said hesitantly.
“I’m glad that you do,” Khaleel said, smiling more broadly. “And I’m sure you’ll be just fine at what I ask of you. But I do like to have a feel for a new employee’s basic level of skill, you understand?”
“That makes sense,” Aurora said, her heart starting to beat a little faster. It’s just cleaning. How hard can it be?
“I’m so glad you understand,” Khaleel said, giving her another winning smile. “Just so you're aware, I’m going to be watching during the entire time you’re undergoing your initial evaluation. Keep in mind, if you don’t do well, it’s not like you’re going to be fired right off the bat, but I will be critiquing your performance.” Aurora nodded, feeling a lump of cold dread starting to form in her stomach. “I will give you a list of chores to do in this stateroom and around the boat, and then I’ll evaluate how well you do at them.”
“Okay,” Aurora said. She glanced around surreptitiously; the room was already clean. She couldn’t imagine how much Khaleel could really give her to do in order to prove her chops as a maid.
“First I'd like you to clean out the bathroom, top to bottom. You’ll need to polish the mirrors, scrub the shower and the bathtub, clean the floors by hand, disinfect the toilet, take the trash to be incinerated, and polish the granite wall tiles.” Aurora swallowed, staring at him in shock at the lengthy list of tasks just for the bathroom. “Then in here, I will want you to organize my closet, strip and remake the bed, dust and polish all of the surfaces, clean the upholstery, polish the wood on all of the furniture—including the posters, headboard, and footboard of the bed…”
Khaleel glanced around as if thinking. “Also, you’ll need to sweep and hand-polish the floors, vacuum the rugs, and scrub down the balcony; it does tend to get a bit messy out there, what with the salt water constantly blowing up onto it.” Aurora’s mind spun at the lengthening list; the tasks were seemingly endless. “Finally, of course, I’ll want you to clean the doors and the corridor leading into the space, and bring in some fresh flowers for the vases.”
“That sounds like quite a…comprehensive evaluation,” Aurora said, trying her best to look calm and composed.
“I want to give you as much chance as possible to demonstrate your skills,” Khaleel told her, the smile never wavering from his face.
“That’s very kind of you,” Aurora said. She took a deep breath and looked around the room. “I guess I’ll start in the bathroom, then.” She swallowed, visions of the mammoth task ahead of her dancing through her mind. “There’s a supply closet with all of the cleaners nearby, right?”
“Right in the room,” Khaleel told her. “Off to the side of the bathroom.” He glanced at a clock set on one of the low tables in the room. “I’ll be keeping track of the time as well.”
“Better get started then,” Aurora said, forcing a brighter smile onto her face than she felt.
FOUR
Aurora opened the cleaning supply closet and took stock. She had never been particularly enamored of cleaning chores; her own apartment was mostly neat, but she tended to clean things on an as-needed basis, rather than on any kind of routine, and while she had taken the “deep clean” shift at the café twice in the few weeks since coming home from Southeast Asia, Aurora had taken them more for the money than out of any delight at the prospect of chemicals and dirt.
She grabbed item after item, cradling them in one arm as she picked through the options available in the closet. She went through a mental checklist of all the things Khaleel wanted her to do in the bathroom. Why on earth would he need it to be so thoroughly cleaned? Didn’t someone do it before he got on board? If they didn’t, why would he have taken a shower? She glanced over her shoulder to see that Khaleel was, true to his word, watching her, and closed the closet door awkwardly before moving into the bathroom.
The bathroom was just as incredible as she had imagined it, based on the quarters she had already seen. It was as large as her bedroom at the apartment, and boasted marble tiling from the floor to the ceiling, as well as both a bath and a shower. The shower was enormous on its own, open, with a solid marble bench and no fewer than four shower heads positioned around where the occupant would stand.
Aurora shook her head slightly to herself, glancing at the big, deep bathtub on the other side of the bathroom. He must go through an insane amount of water. The wall behind the sink was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and Aurora looked at herself in it for a moment, taking in her dark hair smoothly swept back from her face in a braided ponytail, her big dark eyes, her curvaceous body covered by the skirt and blouse she’d put on that morning for one job and then used for her cover in the new position she’d taken. He’s keeping track of the time. Get started already.
