Another Night at the Marco Polo

by Susan Buttenwieser

Someone committed adultery in Room 119. On both double beds and in the shower.

Next door, someone else threw up all over the towels after getting take-out from the Great Wall of China.

And the Total Bolsheviks moved the party to Room 201 when their album release gig finished at the Avalon.

But now it's the next morning and Walter has until 3 p.m. to get all his rooms cleaned. Most days his job at the Marco Polo begins the same, exact way: his buddy Drew tells a hard-to-believe cleaning story while the rest of the housekeeping staff get their carts ready. Today's tale involves walking in on a prostitute servicing a client.

"You're such a fucking liar." Gerri, the manager, sits at her desk, washing down a Drake's Coffee Cake with a 20-ouncer of Diet Dr. Pepper. She used to be the coach for the girl's volleyball team at the high school until her knees gave out a few years back.

"I swear on my mother's grave." Drew has been the source of dubious information since grade school, keeping tabs on parents or teachers having affairs, drinking problems, nervous breakdowns.

"Was it the same prostitute you helped escape out the bathroom window because she was running away from her pimp?" Gerri's frosted fingernails match the highlights of her thick-curled hair that is always pulled back in a scrunchy.

The other cleaners laugh at this.

"Whatever, Gerri, whatever," he snaps on his headphones and wheels his cart out of the supply room.

"What a knucklehead. Kid needs his head examined," she says to no one in particular, brushing crumbs off the mound of paper covering a keyboard. "Okay, people, let's go clean some rooms!"

The Marco Polo is located out on that strip of motels where Route 1 edges the coastline. The single-lane highway starts out hopefully enough, with freshly painted motor lodges and holiday cabins lining both sides. Some even have swimming pools, advertise daily maid service or other amenities like free cable, in-room coffee, 100% refrigerated air. But slowly everything disintegrates as you get farther and farther away from the town beach. Then you hit the boarded up cottages that used to be Kay's Kabins and Efficiencies. And right next door, there at the very end, is the Marco Polo. Once an actual Triple A Diamond-rated motel, it's mostly long-term renters now: homeless families, drug dealers, prostitutes, even a couple of meth labs. There are still enough run-of-the-mill, one-night-only guests to employ a small housekeeping staff. Especially in the summer months when back-packers looking for cheap accommodation or campers needing shelter from the rain saturate the area.

Walter found out about the job back when he was home for Christmas vacation. Drew mentioned they'd be hiring extra cleaners in the summer, that personal references went a long way with Gerri. But during the interview she said he was being considered despite his "questionable taste in friends."

Standing in front of Room 112 with his fully loaded housekeeping cart, he knocks hesitantly. No one replies, but before going in he knocks again, louder this time. He's worked there long enough to know that you never want to surprise the clientele.

A slow drizzle slants against the cart. He presses his ear up against the door to see if he can hear anything, like the creaking of bedsprings or heavy breathing. But there is no sound at all, so he unlocks the door, readying himself for the onslaught inside. He squints into the darkness and flips on all the lights. Then he opens the curtains and windows, trying to get rid of the stench.

The rooms always smell bad, even if there hasn't been a party and no one threw up, even if it's just one person sleeping for the night and nothing else happened. The human body can't help but leave behind a trail of decay. And when you only have to pay $39.99 for a night, most people feel compelled to damage the room, even if just a little bit. The cleaners have sometimes come across discarded pets. Gerri keeps a mental catalogue of everything bad that's happened at the Marco Polo: drug overdoses, heart attacks, even the occasional suicide. Sometimes the police show up, looking for a convict, parole violator, teenage runaway. "Do Not Disturb" signs can hang on doorknobs for days, the occupants paying cash in advance, then one day disappearing altogether.

No one knows whether or not the elderly couple who have owned the place since 1967 are aware of what has happened to it. Or if they care. They are rarely seen, living most of the year now in Florida, leaving Gerri to deal with the day-to-day management.

Before getting started, Walter surveys the room. Clumps of wet towels and condoms dot the floor, cigarette butts swimming in Seven & Seven fill every complimentary plastic cup. Thirty minutes is the most amount of time you are supposed to spend on each room, Gerri explained after she'd hired Walter. It just needs to appear clean, it doesn't actually have to be sanitized. But everyone is offered the chance to have their room serviced, she stressed, including the dealers and the dozen or so homeless families that the city provides shelter for with short-term leases. That's the way we're doing it around here, she'd said, snapping her nicotine-replacement gum.

