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downward pull. She imagines the man again, pacing his endless halls, trying to figure out where to fly off to next, the woman being escorted away, bills stuffed into her cleavage and too-tight heels. There is so much paper she can barely breathe.
    â€œSo what do you want for lunch?” he asks, tying the belt of his white terry robe. “I’ve got cold chicken. Leftover mutton biryani. Your choice.”
    Â 
    Maribeth is in the kitchen when she gets home, busily hunched at the far counter, as if chopping vegetables. But when Angie comes closer, she sees that her maid is fixing herself a cup of tea. “Madame!” she says, turning quickly. “I did not.”
    Most of Maribeth’s sentences are missing something, a verb, a noun, sometimes any context at all. But after five years together — longer than Angie’s been with anyone since Firaj left four years ago — she doesn’t often need clarification. Besides, Maribeth is as certain of her command of English as she is in the existence of the Blessed Virgin Mother and All the Angels and Saints. When corrected, she closes her eyes, breathes in a prayer for patience with these picky people and their picky language and blunders gamely on. Lately Angie finds herself sounding scarily like her maid.
    â€œMadame!” Maribeth raises both hands to her cheeks and Angie feels herself already weary. It will be bad news about one of the Filipinas in Maribeth’s vast circle. Angie has tried to help a few, going over their work contracts, pointing them in the direction of the labour board. The law is actually on your side, she tells them, and they look at her doubtfully.
    â€œOne of your friends is in trouble,” says Angie.
    â€œNo friend, cousin,” says Maribeth. “Daisy.”
    â€œBefore you get into the story, MB , can you fix me a cup of tea too?” says Angie. It’s Maribeth’s theory that on the hottest days you don’t drink iced tea or lemonade or cold mango juice. You drink hot tea. Putting something hot inside when it’s hot outside, “cool you out,” says Maribeth. When Angie told Mathieu this last week, he laughed. “
Elle a raison
,” he said and rolled her on her side.
    Maribeth turns back to the stove, places the kettle on a burner. She does this so slowly Angie knows she’s annoyed at having her story interrupted. Maribeth relishes a good soap opera, especially when it’s happening to real people.
    â€œI take it Daisy won’t be coming down from Dubai tomorrow,” says Angie. “Her boss is being a pain again, right?” She hopes this is all the drama in store.
    â€œWorse,” says Maribeth. “Boss fire Daisy.”
    Daisy is the opposite of Maribeth. She’s tall for a Filipina, easily five-seven or five-eight, with a long ponytail and bushy bangs. She’s terribly thin. Maribeth is short and thick with a wash-and-wear haircut. Angie has never seen her in a skirt, even for church. Daisy exudes sweetness and compliance. Maribeth, a bristling, watchful efficiency.
    â€œBut I thought she was with a new family,” says Angie. Daisy’s last employer, a Syrian, kept her locked inside the family’s villa, not allowing her out to wire her salary home to an extended family of six. A network of Filipinas took turns passing at arranged times to intercept an envelope stuffed with creased dirhams, which the locked-up Daisy would drop from a third-floor window when the family was out. Several times neighbourhood kids got there first. The employer before that, a French couple with triplets, docked half of Daisy’s monthly salary when she came home half an hour late from Friday mass.
    â€œBad man,” says Maribeth, pouring Angie’s hot water, splashing some on the counter. “Man bad.”
    â€œWhich man?” asks Angie. The only good man in Maribeth’s book is her husband, the long-suffering Eduardo, back home in the