Page 7 of Mama Si's Paradise

It was real and I was here, and I wasn’t going to fucking die just because I’d entered a fancy building.

“Of course, I do. Why else would I see you at the door?” One look back at me and the woman stopped in her tracks, looking me up and down once more. “Are you okay? You look really pale.”

“No, I’m fine. I just…I didn’t actually think you’d let me in.” And now I couldn’t fucking breathe. It felt like my very presence was making this place filthy.

The woman snorted a laugh. “It’s just a place. Don’t lose your head,” she then said, waving her hand up like the way everything looked around here didn’t impress her at all.

She led me to the stairway on the left and behind it, through a door in the wall colored a pale purple and into a narrow, much darker corridor that looked very ordinary. White walls and normal overhead lights and normal brown doors to the sides. People. More people—all dressed kind of the same, I realized. Just like the woman I was following.

It must have been a uniform, its color a baby blue with white threads and golden buttons, fancier than anything I’d ever owned. Was the woman a housekeeper, too? She did wear an apron and her dress was a bit loose around her frame, like she wanted to be comfortable to move in it. Her hair was perfectly combed and tied behind her head, and she wore little makeup, but it was flawless.

Every other woman walking from one of the many doors in the corridor to the other looked the same—clean and polished.

“What exactly is this place, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said as we went through the third door and finally came out in a half-open room. Two rows of tables took up the space near the left wall, and men and women were behind them, some working with fabrics, some with shiny metals. There was no wall on the right, just thick pink pillars holding up the high ceiling.

Beyond them I saw pools. I saw trees. I saw the AtlanticOcean glistening under the sunlight in the distance, far below us.

I forgot to breathe again.

“Are you coming or what?!”

I blinked, focusing on the woman—she’d moved and I’d stopped right by the door without realizing it. The people working by the tables all turned to look at me as I rushed to her side.

“I said, the Paradise is a hotel that accommodates its guests’ every need.That’swhat this place is,” she told me.

“Right.” A hotel—just like the woman at Annabelle’s bar said. Except I’d been to two of the town’s hotels today looking for work, and they weren’t half as fancy as this. They hadn’t had this many people dressed in those beautiful uniforms working in half-open rooms by multiple pools, either.

“Over here,” the woman said, pointing left toward the last table near the pillar that separated it from the outside.

Outside, where the pools were. And the loungers. And the absolutely drop-dead gorgeous women on them.

I stared with my mouth open.

Then I was grabbed by the arm and pulled closer to the table where another woman sat by herself putting a thread in a needle.

“I’m sorry. So sorry,” I whispered, not exactly sure what the hell I was saying sorry for—being distracted by my surroundings, by these people and those girls that looked like an upgraded version of supermodels, with glowing skin and sparkly bikinis?

Or by the air that smelled heavily of roses andreallywas thicker to breathe in?

Or by the fact that I was here, applying for a job I didn’t even want to apply for?

But maybe it was because I was already sitting down across from this woman who’d managed to put that thread in theneedle, and now she was unfolding a piece of pink satin clothing without ever looking my way. She was older than the others, silver hair done in a thick braid that rested over her right shoulder. Her wrinkled skin was clean and radiant, and her uniform didn’t have the same golden buttons in the front as everyone else’s. I don’t know why I took that to mean something.

She began to sew a tear on the satin shirt, and I just now noticed that music, slow and soothing, was coming from everywhere at the same time, like the air itself was whispering the notes. Maybe that’s why it was so thick and coated my tongue like I’d eaten rose petals for lunch.

I felt sick.

“Hello,” I breathed before I lost my damn mind.

The woman finally looked up at me.

“Autumn Hayes, applying for the vacancy,” she said, and her voice was light and soft, not at all what I expected.

“Yes,” was all I managed. I wasn’t exactlyafraidto be under her gaze like that, but I was far from comfortable.

“I don’t see a resume on your hands. How old are you?” she asked, never even looking down while she sewed.

“Twenty.”

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