Steve’s only regret in life was being a failure. But he was proud, which is why he didn’t ask for any help when he left California or for any money when he ran out of it. He chose to take a job as a butler in a small town in Ohio rather than admit defeat.
“I’ve never butled before,” he told Kevin, who made his fortune in the late nineties by patenting the easy squeeze condiment container.
“That’s cool. Up until a couple years ago, I was never a millionaire, but I got used to it.”
Kevin led Steve inside the house and instructed him to take his shoes off. “We take our shoes off in this house. We’re not animals.” They walked down the foyer, toward the kitchen.
“Animals don’t wear shoes, though,” Steve said, admiring the house’s interior.
“I’m not following you.”
“Well, you said, `We take our shoes off here; we’re not animals,’ and I was just commenting how animals don’t wear shoes.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what.”
“Don’t make comments like that.” They stopped in the kitchen. “Usually the chef is here, but he’s not at the moment.” The two stood in silence to really take in the absence of the chef. Kevin breathed deeply and stretched out his arms in a magnificent manner. “I call him Cook.”
“Who?”
“The chef.” Kevin turned his head slightly toward Steve and contorted his face to express puzzlement. “Who else would I call Cook?” It seemed, to Steve, that that was not a good way to start off his new job. He sensed animosity, but only its presence and not its cause.
Kevin brought Steve to his living quarters. “Hey, Cook,” said Kevin, knocking on a door, “Come talk to the new butler while I go make some practice messes for him to clean.”
An elephant of a man in a frock emerged.
“I’m Steve.”
“I’m Cook.” The two shook hands.
“So, it’s just me, you, and Kevin living here?”
“And Trey, the gardener.”
“Why does he need such a large staff if he’s here all alone?”
“I don’t question that sort of thing. All I know is that I get paid for doing very little.”
The conversation ended. Steve went into his room to unpack, but Kevin called from the first floor.
“I spilled some potting soil,” said Kevin. “Clean it up.” Steve did as instructed.
“You’re doing a decent job here, but I don’t like your hair. Go to town and get it cut.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
The two walked out the front door toward the garage.
“Hey Kevin,” said the chauffeur, a short bald man with a bushy mustache.
“Hey Steve.” Kevin’s expression soured. “We can’t have this.”
“What?” asked both Steves.
“I can’t have two people with the same name working for this organization. One of you is going to have to go. Go to town, get a haircut, and I’ll think of something by the time you get back.”
***
Steve entered a hair salon and was greeted by a tall woman sitting behind a counter.
“I’d like a haircut.”
“You came to the right place. I’m Bill.” Steve was puzzled. “It’s short for Billerina.” Steve was led to the back where his hair was washed. Then Bill brought him to her station and asked what he would like done to him.
“Just make me look nice.”
“Sure,” she said, and began her work. “You know what would go well with your new haircut?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “Financial independence. Tell me, do you use soap?” Another rhetorical question. “Of course you do. Everyone does. It’s the one item that always sells, but it’s still expensive. I get it cheap, though, because I get it straight from the manufacturer. No middleman means I get big savings. I get all sorts of stuff that way: pants, cereal, and even vitamins. My whole family does the same thing and so do my friends. Plenty of people do it and you can too.” It took half an hour to cut Steve’s hair and that was just enough time to get him into Amway. Steve bought himself a start-up kit, some soap, and planned a meeting at Kevin’s house. But Steve was no dummy; the meeting was scheduled in two weeks so that there was enough time for him to get comfortable. He’d be a fool to put his job in jeopardy so soon.
The two Steves returned to the mansion, one with more stylish hair and the other with ketchup on his shirt. Kevin led them to the backyard where he had assembled an obstacle course worthy of Nickelodeon.
“First, you do two laps around the house, then you climb the wall, slide down the pole, crawl under the barbed wire, climb the ladder, and then slide down into the kiddy pool filled with vegetarian baked beans.”
“Screw this job,” said the chauffeur and left.
“Great. Who wants beans? Trey, clean this up.”
“Whoa, just because it’s on the lawn doesn’t mean the gardener cleans it. Make the butler do it. That’s why you got him.” Everyone looked at Steve, who immediately got to work. It was Steve’s first official task as a butler and it made him realize that he didn’t negotiate his wage. What’s a fair fee for such degrading work?
“Fifty dollars a day!” exclaimed Kevin when presented with the idea. “Okay.” And so it was settled. All that remained for Steve was meeting the rest of the help.
***
Trey, the gardener, treated Steve like an intruder, which was expected since he walked into his room uninvited.
“We knock around here,” said Trey, a young man of medium build with shoulder length hair and a penchant for denim.
“I did. You didn’t hear me because your music is so loud. What are you listening to?”
“Napalm Death.” Steve grimaced. “They were the first grind band. You like grind?”
Steve thought for a moment, during which three songs had played and a fourth had started. He shook his head.
“No? They’re probably too technical for you. Let me put on something more melodic.” Trey put on some death metal.
“I think I hear Kevin being murdered downstairs. I’m going to go make sure he’s okay.”
“That’s just the vocalist.”
Steve made for the door nonetheless. “I’ll make sure just in case.”
Walking toward the first floor, Steve looked out the window and noticed some bright lights flashing from the neighbor’s house. He decided to investigate, observing on the way over that a city block could fit in the space that separated Kevin from his neighbors.
“Are they having a rave?” thought Steve, peeking over the metal fence from a tree.
“Get out of the tree,” demanded Kevin, causing Steve to fall out of it. “I don’t like to use this thing at night. It wakes up the neighbors,” Kevin explained, his voice followed by the feedback of his bullhorn.
The sprinklers turned on the way back to the house.
“Do they always go off at ten?” asked Steve.
