Still you have nothing to say in your own defense. It is all true, terrible. Almost you feel a kind of exhilaration, that this hostile stranger has seen you so exposed, naked.

Time to leave. And leave your hard-earned “gifts” behind to be returned to the giver. Maid Brigade is dismissing you. Not even as a part-time laborer paid contemptuously in cash, off the books, will you be welcome to return though only recently you’d been one of the Agency’s most diligent workers, uncomplaining and uncomplained-against.

Dwyer adds, laughing: “You must’ve done something to really piss this guy off, Vi’let. Count yourself lucky he called us first, not the cops.”

Count myself lucky. Yes!

BUT THEN, THERE WAS NO CLEAR END. FOR METTI CALLED ME A few days later leaving messages of abject apology, insisting he didn’t want the gifts back, there’d been a “tragic” misunderstanding—the fault of the Agency.

When I didn’t answer, didn’t return his calls Metti came by the place in which I was living, a weatherworn Victorian dwelling north of the sprawling university campus. Metti had seen the residence exclusively from the outside, and at night. Somehow he made his way inside and upstairs unerringly to my room on the second floor determined to speak to me but I hid from him behind a locked door. “Violet! Try to forgive me. I’ve been a little crazy, I think. I never expected that kind of behavior from you. Betraying me. Sleeping with—those men. I’d believed I was the only one.” He began pounding on the door with a fist. “It’s your life, Violet. You have a right to your own life. I can see that. I’m a father, I am not a jailer. A girl—a daughter—can fuck anybody she wants to. Any color. I know that. I am not contesting that. But I’d thought you had promised me. Must’ve missed something, I was sure you’d promised me. When you took gifts from me. Money. There was an agreement. There is an agreement, if a woman accepts gifts and money. But not you, you lied to me. But no, I am not accusing you, Violet. You’re very young. You’re not too young to know better. This isn’t going to end here, Violet. There’s too much left undone. We have much more to say to each other, dear. Women don’t walk away from me, not like this. They walk away when I tell them—walk. This isn’t over yet, Violet. You lying cunt. Not by a long shot.”