Scott's Realty Brokerage and the "Barely There" cleaning service

It was after 9PM. Scott hadn't planned on needing to go back to the office at this hour, but there was an interested buyer in the Ellemont estate--and the pre-approval documents were every bit legit. He could've passed the showing to one of a half-dozen of his most capable agents, but there was something about not wanting to giving away a $150,000 commission that made it worth the hassle.

When he pulled into the lot to get the file and the keys, the two vans from "Barely There" and Marlene's blue sedan were the only other vehicles there. Was Marlene still at the office? She was a hard worker, but even if it was her long day as Admin, she only had to man the phones until 8PM. Scott walked past the vans and stopped, turning to look through the windshield of one of them. He thought he saw something moving inside the vehicle, but there was clearly no one there.

"Huh..." He muttered, heading toward the door. His brokerage was housed in one of the beautiful Victorians on the west edge of town, with easy access to the business district but not too far from the more expensive neighborhoods on the northwest side where the upper-crust suburbanite money was really made. It occurred to him that he'd never been to the office while this "Barely There" cleaning service was in the building. Marlene had arranged for them to take the place of his former cleaning service when a couple of his prima donna agents repeatedly complained about gritty floors or bathrooms that didn't seem to get a thorough enough cleaning.

Silly little things Scott didn't care to worry about when there was money to be made.

That's what made Marlene such a great find, actually. Youthful, beautiful, reliable--she'd been the public-facing image of the office for almost two years now, and Scott could trust her with anything. Even with 20 agents piling work on her and her two office assistants, she was able to keep up with his exacting demands. The best part of all--she even had a sense of humor. She could shit-talk with the best of them, keeping up with personal banter well-enough that Scott could get away with comments he'd never expect a 20-something in this generation to tolerate.

She was like a smart, sexy cultural relic from the days Scott thought he'd missed. Marlene didn't seem to have a personal life that ever got in the way of her responsibilities here, and he was floored at her admission a few months before that she hadn't had a boyfriend since college. Now that Scott's divorce was finalized, he wondered if he should do something with that little nugget of information. Being 15 years her senior wasn't so bad, right?

Scott used his code on the door and came into the office. The entry was dimmed, as always at this hour, but many of the office lights were clearly on, as he could tell from behind the closed shaes. Marlene's office lights were on, but no one seemed to be in there. Late as it was, she must've been in his ante-room prepping the schedule for the next day. Scott headed through the hallway, hearing the sounds of the cleaning service in the kitchen and in an adjacent agent's office with the door half-closed.

The door to his ante-room was open, but only the modest desk lamp was on. As he suspected, Marlene was there, bent over and digging through a filing cabinet. Scott practically licked his lips watching the tight, pocketless backside of her khakis wiggle as she shuffled around paperwork.

"Why are you still here?" Scott asked, finally breaking his gaze from Marlene to pull the keys to his main office out.

"It's unlocked, boss," Came her sweet voice. "I was just finishing up here, but tomorrow's schedule is on your desk." Scott opened the door to his office, the rear corner occupied by four big windows with wooden shades drawn. His bookshelves had no dust. The fine women rug under his hardwood desk didn't hold any evidence of the coffee he'd spilled on it earlier that week.

"That cleaning service is something else!" Scott said back to the ante-room so that Marlene could hear. "Those girls even got the coffee stain out of my rug." He heard the filing cabinet in the next room close.

"How do you know they're all women?" Marlene asked. Scott saw her shade as she walked by the door and looked up just as she passed it. His face contorted. Just before she was out of sight beyond his door frame--he swore he saw...a red sleeve. Just the empty sleeve, with a folder suspended at the end of it. He tried to shake it off. He was tired. It was already late, and he still had an estate to show.

He pulled out his hard copy of the Ellemont estate's file from his bottom drawer and glanced at his schedule for the next day.

8AM: FREE
9AM: FREE
10AM: FREE
11AM: FREE
12PM: LUNCH
1PM: FREE
2PM: FREE
3PM: FREE
4PM: NEGOTIATIONS

He picked it up and flipped it over. This had to be a joke.

"Uh--Marlene?"

"Boss?" Came the voice from the ante-room.

"This is a gag, right? Tomorrow is a...pretty full day," Scott said, standing up and grabbing his phone from his pocket to open up his digital calendar. He heard laughter form the other room.

"Oh, it's going to be a very, very full day," Marlene said. "That's why we cleared your schedule. We wouldn't want to be interrupted." There was a playful, suggestive tone about that voice that made Scott swallow hard. Marlene bantered, sure, but it was usually on the biting, cynical side.

