CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Thirteen

 DAHLIA 

Melissa's words crossed the space between us in my cluttered little room invisibly, but they might as well have been accompanied by a swift physical swish of her arm; a blow to my cheek. I took a step back and came immediately up against a little set of drawers with dishevelled clothes issuing untidily from each slot.

"What?" I said, but the word seemed immediately stupid. I could see her face. I had seen the rippling and disturbing chain of emotions pass through her features as I'd made my final statement of intent. To pretend misunderstanding now was naive and ridiculous but it just slipped out and I could see it made her even angrier.

"You must think I'm a right idiot!" snapped Melissa, "a right mug, to treat me this way. You must have been laughing your ass off at me all summer. Is that right?"

"What? No!" I stammered. "Of course not!"

"No, course!" she cried. "You've used me for your fantasies from day one and now you're going to dump me to the side as though nothing matters - as though none of the sacrifices I've made matter. Sacrifices I've made for you!"

Sacrifices? That brought me up short and I got a jet of anger of my own but I was still too taken a back to let it out.

"I was happy with my life before you stepped in," said Melissa. "It wasn't perfect but I knew where I stood. I knew who I was. Yes, it was shit half the time but it was what I knew - it was all I knew.  Then suddenly you're there with your weird fantasies, coming down from your tower like you owned the world. Swap places with me Melissa. Become the lady of the manor for the day. How was I supposed to react to that? How was I supposed--"

She stopped dead and gave out a vicious chuckle that contorted her face, making it surprisingly ugly.

"But why am I asking you?" she said. "You don't have any clue. And that's the thing isn't it? You're the princess in the castle, perched on top of the hill. You have been all your life. You've never been normal. You've never lived like an ordinary person. You have no way of empathising with me or the way any of this has made me feel because you have no genuine human connections. Everyone in your life has either been employed by you or spent their time sucking up to you because of your cash and looks. I bet you've never had a single genuine human connection in your life!"

I raised my hands. I couldn't stand what I was hearing. "Melissa stop."

"So that what? So you can feel better? So you don't have to feel guilty about that you've done to me?"

"What I've done to you?"

Melissa smirked. "Oh, here it comes."

I was genuinely flabbergasted. I couldn't understand her enmity. "What I've done for you, this summer... I appreciate that it has been to help me live out my... my fantasy... but you've..."

"Come on." She nodded, flicking her fingers as if to say, give it to me.

"You've had your bills paid. You've stayed in a penthouse hotel room for months. You've had liposuction operations and a personal trainer. I mean, look at you." I gestured with my open palm. "Just look at you. You're amazing. You're beautiful."

Melissa gave out a laugh that choked off immediately. "Beautiful? Am I?" She laughed again harshly. "And how long do you think that will last when I'm not you anymore?"

I stared at her, unsure what to say.

Because ridiculous though it was, I knew exactly what she meant.

I looked down at my own meaty arms and bulging torso.

"You gave me a free holiday - great - thank you so much - an expense that meant nothing to you in the long run - but you gave me something else with it that you were probably too busy self-obsessing about to even consider, and now you're stripping both of them away. So yeah, take me out of my nice hotel suite and bundle me back to my shitty little house in Barton - I can't stop you - but know that the other thing you gave me is something that I'll never get back; something you set up and now you're snatching away."

My brow creased.

"Hope," she said. "For a better life." Another scratchy, sarcastic chuckle. "The idea that I, of all people, could have had something better."

She went over to the bed and slumped down.

"But that isn't going to happen, is it? I don't get any say in the matter. Of course I fucking don't. You're the princess. What I am?"

She looked me in the eye.

The words, You're my cleaner, came to my lips but I didn't say them. Of course I didn't.

"So you dump me back down and I scurry back to my old life, is that the plan? Except now it's awkward between us and you can't keep me on anymore and so you give me my notice. And maybe a pay-off, just to make you feel better. Enough that it has no effect on your bank balance and no real lasting effect on mine. And then what? You hide away in your castle, getting slimmer again until you can pretend none of this ever happened and I get stuck with the shitty life for the rest of my days."

