Flor Did the Right Thing; Esme Did Not

Flor’s palms had been sweating since they entered the gated community and parked to the side of Esme’s house, where they had a clear view of her bedroom window. But if Flor was really honest with herself, her palms had been sweating since she was getting ready at home, rummaging through her closet to find black pants and a black shirt. She wiped her hands on her slacks, the only black pants she could find, which she hadn’t worn since her mother’s funeral.

And now they waited in the dark in John’s black Honda Civic with shiny chrome rims, black leather seats, tinted windows, and a spoiler on the trunk. “Sorry, aunties. I never really have anyone back there,” John apologized, referencing his cramped backseat. “It’s ok,” Flor said. She was seated next to Virgie, whose legs shook and occasionally bumped into Flor’s right knee. Virgie smiled the whole way. She reminded Flor of her now-deceased Maltese mix Dolly whenever she drove Dolly to the beach.

“Ay sus, Virgie, keep still,” Flor scolded her.

“I’m not even moving!” Virgie wailed, smacking her friend’s thigh.

“This reminds me of the road trips I used to take with my family. Our parents always sat me and my twin next to each other in the back seat of the van,” Julie chimed in. 

“You’re a twin?!” John asked.

“Yeah. We’re identical twins.”

“Whoa,” John was astonished.

“Hey John,” Virgie interrupted, “What does ‘Panty Dropper’ mean?” She pointed to the sticker decal on the window closest to her, its letters mirrored from this side of the window, but still legible. She was smiling, stifling a laugh. 

John’s face flushed bright red; even his ears flushed. “Nothing, Auntie!” he said, as he straightened behind the wheel of his car, eyes looking ahead, too embarrassed to face anyone.

“Eww John, are girls dropping their panties in here?” Julie’s face scrunched like she just smelled something bad. These women were all old enough to be his mom, and John hoped he could just politely ignore them as he did her.

“There is not enough space back here for that,” Virgie cackled, smacking Flor’s leg again and then shaking Julie’s shoulder when Flor neither laughed nor acknowledged her joke.

Flor continued to wipe her sweaty palms on the sides of her black slacks and kept her eyes glued to Esme’s second-floor bedroom window. The lights had been off since they arrived two hours ago. They expected Esme to leave home around this time for her usual Friday night bingo, but it didn’t seem like she was home at all. Her new Mercedes Benz wasn’t parked out front.

“Where’s Esme? She should’ve left by now,” Flor interrupted their chatter. At this point, Julie was sharing that she saw a meme on Instagram about millennials eating ass but not the dark part of a banana and John was wishing he’d never been born. 

“Maybe she didn’t come back home after work,” said Julie.

“The casino has a nice buffet. She could’ve gone straight there,” Virgie suggested.

“Her car isn’t here,” John observed.

“Let’s go inside then!” Virgie exclaimed, unbuckling Flor’s seatbelt which she kept on in case they needed to make a quick getaway. Flor yanked at Virgie’s arm before she opened the car door. 

“Hold on. Can I see the plan again?” Flor pleaded. Virgie sighed.

Julie pulled out a blueprint of a floor plan and turned around to face her two coworkers. The ground floor was on the left and the second floor was on the right. Flor had studied it endlessly, but needed to be absolutely sure of where she would be going. She urged Virgie to take a look as well. She pushed the floor plan away and looked out the window instead.

“Why is Esme still gambling if she’s a millionaire now?” Julie mused.

“How else is she going to show off her new car and new bag?” said Virgie, rolling her eyes.

“So remember,” Julie pointed at the red circles she made on the floor plan, “This is where the security cameras and Ring cameras are. If you walk this path,” she traced the path she drew with a blue pen, “You’ll be able to avoid them.”

“How do you know all this?” asked John.

“I cased the house the other day,” Julie beamed.

“Cased?” Flor asked, “What does that mean?” She turned to Virgie, wondering if she knew, but Virgie was busy looking out the window.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Can we go now, Flor?” Virgie whined. 

