“So, um,” I start when he doesn’t say or do anything. “I’ve never really done this before.”
He turns his dark eyes to me. “That’s obvious.”
“It is?”
“You wouldn’t be a virgin otherwise.”
God, I’m dumber than a box of rocks. Maybe alcohol really does kill brain cells.
He puts out his cigar and stands up, walks to the bar and comes back with a glass of water. “Drink it. It will help with the hangover.”
“I’m getting a hangover?”
“You had two glasses of champagne, a Long Island Iced Tea, and you look like you barely weigh over a hundred.”
I drink the water. Can I mess this up further?
“Where are your parents?”
He asks as if I’m a teenager hanging out after curfew.
“My adoptive father passed away when I was twelve, and my mother’s in North Carolina. My adoptive mother, that is. My birth mother lives in San Mateo.”
“Do they know what you’re doing?”
I flush. “I only met my birth mother six months ago, and...she’s not really that interested in me. And Lila, no, she doesn’t know.”
He watches me drink the water. When I finish, he takes the glass from me.
“You should go to bed. Try to sleep off the vodka and gin.”
“There’s vodka and gin in what I drank?”
“And rum.”
No wonder I feel like I’m halfway to being Cooter Brown. It feels good, but I get the feeling I’m going to pay for it later.
“I had no idea,” I half say to myself. I look up at him. Is he serious about letting me go to bed?
He stares at me for several intense seconds, then returns the glass to the bar. “Go.”
I stand up, and the room immediately wavers. I right myself. “Really? What about...?”
He waits for me to finish my sentence, but surely he knows what I’m referring to?
“You just want me to go to sleep?” I query. “That’s it?”
“I expect employees to follow their directives.”
But I’m not— Is he referring to me as a hotel employee or a different kind of employee?
“Does anyone else at the hotel, other than Sierra, know what you do or facilitate this in any way?” he asks.
“No! No, this was totally spur of the moment. Even Sierra didn’t know I was...”
Part of me wants to beg him not to fire me. It’s not that I like being a hotel maid so much, but I don’t want to have to go job hunting with midterms coming up.
I should beg him to let me keep my job.