“You’re two minutes early.”
She was in a dress that hit her knees and was tight just under her tits but loose flowing down her body. Not that it did anything to obscure her figure from me. She looked great, it almost made me feel bad about not cleaning up a little.
“Look at the state of this place. Are you having me on?”
Scratch that, I didn’t feel bad. I had seen this woman a total of three times and I felt like that was enough for a lifetime. Just her presence exhausted me. Seeing her and getting ready for the onslaught that was to come because she always had some shit to say.
“Isn’t that your job?” I said to her.
“I’m here to fix your image, not clean up after you.” She walked into my loft, taking it all in. The food boxes on the table in the living room, the random items on the floor, the used towel thrown over the back of the couch. She made a face. “What kind of billionaire doesn’t have a cleaning staff?”
The way she said cleaning staff made me feel like she was very familiar with ordering people around to do stuff for her. I didn’t know that much about her background. I didn’t know anything about her background, but it seemed like she came from money or had a lot of it. I wasn’t sure why, but it amused me that she was so appalled with my living conditions. What the hell was I supposed to do? Commit the biggest sin of the nouveau riche by buying a huge mansion and filling it with disgusting, gaudy stuff that was so expensive that it looked cheap?
“Well, the position is open if you’re interested.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you at least live alone? Or will I have to contend with a roommate?”
“All alone.”
“How could any one person generate this much of a mess?” She wasn’t talking to me just then, she was thinking out loud, but I answered her anyway.
“You think it’s messy? I think of my home the way I think of my clothes.”
“What? Moth-eaten? Old? Several decades off trend?”
I deadpanned. “Lived-in.”
“Lived-in by a pack of wolves more like,” she said, sighing. “I don’t suppose you’re offering me anything to drink so we might as well get started.”
I laughed. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“I can’t imagine the state of your kitchen. Drink something from in there and risk E. coli? I think not. Show me your wardrobe.”
“Right. In America by the way we call that a closet,” I said as we walked down the hallway towards my bedroom. The hallway took the first bill from my bedroom. I had some abandoned gym equipment lying there, as well as some clothes that I wasn’t sure were clean or not. I had a bookshelf in the living room, but a lot of my books had ended up in the hallway too. The bedroom wasn’t great either. I never made my bed, what was the point when I was just going to get into it again and mess it up? Besides that, there were clothes, clean and dirty everywhere.
“Jesus Christ, is your mattress on the floor?”
“No. It’s on the fucking ceiling.” She glared at me.
“Why don’t you have a box spring? A bed frame? Anything?”
“After sleeping in a military issue cot for six years, this is a hundred percent more comfortable.”
“What excuse does a man your age have to be living like this? I’m sure 19-year-olds in college dorms live under better conditions. You have more than enough money so a lack of it is not going to fly as an excuse.”
“You’re right, I do have a lot of money. Do you think I made all that money because I spent all my time here, making sure all my socks were folded correctly?”
“Do you invite women over with your home looking like this?” She asked.
I scoffed. “Why the sudden interest in my sex life? Are you being paid to help me with that too?” I kicked the towel out of the way into the walk-in closet.
“Here it is. The wardrobe,” I said, imitating her accent. I had a lot of clothes, even though it was a lot of the same thing. I hated doing laundry, so what I did a lot of the time was just buy new clothes when I ran out. I didn’t do it as much anymore, but that meant I had a lot of stuff, sometimes multiples of the same shirt or pair of shorts. I looked at Missy. She wasn’t even trying to disguise the disgust on her face. Until this point, it had been amusing, even kind of fun to get on her bad side, but suddenly, I felt a little weird. I wanted to kick her out of my house. I didn’t like that she was seeing it the way it was.
I was angry. She was only here to judge me. This snooty British chick was going to look through my stuff and tell me that it wasn’t good enough. I was in the army for God’s sake. I had given up most of my twenties to serve my country and this chick was going to come all the way from across the ocean to tell me what I was doing wrong. Didn’t we have a revolution to get rid of her people a few hundred years ago?
Where did she get off telling me that I didn’t look right? What were her credentials besides probably a mile-long credit card bill? She started looking over my clothes, touching them with just her fingertips like they were covered in rabies or something. All I wore were T-shirts, jeans, sweats and basketball shorts.
“Is this everything?” she asked. She was holding a black T-shirt with the Misfits logo on it.