deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: Sometimes in the dead of night on the way to the kitchen for a glass o

deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: Sometimes in the dead of night on the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I see an extra door in the hallway, black and imposing. It’s not a bad boarding house, as these thingsgo.We’re not allowed up to the fourth floor, forany reason – but I don’t blame the landlady for wanting her privacy. Nobody but the landlady answers the strangewillow-patterned telephone on the third floor landing. We all lock our windows on full moon nights.No couples are allowed, ever. Only single womenand girls.And sometimes, if you go down the hall to thekitchen late at night, there’s a strange black door that’s never there bydaylight. For some reason, it’s hard to get new lodgersto stay. I don’t know why. It’s a little strange, maybe, but the meals are good,Mrs Hallow the landlady is kind, and the rent is ridiculously cheap. I’ll takethe strange black door and the phone that rings even when there’s no wire goingto it over rats in the walls and cigarette ash in the food any day. My lastboarding house was like that. I like it here.I’d been living here for nearly two years whenI lost my job working at the telephone exchange. It wasn’t my fault – they cutthe night shift back, and one of the girls cut was me. Mrs Hallow told me notto worry – as I was an old lodger, she’d let me work for room and board while Ilooked for another job. She’s so nice, I don’t know why people say she’screepy. It’s not her fault she’s so tall and thin, and her bones show throughher fragile old skin. I worked hard, wanting her to be glad she’dkept me. One of the jobs she gave me, since I was used to working nights, waspacking lunches after supper. For the Night Gentlemen, she told me, but didn’tsay more. Every night, I packed twenty lunches in twenty tin pails and filled twentythermoses with strong coffee. I made sandwiches, and boiled eggs, slicedpickles and cheese, and packed a paper napkin into each pail. I was to haveeverything done by eleven, Mrs Hallow told me, for the Night Gentlemen came atmidnight to collect their meals, and I should be in bed by then. By morning,the pails were all gone. By evening, they were all stacked neatly in thekitchen again, clean and ready to be filled. I never saw them come, but Isupposed it must be while I was sleeping. Then I started to worry that my lunches weredull. I baked cookies for the lunch pails, and pies and pasties. I put indifferent kinds of fruit and vegetables each day. The Night Gentlemen workedlate hours, if they came for their lunches in the middle of the night. Theyneeded to eat good food. I looked through Mrs Hallow’s old recipe books and triednew dishes, like german apple pancake and potato dumplings. Mrs Hallow waspleased, and said she would pay me a little wage in addition to my room andboard, if I didn’t mind continuing. She was getting too old, she said, to makeall those meals every night.I had been working at the boarding house fornearly six months when I really messed up. I’d burned a whole batch of cookiesto a crisp, so I had to start all over, and I didn’t have time to decorate thembefore evening. It was Valentine’s Day, and I felt so bad that I decided tostay up late to finish them. The Night Gentlemen didn’t come until midnight, soI had time… I thought. I was almost right. I was just packing the lastcookies when I heard a door open with a long, slow creak the like of which I’dnever heard in that house before. A creak that was nothing like the front door’ssoft groan. I don’t know how I knew, but it popped into my head right then thatit was the black door that had opened. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange – I’veheard every door in the house open many a time, except for that one, so whatelse could it have been? Then I heard feet in the hall, a number of them, andjust as I closed the last pail, they came through the door.Twenty of them, all men, all dressed in soberblack, with overcoats and hats on ready to go out. Some looked older, someyounger. Some were fair, and some were dark. And every one had eyes likeglowing coals, orange-red and bright under their lids. Plenty of girls would have run screaming fromthat, but I’ve lived at Mrs Hallow’s boarding house for a long time, and you dosee strange things here sometimes. Besides, there was something else I couldsee right off, even as they stopped and stared at me in surprise with theirglowing eyes. Every one of them looked tired. You could see just looking atthem that they were going to do really hard work. I’ve seen people look likethat before – construction workers, and waitresses, and the like. With somejobs, the tiredness just sinks in and never leaves you, so you go to work tiredand come back half dead and never get properly rested. So I smiled, and said good evening, and that Iwas sorry to be running late, but I hoped they all liked their lunches tonight.Maybe it should have felt silly, handing black-clad men with glowing coals foreyes a tin pail with heart-shaped cookies frosted in pink inside, but it didn’t.They all just looked so tired, I was glad I’d done something that might cheerthem up a little bit. When they got over the surprise of seeing me, they eachtook a pail and a thermos, and thanked me very politely in voices that echoedhollowly in their chests, and filed out the kitchen door. The last one evenlifted his hat when he turned to close the door, and wished me good evening. Now, how could