Big Trouble

"OK," said Eliot, "but I want the car back at my apartment by ten-thirty, and I want you to promise to drive ... "

"OK thanks Dad," said Matt, hanging up, a busy man.

" ... carefully," said Eliot, into the silent phone.

When she finished cleaning up after dinner, Niña went back to her room—it was called the "maid's quarters," but it was just a little room with a tiny bathroom—and locked the door. She'd started locking it about three months earlier, when Mr. Herk had walked in on her. Niña was getting undressed, down to her bra and panties. Mr. Herk had not knocked; he'd just opened the door and come in.

He was holding a glass of red wine. Niña snatched her robe from the bed and held it in front of herself.

"It's OK, Niña," he said. "I just wondered if you'd like a little wine. You work so hard."

Niña knew he didn't care how hard she worked. She knew what he wanted, because of the way he looked at her sometimes, especially when he was drinking. He liked to come into the kitchen when she was there alone and stand a little too close to her, not saying anything, just looking at her.

Holding the robe close to herself, she said, "No, thank you, Mr. Herk. I am very tired."

He closed the door behind him and moved toward her. "You just need to relax," he said. He put his hand on her bare shoulder and let it slide toward her breast. His hand was wet with sweat.

Niña ducked from his hand and stepped backward, toward the bathroom.

"Mr. Herk," she said, "I don't think Mrs. Anna will like to know you are here."

His face turned hard. "She's asleep," he said. "And I'm not gonna tell her I was here. You're not gonna tell her, either, are you, Niña?"

 No, she was not. He was the boss of the house, and she was the maid, and she wasn't in this country legally, and she had nowhere else to go.

"Excuse me," said Niña, and she turned and stepped into the bathroom, quickly closing the door and pressing the lock button.

The doorknob rattled as Mr. Herk tried it.

"Niña," he said, "come out."

Niña stared at the doorknob, not breathing. She could feel his sweat on her, where he had touched her.

"Niña," he said, louder, "this is my house, and you work for me, and I want you to come out now."

Niña stared at the doorknob.

"Bitch," he said.

Niña heard glass breaking, then the hallway door banging open. She waited some more, then opened the bathroom door. There was a dark red stain in the middle of her white bedspread, where he had poured out the wine. He had smashed the glass on her floor. She cut her foot cleaning up.

The next day, when she served him his coffee, with Mrs. Anna there, he acted as though nothing had happened. But she still saw him looking at her. And she kept her door locked. She did not like Mr. Herk, but she needed to keep this job. She needed to make enough money to pay a lawyer so she could become legal, and then to bring her mother and her brother to the United States.

 And there were things she liked about working here. The house was like a castle, and Mrs. Anna was very nice, very pretty. Niña could not understand why Mr. Herk could be so mean to such a woman. Niña had heard him yell at her, calling her bad names, making her cry. Niña thought that sometimes he hit her.

Mrs. Anna was nice to Niña. So was her daughter, Jenny, although she mostly stayed in her room, always on the phone, always listening to her music, which sounded to Niña like angry people shouting. She couldn't imagine why anybody would want to listen to shouting.

Niña listened to flute music from her country, on cassette tapes that she played on a Fisher-Price tape player that had been Jenny's when she was a little girl. At night, Niña would open her window (she didn't like air-conditioning) and lie on her bed with the lights off, letting her mind float on the music. It made her feel less lonely.

Across the yard, in his tree, listening to Niña's music, Puggy felt less lonely, too.

Matt picked up Andrew at 8:40.

"Where's the gun?" asked Andrew.

"In the trunk," said Matt. "I love this song." He cranked the volume all the way up on the stereo, which was playing "Sex Pootie," by a band called the Seminal Fluids. The lyrics were:

I want your sex pootie!

I want your sex pootie!

I want your sex pootie!

I want your sex pootie!

I want your sex pootie!

I want your sex pootie!

I want your sex pootie!

I want your sex pootie!

And so on.

"What's a sex pootie?" asked Andrew.

"What do you think it is?" asked Matt, scornfully, although in truth he wasn't sure what a sex pootie was, either. To change the subject, he said: "This sound system sucks." Matt had great contempt for any sound system that was not loud enough to stun cattle.

"Why'd your dad buy a Kia?" asked Andrew.

" 'Cause he's a dork," explained Matt.

Andrew nodded understandingly. His dad was a dork, too. It seemed like everybody's dad was a dork. It amazed Matt and Andrew that their generation had turned out so cool.

"I just hope Jenny doesn't see this car," said Matt.