My boyfriend, Hunter, came by on Sunday afternoon and insisted we open up the expensive cheese and fine wafer-thin crackers, insisted on eating their frozen pizza--Not that I really resisted, but he tried hard to make a party: "Look--When you house-sit for the rich, you have to take advantage of it. That's the whole point."

He enjoyed watching the NCAA basketball playoff prediction-or-something-or-other talk show-thing on the cable as we ate our pizza, but later his stomach hurt, and he admitted to feeling uneasy in this house. He agreed when I said, "I feel like we're at Pottery Barn."

Strangely enough, the house belongs to my boss, the owner of a small gift shop. She has a flair for picking out and displaying creatively the jewelry and Soy Candles and lip balm and pet accessories and nightlights and handmade wooden boxes at the store, but when I come to her house from the store, it's like I'm still there.


The clock chimes every quarter hour. The way it echoes through the house, I thought its chiming was the church down the road, my entire first day here.