She knocks twice, then twice again and calls out "Hello, room service!" just like she has learnt during her half-day of training for this job. She has learnt to say "yes", "right away", "of course" and "not a problem", followed by "sir" or "ma'am", and she has mastered the art of being unfailingly friendly and polite even when she doesn't know exactly what a guest really wants from her.
Luckily, body language is pretty much universal. It helps a lot.
Her job is simple but satisfying. This hotel is in the sweet spot between being too big and too small, between being too busy and being deserted, between being so cheap that it attracts slobs and encourages vandalism, and so expensive that the guests are entitled snobs who take everyone and everything for granted and never honestly say 'thank you'. The pay is decent, the benefits are fair, and there is always enough to do. Bad days here usually consist of cleaning the toilet of a guest with bad aim and sitting through yet another meeting on why worker's unions are the literal antichrist. That is all.
The guests, for all intents and purposes, are 'normal people'. That was a selling point at the job interview.
After three years of working here, she is still surprised at how liberal the 'normal people' are with their personal lives when in a hotel. Most guests leave their wallets and passports, their work-related things - documents, important-looking lanyards, filofaxes, business cards, electronic devices and so on - their toiletries and medication, and their dirty unmentionables for housekeeping staff to find. No one would leave these things out at their own home when other people came over. At a hotel all bets seemed to be off.
But the 'normal people' are surprisingly lax with the other facets of their lives as well.
Aside from stripping bed sheets and pillow cases with very obvious stains created by bodily fluids, she regularly picks up racy underwear, sex toys and accessories strewn across the rooms and ostentatiously draped over furniture. She has taken off handcuffs dangling from bed posts - once she even had to cut them down with a wire cutter - closed and re-shelved erotic books and magazines that lay open on bedside tables, and has thrown untold numbers of used condoms and suspiciously damp paper towels into the waste bins. The large flat-screen televisions in the upper suites have been tuned to porn and saucy movies dozens of times when she came in.
Sometimes she thinks some people
mean
for her - or
some
one - to find their evidence. It often feels like they intentionally leave the mementos of their sexual adventures before they leave the rooms, and then put the 'room service required'-sign onto the door handle as a beacon. An invitation to the cleaning staff like her, to come in, rifle through their debris, and live vicariously through them.
And she does. She tries not to, tries to be impersonal, aloof and unaffected and do her job like a robot would. She tells herself that the things she cleans up are just that - things - and that it is irrelevant how they have previously been put to use. She doesn't want to give the guests the satisfaction of knowing that they succeeded in stirring her up a little. It is reminiscent of the naughty teenagers at her first job at the supermarket, who would buy condoms and cucumbers, or try to buy condoms but then 'change their minds' and purchase zip-loc bags and rubber bands instead. She never wanted to give people the satisfaction then and she doesn't plan on starting now, either.
She imagines The Normal Hotel Guests enjoying their breakfasts and lunches at the restaurant on the first floor and shooting each other private, wicked little glances because they know that, right at that moment, some stranger -
she
- is sifting through their things and reconstructing the events of last night, like some sort of unwilling detective.
Especially when the display in the room is particularly elaborate - colorful, floppy dildos that are shaped like tentacles dangling from the shower walls, or a complete bondage setup made of almost comically thick iron chains, or leather leashes curled on top of the bedside table and two large feeding bowls next to it in a hotel where dogs are not allowed - she furtively glances around for hidden cameras and strives to keep a very straight face.
She sometimes imagines the guests watching her on little screens in adjacent rooms, lying in wait for her to walk into their traps.
She imagines them hoping she would try out the offered toys and clothes and accessories - because some of them are placed and showcased like offerings to her.
Then, she imagines herself walking into those traps, and what would happen after.
As she untangles ropes from the bedposts, she imagines herself lying down on the bed instead, spread-eagled, slipping her hands through the little loops - just for a second, just to see how it feels - and pulling them tight until they close around her wrists.
They are much tighter than she had bargained for. Sweaty panic sets in.
She would writhe around, the knee-length skirt of her cleaners' uniform riding up on her thighs. She imagines the guests coming back and finding her there, catching her in the act, pleased that she took the bait, ready to exploit her self-inflicted helplessness.
As she drapes the delicate thong, garters, garter belt and silk stockings over the back of a chair in order to vacuum the floor, she imagines herself stepping out of her sensible work shoes, panty hose and panties and putting the lingerie on instead. Leaving out the panties, of course.
Just for a moment, to feel beautiful and sexy for a while. Being pantyless only makes it that much better, and worse.
The guests would come through the door and catch her as she stared at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, her crotch obscenely framed and emphasized by all that lace trim and the silky frills around it.
Every so often, she thinks back to that very realistic suction cup dildo she had found stuck fast to the bottom of the shower cubicle. It had almost had her on all fours, bending over all the way, taking the phallus into her mouth and throat while her ass would stick up in the air.
Her mouth slides down on the toy, her lips tracing the veins and ridges, until the bulbous tip nudges the back of her throat. She would gag and choke a little - and try again, try to reach the shower floor with the tip of her nose.
Whoever would have come in would have seen her big, round buttocks, her maid uniform straining over it, and between them the gusset of her sensible white cotton panties with a little wet spot on it that would grow and get darker.
Of course, all of these things are just in her head. She never would and never could.
She loves and hates her job in equal measure.
***
The group made of two men and two women comes around the corner and passes by her and her cleaning trolley on the corridor. She meets their eyes in turn and gives them a polite smile and a "hello, good afternoon", and they give it back.
She is struck by the beauty of the brunette with the high ponytail who is walking in front. Her lipstick is glossy and so red it looks like fresh blood dripping from her sumptuous mouth. Her green-eyed gaze seems to pierce through something within her. Her gait is that of a cat, a sure-footed, graceful strut on black heels.
The other woman is small and delicate in comparison but not any less striking, with almond eyes and hair so black it is almost blue, braided all the way down her back. She is holding on to the other woman's elbow and leaning into her with a dreamy look on her face. They must be best friends, she thinks.
The two men who walk behind are both taller than the women. One of them is broad like a rugby player, the other lither. Both of them have an aura of utter self-confidence and easy grace. The bigger one has his hand around the brunette's upper arm, but it is unclear whether he his leading her or being led.
She watches the group as it vanishes into a room at the far end of the corridor, a room she had skipped on her rounds due to the 'please don't disturb' door hanger dangling from the doorknob.
Immediately, her imagination opens like a flower.
