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down.”
    “Ain’tcha got a date with my baby?” Sometimes that was Talba, sometimes Sophia, but this time she meant Darryl.
    “Can’t do it,” she said. She’d phoned to cancel on the way home. She kicked off her shoes and threw herself on her bed, wondering if her body was ever going to be the same. Two hours later, she woke from a deep sleep, teased into consciousness by a black cat purring in her ear, a white one nibbling her toes. “Don’t bite, Blanche,” she snapped, and forced herself to go forage for food.
    Her mother had made chili. Miz Clara had already eaten, but she sat down across the old black-painted table from her daughter, having first poured her a glass of Chardonnay—an unaccustomed attention. “Ya gotta either drink or read the Bible if ya gon’ clean houses,” she said, “and I know ya mama raised a heathen.”
    “Have some wine with me,” Talba said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
    “Why, I b’lieve I will,” said Miz Clara, who never drank unless invited, and then only one glass. She retrieved the wine, which she’d already put away, and poured a glass for herself. “My baby have a hard day?”
    “Mama, I’ll be honest. I don’t know how you do it.”
    “I got my systems.” Miz Clara looked like the Cheshire cat.
    “What would you think about sharing? Along with some recipes.”
    “Recipes! They want ya to cook?”
    “You don’t have to?”
    “These people are animals.”
    Talba considered it. “Well, one of them is,” she said, thinking of Buddy. “Jury’s still out on the rest. How do you do it, Mama?”
    She meant the question literally, and Miz Clara took it that way. “First of all, ya gotta start at the top. If ya do the floor and then the chandeliers, what’s gon’ happen?”
    Talba didn’t know, but apparently she wasn’t required to. Miz Clara answered herself. “Ya gon get a second coat of dust on that floor. Have to clean it twice. See what I mean?”
    Talba’d never considered the effects of gravity on dust—this was actually very educational. “Ya gotta look for cobwebs while ya up there—most housecleaners don’t even notice ’em. But they up there; they up there catchin’ dust, holdin’ dust, makin’ everybody sneeze. Get them cobwebs and the room’s gon’ be a lot cleaner already. They gon’ like that.
    “Another thing. Clean the windows before you do any other heavy stuff. Why? Because the whole house looks cleaner when the windows are clean. Right away, they gon’ be impressed.”
    “Oh, good. Alberta doesn’t do windows.”
    Miz Clara nodded, satisfied. “Ya gotcha work cut out for ya. And here’s a little insider tip—ya want to impress men, clean they windows. Ya want to impress women, make those mirrors shine. Spend extra time on the glass stuff—quickest way to impressin’ a new client.
    “Now here’s somethin’ real important. Never touch they guns.”
    “Funny you should mention that—I found a gun today. In the drawer with the sex toys.”
    Again, Miz Clara nodded. “Sometimes they be in there. Drugs, too. Lot of folks keeps they drugs in there. Here’s somethin’ I notice. Folks rich enough to have an everyday maid—specially ya judges, ya city officials, folks like that—they got drugs all over.
    “They don’t have the least little fear about the po-lice or the law. What they paranoid about’s people turnin’ on ’em.”
    Which I fully intend to do,
Talba thought, and was momentarily disappointed that she hadn’t found drugs. But the moment passed—a private stash wasn’t a news story and the cops were probably already bought, anyhow. She needed something a lot better than a little pot.
    “Ya don’t never find no loose change in those kinda people’s houses,” Miz Clara continued. “Guns, though. I find ’em everywhere—under the mattresses, under the chair pillows. Once I come across one in a kitchen drawer, all tangled up with a corkscrew. Like to scared me to death. Dangerous? Whooee!