Flor looked down at her palms on her lap, wondering how she got here. This wouldn’t be happening if she had just kept the money. She couldn’t stop replaying the moment she had found the stacks of cash in the hotel room safe. Her heart had been beating so fast as she had to quickly decide what to do. A coworker could walk in, or the guest could come back, or her walkie-talkie could go off with an urgent command to clean another room or drop off extra towels to another guest. Images flashed through her mind quickly like a slideshow on fast-forward. Images of her children graduating from college without student loan debt, of buying Häagen-Dazs ice cream without her card declining, of buying her daughter Christina the basketball shoes she needed this season. Images of the cross-stitched Ten Commandments that she stared at as a child while eating dinner with “Thou shalt not steal” stitched in red, of her led off in handcuffs by the police and FBI and CIA, of a bloodied Jesus Christ looking down on her from His crucifix and asking her, “What would Jesus do?”

Flor did the right thing. The housekeeping manager, Esme, did not. The day after Flor turned in the money to management, Esme sauntered into the employee cafeteria with a sunny yellow Hermès Birkin embossed like snakeskin. The other managers oohed and ahhed, leaning forward to look at the bag that Esme proudly displayed on the crook of her arm. Flor’s stomach sank as she watched silently from across the room. She no longer had an appetite for the longganisa, pan de sal, Dunkin Donuts donut holes, and a large Pyrex full of rice that the other housekeepers sitting at the round table continuously passed around and offered her.

What if. What if. What if.

Flor wanted to kick herself. She wanted to scream. But none of that would change anything. She looked at Virgie and nodded. She was ready.

“Yehey!” cried Virgie, then she opened the car door. Julie exited as well. “See you soon,” she said to John before shutting the door. He started the car, kept the lights off, and placed both hands on the wheel.

The three women quietly opened the side gate. As planned, Julie stayed by the gate while Flor and Virgie proceeded to the back entrance of the house. Flor led the way, carefully staying on the path that Julie delineated. Both women carried black backpacks. 

Virgie pulled the spare key from her back pocket, which she had never returned to Esme after she cleaned her house two years ago, when her usual housekeeper was on a trip back home to the Philippines. It was a huge risk they were taking–they had no idea whether this key would still work. When Virgie pushed the key into the keyhole, the key didn’t turn. But the doorknob did when she jiggled it with her hand. The door was already unlocked.

“That’s not right,” Flor whispered, tugging at Virgie’s sleeve.

“Never mind, at least we got in.”

“She’d never leave her door unlocked.”

“People forget sometimes.”

Virgie entered the kitchen, fending off Flor’s attempts to pull her back outside. Flor reluctantly followed her. She almost, instinctively, took off her shoes–until she remembered what they were there for. The lights were off, but Esme’s large windows and the all-white kitchen interior brightened the room. The moonlight glistened on the white marble floor and countertops. The kitchen was spotless and sparkly. Not a single small appliance could be found on its countertops–no toaster, no coffee maker, no Airfryer. 

“There’s no way this bitch cooks,” Virgie whispered. Flor shushed her.

 They crossed through the dining room, which had a long rosewood dining table with matching curio cabinets that displayed blue and white china. On the wall was a framed print of The Last Supper and a giant wooden spoon and fork. The room’s lack of windows made it darker and harder for Flor and Virgie to see. Virgie fiddled through her pocket in search of her flashlight, but Flor smacked her arm. “Not yet!” she whispered. 

But that meant they had to move through the house more slowly. Flor spotted the carpeted stairs and ascended, holding on to both guardrails. There wasn’t a sound in the house, except for the tick-tock of a monumental grandfather clock that Flor spotted not far from the dining table.

Flor got to the top of the stairs and walked straight ahead into Esme’s bedroom. Virgie recalled seeing a safe inside Esme’s walk-in closet when she cleaned her home two years ago. Julie’s floor plan showed Flor exactly how to get there so that they could get in and out as fast as they could while contaminating as little of the house as possible with their hair, skin cells, or whatever other genetic material they could shed. They took other precautions–both had their hair tucked fully into black beanies that Julie bought for them, and they wore gloves that they took from the supply closet at work. 

But there was one major point that Flor never resolved: how to open the safe. Virgie assured her over and over that she had a plan for that. “I know a guy who knows a guy who told me how to do it. He said if it’s a home safe, it’ll be really easy to do,” Virgie replied, with the same nonchalance that she had when she talked about her latest date or her eldest son’s stellar report card. 

“But how?” Flor pleaded for more details as they scrubbed the bathtub of the hotel’s penthouse suite.

