Jeff Hannah

Every surface in the kitchen was coated with a congealed mixture of dust and cooking grease — the counters and floors, cutting board and canisters, cans, spice bottles, knives, utensils, the toaster, and the blender.

I cleaned houses for five weeks when I moved to San Diego last spring and needed fast cash. I'd lived for a year in New York, spending most of my savings on art school, and had just enough money left to rent a small apartment in Hillcrest and fill the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

At first I had no intention of cleaning houses. I'd already done it part-time in New York and had quickly discovered that hours of heavy cleaning and a long commute don't leave much energy for art. Also, pride would periodically step in and suggest that I shouldn’t be spending so much time doing menial labor at the expense of "developing my talents." I usually cringed a little when telling someone I cleaned houses.

My San Diego plan was to wait on tables at night, then paint and draw during the day. Exactly why this routine sounded easier than housecleaning — or any other kind of grunt work — is not clear now. I was convinced, however, that waitering would provide the fastest income.

I queasily went ahead and filled out applications at various restaurants in Old Town, downtown, and Seaport Village. The dining room managers who interviewed me must have sensed my inner dread, because while a few of them called me back for second interviews and two said I was on their "top ten" list, the only job I was actually offered required standing behind a wine bar for minimum wage plus mercy tips from the waiters and waitresses. I told myself I could do better somehow.

Around the same time. I knocked on doors in Escondido for Proposition 103, the insurance initiative. Although the cause was great, I hadn't the stomach to hit people up for money, particularly in the low-rent neighborhoods we were "targeting." It seemed that every other house I went to had a sad story: brain cancer, alimony, unemployment. It was embarrassing to put these struggling people on the defensive over a couple of bucks.

In addition, we had to collect a minimum $75.00 per eight-hour shift (no breaks) in order to earn more than a pittance. Twice, at the end of a shift, I came in five dollars under quota, which netted me a preposterous $34.00 for two full days’ work. I left.

After that, I hustled "original watercolor drawings" that I’d done of houses in Mission Hills and Hillcrest. I would show my work to real estate agents, who in turn would commission a drawing of some favored client’s home, then give it to the client as a gift. That little business prospered for a time but petered out when commissions slowed to a trickle.

By then, my second month’s rent was looming and I was barely going to cover it. After an offer to help paint a small restaurant fell through, I quickly decided I’d better try housecleaning again.

Actually, I do love cleaning, and I’m good at it. Creating order out of a mess and making someone’s environment more inviting satisfies me deeply. Charging money to do it was originally my New York roommate’s idea. One month, he saw I was strapped and pointed out that all kinds of artists and actors in New York clean houses to pay the bills. He’d done it himself one summer and earned enough for a trip to Europe. So on his advice, I put an ad in the Village Voice. My logo was "Sparkle Cleaning Service," and response to the ad was immediate.

What surprised me was how many New Yorkers, having every reason to be paranoid, were anxious to have me clean their apartments while they were away at work. Very few of them showed much interest in my references. It seemed that as soon as they sensed I was responsible and relatively normal, it was all systems go. Soon I was zipping around Manhattan and Queens with my Playtex rubber gloves folded inside a gym bag. The money was good — $12.00 an hour — and if I got irritated with a client or bored with a job. I’d find another.

After I moved to San Diego and the other jobs I tried led nowhere, I called around to find the going rate for housecleaning (settling on $35.00 for 3'/2 hours) and placed an ad in the Reader. I made my first mistake in resurrecting the name "Sparkle Cleaning Service," not knowing that in San Diego, "cleaning service" means you bring your own supplies, including a vacuum cleaner. (It amazed me how many people there are who can shell out 35 bucks to get their house cleaned but don’t own a vacuum cleaner.)

After the ad appeared, sporadic calls started coming in. Considering my positive experience with New Yorkers, it was unsettling to find that most of the callers sounded suspicious or uncomfortable. They asked lots of personal questions. Fortunately, I had good local references, but repeatedly I would get promises of a call back after checking the references — and I know they did check them — and then I wouldn’t hear from them again.

Late one afternoon, the first real job offer came. The husky-voiced caller (who told me she was a cocktail waitress in La Jolla) sounded as though she’d just crawled out of bed and rambled on spacily about how dirty her house was. Did I have my own rags!? Could I bring a vacuum cleaner? Did I paint window sills? Did I have a ladder? My stereotype of someone living in La Jolla was that they would have everything I might need for cleaning, but this woman sounded as though she had nothing. An inner voice told me something was shaky, but I ignored it because I wanted the job. We agreed that I would come clean her house at 10 o'clock the next morning.

