Scratches. Like somebody was scraping at the door.
Trying to get out.
No, that’s ridiculous. I’m being paranoid. Sometimes old wood gets scratched up. It doesn’t mean anything ominous.
The room suddenly feels unbearably hot and stuffy. There’s a small furnace in the corner of the room, which I’m sure keeps it comfortable in the winter, but there’s nothing to cool it down in the warmer months. I’ll have to buy a fan to prop up in front of the window. Even though it’s way larger than my car, it’s still a very small space—I’m not surprised they used it as a storage closet. I look around, opening the drawers to check their size. There’s a little closet within the room, with just barely enough space to hang up my few dresses. The closet is empty except for a couple of hangers and a small blue bucket in the corner.
I attempt to wrench open the small window to get a bit of air. But it doesn’t budge. I squint my eyes to investigate more closely. I run my finger along the frame of the window. It looks like it’s been painted into place.
Even though I have a window, it doesn’t open.
I could ask Nina about it, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m complaining when I just started working here today. Maybe next week I could mention it. I don’t think it’s too much to hope for, to have one working window.
The landscaping guy, Enzo, is in the backyard now. He’s running the lawnmower back there. He pauses for a moment to wipe sweat from his forehead with his muscular forearm, and then he looks up. He sees my face through the small window, and he shakes his head, just like he did the first time I met him. I remember the word he hissed at me in Italian before I went into the house. Pericolo.
I dig my brand-new cell phone out of my pocket. The screen jumps alive at my touch, filling with little icons for text messaging, calls, and the weather. These sorts of phones were not ubiquitous back at the start of my incarceration, and I haven’t been able to afford one since I got out. But a couple of the girls had one at the halfway houses where I went when I first got out, so I sort of know how to use them. I know which icon brings up a browser.
I type into the browser window: Translate pericolo. The signal must be weak up here in the attic, because it takes a long time. Almost a minute has gone by when the translation of pericolo finally appears on the screen of my phone:
Danger.
FOUR
I spend the next seven hours cleaning.
Nina could not have made this house dirtier if she tried. Every room of the house is filthy. The pizza box on the coffee table still has two slices of pizza in it, and there is something sticky and foul-smelling spilled in the bottom of the box. It has leaked through and the box is fused to the coffee table. It takes an hour of soaking and thirty minutes of intense scrubbing to get it all clean.
The kitchen is the worst of it. In addition to whatever is in the garbage bin itself, there are two garbage bags in the kitchen, spilling over with their contents. One of the two bags has a rip in the bottom, and when I lift it to take it outside, all the garbage goes everywhere. And it smells beyond terrible. I gag but don’t lose my lunch.
Dishes are piled high in the sink, and I wonder why Nina didn’t just put them in their state-of-the-art dishwasher, until I open the dishwasher and notice that it is also packed to the brim with filthy dishes. That woman does not believe in scraping plates before putting them in the dishwasher. Or, apparently, running the dishwasher. Before I am done, I run three loads of dishes. I wash all the pans separately, most of which have food caked on them from days earlier.
By mid-afternoon, I’ve gotten the kitchen at least somewhat habitable again. I’m proud of myself. It’s the first hard day’s work I’ve done since I got fired from the bar （completely unfairly, but that’s my life these days）， and I feel great about it. All I want is to keep working here. And maybe to have a window in my room that opens.
“Who are you?”
A little voice startles me in the middle of putting away the last load of dishes. I whirl around—Cecelia is standing behind me, her pale blue eyes boring into me, wearing a white frilly dress that makes her look like a little doll. And by doll, I’m of course talking about that creepy talking doll in The Twilight Zone that murders people.
I didn’t even see her come inside. And Nina is nowhere to be seen. Where did she even come from? If this is the part of the job where I find out Cecelia has actually been dead for ten years and is a ghost, I’m quitting.
Well, maybe not. But I might ask for a raise.