Free A Very Important Guest by Mary Whitney

A Very Important Guest
     
    Abby’s job sucked, but it was the perfect job for her. The monotony of housekeeping, the anonymity of an ugly uniform, and the solitude of the work allowed her to achieve two necessary goals. The first was to avoid too many personal interactions because her emotional capacity was spent long ago, and the second was to focus on getting her degree. Her class lectures streamed through her headphones, taking her away from the mundane work.
    That day, though, her mind wandered from her lecture on the Soviet Union and back to the task at hand. Time ran short as she finished cleaning what had been a filthy room. The bathroom’s toiletries needed to be replenished, and the room still required a final sweep. Even the nicest hotel rooms were subject to the occasional stray condom wrapper. 
    Poking her head under the bed skirt, she said in triumph, “Ah ha!”
    As she snatched the black foil packet, she heard a male voice say, “I was told this room was clean.”
    She scowled at the annoyance in the man’s voice. Looking up from the box spring, she found her composure and rose from her hands and knees. Without yet seeing the man, she said, “I’m sorry. I told them this room wasn’t quite ready.”
    “How much longer?”
    Forming a fake smile, she gave him a once-over. She was accustomed to guests forgetting she was a person first and a housekeeper second, and thus worthy of a hello. He obviously couldn’t see past her matronly uniform.
    Her first impression of him was that he was tall and not far from her age—though he looked vaguely familiar and after a few seconds, decidedly handsome. She crumpled the wrapper in her hand and said, “Only a few minutes. I’m just finishing up.” She gestured to her left. “Please sit on the lanai. I can get you ice water or pog if you like.”
    “Pog?” He raised his eyebrows.
    “Oh. That’s short for passion-orange-guava juice.” She shrugged. “It’s a Hawaii thing.”
    “Water will be fine. Thank you.”
    His clipped tone jogged her memory, and when he strode past her, she remembered where she’d seen him before. The previous semester she took a class on the U.S. Congress, and one of the assignments was to watch C-SPAN. If the U.S. Senate was supposedly “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” Abby was sure the U.S. House of Representatives was the worst. She soon tired of the theatrics on the House floor, and instead spent most of her time watching the committee hearings where there was more content to the discussion.
    As she grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-bar, she recalled his name—William Lloyd, a Democrat from Ohio . She’d watched him for hours one day as he’d interrogated the CEOs of the major oil companies, accusing them of price-gouging. At the time, she’d cheered him on because he was tough on the executives who seemed uncaring, and he was so harsh with them that halfway through the hearing she forgot how good-looking he was. Laughing to herself, she thought of how he’d just treated her. Maybe his treatment of the oil company heads wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Maybe he was a jerk to everyone.
    When she placed the bottle on the table next to him, he didn’t even acknowledge her. He simply continued his phone conversation while staring out beyond the shores of Waikiki . She smiled to herself as she confirmed that she’d guessed correctly. He was, in fact, William Lloyd, and he did appear to be sort of an asshole.
    Rolling her eyes, she left him and finished her duties. Just as she completed the final touch of folding the toilet paper end into a neat triangle, she heard a rustling in the bedroom. She’d planned on a quick good-bye and exit, but as she walked out of the bathroom, she saw him thumbing through papers with a confused look.
    “Can you tell me where the Iolani room is?” he asked with barely a glance at her.
    While her ears suffered the reverberations of his horrible pronunciation, she