A misty rain was falling when I parked my borrowed car in front of a shabby 1950s tract house on Chelsea Avenue in Bird Rock. Lugging my vacuum cleaner (also borrowed) across yellowed grass, I knocked on a warped plywood door. Silence within. A minute passed and no answer, so I knocked and rang again. Finally a crusty voice called out, "Who is it?" and I answered, "It’s Jeff, the cleaning guy." More silence, followed by scuffling sounds, then the door opened and there she stood — my lady of the house. A big mastiff crouched beside her. The woman, wearing a red bathrobe, her hair tangled, looked about 35, attractive but puffy-faced, with bloodshot eyes fixed confusedly on me.

Finally she muttered, “Oh, yeah ... uh, I’m not ready for you today." Disbelieving, I just stood there. "What do you mean, you're not ready?” I asked. "You told me to come clean your house this morning at 10 o’clock.” I pointed to my watch. She looked threatened. "You can’t come in," she said. "I’m not ready ... maybe tomorrow" I replied that I couldn’t come back "tomorrow," or any other day. "Our appointment was for this morning," I said. Obviously, this woman was no stranger to nasty confrontations, so I knew that continuing to badger her would be fruitless. I was tempted to make a crack about how obvious it was that she was a drunk or a dopehead, but instead I picked up the vacuum, looked her in the eye and said, "I knew you were trouble the minute you called yesterday." She continued glaring. I skulked back to the car, thinking to myself, "Shit. Off to a roaring start."

Things looked brighter the following day when a woman named Sheilah phoned. Sheilah at least sounded alert.

She and her companion, Larry, lived in a one-bedroom condo on a shady street above Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach. When I went there the next morning, Sheilah answered the door, all red in the face, saying she was late for work and had only a minute to show me around. In our rush from the entry to the kitchen, I could see that this place was dirty, really dirty. A stale odor laced the air.

Larry, wet-haired, with dark circles under his eyes, ran into the kitchen to tell Sheilah they had to leave immediately. Luckily, she had taped onto the refrigerator a list of everything she wanted done After Sheilah frantically showed me the cleaning supplies beneath the sink, she grabbed an apple and promised to return by noon with my pay. As soon as they closed the door, I walked around opening windows to ventilate the smell. (It’s always a relief when your clients leave; those who stay home can never resist popping out with periodic "reminders.") Since the bathroom looked like the dirtiest of all the rooms, I decided to start there

I went back to the kitchen and loaded a plastic bucket with Comet, Windex, paper towels, ammonia, a big scratcher sponge, and some terry-cloth rags. Finding such a bounty of cleaning supplies seemed odd, since there was little evidence of their ever being used. I pulled on my rubber gloves and carried the bucket into the bathroom. I hadn't found a toilet brush, so I started by reaching — with hackles rising — right into the pooper to scrub away a brown stain that covered the bowl up to water level. Next came the bathtub, with its foot-wide ring of hairs encrusted in body grease. Gray slime gurgled in the drain. As I scoured off a layer of waxy grit covering the tiles above the tub, I tried to picture Sheilah and Larry preening themselves in this sty. By the time the tub was clean. I'd dumped a good dozen loaded buckets of greasy black rinse water down the toilet, which in turn had to be rewiped and Windexed. (To avoid that kind of backtracking, I should have started with the tub, instead of being overly anxious to clean out that filthy toilet.)

The rest of the bathroom was equally dirty, sticky handprints adorned the woodwork, and dust balls carpeted the toilet’s base and the linoleum around it. Someone had recently wiped out the sink, although the water-spotted chrome fixtures sported rusting hairs in the joints. An hour later, with the floor swabbed and rinsed, the bathroom actually looked pretty good I wondered how much of a difference Sheilah and Larry would notice.

A drunken recluse would have felt right at home in their dank bedroom. Damp towels and some rank-smelling men’s shirts hung over the closet door. Cigarette and joint butts overflowed from a homemade ashtray on one of the cluttered bedside tables. Underneath was a woven Mexican trash pail stuffed with wadded Kleenex, black hairs, and tampon applicators. Crusted stains on the bedsheets and coverlet suggested that Sheilah and Larry found filth a turn-on.

I straightened the room, swept and dusted, vacuumed, then proceeded into the hallway for a quick once-over on the floor and woodwork. Invariably, when cleaning a place like this, the thought comes that only a janitorial crew working all day could really get it clean.

