The Sapphire

Frank was so mad about the popsicle. Dramatic mad. But he was the one who wanted to do this during a heatwave. Did he expect me to sit in a hot sedan for who knows how long without even a teeny, tiny bit of refreshment? He was the one who asked if I wanted to stop for anything.

“Coffee.” He grumbled. “Something like coffee. You know, something like grown-ups would get.”

Whatever. A minute or so after he left the car with a scowl of disgust on his face, I had to concede his point. My hands were sticky and red, but my fingertips were delightfully cool. They were also incredibly wet. The wrapper did not make for a good hand wipe. The hand sanitizer kind of made everything messier and fruit juicy redder. I couldn’t put my mask back on without the risk of coating my ear lobes with cherry bomb-red corn syrup. Not my finest moment. I stuck the popsicle stick under the sun visor, wadded the hand sanitizer-soaked wrapper into the smallest orb possible, and hid the evidence of my poor decision in the side door’s cargo net pocket. I planned on chewing the popsicle stick later. I wiped my hands on my jeans. They came back fuzzy but at least that mitigated some stickiness. All that done, I tried to concentrate and do my job.

Frank had us park across from the hotel and about 20 feet from the corner of Durango and Mission. This put the hotel entrance behind me, so I had to keep checking the rearview for his signal. It wasn’t the most luxurious hotel. And honestly, it wasn’t the greatest plan. We were desperate and times were rough so we actually believed it could all work out.

The Hotel Sapphire had quick freeway access, which was good for us and for the people who decided to risk a night in the place. Frank and I had met there three years ago, right after I got out of the Navy and was trying to save money for college. He never asked me about the Navy or the Persian Gulf or anything like that and I was glad. Frank had never gone to Vietnam. Although, if he had ever told anyone that he did, those people would have probably believed him. I think he may have worked at The Sapphire since 1972. He never remembered its glory days or remarked on them. It was always a bit seedy and so was he.

Frank was a front desk clerk and I was maintenance. He wore his grey hair in a ponytail and kept his aviator shades on all night. The Sapphire was the kind of place with plexiglass windows between him and the guests who paid cash. It was also the kind of place that still had ashtrays near the elevators. A few of the beds in the corner rooms would take quarters and start to shake. At 5 pm, everything smelled like Lysol. At 2 am it was a pungent mess of menthol, Cool Water, weed, and urine.

A few years ago, the area around the freeway started getting trendy. Art galleries first. Craft beers next. A bike lane. Better bus service. Police started showing up regularly to chase the homeless people away. A creepy mural of smiling kids and a big blue-and-yellow flower with a twisted stem popped up on the brick wall near the parking lot not far from where I sat in the sedan. Before the pandemic, city leaders had started talking about paving the street with some kind of special asphalt that absorbs and filters rainwater. People were excited about a craft market that was set to open on weekday evenings. The hotel owners started expecting me to actually maintain The Hotel Sapphire. Frank had to learn how to accept digital payments. It got rough.

Still, The Sapphire as we knew it held on. Our supervisor left us sticky notes about what needed to be done. Toilets that needed snaking. Lights that needed fixing. By December of last year, the sticky notes had become actual memos. Then the memos became letters. Then the letters became serious.

No more taking cash under the table. No more taking equipment, microwaves, or TVs home. Not even the ones from the vacant rooms and not even if we were going to return them. The housekeeping staff wasn’t allowed to smoke. Someone new came in to manage them, which was ridiculous since Pam, Jodi and Henrietta had been taking care of everything just fine for decades. They weren’t allowed to have their own chill room anymore. They had to take the stereo out of there and the lounge chairs. Our barbecue area near the patio had to go. It was getting so rigid. Frank and I weren’t happy about it.

By February a new boutique hotel popped up in the building on the corner of Durango and Mission. Then the building’s side that faced the parking lot was painted with that creepy mural. I looked at it from my seat in Frank’s sedan for what felt like hours. The hotel was the kind of place where traveling hipsters and their dogs would spend the night. There was valet service and security. Some kind of pastry shop opened up next to it. The whole atmosphere made our customers nervous. They didn’t like being appreciated for an irony of which they were unaware.

Then the new supervisor got rid of Pam and Jodi and Henrietta. Just like that. They were gone. No one said anything to me and Frank, though. I guess some other housekeepers showed up after our night shift. We didn’t know. No one told us anything. Or maybe they did but Frank wasn’t into emails.

At any rate, the pandemic came. And that was all the owners needed to get rid of us for good. We waited all March for the other shoe to drop. But the thing is, our customers kept showing up. So Frank kept taking the cash. But last night when we showed up to work we couldn’t get in. We were locked out. There was orange tape outside the door. Our keys wouldn’t work. That’s when Frank came up with a plan.

We got his sedan and went to the U Haul rental place. We got one of those trailers. We planned on pulling up a little ways from the front entrance. That’s why I was at the corner of Durango and Mission. I was sitting near the creepy mural watching the boutique hotel's valets run from the parking lot to the mural building and from the mural building to the front curb and then to the parking lot. There were about three of them. Two with dark hair and one with red hair. Just jogging in their black sneakers and dress pants and some silly blazer. While I watched the college-aged runners and peeled lint from my fingers with my teeth, Frank was trying to bust into The Sapphire.

He was going to get in through some back way that he said used to be a delivery entrance. Once inside, he was going to pop the lock and give me the signal. He would wave a red bandanna out the front window and then I would drive to the alley. Then we’d load up the Uhaul with any electronic stuff we could get our hands on. Then Frank would pull all the cash out of his hiding places. I assumed he would share that with me, but looking back now that was probably only my assumption. Or maybe I’m saying that to make myself feel like the victim. I am not sure. All I know is that this is how it actually happened and I wasn’t there for Frank.