Walter pulls on his yellow gloves, and although they protect the skin from germs, they do nothing to block out texture. He grabs a garbage bag and tosses in the cups, balls of Kleenex, empty cigarette boxes, peels the used condoms off the rug as if they're chewing gum. Trying not to think about what he's touching, Walter instead tries to visualize Mabel. If you manage to get behind her, you can see her lacy, red thong and the very top of a dragon tattoo peeking out from the top of her jeans. She stuck her tongue out at him earlier this morning while they were stocking their carts with clean towels, toilet paper, individually wrapped bars of soap, plastic cups, and he had to turn away so she wouldn't see him blush. Working the same shift as her is definitely the only job perk. Maybe he'll offer to grab her something from Subway when Gerri sends him over there later on to pick up her Veggie Delite.

A few weeks ago, Walter's girlfriend broke up with him, right before she went back to college. "I just think we need to keep our options open," she'd said as they lay on the sand at the 33rd Street Beach, huddles of mini-bonfire parties going on all around them.

Walter had finished his first year of college without much distinction. Still hadn't declared a major, wasn't on a sports team, didn't write for the school paper, hadn't even signed up for any of the extra-curricular clubs.

It was clear after he'd been home for about a month that his little sisters weren't doing too well without him around. Justine had been suspended so many times that she was repeating 10th grade, and Kayla had dropped out altogether. They were out every night, sometimes getting home at dawn, and his mother had completely lost any authority over them. Walter persuaded them to have dinner at home once in awhile. But when they did, it was a disaster. Justine and Kayla were so rude that they'd reduce his mother to tears, while his littlest sister Mallory begged to eat out of a bowl on the floor like a dog. She was allowed to do it once, and now she'll trade anything for the privilege, even a week's worth of dessert or television. She's only in second grade but seems headed in the same direction as his out-of-control sisters. Just this morning, she refused to get ready for school. He tried everything, but she lay on the ground howling. His mother had already left for work and Walter was running late himself, so he had to ask Kayla to deal with it.

While his mother never came right out and asked him to take some time off from college and help her, she didn't exactly protest when he told her of his plans. Living back at home again felt like these two parts of him, the old Walter and the one he'd become at college, were at war with each other. Even when he was with his high school posse -- Drew, Scott and Timmy-- partying at the 33rd Street beach, Drew's place, or the squatter art loft, he felt somewhat detached, like he was watching a movie of himself instead of being an actual participant in his own life.

Outside, cars slash through puddles and the scent of nearby sea mixes with the staleness of the room as he clears off the bedside table, the desk, and the top of the TV set. The junkies next door are listening to Guns N' Roses at full volume. If this were a regular motel, he would have to go tell them to turn it down.

He wipes a rag along the compressed wooden furniture, the window frame. Then he washes out the ice bucket and coffee pot, refills the coffee supplies, puts a new liner in the trashcan. He sets the remote controls and Bible in their original location, disinfects the telephone receiver and the buttons. The carpeting looks much better after all the garbage has been picked up, and Walter decides he could get away with not vacuuming it. The Hoover must weigh close to forty pounds and barely works anyway.

Walter cleaned a room once while a prostitute watched him from her bed. She sat there naked, wrapped only in a sheet, hair mangled, eating out of a bag of peanut M&M's with chopsticks. The television was on, but she wasn't really watching it, just staring off into space.

When he was finished, she offered him some bourbon, said she was sick of the TV. It was pouring outside and she had piercing blue eyes, taut arms that hinted at the possibility of an amazing body. Besides he'd cleaned almost all the rooms on his list so he decided to stay. One drink wasn't going to hurt anyone. He sat on the other double bed and tried to check her out without her noticing. But she noticed.

"Don't stare at me," she drew the sheets around herself. "I'm not an animal in a zoo!"

"Sorry," Walter concentrated on a patch of rug. His eyeballs seemed beyond his control, like they had a life of their own, lingering on things they shouldn't linger on.

It had been comforting sitting there with this strange woman, listening to the pelting rain against the window, the blue glow from the television the only light in the room. Then it had started to thunder, and she'd put her hands over her ears and bent over, asked him if he could stay until it passed.

