Dajana drummed her fingernails on the grimy glass table of the rooftop terrace, slow and tense. A tiny muscle kept twitching in her cheek, her forehead folding into wrinkles on its own. Sometimes she pressed her lips together, sometimes she sucked them in, as if trying to swallow her thoughts. Her mind kept spitting out doomsday scenarios, each one worse than the last.
She glanced at her phone. A strong urge pushed her to call Viktoria, but she already knew how it would go: that syrupy, baby-talk dismissal, the “oh please, honey, don’t worry” kind of tone. That woman didn’t need a call — she needed to be cornered. She’d have to wait until Viktoria came home and catch her then. Maybe in the underground garage. She’d say she had just finished cleaning a place. Actually, a decent plan. And she couldn’t delay this any longer anyway.
She took a sip of freshly squeezed orange juice, but the sourness jolted straight down her spine. Where on earth had Adrian found these unripe excuses for oranges? He’d probably forgotten to check the label again — bought some imported trash instead of proper Canarian fruit. You couldn’t trust the man with anything, damn it! She grabbed the agave syrup, held it over the glass, and let a slow, thick stream of amber sweetness sink into the juice.
She jumped when the terrace door opened. Adrian stared at her, puzzled.
“You weren’t supposed to be back until tonight.”
Dajana waved him off, annoyed.
“They cancelled all the apartments for today. That bitch said she’d do them herself.”
Adrian slumped into one of the garden chairs with a worried groan.
“Oh, come on. Again?” He shook his head. “This won’t do. We need that money, damn it!”
Dajana’s shoulder twitched.
“It’s not all about one day.”
“It’s been a lot of cancelled days lately, enough to hurt the budget,” Adrian shot back.
“I know. But repeating it every two minutes won’t make it any better.”
“And pretending there’s nothing to fix won’t either.”
“So now it’s my fault?” Dajana snapped.
“Why wouldn’t it be? You’re the one cleaning houses, aren’t you?” Adrian barked. “Tell those two idiots to make a choice: either they give you proper work and stop screwing around, or you leave them and find someone else.”
“Oh wow, brilliant solution,” Dajana jeered. “If they don’t give me enough work, I should threaten them? That’ll surely make things lovely between us.”
“Who the hell cares about ‘lovely’? We need money, for fuck’s sake, get it into your head!”
Something flickered in Dajana’s eyes.
“And you get this into yours: I can’t afford to piss them off! There are more cleaners on this island than stars in the sky. Everyone wants a cleaning job. If I walk out, there’ll be a hundred lining up to replace me. And I’ll be the idiot wandering around asking who needs help. Then we’ll have even less money. That what you want?”
“Then ask around here in the complex,” Adrian shot back. “That fancy American–French couple definitely has a maid. Convince them to hire you instead.”
Dajana stared at him as if he had grown another head.
“You can’t be serious. You want me to knock on our neighbours’ doors begging for work? Do you have any idea how humiliating that would be?”