typea_all Read Free Page B

Pennsylvania driver's license. It's against the law in that state.
         "Listen, while we're here, considering it's dark and all, would you want us to check out the inside of the house?"
         "No, that's okay, I'll be fine."
         Truth is, I don't just let anyone in my house. I like it clean. Some people might call it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I like to think of it as just being highly antibacterial. I rarely have people over to my place because they carry dirt. Cat dander.  Dust mites. Lice. Radioactivity.  Ebola.  Black Death. Whatever.  Once I clean a place, make it mine, I do everything I can to keep it clean. I even have these little paper booties for workmen that I have to let in.
         At my old apartment in Philadelphia, I was just the same way. Workmen had to wear the booties, or they didn't get in.  Friends could skip the booties, but I'd spend all night cleaning the place when they left. I'd keep a mental inventory of every place they walked, and touched for that matter, so I could wipe it down afterward. Worked out to a 2 to 1 ratio most times. For every hour someone spent in the house, I spent about a half hour cleaning up. Of course, if they used the bathroom, we're talking 3 to 2.
         Ryan was about the only person who had full access to my place, but I still sanitized the entire apartment when he left. Ryan hasn't been to my new place yet. I didn't know Officer Walker that well to justify all that cleaning.
         "If you're sure."
         He aimed the light around the front of the house, not looking too sure that he should leave. By that time, his partner returned and gave him a little nod. They waited until I turned on the light in the garage, and then they got back into their car. I saw him hitting keys on his laptop and looking at my license plate. Then in a few minutes, he gave me a wide smile and a little wave, and they drove off.
         I was right, he was flirting. Isn't cleavage great?
     
    ******
     
         It took me about an hour to clean the car, folding the dirty papers and placing them in the trash. I always thoroughly clean my seat when I sit on it with dirty clothes. I'm binary in that way, either clean or dirty but nothing in between.
         Cleaning actually relaxes me, and that night it gave me some time to think about how I got where I was. It was my mother's fault, may she rest in peace.
         "Be a teacher", she said. "Why do you want to be a medical technician?"
         "A medical technologist, mom, there's a difference."
         "Who cares?  Be a teacher and have the whole summer off. You can travel, meet men, do charity work. Estelle's Sophie is a teacher and she goes to Europe every summer."
         Sophie was a 200-pound lesbian who could bench press twice her weight and beat any man in arm wrestling. She doesn't go to Europe, she just tells her mom she does. I know because we were like best friends in college, and we stayed friends for a while, although I hadn't seen her in a few years. Every summer she goes to Ocean City, Maryland, and lives with Joyce, a petite 90-pound blond with short hair and even smaller breasts. When they walk hand-in-hand it looks like Jack leading the cow to market in some fairytale. My friend Marcie told me she saw the two together in Rehoboth Beach one summer, making out on a bench, and that you could hardly see Joyce. It was like Jonah being swallowed by the whale.
         "Mom, I want to be a med tech"
         "Why?"
         "I want to work in a hospital, do blood tests."
         "Why?"
         "I want to do research."
         "Why?"
         I gave up. "So I can meet doctors. Maybe get married."
         Against my mother's advice, I became a med tech. I became Brooke Castle, M.T. (ASCP).  Only thing is, I hated the job. I hated driving into town, in a dumb looking white uniform, and taking blood from sick old people. The hospital was really just hell with fluorescent