Cleaning for the Maids

It is an odd fact of life that although I can afford to pay two hispanic women to enter my house each Wednesday afternoon in order to clean it, I must still clean my house before they arrive. I call this cleaning for the maids, and it causes Big Marv no end of pleasure each time I mention it to him.

"You clean for the maids?" he'll ask.

"Well, of course." I say, "I wouldn't want them to pick up anything really filthy."

Big Marv will always follow up with the question, "How much do you pay them?"

The maid service I employ is not, by far, the least expensive in Dallas, a fact I never admit to Big Marv. From empirical data (that is, Chuck) I know that I spend much too much on these two cleaning women. Chuck'll set me up with just one for about a quarter of the price. "And you won't have to clean for her before she comes." he'll add as an inducement.

"They came highly recommended by my real estate agent." I'll reply.

Big Marv, who grew up on a farm, finds my position hilariously untenable.

"Look," I'll say, "when I hired the maids, the 'Maid Manager', or whatever you call her, came over and told me all the things the maids would and wouldn't do. So, I have to do those things they won't do before they show up, or they won't get done. Besides, they've proven themselves reliable. Apart from flooding the upstairs bathroom, breaking the gas stove so that it flamed dangerously all day, and shutting Coda Dog's dog-door repeatedly despite my instructions, they've never done me wrong." After all, I'll think to myself, it's not their fault that the extra shower faucet on the upstairs tub leaks invisibly, it's not their fault that the stove decided to break and flame-out, and perhaps my "instructions", which consisted of putting a small cardboard box of unread mail against the dog-door to hold it open, did not translate to "Leave this dog-door open" in Spanish.

Big Marv will look at me, laughing and shaking his head.

I'll continue. "You don't understand. I need structure like that in my life, otherwise I'll just give over to entropy. I need the fear that two hispanic women who I hardly know will, if I do nothing, see my underwear, my 'personal' reading, and my dirty dishes. If I didn't fear that, I'd never pick anything up and my house would, in most likelihood, be condemned."

Big Marv will think about this for a moment and realize the truth of the matter before he wickedly slides another 10 pounds onto the bar and tells me to hold my head up and hold my stomach in.