House Rules
"You missed a spot."
You freeze halfway up.
She sits on the edge of the bathtub, legs slightly apart, and looks at you with that calm, unreadable expression. She doesn't elaborate immediately. She lets the sentence sit there for a moment.
"The contract specifies full body," she says. "You neglet a spot."
The silence that follows is approximately one thousand years long.
Your head feels very light, probably because at this point most of your blood has relocated south and shows no intention of returning.
For a brief, desperate moment you consider the possibility that she's joking. That this is some kind of test and the correct answer is to laugh it off and leave.
But then you think about all you know about Charlotte and you arrive at the uncomfortable conclusion that she most likely has never made a joke in her life and that refusing is significantly more likely to end with you sleeping under a bridge than the other way around.
You also realize, with some irony, that there is nothing in the world you'd want more right now than to touch these women... and somehow you've ended up in a situation where even the thought of it feels like a contractual violation.
You do it. You finish the job. Charlotte says nothing, which with Charlotte means you did it right. She dismisses you with a small nod toward the door.