I be afraid of someone so polite?Especially when it was me who’d been late, and been where I wasn’t supposed tobe. They’d tried real hard not to let me see them and maybe be frightened.The next morning I confessed to Mrs Hallow assoon as we were alone in the kitchen, washing up after breakfast. “I was lategoing up last night, Mrs Hallow,” I told her, scraping leftover bits of egg andscraps of grits into the garbage pail. “And I was still in the kitchen when theNight Gentlemen came.” She stopped right in the middle of pouring outthe coffee-slops, and turned to stare at me with those pale green eyes that *are*a mite unsettling. “And what did you do?” she asked, in a foreboding tone I’dheard more than once before she told some girl to pack up and leave forbreaking the rules. “Oh, I told them good evening, and sorry I waslate, and that I hoped they liked the lunches,” I said, not stopping what I wasdoing. “And they took their lunches and thanked me ever so politely, so I didn’tsuppose they minded too much.” She relaxed, then, and went back to pouring outthe cold coffee from cups and coffee pots. “I see. You were polite, I trust.Didn’t stare.” “Oh, no.” Rudeness is an evictable offense, atMrs Hallow’s house. I learned that early on. “But I couldn’t help noticinghow tired they looked, poor creatures. Whatever they do must be very hard. Ishould pack more into those pails, I think.” “It couldn’t hurt,” Mrs Hallow said, after along pause. “What they do is about the hardest job there is, and I’ve neverseen a pail that didn’t come back empty yet.” She saw one that day, though. Nineteen pailsand twenty thermoses came back spotless, but the last pail, though clean, had alittle candy heart in it, and a slip of paper that just said ‘thank you’ infancy copperplate handwriting. Mrs Hallow was so puzzled by that that she camestraight to me to ask for an explanation, and I blushed and told her about allthose Valentine’s cookies I’d made and decorated special, to cheer them up. Shewas quiet for a long time after I said that, watching me with her huge greeneyes. “It would take more than a cookie to cheer those poor souls,” she told mesoberly, “but it was a kindness, and a good one. You keep on, Annie. You keepon being kind. And don’t worry if you’re not out of the kitchen by midnight. Ifthe Night Gentlemen don’t mind it, I don’t.” After that, I always stayed until midnight. A smileand a kind word go a long way, and I made sure they got them. I got to knowfaces, after a while. Every now and then, one would stop coming, and a new facewould take his place. When I asked, I was told the ones who had left had ‘goneon to a better place’ which I took to mean a better position, so I was alwaysglad for them and hoped they’d finally get rested. They were all polite, thoughnone of them ever talked much. Every midnight, they passed out of the kitchendoor, carrying their tin pails and thermoses, looking tired but carryingthemselves straight, like men determined to do their duty. It took me a while to realize what that dutywas. I’d gone out shopping in the afternoon, like I usually did on a Wednesday,and it just happened that on my way home I passed a house where there had beena fire. The firemen were still putting it out, and there was a crowd gawkinglike there usually is, and while I was trying to get through with my basket, Isaw one of the Gentlemen walking away from the house. He was leading an elderlygentleman, shuffling along in carpet slippers stained with soot, and as crowdedas the street was, nobody seemed to jostle or even notice the two. I suppose it was because I’d been seeing themin the house, that I could see them outside as well. But when I found out laterthat an old man had died in the fire, well, it wasn’t hard to put it alltogether. No wonder they always looked so tired. A few weeks later, there was another fire, thisone at an orphanage. That night they all shuffled along so dispiritedly that itwould break a harder heart than mine, and a smile and a slice of ginger cake intheir lunch pail didn’t seem anything like enough. But it was what I had, andthey seemed to appreciate it. As time went on, they talked a little more, andif one had had what they called ‘a hard delivery’ he might stop for a word ofencouragement and a pat on the shoulder, and I always gave it to them. I don’t plan on looking for another job. I likethis one, and the way I see it, it’s about one of the most important jobs thereis… especially these days. These days, I make more lunches. I fill thirty pailsnow, and I fill them full, because the Gentlemen are working terribly hard. TheSpanish Flu keeps them so busy that they hardly have time to stop and say hellowhen they pass through, though they’re always as polite as can be. Nobody in this house is sick yet, and I don’tthink they will be. Mrs Hallow’s house is… protected. But I’d keep working evenif it wasn’t. There’s nothing I can do to keep people from dying, but I canmake sure the Gentleman who comes for them has had something to eat, and alwaysgets a kind word and a smile when he’s on his way. It’s very hard, what theydo, and I like to know I can help a little. Mrs Hallow says I’m doing a wonderfuljob, and that they’re glad I’ve decided to stay on. Who ‘they’ is I’m not sure…the Gentlemen, or the ones who send them. Either way, I’m glad.It’s really a very nice boarding house, asthese things go. Just a little strange, is all.—Two stories in two days! Don’t get used to this, I don’t think I can keep it up. ;)  -- source link

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