The popsicle melted down. My hands were fuzzy and sticky. The popsicle stick was in the sun visor. I struggled with my mask because I cared about not getting the crazy virus even though Frank thought it was a hoax. I admired the red-headed valet’s red mask as he strode to and fro. I also kept an eye on the rearview.

Honestly, there was too much red. The red-headed valet, his red mask, my red fingers, the red setting sun, and the red bandanna. It all got to be a bit much so I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Frank’s red bandanna was still not waving in the window. When I looked through the windshield the red-headed valet was on his hands and knees. His brown-haired colleagues kept up their pace, skipping past and around him. One touched his shoulder briefly, to acknowledge his struggle I suppose.

The redhead's hands kept skimming the surface of the parking lot like he was conjuring up some dead thing. I almost expected dry ice fog to start coursing through the special asphalt. Then he pulled his mask down and I noticed that he was either praying fiercely or cursing fervently. I looked in the rearview. Still no bandanna. No lights were on in The Sapphire either. Maybe that was something I should have paid a bit more attention to, but I was caught up in the redhead's drama. I hadn’t thought much about the possibility of Frank undergoing anything more serious than another cigarette break in the alley for old time’s sake.

I rolled down the window for a better look at the parking lot. The redhead's hands were still held above a grate. One of the other valets stood behind him. The brown-haired valet shrugged and went back to the mural building.

I glanced back. Still no bandanna.

I looked ahead and leaned out the window. The brown-haired valet jogged back with one of those claw things that short people use when they are stocking shelves. The red-head shook his head and laughed. It was a quick, breathy laugh. The brown-haired valet shrugged again and kept jabbing the ground with the claw. Then he shook his head and started back to the mural building again.

I glanced back at The Sapphire. Still no bandanna. My eyes were starting to feel grainy and irritated. I couldn’t rub them on account of my fuzzy fingers. I called out.

“Hey!”

The red-haired valet looked up.

“Hey!” I called out again. “You lose something down there?”

One second before he yelled back I realized it must have been a set of keys. Stupid. I should have realized that at once, I thought. Now I realize that there were quite a few other things I should have realized.

I had pulled down the sun visor for some shade. I felt like I was seeing all kinds of refractions from the sunset. Like a disco ball from The Sapphire’s glory days. Blue, red, and white and orange tints. Then I saw the sticky popsicle stick. I almost put it in my mouth. Instead, I got out of Frank’s sedan and started walking, stick in fist, toward the red-headed valet.

I was down on my stomach next to the grate when the first sirens came up the street. When I heard tires squeal I looked up because I thought some car in the parking lot was going to hit me. The red-haired valet said, “Don’t worry. It’s nothing. Do you almost have it?”

I almost did. Surprisingly it wasn’t the sticky popsicle stick that managed to get ahold of the key fob. The stick had managed to move the fob from behind a concrete lip below the grate. Yet, it was a miraculously clingy piece of sticky lint dangling from my index finger that made the final grab possible. The red-headed valet let out a whooshing shout. He thanked me and tossed me a wet napkin. He reached for the key and ran off. The whole good deed and its aftermath lasted only fragments of a second.

I was on my stomach getting ready to push off from the ground when I heard Pam, Jodi and Henrietta scream with hysterical joy. Jodi clapped and Pam joined in. Together it was some kind of 2-2-3 rhythm. Henrietta wasn’t joining in because her hands were clasped to her chest and stomach as laughter rolled across her body. And Frank was there too, standing between two cops with his hands behind his back. He was wearing his baseball cap, ponytail, aviator shades, and his underwear. Briefs. I wish I had never seen it.

Maybe, if Frank had a smartphone he could have texted me for help moments before Jodi put the blindfold on him and refused to take it off. Or maybe he could have live-streamed his ordeal. He could have captured the moment when his biggest fantasy turned into nothing more than a wedgie from Henrietta. Or maybe, if Frank had a smartphone he would have known about the MeToo hashtag and would have had a moment or two of quiet reflection on his past behaviors. But probably not. Truth is he really did enjoy those decades of talking to Henrietta’s cleavage, suggesting foursomes in the chill room and skimming housekeeping’s tips.

I was unaware of any of this. I had no clue at all. If Jodi hadn’t nudged Henrietta and if the three former housekeepers had not started walking toward me in the parking lot, then I never would have known at all. I had never noticed their discomfort around Frank. I had never noticed how they never approached him without at least one of the other housekeepers. I had never noticed that Frank was never actually invited into the chill room, even though Jodi, Henrietta, Pam, and I had spent hours in there on slow nights. I had no idea. And then the three of them were walking toward me with a triumphant, adrenaline-fueled power that could have sent me straight into that grate. But they weren’t on the attack. They had me stand up. They looked me up and down with pity in their eyes. They had me lean against a dumpster near that mural flower’s creepy stem and they educated me. They told me about Frank. They told me about the tips. They told me they would let me go. But they held me with their eyes for an uncomfortably long and silent time before Henrietta finally said, “Pay attention next time.”

They left me feeling as if I were a waste of their time.

The cops left with Frank. I don’t know what he was charged with but I just hoped he wouldn’t call me. I stood in the parking lot and watched as Henrietta got into the sedan and pulled into the alley. The lights were on at The Sapphire but I am guessing it was an empty shell by morning. I wouldn’t know. I had enough cash for another bag of popsicles. I held onto a wet napkin from the mural hotel, glancing at the ink scrawl that slowly grew larger and less legible. The night was young and in only one hour the red-headed valet was done with his shift.