Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs Page A

apartment, especially one who didn’t trail a nasty vapor. Perhaps she even smelled like lilacs or, better yet, spray starch. I decided to take Brad’s referral. It beat looking through the Yellow Pages under “Cleaning Lady,” which would undoubtedly bring a transvestite in a French maid’s uniform to my door.
    “I’m not like Brad,” I told Debby over the phone. “I won’t need you to come every day. Just once a week. Is that too little for you to even be interested in?” For all I knew, she was a three-day-minimum housecleaner.
    “Oh no,” she laughed. “That’s normal. I don’t have any other client like Brad. He wants me there seven days a week including holidays. Believe me, you could serve clams casino off Brad’s bathroom floor.”
    She had a pleasant, friendly voice without an accent. This wasa relief, because I knew from experience that I wouldn’t be able to learn even “hello” in another language.
    Oddly, I found myself lowering my voice on the phone, trying to sound mature and calm, like I was talking to a blind date.
    She was uncomfortable giving me even an estimate over the phone. “You say it’s a studio with a little bedroom attached,” she said. “But I’ve seen some studio apartments that are as large as houses. Everybody’s idea of size is different.” Tell me about it, Debby.
    We agreed that she would stop by my apartment the following Saturday to see how large it was and how many hours it would take to clean, in order for her to set a fair price.
    That morning, she buzzed my intercom promptly at ten. Because I lived on the third floor of a walk-up building, I always had a little time to prepare myself for visitors after they buzzed. But nothing could have prepared me for Debby. While not technically a dwarf, the top of her head was level with my nipples. I’m six-one, so this would have made her about four and a half feet tall. And she was awfully young to be a grandmother. Was it even possible to be a grandmother and still be in your thirties? She had a powerful build, like a compact pit bull. And despite her limited height, there was something intimidating about her. One might expect a woman like this to have a scrub of short, spiky hair, but Debby had a long brown ponytail that hung down her back.
    “So . . . may I come in?” she asked, smiling up at me.
    “Oh, of course,” I said, snapping out of it. “It’s not very big.” I immediately regretted saying this, but Debby didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she scuttled into the main room of my two-room apartment and surveyed it with the steady, calculating eye of a professional. “How often do you need to change the filters on those things?” she asked, pointing to the two air conditioners that were stuck in the wall under the windows.
    Silence. “I’m supposed to change them?” I asked.
    She said, “Don’t worry, sweetie. I can take care of that. Let’s see the kitchen area.”
    “Well, I don’t really cook much,” I said, pointing to the L-shaped area of the room that contained counters, a stove, and a refrigerator.
    She smiled at me, like I was a child. “Yes, but dust doesn’t know that you don’t cook, does it?” She was at a height where the light slanted ideally across the surface of the counter, revealing a thin layer of dust on top of three years’ worth of filth, which had bonded permanently to the laminate surface.
    I was horrified, as though I’d been walking around in underwear I only
thought
were clean. And now had to take them off for inspection.
    “And the rest?” she asked.
    I led her into the bathroom, where she tucked her ponytail inside and down the back of her shirt, then leaned forward over the tub, silently appraising. “See this ring?” she said, pointing to a ring of filth that circled the inside of the tub.
    I nodded, ashamed.
    “This is a combination of dirt and minerals from the water. It’s not easy to get off. But don’t worry. I can make this tub look new