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help!”
    Joe C was definitely not in the business of making life easier for anyone but himself, and that only when it suited him.
    But I’d lasted my month, and was now into my third.
    Joe C was up and dressed by the time I knocked on his door. He adamantly refused to let me have a key, so every week I had to wait for him to shuffle from his bedroom to the front door, which I tried to bear philosophically. After all, keeping his keys to himself was his right, and one I understood.
    But I was sure he wouldn’t give me a key simply out of meanness, rather than from principle. I’d noticed he came to the door especially slowly when the weather was bad, and I suspected he relished the idea of keeping me out in the rain or cold; anyway, keeping me at the mercy of Joe C Prader, all-powerful doorkeeper.
    This morning he swung the door open after only a short delay. “Well, here you are, then,” he said, amazed and disgusted by my persistence in arriving on time for my job.
    â€œHere I am,” I agreed. I tried not to sigh too loudly when he turned to go ahead of me to his bedroom, where I usually started by stripping the bed. Joe C always had to lead the way, and he always went very, very slowly. But the man was a nonagenarian: What could I say? I looked around me at the remains of the grand house as I followed the old man. The Prader House, the only remaining home on one of the main commercial streets of Shakespeare, was a showplace that had seen better days. Built about 1890, the house had high ceilings, beautiful woodwork, restored but cranky plumbing, and an electrical system that had seen better decades. The upstairs, with its four bedrooms and huge bathroom, was closed off now, though Calla had told me that she cleaned it about twice a year. Joe C wasn’t fit to go up stairs anymore.
    â€œI’m all stopped up this week.” Joe C opened the conversation, which would not let up until I left the house. He lowered himself into the old red velvet chair in a corner of the large back bedroom.
    â€œAllergies?” I said absently, stripping the bedding off the four-poster and pitching it into the hall, where I’d gather it up and take it to the washer. I shook out the bedspread and draped it over the footboard.
    â€œNaw, I reckon I ate too much cheese. You know, it binds you.”
    I exhaled slowly, calmly, as I stepped out into the hall to open the linen cupboard.
    â€œDid you get Calla to get you some prunes?”
    He cackled. I was one ahead of him. “Yes, missy, I surely did, and ate them all. Today’s the day.”
    I wasn’t in the best mood to put up with Joe C this morning. The charm of this particular town character was lost on me; maybe the sightseers the Chamber of Commerce was trying to attract would appreciate hearing colorful stories about Joe C’s intestines. I couldn’t imagine why any tourist would want to come to Shakespeare, since its only possible attraction would have been antebellum homes—if they hadn’t been burned to the ground in the Late Unpleasantness, as Joe C’s best friend, China Belle Lipscott, called the Civil War. So all Shakespeare could boast was, “Yes, we’re old, but we have nothing to show for it.”
    Maybe Joe C could be propped on a bench on the square to amuse any soul who happened by. He could give a daily report on the state of his bowels.
    â€œChina Belle’s daughter is dropping her off in a few minutes,” Joe C informed me. “Is my tie crooked?”
    I straightened from putting on the fitted sheet. I suspected he’d been eyeing my ass. “You’re okay,” I said unenthusiastically.
    â€œChina Belle’s quite a gal,” he said, trying to leer.
    â€œYou creep,” I said. “Mrs. Lipscott is a perfectly nice woman who wouldn’t go to bed with you if you owned the last mattress on earth. You stop talking dirty.”
    â€œOooh,” he said, in