For a brief moment, she had sounded just like Mallory, who was always coming into Walter's room during storms. This summer, she'd been waking him up a lot, and thunder wasn't always the cause. Sometimes it was a bad dream, the closet door left open, or even just the wind whipping against the house. Any random weird noise was all she needed to come charging in. "See, there it is again," she'd say, shivering, huddled in his arms. Walter would try to figure out what she meant, but could only hear the quiet that is the middle of the night. She'd only go back to her own room if Walter sat with her until she fell asleep.

He starts in on the double beds, taking off the dirty sheets and pillow cases and replacing them with new ones, avoiding looking too closely as he works. He places a blanket on top, tucks all the bottom corners into the bed using hospital corners. Then he folds the edge of the top sheet and blanket down one inch, centers the comforter, smoothes it over the bed and covers the pillows. Next he pushes a small section of the comforter under the pillows, in an attempt to give it a crisp look, the way Gerri showed him.

The little extras get you the big tips, she was always saying, though Walter had yet to collect more than ten bucks from inside the tiny manila envelopes that they left hopefully on the bedside tables. Often they were empty or filled with dirty tissues, pieces of already-chewed gum.

Changing the bedding always makes him think about true crime, as if he's half-expecting to find a dead body somewhere inside the tangle of sheets and blankets. "Kidnapped Girl Found in Motel Room," Walter makes up headlines as he works.

He's become particularly obsessed with local news, following any story involving murder, corruption scandals, domestic violence. Especially if there's a twist, like when a seemingly decent person does something evil. Is everyone like that, capable of such destruction? Or is it only certain people who just wake up one day and snap? Cracking open a soda, he sits for a minute. Now it is full on raining. "Severed Head Found Inside Mini-Bar," he thinks before tackling the bathroom.

First he turns on the shower and lets it run for a while. That usually takes care of the pubic hair. He gathers up all the dirty towels, used soap and plastic cups. You're supposed to fold the new towels in this certain way, but he's forgotten exactly how. Then he sprays disinfectant cleaner on the tub, the soap holder and the shower curtain. He scrubs the toilet bowl, seat and the outside of the toilet, wipes down the mirror and mops the floor. The last step is leaving enough toilet paper, tissue, cups and soap for the next occupants.

He peels off his gloves and pushes the cart back out into the main room. There, standing in the doorway, is Mallory holding Mabel's hand. She's still wearing her pajamas, jam splotches on the sides of her mouth, exactly the way she looked when he left her. Red rims her eyes the way it does when she's been crying for a long time.

"Your sister left her in lobby," Mabel explains. "Gerri said to tell you that she had enough people to cover for you today. If you need to like deal with this. Or something."

Walter feels his face heating up. "Thanks," he mumbles.

"You okay?" she asks.

"Totally cool," he says too loudly and nods vaguely in her direction.

"Okay then. Guess I'll see you around."

As soon as she's gone, Walter wishes he had thought of something else to say.

Mallory starts crying all over again. "I'm not going to school ever again!" she wails. Snot and tears run down her cheeks, mixing with the ends of her unbrushed hair.

"Since when do you hate school?" Walter grabs a towel from his cart and wipes at her face.

"I don't hate school," her shoulders rack with sobbing. "School hates me. Please don't make me go there, please don't tell Mommy."

"It can't be that bad."

"It is so that bad, Walter. Everyone teases me all the time. Because of the barking."

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes I play the dog game," she looks down, as if she knew it wasn't a good idea, but couldn't help herself.

Walter hugs her again, her head resting on his shoulder, her throttled breath against his neck. He tries to swallow but it's like a golf ball has been shoved way down his throat, picturing her surrounded by taunting children, sitting off by herself at lunch, not talking to any friends all day long.

His mother has been working doubles all month. When exactly was the last time Mallory had a bath? Or ate something besides cereal or toast for dinner?

Walter wets the edge of the towel, gently works away at the crust around her mouth, blots her eyes. Then he runs his fingers through her hair, trying to undo the tangles, pulls it back into a twist, fastening it with a rubber band from his cart. Mallory sits in the middle of the floor and doesn't say anything while he cleans her up. But she's still in her pajamas and has already missed almost the whole morning of school. It's too late to bring her in, too late to do anything but just keep her here, with him.

"How about you help me do my job today, and tomorrow you go to school without any complaining? Deal?"

She nods over and over, her face brightening slightly.

Before moving onto the next room, Walter takes one last look around, just to make sure it's clean enough in there. Wheeling the cart out to the corridor, he closes the door. Behind him lay the room, empty, waiting for it to be night yet again.