Chapter Four Tula #2
“I thought there weren’t checkouts on Tuesdays.”
“They are every day these days. With Airbnbs, people rent for a day, a night, and some still a week.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t look so grim.”
“And the surf shop? Who watches this place while you’re cleaning?”
“I close for a few hours. No camps on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I clean in the mornings because of the afternoon surf camps.”
“You must be doing pretty well.”
She crossed her fingers. “Not quite breakeven, but it’s getting there.”
“Good. Nice to have a steady income.”
After Mom died, I’d developed a fear of poverty.
A counselor, Dr. Miller, had reminded me that—news flash—fear didn’t stop us from dying or losing money.
I’d pointed out that people starved to death and drowned daily.
Beyond exercising reasonable caution, he’d warned, giving in to fear was unnecessary and indulgent.
His no-nonsense advice had not helped initially, but it had slowly diluted some of my fears.
Several months ago, Dr. Miller had questioned my inertia. I’d quit therapy.
“Money doesn’t make you happy,” Kaitlin said.
“It helps.”
Kaitlin arched a brow. “You look like you just bit a lemon.”
A smile broke over my face. “My resting sour face.”
She laughed. “Surf and sun will fix that. Life is too short to worry, Tula.”
But not too short to scrub toilets, push a vacuum, or wipe down kitchen counters.
“Want to see the van?”
“Van?”
“Our rolling cleaning machine.”
“Sure.”
We walked out the back door to the lot, which faced small rental homes and an old green van. Imprinted on the side was a magnetic sign that read MERmaids. More waves and fish tails splashed in the background.
“That’s your mom’s van,” I said. “And it’s the same color.”
“Still runs great. More or less. She drips a little oil, so I carry extra. Had a friend repaint it for me.”
“It’s the same color.”
“Fewer colors are cheaper.” She combed fingers through her hair. “Hard to believe you’re here.”
“I don’t believe it either. It wouldn’t take much to talk me out of all this.”
“But you won’t, because you know I’d come after you.”
“I did consider that.”
“Smart woman.”
“Where’s our first job?”
“A duplex in Nags Head. It needs to be cleaned after a family reunion. The renter arrives this afternoon.”
“Sounds like a lot of cleaning.”
“Yeah, this one is chaos. But it’s a surface clean. Basically, fresh linens, tidy up, and wipe down. No deep scrubbing required,” she admitted. “I checked it out this morning.” She looked me over. “You good to clean in those clothes?”
My shorts and athletic T-shirt weren’t fancy, but they weren’t exactly grunge. “I have other clothes for cleaning.”
“Well, grab your bag from the car. We’ve got to get going.”
“Like now?”
“Like five minutes ago.”
I headed outside to my car and from the back seat opened my trash bag.
I grabbed old cutoffs, a tank top, and worn sneakers.
I vanished into the ladies’ room. As I tied back my brown hair, the woman looking back from the mirror had a tight expression and eyes wide with fear. “What the hell am I doing here?”
When I emerged, Kaitlin had flipped the shop’s Open sign to Closed and was already behind the wheel of her van. I tossed my travel clothes into my car and slid into the van’s passenger seat.
“Just like the old days, right?” Kaitlin asked.
It was an uncomfortable full-circle moment.
My mother had died, and I was staying with Kaitlin’s family while I got myself together.
Kaitlin’s mom was too tired to work much, so I’d taken her place.
I’d scrubbed toilets, wiped out refrigerators that smelled like death, mopped floors, and changed more bedsheets than I could count.
“We cleaned our share of houses that last summer.”
I’d hated every minute of it, but the job had given me time to shake off the shock of Mom’s death.
And at the end of each day, I’d had an odd sense of satisfaction.
Cleaning was something I could control. Dirty.
Clean. No gray areas. I’d left in late August, made a short detour to the mountains, and then fallen back to Norfolk and the job at Tierney, Brooks, and Bainbridge.
“Let’s hope I remember your cleaning lessons,” I said. “I don’t want to slow you down.”
“You’ll pick it up quickly.” She fumbled with her keys. “What’s the deal with the Brooks house? Why are you dealing with it?”
“The former owner had an interest in the Oceanus. And my boss, his great-nephew, thought I might be interested.”
“Seriously?”
“Mr. Brooks gave me a partial manuscript someone wrote about the ship. He said the rest might be in this house.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Don’t know. No name on it.”
“And you want to know more about that wreck?”
Surprising myself, I said, “I think I do.”
The van rumbled down the beach road. At milepost ten Kaitlin pulled onto a cracked concrete driveway that cut between larger, lightly colored homes built in the last few years.