Another 20 minutes on the living room (dust furniture after plumping the pills), and the final frontier awaited: the kitchen. Every surface in it was coated with a congealed mixture of dust and cooking grease — the counters and floors, cutting board and canisters, cans, spice bottles, knives, utensils, the toaster, and the blender. Cleaning the refrigerator was a major job in itself, but there wasn't time to do it thoroughly. I switched on an old movie for company and spent the remaining hour wiping down everything in sight. As I mopped the final puddle of wax across the floor, Sheilah walked in. looked around incredulously, and asked. "How do you do it?" I could have asked her the same question.

My next job, tidying the home of two retired schoolteachers in Tierrasanta, was uneventful. Lunch was the highlight, when they served up a mysterious brown soup containing green peas, macaroni, chili beans, hamburger balls, and whatever else remained of the previous week’s leftovers.

Then one night, I got a phone call from Bruce, a housepainter in Fallbrook. Bruce owned a two-story rental unit in East San Diego, and his tenant had moved out. He needed help getting it ready for the next lucky person. He told me he’d grown up in the neighborhood and had lived in the unit until he got married and moved to North County. He said he was glad to be out of the area since it had become so "sleazy.” His plan was for me to clean downstairs, while he painted upstairs, then switch. The job would probably last all day, which was just fine with me.

The following morning I took a bus out to University and 54th Street. I was running late, so naturally the bus crawled in slow motion. Bursting at last from the bus at 54th Street, I sprinted two blocks down a canyon to one of those 1970s stucco-box, parking-lot complexes This one, painted a nauseous mustard color, featured a single strip of raw wood shingles tacked along the roofline to give it that "designer townhomes" feeling.

I ran up the stairs and spotted Bruce, husky and apple-cheeked. standing outside chatting with a neighbor. If he knew I was late, he didn't seem to care. We exchanged hellos, and he introduced the neighbor, a nervous fellow with long, center-parted red hair, green trousers, a plaid shirt buttoned to the throat, and basketball shoes. He stared at the floor as we shook hands.

Bruce opened the front door, and the three of us tramped into the unit. From the entrance you looked straight through to dusty, sliding-glass doors and a view of eucalyptus trees. The entire downstairs, except for the kitchen, was carpeted in sculpted avocado broadloom. A cottage-cheese ceiling with glitter specks, fake "wood paneling" glued to one wall, and the inevitable amber-globed swag lamp on a plastic chain underscored why the ’70s were such a high point for design and architecture.

Bruce’s departed tenant had left telltale signs of the "young bachelor" — a floor so encrusted with dirt in places that I had to chisel it off with a knife, a refrigerator reeking of mildew, and a blackened stove that appeared to be the veteran of several exploding grease fires. If it weren’t for Easy-off and Comet, cleaning that stove would have taken all day. The only fixture in the kitchen that I bypassed was a cobweb-festooned window, which was nearly impossible to reach behind an enclosure of rusted security mesh.

Throughout the day, the odd neighbor Dan followed Bruce upstairs and down. When he left momentarily to see if his mail had come. Bruce whispered that Dan was emotionally disturbed, living next door on disability. "You ought to see his apartment." he said. "It’s piled to the ceiling with old TVs and electronic junk. That's his hobby. He repairs appliances for the neighbors." Bruce clearly felt affection for this shy, harmless soul, who he said had been stopped by the police one night for walking naked up 54th Street.

My last and strangest job materialized one evening when I answered the phone about 9 o’clock. A whispery-voiced lass named Patty told me how much her house needed cleaning, as her regular cleaning lady had gone to the hospital. Without asking for references, she was eager to know if I could come and clean as soon as possible. I said I could come the following day. Judging from her little-girl voice and sigh of relief, I pictured Patty as a kittenish housewife with small children running about.

At the appointed hour the next morning, I approached a small wooden bungalow on a sunny stretch of Iowa Street in North Park. Freshly watered pansies lined the walkway to a shady porch, where I rang the bell. Patty answered the door, but her appearance was nothing like what I expected: small and very plain, dressed in jeans and a big T-shirt, she was on crutches and had a large bandage across her forehead. Immediately I thought "battered wife."

She was very friendly, almost motherly as she greeted me, and I followed her into a charming living room furnished with a mixture of cozy Victorian and 1920s nostalgia. The walls were pale pink, decorated with framed sheet music and old magazine covers; champagne-colored carpeting covered the floor, and two tiger-striped cats dozed in the sunlight by an old rocking chair.

