Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [29]
“So . . . may I come in?” she asked, smiling up at me.
“Oh, of course,” I said, snapping out of it. “It’s not very big.” I immediately regretted saying this, but Debby didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she scuttled into the main room of my two-room apartment and surveyed it with the steady, calculating eye of a professional. “How often do you need to change the filters on those things?” she asked, pointing to the two air conditioners that were stuck in the wall under the windows.
Silence. “I’m supposed to change them?” I asked.
She said, “Don’t worry, sweetie. I can take care of that. Let’s see the kitchen area.”
“Well, I don’t really cook much,” I said, pointing to the L-shaped area of the room that contained counters, a stove, and a refrigerator.
She smiled at me, like I was a child. “Yes, but dust doesn’t know that you don’t cook, does it?” She was at a height where the light slanted ideally across the surface of the counter, revealing a thin layer of dust on top of three years’ worth of filth, which had bonded permanently to the laminate surface.
I was horrified, as though I’d been walking around in underwear I only thought were clean. And now had to take them off for inspection.
“And the rest?” she asked.
I led her into the bathroom, where she tucked her ponytail inside and down the back of her shirt, then leaned forward over the tub, silently appraising. “See this ring?” she said, pointing to a ring of filth that circled the inside of the tub.
I nodded, ashamed.
“This is a combination of dirt and minerals from the water. It’s not easy to get off. But don’t worry. I can make this tub look new again.”
She was incredibly positive, I thought.
Next, she fingered the caulking between the tiles on the wall near the sink. “Mold,” she said sharply. Her eyes narrowed, and she suddenly looked angry. “I hate mold.” She leaned in even closer so she could get a really good look. Then she looked up at me, while her head was over the sink. “People can get very sick from mold. If they’re allergic, mold can even kill a person.”
Here, she frightened me. Her eyes seemed to display a sort of madness, but I thought perhaps it was because I was looking down at her, and she was at such an unusual angle, with her head over the sink and her neck craned so she could face up at me.
Then she straightened and I saw her smile had been replaced with a clean, straight line. She shook her head, as though to clear an ugly thought. “Anyway, let’s see where you sleep.”
I thought it was odd that she said “where you sleep” instead of the more common phrase “bed.”
Checking to make sure her ponytail was still secured under her shirt, she bent forward and checked under the bed. “Can’t see much,” she said, rising back up. “But I have a pretty good idea,” she added, looking at me with something akin to disapproval.
She’d become chilly. On the phone and for the first few minutes, she was very friendly, perky, and optimistic even. But now she seemed darker and almost angry, as though my sloppiness was a personal affront.
She opened my closet door and asked if there were “any offlimits areas in the apartment: a box of porn, toys, anything you don’t want me to stumble across.”
I was almost unable to recover from hearing the tiny, young grandmother say the words “porn” and “toys,” but I was able to mumble, “No, you can look anywhere.”
She continued, as though reciting from a memorized list. “Any pets? Cats? Dogs? Birds?”
“No, not even a plant,” I said.
She scratched above her ear, then examined her hand, like she was looking for fleas or some sort of debris.