(LB1) Shakespeare's Champion by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

Her face was round, and her teeth were perfect and white. If she was wearing any makeup, I couldn’t see it.
    And despite the fact that she was pretty, very pretty, and smiling in the friendliest way possible, this woman had thrown me off balance.
    If her fading smile was any indication, she was feeling the same way about me.
    “You’re Lily Bard?” she said cautiously.
    “I am.”
    Slowly, she pushed open the screen door. She extended a plump golden hand. I shook it.
    She stepped aside and I went in the house.
    She began dithering around the filthy little kitchen. “I should have been expecting you but I got caught up in my work,” she said over her shoulder, stacking plates by the sink in an effort to pretend she’d actually been engaged in doing so when I knocked.
    “What do you do?”
    “I’m a genealogist,” she said, her face turned away, which I thought was a lucky thing.
    “Umm,” I said, which was the most noncommittal noise I could manage. “You don’t have to clean up for me. I’m the cleaning woman.”
    She looked down at the plate in her hand as if she hadn’t realized what she was doing, and very carefully deposited it on the drain board. “Right.”
    “What did you want me to do?” I asked.
    “Okay.” That calmed her, as I’d intended. “I want you to change my sheets—the clean ones are in the bathroom closet—and dust the house, and vacuum. There’s only one bathroom, and it’s in pretty bad shape. Clean the sink and tub, and wipe the kitchen counters. Mop the linoleum floors.”
    “Okay. Anything else?”
    “Not that I can think of right now.”
    We discussed my pay, and my hours. She thought the house might take me until twelve-thirty to get in shape, and if the kitchen was any indication I agreed it would. I got to the Winthrops’ at one, usually, so that didn’t leave me much leeway. I figured I could stop by my house and grab a piece of fruit on my way to the Winthrops’.
    I examined the house first, to plan my work. Mookie had retreated to the living room at the front of the house, which she had turned into a workroom. There was an old couch, an old chair, an old television, and a huge desk. She hadn’t hung any curtains, and the blinds on the big windows were coated with dust. The wastebasket was overflowing, and cups from various fast-food places dotted the desk, the arm of the couch, the floor. I kept my face blank. I’ve learned to do that.
    As Mookie sat down at her computer, I wandered down the hall (filthy baseboards, fingerprints on the paint) to the bigger bedroom. I wrinkled my nose. The sheets certainly did need changing, and the bed had probably never been made since the sheets had been put on. There was a thick layer of dust on every surface—every surface that wasn’t already covered with something else, like paperbacks, makeup, snack wrappers, tissues, jewelry, hairbows and brushes, receipts. I could feel that little contraction between my brows that meant I was perturbed. Then I examined the bathroom, and I shook my head in disbelief.
    The second bedroom was almost empty, only luggage and a few boxes strewn about the floor…at random.
    Now I wondered if the allotted time would be enough.
    I went out to my car to get my supplies, wondering how far I could get. I’d start with the bathroom, for sure…then the bedroom.
    Cleaning is work that doesn’t occupy your whole mind, which is something I occasionally enjoy. I was halfsmiling to myself as I began scrubbing the bathtub. I’d expected Mookie Preston to be completely white, and she’d expected me to be black. We’d both been astonished.
    In a better world, we wouldn’t have even noticed that we were of different races—maybe if we’d even met each other in a big city, we would just have celebrated our ethnic diversity. But it wasn’t a better world, at least not here and now. Not in Shakespeare. Not lately.
    My astonishment about my new employer faded as I concentrated on the task at hand.