Note: The Shadow’s Name has been cut in two due to length. This is part 1.
Nora shows up to work bone tired, but ready. She pushes down the guilt of being at the hotel instead of home, where she'd left her teenage daughter to take care of her younger sick brother.
"I'll take care of Matt," Soledad said. "It's better for me to miss school than you miss work."
Nora hates that she is right. She wants to do more for her family. Sleeping with Matteo's fevered cheek pressed against her chest last night hadn't felt enough. She wants to stay and make him soup. Brush his hair while they watch mid-day telenovelas. She wants to let her eldest focus on school.
Maybe this year after her birthday Soledad could get a summer job, but for now it's just Nora paying the bills. So she kissed her daughter on the forehead, her sick young son on the cheek, and trekked to work.
The hotel backroom for the housekeepers is small and smells of Lysol and lingering sweat. Nora wearily takes off her coat and heads for the one employment perk provided - a coffee machine. It'll be weak, but better than nothing.
Her shift manager eyes her with a small amount of pity. "Dias, Nora."
"Dias, Stephanie."
Stephanie is as white as they come, and one of the few salaried housekeeping staff. She's new and moderately kind. At least, she's made an effort to learn basic Spanish.
Nora watches her coworkers join her in the backroom, looking for new faces. Turnover is high. People move, get better jobs, get married, have kids, burn out, have medical issues, lose their car and thus their transport. There's always someone looking for a job to replace them, happy to have a small paycheck versus any paycheck.
None of them are officially on payroll, so the hotel doesn't care about their immigration status. They don't get sick days, or holidays. Miss too many days in a row, and you're replaced. But every day, you go home with cash in your pocket.
This morning, the group of hotel maids, and one lad, is small. The roster has been shrinking faster than Stephanie has found new staff, and Nora is feeling the strain. Less coworkers means more rooms to clean, but they're never given more time. For every twenty minutes she's behind Stephanie's schedule, Nora makes $5 less. But if she slacks off, if hotel guests complain about a room she was assigned, Nora's docked $10.
When you're making $100 a day, every dollar less is felt.
A comfortable day is eleven rooms in a six-hour shift. Nora is constantly busy, never stopping, but she's familiar enough with the routine and rooms that thirty minutes is all she needs to change the linens, empty the trash, mark what kitchen items someone else needs to restock, vacuum the small spaces, and give the surfaces areas a basic clean. Sometimes the six hours isn't enough, if there's a really messy room or the timing between guest checkout and her arrival doesn't align, but she strives to never go over by half an hour.
But last week Nora was assigned thirteen rooms. Some of them hadn't been vacuumed. Others, she only cleaned the bathroom, not the desk counters. Once or twice, in a rush at the end of the shift, she hadn't changed the pillowcases. She hasn't gotten complaints yet, but she feels like it's coming.
Nora stands straight, trying to banish defeated thinking. Sure, she's tired. And achy. And worried she's caught whatever illness Matteo has. But Soledad isn't giving up her day at school for Nora to bring home less than full pay.
Except, as Stephanie hands out printouts of the rooms they've been assigned, Nora sees a red mark at the top of her sheet.
-$20
Under that is a circled sixteen. The count of what she is expected to do today. Nora does the math in her head. Twenty-two minutes to clean each room. Twenty, if two of those minutes is the travel time between rooms. She looks up at Stephanie, but the woman is standing stiffly, looking down the hallway, refusing to catch anyone's eyes.
Nora quickly glances at the sheet of the woman next to her. Fifteen rooms. With a negative thirty to start.
Nora is sure, in Stephanie's own way, she's trying to be kind in a bad system. $60 a day with the likelihood of less is untenable. There are better jobs.
If her co-workers go to greener pastures, there'll be more rooms for Nora to clean.
She doesn't know where else to work.
She ignores the aches in her body and quickly overstocks her cart; she wants to minimize trips to grab new shampoos and soaps. Then, she heads toward the elevator.