“Don’t worry about it, mare,” Virgie nudged her friend playfully. “You just use a stethoscope. I’m borrowing Stella’s since she won’t have class that night.”

“Doesn’t Stella think it’s weird that you’re borrowing her stethoscope?”

Virgie shrugged, “She didn’t say anything.”

“Okay, okay. But what if this doesn’t work?”

“Esme’s combination code is probably something dumb like her birthday.”

“Do you know her birthday?”

Virgie paused for a moment to think, then replied, “We can have Julie look it up.”

“Julie only has access to guest info, not employees.”

“She knows a lot of things. How did she even find a floor plan of Esme’s house?”

Virgie stumped her. But Flor brought them back to the subject, “And then what happens if that doesn’t work?”

“We could always carry the safe.”

“Are you kidding?” Flor was aghast, “I hurt my shoulder at work the other month.”

“And I have carpal tunnel. Yet here we are, scrubbing tubs and lifting heavy mattresses.”

They were both silent after that, remembering what they were doing this all for in the first place, imagining what that $5 million – albeit split four ways – would do for them.

Flor and Virgie entered Esme’s dark bedroom. They couldn’t see much, aside from her California King canopy bed with white sheets and a white comforter. Flor raised her finger to her mouth to remind Virgie to stay quiet. Virgie held in every snarky remark she could think of. The wall straight ahead had two doors, both ajar. They walked toward the one on the left.

The walk-in closet was pitch black, so Flor took out her flashlight. Empty space did not exist in Esme’s closet. The racks were packed with clothes, and the shelves above and the space below the clothes were filled with shoe boxes and purses. Virgie reached up to touch a red Michael Kors bag, only for Flor to smack her hand away. 

Flor pointed her flashlight to the back of the closet and spotted the side of a small black rectangular box. “That’s it!” Virgie whispered. They ran toward it.

But when they got closer, they noticed the safe was slightly open. Flor opened it wide and looked inside. The safe was empty.

“Fuck, she probably took it to the bank,” Virgie cried.

“Shh!” Flor shushed her, “That can’t be it. That’s a lot of money to deposit. The bank would flag it.”

“Maybe she’s depositing small amounts at a time.”

“But then she would leave the rest of it in here.”

“Anyway, it’s not here!” Virgie raised her voice again, “There’s no money. Fuck!”

Flor was struggling to stay calm, too. But she had to. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. 

As they both exited the closet, Virgie stopped, “We came this far. We have to look around some more.”

“No, Virgie! Let’s go.”

Virgie walked to the door to the right of the closet and opened it. It was the master bedroom bathroom. And Esme was lying on its tile floor.

The two women screamed. Esme was on her stomach in her work uniform in a pool of red blood. Her head was turned, facing them, and her eyes and mouth were wide open. Her blood spread like shadows during sunset, filling into the grout crevices of the white tile. The back of her shirt was soaked in blood and full of holes, but there was no knife or weapon present.

Virgie grabbed Flor and shook her arm. “What do we do?” she whispered, even though she didn’t have to anymore.

Flor opened her backpack to pull out a walkie-talkie. She pressed the button and spoke, “Julie, this is Flor. Please come up here.”

Silence. The two women looked at each other, wondering and worrying about the normally not-silent Julie being silent.

Then, a beep. “You didn’t say ‘Over.’ Were you done? Over,” Julie’s voice rasped over the walkie-talkie.

Flor pressed the button again, “Yes, that was it! Come up here. Hurry! Over!”

Julie got there quickly, then gasped when she saw what the two were looking at. “Oh my God,” Julie also whispered. Then she turned her head back and forth to look at each of them. “Did you do this?!” Julie cried.

“No! Oh Lord, no,” said Flor.

“And the money is gone,” said Virgie.

“Never mind the money,” Flor snapped, “What do we do? Should we call the police?”

“We don’t even have our phones on us,” Virgie snapped back.

“It’s going to look really, really bad if we call this in. How do we even explain what we were doing here?” said Julie. 

The three of them stared blankly in the direction of the body, not daring to look at it anymore but unable to look away completely. Flor wiped her hands on the side of her slacks, then pulled them up higher on her waist. She’d lost some weight since her mother’s funeral.

