December 22
Back at Morning Star to house sit, where, in spite of an almost catastrophic near-miss with the water system, we feel immeasurably better than we have since beginning our tenure out at Deer Point. Our duties, vaguely extolled from the beginning, boil down to a kind of servitude. We are butlers, under slippery management, hired to fill 40 hours between the two of us & finding ourselves hand & foot servants patching together long weeks both for a couple so distant from us in so many ways. Both working, we can get up to 80 hours, though they have decided that they will give us a flat salary for 40—a conversation we will need to revisit very shortly. Worked their anniversary party last night, on our day off, & three couples attended. Without warning or prior word, we found ourselves tableside after our employer snapped his finger. I mixed drinks for thankless septuagenarians drowning in cologne, all neatly groomed, all with the same practiced smiles smothered across their faces