“They’re motion activated.”
“That must waste a lot of water.”
“Usually people don’t venture into sector ZZ9 Plural Alpha.”
Kevin then left for the evening, as he often did. Steve didn’t know where he went, and neither did the rest of the help.
***
Steve awoke at nine and was instructed to clean the entirety of the house. Three days of the same routine followed.
“You have now mastered the art of cleaning my house,” said Kevin.
“Okay,” replied Steve.
“So you can just open the door and answer phones now.”
Bored with daytime television within an hour, Steve decided to interact with the rest of the help. He found Trey in the outer region of the yard.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve been watching this house for the last couple of days,” began Trey, “And I’ve noticed that there’s some weird shit going down inside.”
“Such as?”
“First it looked like a party. All these chicks and dudes in bathing suits, dancing and boning, but then yesterday they all seemed pensive and at night they had what looked like a pagan ceremony.”
“You mean you think they sacrificed someone?”
“I don’t know, but tonight Cook and I are going to sneak in. You should come.” Steve agreed.
There was no avoiding the automatic sprinkler and both Steve and Trey returned to the house ridiculously wet. Kevin was waiting.
“Question: what do you think of the rodent?”
“Cute,” answered Steve.
“No, I mean as a persona. If you were approached in a dark alley by a man dressed as a rodent, would you be intimidated?”
“Not at all. Why?”
“No reason.” Kevin walked off toward the basement.
Steve had noticed that Kevin had a propensity for odd behavior. It was only an hour before that that he had seen Kevin walking around the house with a grappling hook. When Steve questioned him about it, he replied, “What hook?” and continued on his way. But there was no time for thinking about such things at the moment.
“We’ll meet in the foyer in six hours,” instructed Trey. Perhaps there was time for contemplating such things, but Steve choose not to instead.
***
The help met. Each was dressed in dark clothing to blend in with the night. The journey there was simple, as was entering the neighbor’s house. Their investigation, however, was cut short.
“What are you doing here?” whispered a man clad in tropical attire.
“Nothing, we were just–”
“Well, you’re not supposed to be here. This is a closed set.” The three looked puzzled. “This is the house from Promiscuous Manner.”
The help was being escorted out of the house when, perhaps caused by the sound of their footsteps, they were approached by the entire cast of Promiscuous Manner, each demanding something different.
“Get me a jacket, please. They won’t let me wear anything but this bikini top.”
“What’s the news on the outside? They haven’t told us anything in over sixty days.”
“Oh, God! Can you get me some normal food? They feed us nothing but aphrodisiacs and I cannot eat anymore oysters.”
The following morning, Kevin called the help together, and it looked like he had found out about the previous night’s tomfoolery, but really he was announcing his departure for a location he refused to disclose. He was in too much of a hurry to elaborate or to specify who was in charge.
Steve saw this as the perfect opportunity to have his Amway meeting. Trey and Cook, not knowing that they both had the same plan, invited people over and were going to pretend to be millionaires.
At seven, when most families had dinner, Billerina and her business associates arrived.
“Have you got any leads?” she asked Steve, referring to potential Amway clients.
“No, I was here all this time.”
“Well, you can just watch.”
Bill and her cohorts then began calling various people that they had met and asking them if they would be interested in what Amway had to offer. The results were marked down on a white board in the categories of hits, misses, and flushes. A hit was when someone was interested, a miss for unanswered calls, and a flush if someone requested that they never be contacted again.
Then, around eight, Trey’s friends showed up. They were unable to refuse to view the Amway presentation.
“Wait,” interrupted Trey, “How is this not a pyramid scheme? You drew one right there.”
“No,” insisted Bill, “this is just a hypothetical hierarchy. It can just end with you, if you want.”
“Right, but then I’m someone’s base.”
That’s when Cook and his buddies showed up. They took one look at the board, saw the triangle, and walked right out the door.
It was an uneventful evening, however, and no one mentioned it until Kevin came back and tried making some phone calls.
“Why isn’t anyone answering my calls?” he asked Steve, who shrugged his shoulders in response.
“What’s up with all of these newspapers you’ve got?”
“Nothing. Just some local papers.”
“None of them are from around here, though.” Steve examined a front page. “Masked man fights gang war?”
“Never mind that,” said Kevin, attempting to digress. “What about all these phone calls someone made while I was away?”
Steve eyed a nearby clock. “It’s noon. I always clean the kitchen at this time.”
“No, you can’t. Cook’s making my lunch in there.”
“What’s that?” asked Cook, hearing his name from afar.
“I want to know who made all these calls while I was out.”
“Oh. It was Steve and his Amway pals.”
“Amway!” Kevin exclaimed. “Oh, shit. I hope the neighbors didn’t hear that. That’s why no one will answer my calls. They think I’m trying to push Amway. You’ve ruined my reputation in this town.”
“No, no.”
“Yes, yes. I have to move now.”
Sensing his job safety was in peril, Trey re-assured Kevin that he could have his number changed and that that would fix everything. It was not so. The number was different, but the name remained the same on the caller ID.
“I will leave this town,” Kevin told the help. “I shall take all that I own and flee.”
“Us too?” asked Trey.
“Yes, you two.”
It was only on the day of the move that Steve found out he lost his job.
“Where do I sit?” he asked in reference to the moving van.
“You’re not coming. I told you when you asked if I’m taking you with me. I said two.”
“Not too?”
“No. Sorry.” Kevin closed the door and Steve made a sad face. Then Kevin rolled down his window. “Actually,” he began, prompting Steve to smile, “I’m not sorry. This is all your fault.”
It was a valuable experience for Steve, and later, when people would ask him how he got the money to get back home, he would lie and say he was a man whore. Better that than admitting to being in Amway.
