Summary

The narrator says that over the years, "thirty or forty women had quit without saying a word" (5). Marie wonders whether some of the women had disappeared at the hands of the men in their lives. But she also knows that some of the women were simply irresponsible. The narrator explains that Marie "had been slapped, punched, kicked, and bitten by former maids. Her purse had been stolen three times. And her car stolen once" (5). One maid had robbed the owner, Naseem, and gone to prison. Another had been murdered by a serial strangler.

The narrator continues to document the past history of maids at the motel: "There were drug addicts and alcoholics and women who dowsed their cleaning rags with disinfectant and huffed those poisonous and intoxicating fumes into their lungs...There were illegal and legal immigrants, though Marie didn't care about their status...