Patty immediately remarked that she envied my living in Hillcrest. "We tried to get a house there,” she said, "but it’s too expensive. I feel more at home up there; it’s so much more artistic than North Park." Actually, she didn't feel much at home in San Diego. She said she had moved down from Sacramento a year earlier, and aside from San Diego s climate, she lamented that it was too transient, not friendly — at least not like in Sacramento — and the drivers were too aggressive. "I just hate to get on the freeway here," she said. We sat down on a red velvet sofa, and I noticed copies of Fate and Psychic World on the coffee table.

"Here's my list of what I want you to do this morning,” she said, handing me a sheet of lined paper. "But first I think you ought to know that this house might seem a little strange to you." I asked what she meant by "strange.” She hesitated "Well, you may see some rather odd people coming and going while you're here." Before asking what she meant by "odd,” my first thought was that this was a halfway house for mental patients. I’d lived next door to one in Los Angeles and had gotten to know the housemother, so it was easy to imagine Patty as the wounded caretaker of the emotionally fragile. Even if she hadn’t been bruised and bandaged, she possessed a sympathetic sweetness that made the scenario plausible.

"You’ll understand better" she continued coyly, "when my roommate comes home." As soon as she said "roommate," I surmised that the two of them were lesbians and Patty didn’t want to tell me right away. Hoping to make it clear that I was broad-minded, I said I’d lived in San Francisco and New York for several years and doubted that anything going on in the house would shock me. Actually. I was beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable, wondering what was the point of this guessing game, but Patty clearly didn’t wish to elaborate. She dropped the subject by saying that Lupe (the hospitalized housekeeper) "didn't have any problem with what was going on. She thought what we were doing was great."

Before we got up, she mentioned she was a writer. I had noticed a word processor on a desk in the dining area. Continuing the game, she said she didn’t want to talk about her latest project until it was finished. We rose and headed through some swinging café doors into the kitchen. There, amid the sunshine and bunny-rabbit cookie jars, I spotted something incongruous: a stack of raunchy sex tabloids on the breakfast nook table.

Patty hobbled into the laundry room and pulled out a load of wet wash while I gathered up supplies from under the sink to begin cleaning the kitchen. As I started removing the burners from the stove, she piled the laundry into a basket and eased herself outside towards a clothesline behind the garage. As soon as she was out of sight. I hurried over to glance at the sex papers. There were five of them, and they all looked similar. The one on top was called California Swinger and contained maybe 20 pages filled with snapshots of "beavers,” penises, and middle-aged, intertwined bodies. Beneath each photo was a first name, location, phone number or PO. box, and a description of interests: "George, El Cajon — likes to get it on with ladies and couples."

Suddenly, the front door opened. I shot back to the stove and resumed cleaning just as a sullen-looking woman with dark, soaking-wet hair schlepped into the kitchen. Barely looking at me, she mumbled, "I live here too.” then threw a San Diego Union on the table and walked out.

While I puzzled over that introduction, Patty returned and went to join the woman in one of the bedrooms. There was giggling, drawers slamming, then the shower running. In the background, telephones were ringing continuously, but no one answered them. I heard a message machine click on and off.

A while later, as I dusted the dining room, I noticed a paragraph flowing on the screen of the word processor. I went over for a closer look but couldn’t make much sense out of the wording, something about "what does it feel like when a man is humiliated?"

Below the processor lay a typewritten personals ad, the gist of which was: "attractive lady wishes to meet loving, obedient gentleman who will bring her flowers, give her warm bubble baths, massage her feet, cook gourmet meals, and IF he minds his manners, they MAY proceed onto other interesting things, (signed) Ms. Gretchen."

That these messages were left out for me to see was no accident, and I could only assume that Patty was the ominous-sounding "Ms. Gretchen." The undertone of it all was mildly creepy. Moments later, I was not surprised to see several pamphlets about prostitution lying on the bookshelf nearby.

Unexpectedly, a voice behind me said "hello." I turned around to see a woman — the roommate — who was now all but unrecognizable; she looked nothing like the grim female I'd seen in the kitchen 40 minutes earlier. Heavily made up, her hair luxuriantly teased, she looked strikingly, pretty in a clinging, blue-velvet jumpsuit that showed lots of freckled cleavage and a modest pot belly. I was surprised enough to gush, "My God, what a transformation. You look great!" She smiled at this, apologized for her earlier bad mood, and told me her name was Diane. "Patty tells me that you’re an artist," she said. "Well, I think you’re very enterprising to be out doing this kind of work." I would have been embarrassed had anyone else said that, but her child-like sincerity made me feel complimented.