She shuffles to the first room on her list. They're not checking out today, and there's a do-not-disturb sign on the door. Nora thanks God for the break and pushes her cart to the next room to knock.
"Housekeeping," she calls. No answer. Nora slides her electronic key in the lock and opens the door.
The smell of excrement hits her. One of the beds is completely stripped, linens bunched on the floor. There are runs in the curtains, short hair floating on the air-conditioning breeze. When Nora pokes her head into the bathroom, she finds a broken bar of soap in the sink and next to it a half an open can of tuna. There’s the flash of an orange feather behind the door, and smelly surprises among the floor sheets.
Someone snuck a cat into the hotel for the two days they'd been here.
This is not a twenty-minute job, or even a forty minute job to borrow the time from the first room. She needs to get rid of all evidence of the cat, vacuum and shampoo the carpets and clean all the crevices for cat hair and dandruff. To do this room right she'd need at least sixty minutes, but she's got thirty-seven and she's already starting at $90 today and what if Matteo needs medicine and Soledad needs to take another day off of school and Nora finishes so late she goes home with zero. It'd be better to take the dock for tomorrow, but to miss a room this bad might get her fired.
She doesn't have time to cry, but Nora can't help the burning tears falling down her cheek. She snaps her gloves on, crying as she dumps the trash into her cart, stuffing the cat-urine filled sheets into trash too. She's tired and sore and her face feels hot, and maybe she's also suddenly allergic to cats based on how her nose keeps running.
She's convinced the sudden man in the room is a stress-hallucination until he touches her, hand over hers as she reaches for the spray bottle at her hip.
Nora is five four, but he comes up to her shoulder. His skin is darker than hers, his hair thin with a mix of gray and black. There's a strength to his grip, but what makes Nora pause is the smoothness of his palm, the gold in his eyes. And how, despite the unnatural color, his eyes are familiar.
"I can help you," he says.
"Que?"
He switches easily to Spanish, as if Nora's question was due to a lack of understanding instead of confusion. "I can help you. I can clean this room for you. And all the rooms on your list, with a snap of my fingers."
To demonstrate, he snaps and the curtains right themselves. Gone is the run from cat claws and the wrinkles from months of use. They are perfectly arranged across the window, each crease evenly placed from the others. Hotel standard is to leave them open for light, but Nora isn't going to nitpick. He probably doesn't want to be seen.
Nora's not sure she wants him seen either.
"I can clean your full list of rooms," the man says again, tapping the sheet on the top of Nora's cart. "It will take me seconds. You can spend the rest of your shift walking around the city. Wouldn't you like to dip your toes in the lake?"
There's sympathy to him, an honest desire to help, that puts her at ease. There's a beach not far from the Loop…
"You can stay at the hotel? Watch TV? Take a nap in the bed? No would know."
Nora licks her lips. A nap, even just twenty minutes, would be delightful, but if she could sleep longer? Six hours is not enough to clean, but it's enough to recover from her interrupted sleep last night. Maybe, if she rests, the fever starting to warm her cheeks will disappear.
"For free?" She asks. She doesn't have money.
The man pulls his hand off Nora's and steps back. He's dressed in a gray vest and linen pants and the shadows under his feet twist oddly, stretching back as if he were taller. Wider. His smile looks similarly deformed, a little too wide, a little too white.
Nora has had little experience with the shadows of Chicago, the dark, moving forms that trap anything that walks into them. She works the day shift for a reason. And yet, she is positive this man has come from them.
"I don't think that it's fair you were given an impossible task, and I don't need money. You have something else I'd like - the memory of your husband."
She realizes what makes this man so familiar. His accent is the Cartagena dialect her husband spoke; so rapid he drops sounds in the middle of long words to make them shorter.
Adrián has been missing three years. Matteo is losing his memories of his father, and Soledad has given up on Adrián returning. Nora still holds hope, calls around to shelters and hospitals when she can. She doesn't know what happened, doesn't know how to check government records if he had been picked up, doesn't know what traces might be left behind if it had been the dark corners of Chicago that swallowed him.
