With her seeds all planted from yesterday, Elsie wasn't certain what to do with herself the next morning. She checked on the little mounds in the earth and watered them well, but that didn't take more than an hour of her time. Looking around at the chaos which was the rest of her farmland, she decided she might as well spend time clearing more land; eventually, if everything went to plan, she would have enough money to buy more seeds for planting and would need room to grow a larger crop.
The work which followed was brutal and left her limbs shaking like a leaf in a gale: she hauled away rocks, breaking open the biggest ones with a pick axe. She cut down trees and threw the wood on the pile heaped next to her rickety shack. She tilled land until her hands threatened to bleed from the blisters left by the hoe.
Elsie was punishing herself, she knew, as well as trying to keep her mind off the last two nights. She didn't like what was happening, what she was becoming; it didn't feel like her. When had she become so passive and docile? Was it life in the cubicle farm which had wrought this change in her? Why had she dropped to her knees and opened her body the instant someone ordered her to? First she submitted to Darryl, then to Charlotte, her entire being flushed and crying out for more as these strangers-her neighbors!-used her like a toy.
Alongside the anger she held for herself, she found room to nurture a seed of frustration at the couples who had slept with her. Yes, she had obeyed. Yes, she had made a choice. But Darryl and Rachel, as well as Charlotte and Paul, were older and wiser and more experienced. They held emotional power over her, as well as the physical power of the debt leveraged against her farm. They knew what they were doing, and didn't care if it was wrong; they were too busy enjoying themselves to dwell on the morality of the situation.
It frustrated Elsie that she could see that they were wrong and yet still want them. Her dreams last night had been torturous affairs of pleasure: Darryl's warm voice praising her as he stroked her hair and took her mouth; Charlotte's soft hands on her body as she brutalized the girl's every hole. Rachel and Paul lurked on the edges of her dream touching themselves and telling her soft praises that faded with the dawn: how lovely she was, how aroused she made them. She woke covered in sweat and panting, masturbating furiously as she chased the orgasm which had seemed so close in her dreams. When she came, it was a quick and unsatisfying, nothing like the roiling sensations her recent partners had coaxed from her.
What the hell was she going to do?
She wouldn't go back to them on one of her off-days, she knew that much. It was one thing to visit when she was scheduled and to work off her debt, but it was another entirely to crawl back to them on her own free time and beg for more. She wasn't a dog to whimper at their doors for scraps. But when would she be scheduled to see them again? Elsie hated herself for wanting more, but her hate couldn't stop the hunger. Her body burned as she worked and no amount of labor could drive away the coiled heat in her stomach.
When it was time to shower and report to her next assignment, Elsie was so exhausted she thought she might have to crawl there. She checked the envelop in her mailbox and breathed a sigh of relief; Jessie and Kevin's house was at least close to hers. Even so, the walk felt like an eternity and she wondered what the evening held in store for her. She'd not met this couple at all, even in passing, and she could only pray that they hadn't received a briefing about her straight from Rachel's tattling lips.
The house, when she entered after knocking, was a country kitsch affair: too many knick knacks covered in dust, with too much gingham trying to force homeliness and cheer into the room. A housewife with a cute face and auburn hair tied in a long braid over her shoulder studied Elsie with listless eyes. Elsie shifted on her feet, feeling uncomfortable. "I'm here to work?" she offered. "I'm Elsie. The farmer. I'm new here."
"Jessie," the woman said, extending a hand to shake without much enthusiasm. "I'm sorry about the mess. I did try to clean up before you got here, but there's just so much to do and anyway that's why you're here, right? Doesn't make much sense to clean house before a maid comes, does it? Not that I'm saying you're a maid, but that's what you're here to do, right? Clean? Or did I get that all wrong?"
Elsie swallowed hard, feeling relief unknot the tightness in her shoulders; as cute as this woman was, she had absolutely no desire to do anything with her in the bedroom. "Yes, ma'am. I'm supposed to be doing, um, odd jobs around the village to pay back the debt on my farm. Taxes. I'm happy to clean."
"Oh, good." Jessie looked relieved, a smile brightening her tired face. "Okay, excellent. I have laundry to do so I'll be in the back room with that, but you can stay out here and dust. You don't need supervision, do you? Oh, good. Please don't mind Kevin, just be quiet and don't get in the way of his television watching."