Then Patty emerged, equally transformed but looking much harder than Diane, with her hair bushed out and her face painted almost mask-like. Hopping around on her crutches, she wore a leopard-print Spandex leotard and pink Reeboks. This, she said, was her workout suit for the gym.

Both women shared a subtle smile, which told me they were enjoying the knowledge that I had figured out what was going on. Nothing was said directly, but before Patty left for the gym, she mentioned that a friend of theirs had been arrested the night before. “That's why we're so nervous and aren’t answering the phone." As she was leaving, she cautioned me not to open the door for any reason.

I returned to Patty and Diane's house two more times. When I arrived for the second visit, Patty was at the gym, so Diane answered the door. To my surprise, she was in the midst of packing to return to Sacramento. Her room was in chaos. “There's no reason to stay," she said. “Patty's decided to put the house on the market, and a real estate lady is coming by to look at it this afternoon." Later, while I was cleaning the kitchen, she came in to cook some toast and bacon. Looking disconsolate, she ate standing up, staring out the window. To make conversation, I mentioned that I'd grown up in the San Joaquin Valley and wondered if she had always lived in Sacramento. “No,” she said, "but have you ever heard of Hillsborough?" I knew it was a rich suburb near San Francisco. "Well, I grew up in a mansion in Hillsborough, but as you can see, it didn’t rub off." That was a fair statement; I could picture Diane coming from a mansion in Modesto or Bakersfield, but not Hillsborough.

She sat down and explained that six years earlier, she had been a divorced mother with a teenage daughter, nearly broke, and doing part-time office work. One night at a party, she met Patty, found her fascinating, and was intrigued by Patty's description of the money to be made as a call girl. "You do know," Diane asked me conspiratorily, “that Patty is a dominant mistress?” I said I had assumed as much, particularly after noticing a videotape entitled How to Dominate a Man on the VCR in Patty's bedroom. (I didn’t mention the thank-you card on the mantel in which the sender lovingly thanked Patty for "stretching his balls" and looked forward to having it done again.) "Well, I hope I don’t shock you," she said, "but that’s what I’ve been doing too, though I'm pretty much out of the business now" She asked me how old I thought she was. "Oh, mid-40s,“ I answered. "I’m 51," she stated, “and I’m sure you can understand that I really don’t want to do it anymore."

I asked if she had enjoyed her work. "Sometimes," she said, “especially if the guy gets real excited, but you know, it’s very well paying. That's why I do it. I charge a lot. It's mostly businessmen and older guys; they're the only ones who can afford it." She stared hard at me. "My debts are paid off though," she said. "I've got a little house and a nice car, and my retirement's in the bank. Now I’m going to try living with my mother when I get back to Sacramento, and she doesn’t know about that part of my life."

Diane claimed that her daughter (married and living in Texas) knew nothing of her extracurricular activities either. She went to the bedroom, returning with a photo of her daughter and herself, both posing in Gay '90s costumes at the Santa Cruz boardwalk.

"I don’t know if you're aware," she continued in a tone of admiration, "but Patty is quite notorious. She’s been with some very prominent people but got arrested so many times that this judge told her to get out of town for a couple of years unless she wanted to go to jail for a long time. We were out driving one night when this woman, a junkie, shoots up heroin behind the wheel and plows into us broadside. Just unbelievable.” Pointing to a small scar on her lower face, she said, "My jaw got broken, and Patty had to have surgery on her knee three times — thank God for the insurance. Then we decided to try San Diego."

I asked her if she liked it here; she repeated Patty’s criticisms nearly verbatim. "The weather's nice, but that’s about it." I wondered if she was going to get help in moving her things to Sacramento. "Yeah," she replied,

"My houseman is driving his van down to help me this weekend. Isn’t that sweet?" I asked. "You have a houseman?" She replied, "Actually, he's a college student who used to clean my house every week. He liked to do it nude and didn't even want me to pay him, just give him a good spanking when he was finished. So I’d give him a real good one, then he’d admire his red fanny in my full-length mirror."

When I went back the following week, a "For Sale" sign was stuck in the front lawn. I was nervous because I’d decided to tell Patty that I wouldn’t be returning. I was earning enough from more enjoyable jobs and no longer needed the housecleaning work. Patty had asked me on both previous visits if I was going to "disappoint" her and leave. Although I'd known from the start that it was doubtful I’d last more than a month. I told the truth at the moment: that I had no plans to leave.