Nora waits for the day she'll have news of him, kisses his photo on her nightstand every evening.
"Perhaps another demonstration?" The small man snaps his fingers again, and the beds right themselves. Pillows fluff, crisp sheets tuck themselves around the corner. The carpet stains disappear, from the cat and years of use. Every surface is dust free, the TV screen so clean Nora can see her wide eye reflection in it. From the bathroom comes the smell of the lemon cleaner she uses around the apartment, replacing the stink of exposed tuna and cat poop. Next to the coffee machine is a pyramid of five coffee pods, the trash can beside it empty.
The room is clean, five minutes early by her impossible schedule.
The man circles her, leaning in close, and Nora pulls her limbs in to avoid their arms brushing. He reminds her of dark shadows that move in the alleys, of sounds she hears at L and bus stops when she is the only one there. The hair on the back of her neck raises.
"You need to do this job well more than you need memories of your husband."
Nora clutches her hand to her chest. She's aware of her bank account, of the groceries bills and new shoes and Soledad's upcoming high school graduation. She also knows it's strange to have a magic man from the shadows make this offer.
"A bet." She forces the words out, shaky. "You'll clean my rooms this week, and every day, every day I'll have a chance to keep his memory."
"I do like a wager. Yes, at the start of every shift I'll ask you a question. If you can answer correctly, I'll let you keep your memory."
"What's the question?"
"What's my name?"
Nora stares down at him, at the gold flecks in his eyes, the confidence she sees there. He doesn't think Nora will guess his name.
That remains to be seen but he's right, money is more important than memory. She's not sure if it's her rising fever or heartbreak that makes her say: "deal."
🧹✨🧹✨🧹✨🧹✨
On her way home, Nora debates getting a treat. She feels good. Excited. Healthy. She wants to celebrate it.
She'd finished her shift with no deductions - the magic man truly snapped all the rooms clean. Nora had checked, then slept for four hours in the last room, carefully changing the sheets before the end of her shift. Stephanie's look of surprise had been priceless, but she hadn't said anything.
Nora's concern for her coworkers had been heartfelt, but brief. She needed this rest day. Maybe tomorrow she could help someone. Stephanie is looking for more staff. Complaints about poorly cleaned rooms are bad for the housekeepers and the hotel.
For now, Nora is energized. She wants to do something. Buy something to celebrate and keep her energy going. Maybe a cake? Financial responsibility catches up to her. She buys a single bag of chocolate from the drug store, Easter clearance.
Nora lets herself into their apartment. Soledad looks up from her textbook, Matteo is asleep on the couch. Nora detours to brush the hair back from his face and feel his forehead. Warm, but not like last night or this morning. He'll be alright tomorrow.
She kisses her daughter on the cheek, pulling the bag of candy out of her pocket.
"Mama-"
"Hush, hija. It was a good day and I wanted to celebrate."
Despite her frown, Soledad opens the bag and takes out an egg-shaped chocolate. Nora grabs one as well, savoring the sweetness as she sits next to her daughter and glances at the textbook. Anatomy diagrams surrounded by English text she can't read. Her mood sours, she wishes she could help with homework.
Well, at least today she has the energy to let Soledad continue studying. "I'll make dinner. And then, we can play a game tonight?"
Soledad looks at her mother, face soft. "It must be a good day if you have the energy for that."
"Someone at work helped." Just for the week. Just for the price of her husband.
On the other side of a day of rest, Nora realizes just how stupid this deal is. A week of rest for years of memories of Adrián? But she was desperate this morning, and thanks to his help she returned home with $80 and will start tomorrow with $100. Without the magic man's help, she might have come home with $75, and started tomorrow with $70. He saved her from a downward spiral. She needs to take advantage of it.
Chicago’s Grimm is a collection of urban fantasy stories inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales set in Chicago. Subscribe to make sure you get every story and if you liked it consider getting me a Ko-Fi ☕or picking up one of my short story collections.
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