"Um--interrupted?" He asked.

"I'm gonna go wash my coffee cup, hon. We'll talk in a second," Marlene said. Scott was pulling up his schedule app in his phone when he realized she hadn't just printed a mock schedule. The calendar on the smartphone read the same way. Free until lunch. Free after lunch until something simply titled "negotiation" at the end of the day.

"Hey, Marlene--wait!" He saw her in the shade of the hallway, heading down toward the Victorian's second kitchen, converted to the brokerage's break-room He squinted through the distance and the dark, noticing something else--he couldn't see the yellow-gold sheen of her blonde hair as she moved through to the break room. When he blinked a few times and moved to the ante-room, she was already out of the hall. "What the hell is up with me?" He muttered.

Deciding to follow her, he tossed the Ellemont estate file on her desk and headed into the hall. Hearing a vacuum to his left, toward the entry, he turned to get a look at a member of the cleaning crew. Silent and stilled by what his saw, his jaw hung open.

Moving through the hallway was a vacuum, operating on its own. Not a little robot vacuum gliding down the hall on wheels, not even an upright--but a commercial canister model--with the wand and floor nozzle gliding along on its own, as the canister wheeled behind it, tilted on its two wheels in a balance that wouldn't be possible without human hands or the intervention of some powerful gyroscopes.

But even gyroscopes couldn't explain the fine movements of the wand moving itself along the edges of the hall.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Scott asked. He was curious enough, now, to approach the thing. It seemed to continue its routing unnoticed. Scott slowly got closer to the self-directed wand, trying to come up with some reasonable explanation as he steeled himself to reach out and grab it. "That's not--is, is this a joke?" He said it loud enough to be heard in the hall, but Marlene wouldn't have been able to hear the question around the corner and 30 feet away in the break room. He was on the security camera, after all. He looked back at the camera in the hall, its steady green-light on, before turning back to the animated vacuum again. "There's no way..." Scott said, reaching for the wand himself.

His self-assured attitude lasted only as long as it took for the hose to pull back, the wand flaring skyward to point the spinning brush and floor nozzle right at Scott's face.

"Whoa!" Scott cried, leaping backward. As soon as he made his retreat, the nozzle met the floor again, but the vacuum seemed to be waiting for him now--holding it ground and slowly inching toward him. "What--how is this...HEY!" The wand darted forward to make him jump again--and he backed away until he hit the turn in the hallway right next to his ante-room door. He could hear water running in the break room. "Marlene!" He shouted. He looked back at the vacuum, which seemed to be satisfied with Scott's further withdrawal enough to continue cleaning the hallway. Scott just shook his head. "Marlene!?" He shouted again, storming toward the break room.

He was so anxious to tell her about what he saw--to get some kind of confirmation or explanation--that he was already well inside the break room threshold when he noticed something else out of place. Something important. Namely...Marlene herself.

"Muh--Marlene?" Scott stared at the long-sleeved red shirt. Its sleeves were drawn up to the elbow as a coffee cup tumbled under the sink as if rinsing itself. He stared at the strange sight, thinking for a moment that was seeing clear outlines of fingers in spaces where the water running from the tap somehow didn't violate. The collar of the shirt was empty. The sleeves were empty. These were absolutely a set of Marlene's office couture--holding Marlene's athletic form--but no trace of Marlene herself could be seen. "Wh-what is..." Scott backed toward the door as he glanced at the round break table. He could smell bleach, and a pair of yellow rubber gloves glided over the table, with a rag, wiping it down. "I'm--I'm losing it..." he muttered, heading back toward the threshold. A few steps away, though--the door slammed shut.

"Okay, I guess we can talk in here," Marlene's voice said, shutting the water off. "You could've just waited a minute, Scotty." A rolled sleeve pointed to the paper towel dispenser, taking two little sheets. The outside of the mug was wiped down, and the droplets clinging to nothingness were absorbed. Scott backed against the door, slowly moving his fingers to the knob as he watched the mug placed upside down in the strainer. The sleeves pulled back down, and Marlene's outfit turned to the gloves. "I'm done with the sink, hon," A sleeve waved. "You can work your magic." Scott turned the knob of the door when he heard the mortise lock tumble over. "Uh-uh-uh--you're here now," Marlene's voice said. "So let's talk here." The outfit moved toward the table, where a chair pulled itself out. It sat on the cushioned seat, sinking in and crossing its legs. Scott tried the door anyway. It wouldn't open.