The van’s tires rattled over the driveway’s ruts filled with weeds. The shrubs on either side were overgrown. “Is this the land that time forgot?”
The duplex looked as if it had been built in the seventies. It had a slightly pitched roof, faded green window shutters, and a porch that wrapped around the entire house. Amazing ocean views suggested that whoever stayed in this house wasn’t interested in lingering inside.
“Just about,” Kaitlin said. “The owner says he won’t sell if he can keep renting. But rentals are slowing. He wasn’t booked for June, and then it suddenly rented for the summer a few days ago.”
Even rentals like this weren’t affordable for locals on a long-term basis. “Lucky for Mr. Homeowner.”
“The duplex is dated and rough, but the view from the back deck of the sunrises is stunning.”
“Sunrises? You start that early?”
A nonchalant shrug lifted her shoulder. “I know the owner. We used to date. I stayed over a few times.”
“Not dating anymore?” Kaitlin was always very private about her love life. Given that the Outer Banks felt like a small town on a long stretch of land, maintaining privacy was a challenge.
A beaded bracelet rattled as she smoothed her hand over her head. “No, but we’re friends. And he always throws in a generous tip when he calls last minute.”
“Like now?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t expecting this rental and thought he could clean it himself, but he has work.”
“Hence the emergency cleanup?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s hope this mess won’t reach a level ten ick factor.”
“I predict it’s just untidy. A level three.”
We’d rated the jobs in high school. A level ten was the stuff of nightmares. “Let’s hope.”
Kaitlin cut the engine, waiting as the motor rattled until it shut off. She got out of the van, and as I followed, she opened the back hatch and handed me a bucket and a mop. A warm breeze brushed strands of hair across my face.
She grabbed another box full of cleaning supplies, rags, and large plastic garbage bags. “Welcome to Team MERmaid.”
“Do I get a T-shirt?” I quipped.
“You do. But it’s at the office. Now on to the job.”
I wrestled with the bucket, mop, and vacuum cleaner as I followed her up the stairs. She punched a code into the digital lock, and it opened. “Folks like us get a special code that works for all our clients.”
“‘Folks like us’?”
“Plumbers, electricians, any vendor that needs to get into a house.”
“And they just give out the codes?”
“The codes get changed from time to time. It’s a pain when they fail to notify me, but I have everyone’s phone in my contacts.”
“Are the busiest days still Saturday and Sunday?”
“And Friday. Friday check-ins and checkouts help with traffic.”
The mop shifted and clunked me in the side of the head. “Do you get a lot of one-off jobs like today?”
“I never say no to any work.”
She pushed open the door, and we stepped out of the heat into the cool, dark interior.
Sandy grit ground under my athletic shoes.
I flipped on the lights and was a little taken aback by the carnage.
Beer cans, pizza boxes, wrappers, and other trash were spread throughout the house as if whoever was here just dropped whatever they didn’t want and left.
The couches had been pulled toward the sliding glass doors and were covered in sand. The couch legs and skirting were wet.
It appeared the renters had taken furniture on the beach. “It’s a level eight.”
“Yeah,” she said with a frown. “But between the two of us, it’ll go quickly.” She snapped several pictures with her phone.
“For your memory book? Ten worst cleanup jobs? Before and After for the website?” I set down the bucket and vacuum cleaner. I reached into the supply bag, grabbed rubber gloves, and wiggled my fingers into the cool plastic.
“Good to document.”
“Must have been some reunion.” I picked up a pizza box filled with stale slices and shoved it into the garbage bag.
“I would say so.”
We moved around the room, collecting bottles, cans, wadded-up sandwich wrappers, and stuff balled in tissues I didn’t dare look at. After we’d gathered all the debris and set the bags on the porch, I nodded toward the back bedrooms.
“I’ll strip the sheets and bag them up,” she said. “You tackle the kitchen.”
“Right.”
As Kaitlin moved to the bedrooms, I stepped into the kitchen. I loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, filled the soap dispenser, and pressed start. Once the machine was humming, I filled the sink with hot soapy water and washed the large pots and platters.
“All the fast-food garbage, and they had time to trash the kitchen,” I shouted.
Kaitlin paused, a bundle of sheets in her arms. “This won’t be the worst you’ll see in the next two weeks.”
“Oh, I know. I’m already having flashbacks.”
After another hour of picking up trash, making beds, and cleaning bathrooms, I finally had a clear path to run a vacuum and mop the floors. It took us a solid two hours to turn this disaster zone into a nice space.
“We better get going. The next renter will be here in an hour.”