Fifty Grand

Hanson was drunk. He was sixty, trim, handsome, tall, an avid skier. Angela said that he played doctors or lawyers in commercials or occasionally the father of a female lead in television dramas, but not sitcoms as his personality wasn’t large enough for that. He probably thought that being inebriated at nine in the morning was charming, but it wasn’t. I emptied his trash cans, swept his hardwood floor, cleaned his toilet, ran the dishwasher, and wiped the surfaces. He was still in bed and flipping through the channels when I appeared with the vacuum cleaner.

There was a french press filled with cold yellow urine next to the bed when I came in. He pointed at it. I emptied it in the en suite bathroom.

“Giuh hanbac for a hajaa,” he said repeatedly.

It was only when I was leaving that I realized he was saying, “I’ll give you a hundred bucks for a hand job.”

Meth and booze are a killer combination as consistent as cocaine and heroin, so defying Esteban, I put the Ice 9 behind two shampoo bottles on the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet-hopefully he’d need to be reasonably sober to find it.

I closed the front door and walked up the hill to the next residence, an easy one, that of an actor called Bobby Munson who was in L.A. and apparently not coming to Fairview at all this winter. There I did some light dusting and flushed the toilets.

The next house, a weekend retreat for a rich Denver family, was also empty. They had a Dyson vacuum cleaner and it was almost a joy to run that thing around. I dusted, emptied trash, made beds, ate fruit from their fridge. Oranges, grapes, and a kiwi that I lovingly cut, peeled, and diced into quarters. They seemed just the type to have a hidden camera that spied on the help, but fruit was my American obsession and what difference did petty larceny make when I was planning a kidnapping and worse.

Yuri Amatov was a production designer-whatever that is-a skinny, bald man about forty. When I rang the doorbell, he took my arm and led me inside.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Excuse me, señor?”

“Where the fuck is it?” he screamed.

I reached into my messenger bag and brought out the cellophane-wrapped meth. He snatched it from me. “Now fuck off,” he said.

“The cleaning, señor?”

“What part of ‘fuck off’ don’t you understand?”

Another walk. The gradient increased as you went farther up the hill; seemingly the climate zone changed too. The wind was blowing from the north, the temperature had fallen considerably, and the sky was filled with ominous gray clouds.

“Looks like snow,” I said to myself with no excitement whatsoever.

These thoughts left my mind at Youkilis’s house.

Gravel drive. Carved wooden door. Bell. Paul Youkilis came to the door in a sweatshirt, sweatpants, flip-flops.

“You’re late,” he said, looming over me.

“I’m sorry, we-”

Youkilis raised a hand. “I don’t want the details, just get this shit cleaned up. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Sí, señor,” I said.

He smiled and added, “Christ, I sound like such a fucking feudalist. Get this shit cleaned up, please. I can’t work in these conditions.”

“Sí, señor.”

The conditions were Chinese food cartons, newspapers, a couple of beer cans, and what looked like dog excrement in the kitchen.

Youkilis’s house was smaller than Jack’s. A few downstairs rooms painted in bright primary colors and adorned with Mediterranean pottery. The windows looked out on forest and there was no mountain view. I couldn’t tell if this was all he could afford or whether he had just taken it to be next to Jack. Presumably he got 10 percent of Jack’s salary, but how much did Jack make? How much did a second-string actor get in Hollywood? I should probably find out.

Youkilis went upstairs. I’d been cleaning for about fifteen minutes when I became aware that Jack was upstairs with him.

As I was changing the vacuum bag both men came down.

Evidently they had been in the middle of a heated discussion, but now neither was saying anything. Jack was wearing jeans and a blue shirt unbuttoned to the navel. His hair was product-free and he looked tired, frazzled.

Something was going on.

“Plato thought everything had a true self, an ideal form, from which all things deviated,” Youkilis said.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Jack snapped.

“Everything has to be perfect. For a movie to happen, all the stars have to align, there are so many things that can fuck up: the money, the director, the cast. Every single little thing has to be perfect.”

Jack’s face was red. “So what are you saying? I’m trying to read between the goddamn lines here. Have I lost the movie again? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Paul smiled. “Relax, buddy, you haven’t lost anything. Focus still wants to do it. This is just a hiccup. A rag in the gears, not a sabot.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, man! Can you speak English for once!” Jack yelled.