Aurora took a deep breath and sighed as quietly as she could, setting the cleaning supplies down on the floor and surveying the room with her mind focused on the tasks Khaleel had given her. Her parents had taught her to clean from the top down to the floor; that way, she wouldn’t end up having to clean the floor again when she knocked down dust or dirt from higher levels.
She thought that the bathroom looked clean enough that the risk of knocking any dirt down was practically nonexistent, but she thought that Khaleel might be watching for her strategy nonetheless. If he was the kind of man who wanted his employees to face an initial “audition” after they’d been hired, it was easy to think that he would also have some kind of interest in the process an employee used.
She decided to start on the walls, and Aurora found the marble cleaner and a rag for the purposes of scrubbing and polishing. She sighed again and started to work, burying her resentment in the depths of her mind as she sprayed and scrubbed the already-clean walls. There was no noise from the living room area of the stateroom, but Aurora knew better than to look and see whether Khaleel was still observing her.
Aurora hummed quietly to herself as she scrubbed and polished, wondering what kind of man would make someone clean an already-cleaned room. Maybe he’s a germophobe, she thought as she moved from the top of the wall to the bottom, slowly working around the room inch by inch. Or maybe he’s just a jerk and this is some kind of new employee hazing.
She struggled to keep her mental state at least a little bit compliant; she needed to maintain her cover. She needed to blend in and be one of the members of the crew at least until the boat arrived somewhere, and then she could duck off and disappear. Did she have her passport in her bag? Aurora thought about the closet, the shelf where she had left her things. For that matter, she didn’t know where the ship was going, or how long it would take to get there; she didn’t have anywhere to stay on the ship, no bunk to sleep in, and no clothes to wear. Her uniform was obviously going to get dirty quickly; what would she do then?
Aurora pushed the worried thoughts aside as she moved onto another task, ducking into the vaulting shower stall and finding the spray bottle of shower cleaner.
Surely he doesn’t have just one person cleaning his rooms, she thought idly as she sprayed all of the surfaces down and then stepped out of the shower to grab the scrubbing brush. The rooms that Khaleel had to himself were too big to have just one maid assigned to them; it wasn’t realistic, especially if his standards were so high. It would take her hours to do everything he had listed for her—and it was plain to Aurora that Khaleel fully intended to sit there in the main area of his suite and wait for her to finish every last thing that he’d listed. How was his “initial evaluation” realistic?
He has like twenty people crewing this thing, Aurora thought resentfully. Did he do this with every last one of them? Did he ask the chef to prepare a twenty-course meal for him all on his own? The image of a chef hurriedly attempting to prepare dozens of courses for the capricious Sheikh made Aurora smile for a moment as she moved from the shower to the bathtub.
The fact that the rooms were already clean, and that she was being told to do the work of at least two people, began to reassert itself more and more
firmly in Aurora’s mind as she went from one task to another, breathing in caustic fumes. It’s not fair, she thought bitterly as she moved to take the trash out of the room before sweeping and polishing the floors. The bathroom had taken her an hour, she estimated, feeling the ache in her back and wrists and knees from the concentrated labor. She tied the garbage bag closed and hefted it; there was next to nothing inside, but she would—as Khaleel had commanded—take it to the incinerator, and shove it in. What other choice did she have?
Khaleel was still seated on the couch in the main area of the suite when Aurora emerged, carrying the trash bag. “You’re making good time,” he said, glancing up from his laptop.
“Thank you,” she said quickly, striding to the door and opening it.
Stepping into the corridor, Aurora tried to think of whether or not she could remember where the incinerator was. An incinerator on a boat. Is that really safe? She walked up the hall until she saw the sign proclaiming the disposal unit with a caution sign next to it, advising her not to attempt to retrieve anything once she'd put it in.
Once she had gotten rid of the trash, Aurora took a moment to stretch, twisting and moving in the space next to the incinerator chute until the aches and pains in her muscles began to abate.