My landlord thinks the cleaning lady is a prostitute that I hire when Annie is out of town. It doesn't help at all that we poached this woman from a cleaning service. She came one day and when we found out she only got $27 out of what we paid the service we had her come in on her day off. Thus sunday mornings start off with alot of banging around and urban radio blaring and end with me walking out a young, nubile Jamaican woman and handing her a wad of cash. "That was terrific," I said today as my landlord opened his door.

Having her around is great because no matter how hard novel writing gets, I'm not just going to squat down and clean the baseboards and corners. Plus I almost never get to listen to Urban Radio. Annie is the kind of person that might notice that the vegetable drawer is growing mushrooms. But since we have this place together it somehow becomes half my responsibility.

Since this is a wholly unecessary and yuppie thing to do I can't ever complain about it. If she were my weekly prostitue I wouldn't exactly go into work later, grouchy, tired and say, "Leave me alone today boss. My Paypal came over at ten of eight this morning, forgot her Indian hairbraids wig, and didn't even make the bed when we finished."

She did however clean the counter while my cellphone was charging on it. If you call me later and I start screaming into the phone ("HUH? SPEAK UP.") it's because she Mr. Cleaned the speaker and I'm too embarassed to tell her. Instead I'll just pretend that everyone I know is underwater.

Labels: Novel