The kitchen was a typical Friday mess. After lunch, a woman was supposed to come, cleaning the apartment, washing dishes, buying groceries and washing clothes. While she does all this, I'll play a game or two of cards, and then fall into the arms of Marie-Genevieve in her cozy atelier. Returning home after midnight or the next morning, I will find the apartment transformed beyond recognition, smelling of mastic for floors, ventilated and tidied, with a refrigerator clogged with food and shirts fragrant of freshness, neatly folded in the bedroom, and snow-white bedding, giving off coniferous extract.