Your garbage man is a thief. He comes to your house in the gray hours of dawn and takes not only your garbage but anything else that catches his eye; lawn ornaments, potted plants, unusual trash bins, an attractive mailbox -- whatever he wants. He doesn't hesitate. Remember those seashells you found on the beach in Florida? The shells you placed in the flowerbed with such care, the shells that made you smile every time you saw them? You blamed it on the twin boys who live at the end of the block. You had caught them snooping around the flowers once before, and you know their father's an alcoholic.

Your mailman laughs at you. Your bad taste in catalogues makes him howl; letters from your mother send him into hysterics. He snickers at your magazines. He snorts at your credit card bills. You bought a sofa from Morton's? What kind of an asshole pays nineteen percent interest for a sofa from Morton's? He sees your long distance phone calls and finds it impossible to believe you have friends in Arizona and Pennsylvania; he suspects you made these calls in a pathetic effort to impress him. Out of all the mail he delivers, yours is the mail that brings him to tears.

Your nanny is wanted in three states for arson. Don't worry -- no one's ever been killed. Your nanny likes to set small fires, kindled with personal detritus from her employers; movie ticket stubs, drugstore receipts, canceled checks and grocery lists. One unfortunate parent was left with a scarred right hand but don't worry -- they're small fires, and no one has ever been killed.

Your milkman is a pervert. His proclivities are unspeakable, unthinkable. The acts he commits with your milk and cream are so depraved they can in no way be described on paper. You had no idea that people did this sort of thing for fun. What the milkman does is literally beyond your imagination.

Your maid is a slut. When your family is out for the day and your home is hers she has sex with strangers in every room in the house. She's had the garbage man, the milkman, the mailman, and the nanny. She screwed the twins from down the block, the boys with the alcoholic father -- she did it on the living room floor. Every Thursday at three o'clock she fucks the delivery boy from the liquor store in the vestibule, bent over your boxes of Scotch and white wine. You always wondered why he was so happy to bring your liquor, especially after you forgot to tip him last Christmas.

Your exterminator is a serial killer. As a young man he loved his job, but soon spiders and ants weren't enough. He moved up to rodents, which was lucrative and briefly satisfying, then small wild mammals, then household pets, then horses and cows, and just last month he started with people. He uses the bug spray -- he slips it into their food. He's known all of his victims well. Most have been in his own family. Do not -- repeat, DO NOT -- get close to the exterminator.

Your gardener is in love with you. He has been for years. When he heard you were looking for a gardener (and he heard this because he had spliced into your phone line), he bullied every other gardener in town into giving him the job. You wondered why he was the only one to show up -- you had scheduled three interviews that day. The few small conversations you've had about flowers and the weather have been the brightest moments in his life. When you're not paying attention he takes pictures of you through the windows with a high-resolution camera, and at night he lies in bed and looks at the photographs and dreams about taking you to Hawaii. He thinks you are the most perfect human being to ever walk the Earth. He thinks you are lovelier than Aphrodite, wiser than Einstein. He thinks you have the patience and grace of Christ.

The gardener knows he could make you happy, he knows he could fulfill your every need.

If only you weren't so blind.