Chapter 3

She cleaned up after dinner, and Stan loaded the dishwasher, mostly because he felt guilty watching her do it by herself. He settled in on his old couch to watch some TV. She continued cleaning. Her energy amazed him. Near midnight Stan began to grow tired and turned to talk to her.

She had taken all the clothes out of his closets, straightened and replaced some, ironed others, and set up neat piles of colors for the dirty stuff. Stan saw a pair of his dirty boxers near the top of the white pile and blushed.

"I uh, I'm tired, you should take the bed, and I'll sleep here on the couch tonight. Later I'll get you a roll-away or something, I dunno."

"Oh Stan, that's so nice of you, but I can't. I have to spend my first few nights in my shipping container." She smiled at him.

He frowned. "Why?"

"I don't know really, something to do with maintaining my body." She seemed to consider a moment. "I think that my need to be in my crate will go down over time."

She brightened. "Besides Stan, I'd never be able to live with myself, and I really do mean that, if I was in your bed and you were on a couch. I'd feel ashamed, humiliated, and upset." She paused again, as if taking inventory. "Yes, that's exactly what I'd feel, ashamed, humiliated and upset. No, I'd be much, much happier sleeping naked at the foot of your bed." A tiny shiver ran over her. "Oh yes. MUCH happier."

"Naked at the foot of my bed?" He stood and began to walk towards his room. "That's like some weird stuff, right there."

As Stan stripped off his clothes in his bedroom, Freckles jumped up on the bed. "Well Freckles, she's not a doll. She's a freaking green-skinned Orion slave girl or something ... or one of Mudd's women." He shook his head. "Who does that make me? Kirk or Mudd?"

She peeked her head in around his open door. "What time do you like to get up, Stan?"

Stan pulled the covers up quickly and said. "Oh um, six-thirty, and please close that door, sorry."

That night, as Stan slept, the girl completed the first pass of her cleaning. At three AM she climbed into the oak crate, replaced the tubes and sealed it shut. In the silent apartment, only Freckles heard the almost silent whir of the ventilation fans.

At exactly Five AM, the crate unsealed again and the girl unhooked herself and stepped back out.

From five to five thirty, she exercised in the darkened apartment, silently. She whipped through a blinding series of calisthenics and drills, then followed that up with meditation. At Five thirty, she took a shower in the hallway bath and then unwrapped the toothbrush from last night's shopping trip and brushed her teeth. She combed her wig, replaced it in the pouch and put on a red shoulder length wig, brushing it out as well.

At six, she started bread dough, then made eggs and small ham slices. While cleaning the previous evening, she had found recent grounds in Stan's coffee maker, indicating that he liked coffee, so she made him a fresh pot.

At six-thirty, there was a knock on Stan's door. "Uk?"

She opened the door and brought his breakfast in. Blinking, he sat up rapidly. "Oh, uh you didn't..."

She laid the table-leaf improvised into a lap-tray over his lap, and kneeled down beside the edge of his bed. "Coffee, do you like it with cream? With sugar? Eggs. I made scrambled with a bit of cheese and spices. Would you prefer poached, sunny-side up? Fried? Or do you not want eggs? Fried sausage links, do you like patties, though? And I made you some bread for toast. But do you like whole wheat?"

He stared at the breakfast for a second. She'd left out of her description the half grapefruit, carefully segmented, the tiny snow flower plucked off his balcony and laid across the top of his plate, the way the sugar cubes were arranged in a pyramid, or that the drizzle of butter on his toast was done in precise wavy lines.

Stan sighed to himself and shrugged. "Cream AND sugar please. Two sugars. Decaf at night. I like sunny-side up mostly, but an omelette or a scramble is fine. Sausage patties, not links, though not the spicy kind. I love whole wheat."