Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

I opened the container, there was only a tiny bit left.”
    “Maybe you ate more than you thought,” I said.
    “No,” he said. “Impossible. I portion control very carefully. I had precisely half a container left and then tonight just a smear across the bottom: a noodle or two and a tiny shrimp.”
    “So what are you going to do?” I asked, curious to know if he was going to fire her over this. He was accustomed to firing the help. He might even be at a stage where he enjoyed it.
    “I’m going to try an experiment,” he said. “To see for sure.”
    A week later he called me back with the results. “Well, I got confirmation. Debby’s stealing food. I know for sure now.”
    “What do you mean? How?”
    “I ordered a container of shrimp chow fun because at least I know she likes shrimp. Then I left it unrefrigerated for two days, I hid it in the closet. Then I put it back in the refrigerator, full, and that night when I checked, it was almost empty. She called in sick the next day.”
    What a brilliant idea. If I did the same thing, would she become suspicious? And would it be wrong to do it just for fun?
    “So are you going to fire her?” I asked him.
    “Oh, no. I’m enjoying her too much. She’s become my hobby.”
     
    As the weeks passed, I became consumed with work. They handed me an additional account, on top of the three I already had. Now, I truly had no time for myself. I couldn’t even pick up my dry cleaning because they were always closed when I came home at ten. And I was working every weekend, too.
    I became more and more dependent on Debby. An extra day here. A new errand there. Gradually, cunningly, she had wormed her way from “housecleaner” to “personal assistant” all the way to “psychological crutch.”
    It started with the closet. One Sunday when I came home from work expecting her to be gone, she was still there. “If you gave me some money, I could really transform this closet. I could super-organize it, and you’d have so much more room. I could install a storage system where you could keep your shoes, your socks, your bills, and paperwork.” She outlined a dazzling wire shelving plan that was sure to simplify my life.
    “How much?” I asked. I was quite familiar with her ways by now. We’d worked out a very specific cleaning routine, and if it deviated by so much as one extra glass, I would pay. With Debby, everything came at a price. Tighten up those annoying doorknobs? Thirty dollars. Have that slip-covered sofa repaired? Two hundred twenty. You know, freezers need to be defrosted: fifty dollars, please. And I was buying enough
salt
each month (“Works wonders on mold!”) to seize the heart of every retired snowbird in Florida.
    Debby looked at the closet, then back at me. “I checked. The system I have in mind is four hundred and change. I figure it’ll take me two days to install it and then get all your belongings put away. Let’s call it an even six hundred.”
    “Fine.”
    “Done.”
    And she was gone.
    A week later, I was out six hundred dollars, but I knew where my shoes were.
    By this time, I was using Debby to take care of all the day-today tasks that a person normally takes care of himself, with the exception of wiping my ass. But how long before I was paying her for that, too? And what would she charge?
    All the extra money from my raise was going to her and then some. And what did I have to show for it? A very small, half-clean apartment, minus one chair, which Debby said broke when she tried to stand on it. And which I suspect she smashed intentionally.
    “I could help you find a larger apartment,” Debby told me one Sunday. “You’ve outgrown this space. Face it: you’re gonna need more suits, and with all the travel you do, you’re gonna need more luggage.”
    My apartment
was
too small, and in the back of my mind, I’d been toying with the idea of looking for something larger. The trouble was, I didn’t even have time to check the paper