do you?” He didn’t bother to look at her.
“Well not an interview exactly, but a placement. I was assigned to work here. This is my first time here.”
He still was reading his text. “Welcome aboard.”
She grabbed two of those thick, fancy paper towels in a basket with the designs on them and began drying her hands. “You work here too?”
Did he work there? He did actually. “Yes,” he said and then looked at her.
When he finally looked at her up close and personal, he was surprised by how earnest she appeared, as if she had no hidden agendas, and the sincerity in her very soft, very bright brown eyes caught him off guard.
They were so bright and so brown that they almost looked golden.
Wow, he inwardly thought, about her eyes alone.
But Toya wasn’t as impressed with Grayson.
He was a very good-looking man. There was no doubt about that.
Any woman, she believed, would say he was great looking.
But he looked rather unkempt to her, as if he didn’t care about his appearance at all.
Which was fine lounging around the house.
But it was highly inappropriate, in her view, at work.
And besides, didn’t his wife or girlfriend care?
Or were they unkempt sort of people too?
But she had her own self to worry about. She stood back, looking at herself in the mirror that stood over the sink. “How do I look?” she asked him with concern in her voice as she was checking herself out. “Do I look professional enough you think?”
She looked at him with a worried look on her pretty face, as if she felt she wasn’t good enough to work on his grounds. He quickly disabused her of that notion. “I think you look quite professional, yes,” he said as he gave her and her lavender pantsuit a quick perusal.
She had a nice figure, he thought, and a very pretty, endearing face. But he wondered what type of professional job did she expect to have at his house when those jobs, such as house manager and butlers and various supervisors of various household sectors, were already taken?
But whatever job it was, she wanted to make a good impression because she hurried over, picked up her big bag and brought it with her to the sink, pulled out her makeup-compact-thingy and began freshening up her makeup.
He found it refreshing that she would do so in front of him when most girls wouldn’t dare.
But there was nothing about this person, he was beginning to believe, that was anything like most girls.
And she wasn’t exactly a girl anymore. She looked to be in her early thirties at the very least. Which, again, made him wonder what kind of job she would be doing at his house when they generally hired people in their twenties who were able to get around swiftly in a very demanding household?
She also pulled out a comb and began combing her thick, dark, very bouncy and healthy-looking hair that touched down just below her neck.
Her very nice dark neck, he thought, as he looked downward.
When he looked further down, at her sizeable breasts, he began to get an arousal. He quickly looked away.
“You look fine,” he said to her as he returned his attention to his phone.
“Thanks,” she said as she looked over at him. “But if I were to be honest,” she said, “you don’t.”
He looked at her when she made that observation. When he realized she wasn’t kidding, he laughed out loud.
But she was serious. She had this sudden, heavy urge to help him.
She felt as if he needed help. Why she felt that way was odd in and of itself since she never felt that way about any man before.
Not even her ex-boyfriends. Not even her ex-husband.
But that urge to help this white man in his rumpled white dress shirt tucked halfway in and halfway out standing before her was there, and it was strong.
So strong that she attempted to take her own comb to his messy hair.
But he quickly moved his head away from her comb before she could connect it with his hair.
He didn’t mean to be offensive, but he wasn’t accustomed to anyone invading his personal space that way. Not anyone. But what he liked was that she didn’t seem offended at all.
“I was just going to comb your hair because it needs it,” she said in all honesty as she looked into what she saw as his very kind green eyes. “It’s just that . . .” She was looking at his hair again.
“It’s just that what?”
“It’s a mess,” she said. You’re a mess, she wanted to say. Then she couldn’t help herself. That urge was still too strong. She took her comb and started combing his badly out of place hair before he could move his head again.
Grayson couldn’t believe anybody would be that concerned about his appearance to do something this bold about it. And the care she was taking as she combed his hair, as if it truly mattered to her, floored him.
He looked at her as she combed. He ingested her sweet, fresh, perfumy smell as she softly combed his hair as if she was taking care of somebody very dear to her.
Nobody took care of him. Nobody had ever bothered - not even his parents.
But this stranger was? In this bathroom of all places?
If truth had ever been stranger than fiction, it was in that moment.
“Now that’s much better,” Toya said when she finished combing his hair. “Although you need a shave too.”
“It’s been a long day,” Grayson explained.
But Toya would have no parts of his explanation. “That’s no excuse for poor grooming,” she said. “You look like you hopped out of bed, put on that shirt and pants, and the rest oh well. What the hell.”
Grayson laughed. Then he felt his own urge to know her. “Who are you?”
“I told you I’m here from the temp agency.”
“No I mean what’s your name?”
“Oh! Toya. Well, actually it’s Jameesha Latoya Morgan. But everybody calls me Toya or Latoya, which is fine by me.”
Jameesha, he thought. He liked that name. He wondered why she didn’t like it.
“But stop making excuses for yourself,” Toya said as she began putting her comb back in her purse. “That’s not a good look for anybody. Because it’s still a fact that you look like you got out of bed and hurried on over here.”
“Actually,” Grayson said, “I haven’t been to bed yet.”
Toya stared at him. “What do you mean you haven’t been to bed yet? It’s almost five o’clock.”
“That would be accurate.”
“You haven’t been to bed since yesterday?”
“Accurate again.”
Toya was floored. “Now that don’t make no sense. You have to sleep! What’s wrong with you? And I know you’re telling the truth because you look like you haven’t slept for days.”
Grayson smiled again. This girl!
“My mama never said much of anything worth anything ever, to be honest with you, but she always said you should never look like what you’re going through. Especially if it’s bad stuff. You look like what you’re going through.”
Grayson smiled. “Is it bad stuff?”
“Let’s put it this way: It ain’t good stuff,” she said, and he laughed. She liked his booming laugh.
But again, she looked dead serious. “Fix yourself up,” she admonished him.
“It’s been a lot of long days for me. I’ve been pounding the pavement looking for work ever since I got back in town a month ago, which is never easy to do.
And especially not when you’re in your thirties.
They always ask where are you working now.
When I say I’m between jobs, they look at you like something’s wrong with you.
But I still try to be presentable wherever I go.
You should too. But anyway,” she said as she threw her makeup into her bag and began hurrying for the exit.
“I gots to go. I’m early, but I’m not that early. ”
She glanced back at him as she opened the door. “Do better,” she said as she hurried on out.
Grayson stood there in disbelief. Nobody ever spoke to him in such an admonishing, but caring tone the way she spoke to him. She was a firecracker, he thought. Then he wondered what on earth did pounding the pavement mean exactly?
But then he took what she said to heart and looked at himself in the mirror. She was right: He was a mess. But nobody had ever bothered to tell him so.
Not that they had to, he thought as he pushed away from the sink and made his way toward the exit too. He already knew.