HOUSEWORK IS GRIM WORK. HOUSEWORK IS SOLITARY WORK. YOU are made to toil in the service of another’s house. You are made to inhabit the interior of another’s life. You are made to experience an unnatural and one-sided intimacy.

Hairs in drains, stains in toilets and on sheets, indefinable smells that make you gag. Clothes, underwear carelessly flung down for someone else to pick up. Disheveled beds, soiled towels. A spillage of shoes underfoot, no matter if they are expensive leather shoes—too much intimacy.

The scummy condition of his safety razor. Broken, yellowed bristles of old toothbrushes, for what unfathomable reason saved beneath a bathroom sink.

Dishes encrusted with food, soaking in gray water in the kitchen sink. In the dishwasher, more dishes, glasses, silverware encrusted with food which I would have to chip away with a knife, scrub off with steel wool, before they could be properly washed in the machine.

Scattered through the rooms of the apartment were dirtied glasses. In some of these, remnants of alcohol that smelled sharply. Whiskey glasses, wineglasses. Beer glasses. Occasionally, those delicate glasses I’d learned were for champagne.

Felice had taught me: start the laundry as soon as you can. Strip the beds, gather the towels, haul the soiled-laundry baskets into the laundry room and start the machine. The time you spend housecleaning should approximate the time required to do the client’s laundry for you may have to do more than one load and you must make sure that the clothes are sufficiently dry before you leave. Especially, you must not—ever—put away damp things, for the client will discover them and be unhappy.

Wash, dry, sort, fold, put away. Repeat.

Felice had taught me: never leave a room until you’ve checked it thoroughly, all the corners, ceiling, floor, and beneath furniture especially beds where filth can gather. Then, check it a second time.

Still, Dr. Metti had not valued Felice, much. She’d assumed a good relationship with the (single, male) client who tipped more generously than other clients but he’d dropped her, the more experienced house-cleaner, with a single curt call to the Agency.

Just the girl. Not the other.

When Ava informed me I’d felt a sensation of panic. But then, later, satisfaction. For I’d been preferred, unfairly.

Fact is: one day I would be Felice. And another young girl, not beautiful but young, with that expression of naive curiosity, wonder, sexual possibility in her face would supplant me.

You know I want to fuck you, dear. Is it—Violet?

I knew this. But, I did not wish to know this.

Thinking of how my mother, as a girl, cleaning houses on Highgate Avenue, had been approached by her employers. Some of her employers.