“We have to get out of here now,” said Flor, “Julie, go back to the car and make sure John is ready. Virgie and I will clean up.” Julie ran downstairs, no questions asked.

“Clean up?!” Virgie cried, no longer bothering to whisper, “You want us to get rid of the body?”

“No!” Flor said as she rushed out of the room and back downstairs, motioning to Virgie to follow her, “We need to get as far away from Esme as possible. But we should disinfect and get rid of any trace of us being in here.”

Flor led Virgie back to the kitchen, then rummaged under the sink to grab bleach, paper towels, and a trash bag. They ran back to the bedroom, disinfecting the door knobs they touched and the safe. As they headed back downstairs, they sprayed down the stair’s guardrails. Once downstairs, they got on their knees and disinfected the floor they walked on, retracing their steps toward the back door. Then they wiped the back door’s door knobs. Flor and Virgie moved quickly and silently, honing the skills they learned side-by-side as hotel housekeepers. They started work at The Bella Vista on the same day 22 years ago. Flor noticed Virgie from across the room, a pretty and petite morena with long hair that was an orange-tinged brown except for the black roots. Virgie was fidgeting and peeling the polish off her fingernails as the HR manager and the housekeeping manager – not Esme, another woman named Cindy who spat while she talked, yelped like a chihuahua when she was angry, and eventually got fired for snorting cocaine in the laundry room – gave the newly hired batch of housekeepers an orientation on the “The Bella Vista Way.” At the end of the orientation, they informed the new hires that housekeepers must clean rooms in pairs now due to sexual harassment charges against the previous general manager. Flor was paired with Virgie. General managers and HR managers and their housekeeping managers Cindy, Sandra, Bernadette, Tep, and now Esme had come and gone. But Flor and Virgie continued on, still a pair cleaning rooms together. Two women, from the same island, from neighboring hometowns, serendipitously meeting six thousand miles away and becoming best friends.

They reached the side gate and wiped it down. Then they bolted to the car. As soon as Flor slammed the door, John peeled off. He slowed down when they reached the gate, which automatically opened when the car got close. The guard tower was still empty, just like it was when they first arrived. Once the gate opened, John drove off the way he zoomed off the starting line during his high school drag racing days, a speed he wished he could drive when he was parking Ferraris on the night shift.

They were completely silent up until they sped past the gate.

“What the fuck?!” Virgie shrieked, “Oh Lord, what are we going to do?”

“Who could’ve done this?” Julie wondered out loud.

“What if they come after us?” Virgie shuddered.

“Good point. The money is gone, so it’s gotta be someone else who knows about the money. But no one else knows, other than us,” said Julie.

“It could’ve been a random burglary,” John suggested.

“But the house wasn’t broken into. The back door was open,” said Virgie.

“Could’ve been a lucky thief,” said John.

“Wow, we were almost the thieves tonight,” said Julie, with a hint of disappointment.

“There is someone else who knows about the money,” Flor said quietly. Virgie and Julie turned toward her, while John peered at her through the rearview mirror.

“The person who left the money in the hotel room,” Flor said.

Silence filled the car again. Julie let out a big sigh, then said, “His name is Paul Conway.”

“What?” Flor gasped, “How do you know that? You knew this whole time?”

“I looked him up out of curiosity after you told me what room it was.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” said Virgie, kicking the back of Julie’s seat. “No shoes on the seats!” John yelped, then added, “Please, Auntie.”

“I didn’t think it mattered. Esme has the money now. Well, had.”

“Okay, so who is Paul Conway?” Virgie asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to look him up.”

Silence filled the car for the rest of the ride. John dropped them off one by one. Julie first, then Virgie, then Flor. Flor thanked John, then stepped out with her empty backpack in hand. She stood there for a moment, dangling the lightness of the backpack in her left hand. She stared up at her apartment building, a two-story walk-up, though the unit that she and her family lived in was on the basement level and hidden from the street. 

The whole day, her nerves pulled down on her like the tall grass at the farm she grew up on. Grass she would run through as a child, fighting against its resistance with each step. But she was buoyed by the dreams, the possibilities–that she could come home tonight with a pair of new basketball shoes for Christina, or two cartons of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, or the announcement to her family that they would be moving on up, from the basement to the top.