On that final morning, both Patty and the house seemed forlorn. Diane’s bedroom, piled with junk the week before, was empty. Perhaps to liven things up. Patty wanted me to hear the new telephone message she was going to record. Cooing breathily. as in a Marilyn parody (a knowledgeable friend later told me that Patty’s little-girl speech mannerisms surely had something to do with her S&M mistress role), she said, "Hi-i-i there. I'm so-o-o sorry I’m not here to speak with you in person, but I know you’ll leave me an interesting message... and remember, it’s not the size of your message, it’s your performance... by-y-y-e” She giggled delightedly, and I said, '‘Let’s hope someone phoning the Christian bookstore doesn't call you by mistake."

Patty knew that Diane and I had talked about her the week before, and this seemed to please her. She mentioned that Diane had suggested I see the "dungeon" in the garage and insisted on taking me there before I started cleaning.

When we got out back, she undid two rusted padlocks on a small side door in the garage. Opening the door, she hit the light switch, and the first thing I saw was an eight-foot-tall. amateurish painting (on plywood) of a barebreasted policewoman holding a whip in one hand and a billy club in the other. The room was cold and musty. Lengths of soiled carpeting covered part of the cement floor. There was a red-velvet curtain hanging to one side and some leather handcuffs on chains dangling from a rafter. Above a wooden work counter was a bulletin board papered with Polaroids of trussed-up bodies. I glanced only for a moment, not really wanting to see it. Imagining petite little Patty, tarted-up in her Spandex and cracking a whip over some cowering businessman in this dumpy garage wasn’t easy. I flashed on the ravaged look she sometimes had when in full makeup.

She remarked that twice the police had come to investigate strange noises in the garage after a neighbor had complained. When they found no proof of illegal activities, they did nothing, "but I know they're keeping tabs on me.” she said. "It’s one more reason to leave San Diego.” As we left the garage, she pointed out several long strips of bamboo matting nailed along the top of the fence to block prying neighbors. I asked if it was screams that the neighbors had heard. "Oh no.” she laughed. "I make sure that sort of thing never gets loud enough to bother anyone outside. I think maybe they heard my whip, which makes a sound like water when it snaps, and they thought we were cooking up drugs or something.” That didn’t sound convincing to me, but I didn't pursue it.

"Where do you think you’ll go after the house sells?” I asked. “Stockton," she answered. "It’s close to Sacramento, and I know a man there who wants to publish my book about being a dominant mistress.” She sounded serious about this prospect, although I couldn’t imagine Stockton being a place where someone would publish a book about the adventures of an S&M prostitute. "Is it true,” I asked, "that you were quite notorious in Sacramento?" She replied. "Well, yes, but a lot of those arrests happened because I was organizing other prostitutes, helping them stand up for their rights, but certain people don’t think we deserve any rights or respect.” I mentioned that I'd noticed a small plaque in her bedroom that commended “Patricia Penrose" for helping "the ladies of Sacramento."

"You won’t believe this," she said, "but I was a schoolteacher for five years. I taught third grade." With forced chirpiness, she went on, "But I have this need to rebel. My parents did quite a number on me. That’s why I became a prostitute.” I asked if her parents were alive. "Yeah, my mother is in Sacramento. She's from New England, very conservative and religious, and my dad was retired military, very authoritarian. I can tell you they were amazed when they found out I was a hooker."

The time had come to tell Patty that I wouldn’t be returning. She took it gracefully, looked mildly surprised, her expression indicating this was just one more disappointment to cap her fizzling San Diego experience. She went off to the gym, and I proceeded with my chores, spending more time than usual straightening her crowded little bedroom with its rumpled twin bed.

Around noon, she came back and offered to drive me home on her way to an appointment downtown. Minutes later we were cruising up University Avenue in her big blue Buick. Our conversation was strained, and Patty seemed distracted. When we reached my apartment, I got out, we exchanged awkward thank-yous and goodbyes, and off she drove.

One evening a few months later, I wondered if Patty had sold the house and moved north. Her phone number was no longer in my file, but I recalled she was listed in the phone book as "Kitty Sunshine." I dialed the number and a message came on, this time spoken by a strange-sounding woman with a deep voice; it was not Patty. I assumed she had transferred her phone number and clientele to this woman, whose message concluded with "... and if you THINK you can please me. I MAY consider calling you back.”