Red Wheelbarrow 2008 text FINAL REVISED.indd - De Anza College

Trish | Tamika Hayes
Trish was the prostitute that I loved the best. I wasn’t one
of her clients—I was just a girl who worked the front desk at the
hotel where she plied her trade. Like the other women who received
customers at Homebridge Suites, Trish always paid for her room in
cash, often only after an assistant manager had been dispatched to
knock on her door. Unlike the other ladies, who usually dumped a
wad of greasy bills directly onto the desk, Trish always brought me
her balance in a neat white envelope. I appreciated not having to
handle currency that had been…well, you know, I tried not to think
too hard about where it had been.
When I took the job, I didn’t know that there would be
prostitutes involved. After I was expelled from Yale that May, I had
flown to Minnesota on a whim, too proud to move back home to my
parents in San Jose and too poor to afford a place of my own in the
Bay Area. My limited and admittedly hasty research indicated that
the cost of living in a Twin Cities suburb would be manageable for
a college dropout. And it turned out be totally affordable indeed,
provided I was willing to forego luxuries like a bed. On the way
home from buying a sleeping bag for my new place, I spotted a “Help
Wanted” sign in the window of Homebridge Suites, which was
located just three short blocks away from my apartment complex.
Frank Waterford, the manager who hired me, had a head
full of lush white hair, a lineless face, and the trim elegance of a film
star from a bygone era. I adored him immediately. For my interview,
he bought me lunch at Chili’s and we ate at the bar. He cupped his
chin in the palm of one hand while he popped a maraschino cherry
in his mouth with the other. “Leila is such a lovely name,” he said,
extricating the cherry stem from his lips. “One of the cleverest
students I ever taught was a slip of a girl named Leila.” He told
me that he was fluent in Farsi and that he had once been a tutor for
the children of the last Shah of Iran, a fact that I found both bizarre
and delightful. Frank then held forth at length about his extensive
travels, his legendary dinner parties, and his incomparably wonderful
teenage son, Keith. Almost as an afterthought, he mentioned the job
requirements and explained that the rooms at Homebridge Suites,
with their kitchenettes and separate dining areas, were designed to
accommodate business travelers who needed to work in the Twin
Cities for weeks or months at a time.
“I’m giving you this job, my dear,” he nodded decisively,
“and we’re glad to have you. It’s all easy-peasy—check folks into
the hotel, check them out, and try to keep them happy in between.”
He peered over the rim of his soda tumbler and lowered his voice
Red Wheelbarrow | 53