I didn’t see Claude Friedrich. It took me a couple of days to register that I wasn’t running into him and he wasn’t dropping in for lunch, and after that it took me a couple more to decide that this was by design, his design. I missed Claude’s company, but I didn’t miss the pressure of his desire.

And I lost clients. Tom and Jenny O’Hagen, who’d lived next door to me in the Shakespeare Garden Apartments, moved to Illinois to manage a larger Bippy’s. I wasn’t too concerned at the opening in my schedule. I had a standby list. I began calling. The first two potential clients fobbed me off with a lame excuse, and I could feel the worry start somewhere in my gut. Ever since the Burger Tycoon parking lot fight, I’d been concerned that my clientele would drop off.

The third family had found another maid, so I crossed them off. The woman who answered at the fourth number said she and her husband had decided to get divorced, and she would be doing her own cleaning. Another X. The fifth name on the list was Mookie Preston. After puzzling over the entry, I remembered that when Ms. Preston had called me a couple of months before, she’d said she’d just moved to Shakespeare. When I called her, she sounded delighted to hear that I could work for her on Friday mornings. She was renting a house, and she wanted longer than the hour and a half I’d given the O’Hagen apartment.

“Why don’t I work from ten to twelve on Fridays?” I was trying to imagine why a young single woman would need me for that long.

“We’ll see,” said the rich fruity voice. “I’m a little messy.”

I’d never laid eyes on Mookie Preston, but she sounded… eccentric. As long as her checks were good, I didn’t care if she raised catfish in the bathtub and wore a Barney the Dinosaur costume.