Chapter 23

Dennis was gone for a week, then extended his business trip to include a week in Taipei. Marqi had no idea what he could possibly be doing there, but his penchant for hookers made her think uneasy thoughts. She sat at home whittling her fingernails with her teeth, waiting for the phone to ring.

She felt sick every time she thought about school. She was already regretting her decision to leave. What had she been thinking? And she definitely felt weird living in Dennis’s house—especially when he wasn’t around. When it came right down to it, she hardly knew the man. He could be her biological father for all she knew; he was certainly old enough to be, if not her mother’s type.

Marqi forced herself to stop biting her nails. Yesterday there had been some odd kerfuffle at the front door, but she’d only arrived downstairs in time to see a black car driving away. She knew it wasn’t Dennis’s town car, largely because she specifically went to the garage to check. Sure enough, it was parked where it had been all week.

If the grounds hadn’t been so oversized, she would probably have gone stir crazy by now, but given the manor’s floor plan, she knew there were rooms she hadn’t even seen yet. She tried to explore, but it felt empty and vaguely cold. She went to the windows and checked the view from every angle. It seemed as though Dennis hadn’t had time to improve the grounds. Everywhere she looked she saw barren landscape with few trees and dead grass. She knew he had a gardener; or she thought so. She thought she’d seen him. Yes… Because directly off the patio and in the front of the house, there were topiary shrubs and a little bit of planned plantings. But she knew that Dennis owned several acres; there wasn’t another house for miles. Surely he intended to improve the property past the edge of the pool?

She sighed and went back to chewing her nails. She discovered they’d already been bitten to the quick. She pulled her fingers away and headed back to the kitchen. Mei, the housekeeper, seemed to have recovered from her bout of friendliness and was back to giving Marqi the cold shoulder. Marqi didn’t think she’d ever understand the woman, but she still made her best efforts to be courteous to her.

“You want something to eat?” the woman asked, drying her hands on a dishtowel.

“No, thank you,” Marqi said. “I’m just going to make myself some tea.”

She retrieved the kettle, filled it with water, and took it back to the stove. She cranked up the burner and stood idly nearby while she waited for the water to boil.

“Do you want some?” she asked.

Mei shook her head.

“All right,” Marqi said, moving to the cupboard in search of a mug. She found one, then fished in the next cupboard for a teabag.

“Not that kind,” the woman said, appearing unnervingly close to Marqi’s elbow. “Here.”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a small tin of loose tea. “This kind is better.”

“Thank you,” Marqi said, still startled by this woman’s unusual habits. The kettle whistled and Marqi quickly removed it from the heat. She snapped off the stove and was pleased to see Mei fetching a second cup and a little teapot from another hidden spot in the kitchen. She let the woman take over the tea preparation, then added cookies to the tray and carried the whole thing into the small dining area to the left of the kitchen.

“So…what are you doing here?” the housekeeper asking, giving Marqi that same scrutinizing look she had on the night they had first met. Thinking of that made Marqi blush and stutter something unintelligible. The woman shook her head. “No, I mean… what… are…you…doing?”

“What do you mean?” Marqi frowned.

Mei looked at her as though she were an idiot. “I am here to work. Are you here to work?”

“I don’t know. I guess I should. You want me to clean the bathroom?”

“No!” Mei snapped, looking offended. “I mean…your other work.”

“I am not a hooker!” Marqi reiterated.

“No, no!” Mei said at once, looking almost frightened. “Your…school?”

“Oh. That. No, I’m not going to school anymore.”

“Why not? You graduate?”

Marqi laughed out loud. Then she stopped. “Oh, you’re serious. Well, no. No, I didn’t graduate. I just…left.”

It secretly killed her to think of herself as a dropout, and she sure as hell couldn’t face saying it out loud.

“So, when you going back?”

“Um…I don’t know. Never?”

“Never? What will your parents say?”

“Well, my father’s totally out of the picture; I’m not sure who he is really…” Marqi said, turning scarlet as she rushed onward, “and my mother’s moved to France with some guy she met on the internet.”

Mei looked horrified.

“No, really, it’s fine,” Marqi insisted. “What about you? Are your parents proud of you?”

The housekeeper snorted. “I have no parents. I doubt it would be their ambition for me to clean a master’s house. I should be mistress of my own house. Someday I will be.”

“Oh?”

Mei clammed up suddenly, as though she’d said too much. Marqi smiled at her encouragingly.

“So are you going to school then or what?”

“School? What for?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you want,” Marqi said, pouring the steeped tea into her cup and adding honey.

Mei drank her tea without embellishement, hot from the pot. “I don’t know what.”

“Well, what are you interested in?” Marqi prodded, taking a test sip. She decided it was too hot for the moment and pushed it aside in favor of a cookie.

“School is too expensive,” the housekeeper said dismissively.

“That’s what loans are for,” Marqi said, ruefully thinking of her own.

“No. No debt. Debt is bad. Debt breeds bad karma.”

“Really? Huh. I’m screwed.”

“Yes,” her companion answered, her lips twitching in amusement, “in more ways than one.”

“Mei!” Marqi grinned, laughing at the woman’s joke. “Are you teasing me?”

“Hey, if the stripper shoe fits…”

“I’m not a stripper!”

“I know; I know,” Mei said, smiling a little. She took another sip of tea and said, “So if you’re not a hooker, and you’re not a stripper…”

“Yeah?”

“What are you?”

Marqi scrunched up her face. That was a very good question.