She gestured at something behind her and Elsie looked around her to see a tall man with rugged features sprawled on the sofa in the middle of the living room. He nodded in their direction but his eyes didn't leave his show. Elsie returned the nod, smiling nervously. "Do you have a dust rag...?"
--
Two hours later, Elsie was exhausted to the point of tears. She'd made a decent dent in the living room, starting on one end and dusting her way to the other side, but there was so much to clean. In addition to the dust on each knick knack, the baseboards needed a thorough dust and wash, and the walls themselves were in need of polishing. Elsie switched from dry dust rag to wet rag to polish rag again and again, heady from the fumes and dust in the air. Kevin watched television while she worked, largely ignoring her.
Jessi checked on her from time to time but mostly kept to her own work in other rooms. In addition to the laundry, there was cooking to be done for tomorrow and dishes left over from tonight. She had her own daily chores to do, she'd explained in a tired voice, and Elsie was here for deep cleaning work that never got done because there was so much else to do. Did she know how to paint? she'd asked in an airy way before heading back into the kitchen with shoulders hunched. Elsie's emotions wavered between relief and a sort of secondhand exhaustion for the poor woman.
When the village bell chimed nine, Jessie wandered back into the living room and watched Elsie rub out a particularly bad spot of grease from the wall. "Liam explained we have you until midnight?" the woman said, voicing a little sad uptick on the end of her sentence to turn it into a question. "I'd like to use you for the full six hours, but I promised Kevin to split your time fifty-fifty. His shed is in the backyard and needs cleaning; I'm not allowed back there. Can you see your way out? I need to start ironing and folding."
Kevin had left through the back door after his show ended. Elsie nodded her agreement, too tired to speak, and let herself out into the dark night. The cool spring air was bracing but she was exhausted. None of her previous work nights had gone until midnight and though neither of them were easy to endure, she'd at least not been scrubbing walls with rubbery arms still tired from a morning spent hefting axes and hoes.
The 'shed' was a little building in the backyard, almost just the size of the little shack she called home and looking twice as sturdy to add insult to injury. She pushed the door open and stepped into a haze of cigarette smoke. "Kevin?" She coughed once, her lungs irritated already from the dust. "Jessie sent me?"
"I'm here." The light cast by a single travel lantern was dim but with his voice she was able to locate him; he was lounging in an army cot crammed into the far side of the shed. He took a long drag on his cigarette, unreadable eyes watching her as she stood by the door, unsure where to start. "Thanks for coming. I told Jessie I needed help cleaning but, well." He cleared his throat and shrugged. "I know what you are."
She blinked at him. "Excuse me?"
He shrugged again, looking almost faintly embarrassed to be having the conversation. "I saw you walking home last night, and the night before. After visiting with the other couples in town."
Elsie's cheeks burned at the memory and her imagination supplied what she must have looked like: tousled hair, clothes askew, cheeks flushed. The scent of sex in the air like a perfume, a sheen of telltale sweat. She took a step back into the shed wall. "Whatever you think you know, you don't. It's not like that."
"I'm not judging," he said, taking another long drag on his cigarette. "God knows I've got no place to. I've visited enough hookers in my time. Or is it whores?" His expression turned concerned, like he'd just taken a dump in her bed and wasn't sure if he'd committed a faux pas. "I forget the proper terms. Sorry."
"Pretty sure it's 'sex worker'," Elsie said through gritted teeth. "And I'm not one. Like I said, it's not like that."
"Sex worker," he echoed obediently. "Sorry. In the army, we didn't fuss much over using the right words."
Elsie took a deep breath and decided to guide the conversation elsewhere. "You were in the army?" Pulling out a rag she began dusting the nearest shelf full of tools, determined to make herself occupied with something other than him. She was here to do a job, dammit, and that job wasn't him.
"Just got back from a four-year tour," he said, leaning back and watching the ceiling while she worked. "Wasn't sure my wife would even recognize me when I got back. Don't get me wrong, I love Jessie and I know she's happy to have me home, but everything's different now. It's not just the sex, but that's a big part of it."