I lowered my head. I didn't know how she wanted me to respond. How could I? What could I say that would make any of this better? She was right.

"Do you believe in fate?" she asked suddenly.

I pursed my lips a fraction but said nothing.

"Let me put that another way," said Melissa. "That night in the rain, when you found me on the side of the dual carriageway..."

I hesitated, picturing the torrential rain; instantly recapturing my own sense of hurt and loss, then nodded.

"Where were you coming from?" she asked.

I cleared my throat. "London. From a photo shoot that went... It didn't go well."

"And then you drove a hundred miles north."

I nodded.

"And meanwhile I was wandering the streets of Barton as it got darker and rainier; and then exactly where you randomly stop, right there on the side of the Banbury Way of all places, I happen to be standing. Have you considered how unlikely that is?"

I looked at her. I had considered it in fact and the coincidence had scratched away at me.

"Well do you know what I was doing there?" asked Melissa. "As a matter of fact, do you know what my first thought was when you told me that you were going to dump me back in my old life was? Do you, from your ivory fucking tower, have any clue of the effect of your actions on the lowly plebs you lord over?"

I started to shake my head. "Melissa, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for you to--"

"I was going to kill myself! Right there on the dual carriageway. Or here off a balcony. Do you get that? Does it matter to you!? Does anything matter to you really if it doesn't affect you and your fucked-up games directly?"

She glared at me in undisguised hatred but I was completely taken aback. Had she really been as close to that that night in the rain? What if I hadn't come along? What if I hadn't offered this? Did I really have such impact on her?

But look at us. Just look at us.

Of course I did.

"I do care Melissa. Of course I do. Your happiness is... it's important to me. You're my friend. I sometimes think you're my only friend."

"Well you can think what you like. You know a person by their actions and you've decided to fuck me over - to cast me back into Hell."

"It isn't like that Melissa."

"Shut up."

"It isn't like that, really. I just... I can't take this any further. Can't you understand that? I can't really become you forevermore. That's ridiculous. We were both crazy if we ever thought that we could."

Melissa got up. She went to the little window and looked out at the shabby lot behind the hotel. A long silence between us began then went on.

I stood, totally unsure of myself, second-guessing my decision and everything I'd said; trying to comprehend what she had told me and, more, to identify if she was right. Was I really some pampered princess playing dress-up, even now? Had I learned anything from this? Even becoming her for so long... or becoming this caricature of her... Was I even capable of understanding how an ordinary person felt inside? Or was I permanently placed on a different plane? Was it impossible for me to be normal, simply because I always had my escape hatch?

I looked at her back, at her beautiful cascading hair. I went to speak but she beat me to it by a fraction of a second.

"But maybe I'm wrong," she said.

"What?"

She looked back at me and held my gaze for a while and then something dark and glittering glimmered in her eyes.

"I fooled myself into thinking I had influence over you; that I'd sort of become Dahlia already; but then I came here today and you took all that away with a few words, like I was nothing after all."

I dropped my shoulders. "Melissa... You're not nothing.  Don't ever think that you are."

"No. Leave that for other people to think, right?"

"That isn't what I meant."

"No? We'll have a think about this... Look at the way you look now. Look at me. Look at where we're staying and the identities we've been going as. How close we already look to our passport pictures."

I frowned.

"Fuck you having all the power," she said. "Maybe you don't have any after all."

"What do you mean? Melissa..."

"I mean you're stuck in Greece with no proof of who you are and we both look way more like one another than not. You can say whatever you want. You can tell me you want to swap back until you're blue in the face. You can refuse to go to Thailand all you like. There isn't a damn thing you can do to stop me going. I can get the reconstruction done and then good luck to you proving any different. You'll be a penniless cleaner stuck here. I'll be Dahlia Western. And there'll be nothing you can do to get back!"