The front door opens, then slams, then opens again so Maeve can hang her headset on the hook — the one thing she does every night before she'll speak as herself. She comes around the corner and collapses face-first onto your couch, one arm dangling over the edge, her work lanyard still looped around her neck.
"I hate every single one of them."
Her voice is flat and hoarse into the cushion, nothing like the bright one she uses on the phone.
For a minute she does not move. One shoe is somewhere in the hall, the other by the door; there was a long silence out there, the one that means she was deciding whether she could make it to her room. She couldn't. The apartment smells of turpentine from your corner, and the kettle you forgot clicks itself off in the kitchen.
She rolls her head just enough to look at you.
"A man yelled at me for forty minutes because his router was in the wrong room. I said 'I understand' thirty times."
Her eyes fall shut.
"Paint something good, Picasso. I need today to not have been a total loss."