"Scotty," Marlene's voice came again, this time sternly. "Sit." Another cushioned chair pulled itself away from the break table, and Scott looked down at it--his eyes wide as a trapped doe. "Oh, sit already. You already made this harder by coming back here." Out of some intuitive sense that things could easily get worse, Scott sat--albeit more slowly and cautiously than he could ever remember moving.

"I...made it...harder?" Scott said, looking up and down at the empty outfit. The leg crossed over the other was bouncing its foot, working the hem at its ankle high enough that Scott could see the top of Marlene's sock and an equally-empty pant leg extending beyond it.

"Uh huh. I can't believe you don't carry a copy of the Ellemont estate file on you all the time--just waiting for a call on it. You were supposed to head straight there tonight." It sounded like Marlene--at least enough to put him at ease. It looked like Marlene--sort of--the thighs in her tight khakis, cute pink-and-grey sneakers and a bust contoured nicely by her form-fitting long sl-- "Wow, Scott. I'm not even here and you're still staring at my tits."

"Um--sorry, I..." Scott looked away, glancing over to the sink, where the rubber gloves began scrubbing the steel with a scouring pad. He looked back at the outfit again, trying to correct his gaze her where Marlene's head should be. "Marlene--you're invisible? And the cleaning service is..."

"I'm not here, like I said," Marlene stated, her shirt resting an elbow on the break table. "I'm already at Ellemont with our buyer, making preparations. This," she said, the sleeves motioning to her own body with a flourish, "Is a Feynman-Curtright construct that allows me to be in two places at once...though Marlene prime won't exactly know the nitty-gritty with us until she links up with me again.

"Um..." That worked as well for Scott as reading ancient Demotic script. "But...you're invisible?" He heard a sigh across from him.

"Look, dummy--right now I take up the same sort of space and have roughly the same effective density as your Marlene--and yes--since I don't *technically* have Baryonic matter, you can see through me." Scott's expression didn't show any signs that he understood the previous sentence, so she paused and went a different route. "Look, this isn't what matters, Scott. The important part of all this is that you come with me to Ellemont without a fight, without a lot of questions, and without using that smartphone of yours. You get me?"

"Well--I mean, what's at Ellemont?" Scott asked.

"Our buyer, silly. You know that one, so that's a gimme."

"Sorry for, um, staring earlier, but--" Marlene's voice laughed as Scott tried not to trip over his words.

"Oh, buddy, we're waaaay beyond sorry," She said. "You can make it up to Marlene prime with cooperation along the lines of the directions I just gave you, got it?" Scott just nodded, trying to keep his eyes fixed above the collar--though the bobbing leg of the khakis and the shape of the red shirt didn't make it very easy.

"But...the cleaning service?" Scott asked.

"One. You get one last answer from me," Marlene said. "The real Marlene had 'barely there' step in when you bent to Trish and Sophia's complaint about the old crew. They do a pretty good job, huh?" Scott just nodded, looking back at the yellow gloves wiping down the countertops now.

"So they're like..."Furman-Cartwright thingies too?" Scott's wandering mind pictured invisibly nude maids doing their chores with nothing but a pair of gloves on.

"Uh-uh. They're the cleaning supplies themselves," Marlene said, pointing a sleeve to the gloves. "And Miss Buttercup here tells me Miss Clarke didn't appreciate you trying to get grabby with her." Scott snorted.

"Miss...Buttercup?" Scott said with another sneer. "The rubber gloves?"

"Yeah. The gloves. And our very capable floor-cleaning expert out there--is one of her friends." Scott smiled, throwing his hands up. This couldn't possibly be happening.

"Okay. Sorry about that, Miss Buttercup," he grinned. The gloves stopped cleaning for a moment, but Marlene's sleeve seemed to wiggle toward them a bit, and they went back into action.

"That's not very sincere for a man who'd still have a giant coffee stain in that nice Turkish rug in his office," Marlene said.

"I--I'm sorry," Scott said, still smiling. "I think I've pretty much reached the limit here...Marlene." He went back to staring right at the chest of the shirt, emboldened by the insanity of the situation. He'd heard enough to know that this couldn't possibly be real. He might as well enjoy it.

"Haaa...the limit." It was Marlene's turn to sneer now. "You haven't seen the tip of the iceberg, Scotty. By the time 4PM rolls around tomorrow, you're going to be begging us for the opportunity to cooperate...and apologize." Scott didn't know what to say, or how to react to that--dream or not.

"What happens at 4PM tomorrow?" He asked, recalling the schedule reading only 'negotiation'.

"You had your one question, hon. Now let's head to your Escalade, shall we? We're running late."