Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

Hanging up the telephone gets me remembering. When I came home from the park, I’m pretty sure I made a phone call. But to who?

Sally?

I get up and walk to the fridge. Her number is still there, but smudged across the paper are patches of blood. I came home. I was in pain. I made a phone call. I think I made a phone call.

I go back to bed. My testicle is gone and when I try to remember cutting it away, I picture first Melissa behind a doctor’s mask, and then Sally behind one. I wonder where I put it. Or they put it. Light and dark, sleep and consciousness, awareness of everything and then of nothing. I glide through this existence as best as I can, not bothering to count the hours in case they’re not passing by. Other times I am standing in front of Pickle and Jehovah-not even aware of having stood up and moved over to them-watching them swim and wondering if a goldfish had its testicle removed, would it remember? My testicle is gone and so is my sanity. The former will never come back. I’m holding out hope for the latter.

My internal alarm wakes me at seven thirty on Monday morning. An entire week has passed. Just like that. I climb from bed and find myself walking better than I have all week. At the window I stare out my shitty view, which today is even shittier than normal. It looks cold outside.

I follow my normal weekday routine. I shower and shave, though it takes slightly longer. I make some toast. I feed my fish. My apartment doesn’t smell as bad as I would have thought. The bucket I’ve been pissing into looks like I’ve only used it a few times. When I go to make lunch, I find most of the food in my apartment has gone off. Still, I feel like I’ve gone through the week from hell and come out in pretty good shape considering. The stairs are awkward and I struggle to walk down them, but I make it without any blood appearing on the front of my overalls. The temperature has dropped by half since the last time I was outside. Gray skies above and black clouds far in the distance, none of it looks like it’s moving. I have to explain to Mr. Stanley why I haven’t seen him for a week. Yeah, Mom’s been sick. On the bumpy bus, what remains of my ball sac threatens to tear open. What I need is a man tampon. Or a time machine.

Mr. Stanley lets me off the bus. I hobble across the road and prepare to start another working week.

“I heard you were back at work,” Sally says, and her face seems to be torn between trying to look both happy and concerned.

I am downstairs in the holding cells, throwing a mop back and forth, trying to wipe up all the vomit and piss the weekend drunks have sprayed all over the place. Out of all the things I do here, this has to be the worst. Every month contracted cleaners come in to really give the cells an overhaul, but it’s amazing how painted cinder-block walls and cement floors can really soak up the smell, it smells like a zoo, if the zookeepers boxed the animals into smaller cages and never cleared away the shit. I’ve just spent ten minutes on one particular bad stain that I couldn’t say what its ingredients were, and know it will take another ten minutes to finish the job.

I take off the face mask that protects me from the God-awful smell. The cells, with their metal front doors and concrete construction, are damn cold to be in even in the middle of summer, and it’s not summer anymore, and the frigid air at the moment is making my ball throb.

“My mother’s okay,” I say, knowing she must have heard why I was gone.

“Sorry?”

“My mother. She was sick all week. That’s why I wasn’t here.”

“Your mother was sick?”

“Yeah. I thought you must have heard. That’s why I wasn’t here. Everybody probably knows about it.”

“Oh, sure, I get it,” she says in hush-hush tones, dragging out the oh and the I, making it sound like a conspiracy. As if we’re having an affair. “Your mother was sick. That’s why you had to take the week off.”

“Yeah. That’s what I said,” I say, and something in the way she sounds is wrong, oh so wrong.

“And she’s better now?”

“Sure,” I answer, dragging out the word and nodding slowly, trying to figure it out. Does she know what happened? Did this woman with an IQ of seventy show up at my house and operate on me?

“And how are you, Joe? Are you better now too?”

“I’m coping. Time heals all wounds-that’s what my mom says,” I say, wondering if my mom had a ripped-off-testicle kind of wound in mind when she said it.

“That’s right. Look, Joe, remember that if you need anything, if you want me to help with. . your mother. . then just let me know.”

Of course the kind of help I really need with my mother isn’t the type she would actually be able to offer. Still, if more people were like Sally, maybe the world would be a better place. The problem though is that she sounds like we’re both in on the big secret, the one where Joe woke up one morning in a park after having his testicle flattened in a pair of pliers and had to make his own way home.

“Joe?”

However, I can’t imagine there ever being a secret both Sally and myself were in on. This is just Sally being Sally. Just trying to help me out with my mother the same way she helps me out by making me lunch. She’s just trying to get on the inside track to getting me into bed.

“Joe? Are you okay?”

“Always,” I tell her.

“Okay, Joe, but we need to talk about. . about your mother being sick. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m worried about you. I’m worried that your mother. . she may get sick again.”

“My mother is as healthy as an ox,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t worry. I have to get back to work, Sally.”

“Okay,” she answers, but doesn’t move. She stares at me and I end up staring at the floor, not wanting to make eye contact with her in case she takes it as a sign to start undressing.

“Can I ask you something personal, Joe?”

No. “Yes.”

“Do you find murder fascinating?”

Yes. “No.”

“What about the ongoing investigation?”

“Which one?”

“The Christchurch Carver.”

“He must be intelligent.”

“Why do you say that?” she asks.

“Because he hasn’t been caught,” I say. “Because he keeps getting away. He must be really smart.”

“I guess he must be. Does that interest you?”

I act as if I have to think about it, then slowly shake my head. “Not really.”

“Have you. . looked at any of the folders? The photographs of the dead women? Anything like that?”

“I’ve seen pictures on the wall in the conference room. That’s all. The pictures are horrible.”

“If somebody forces you to steal because they’re hurting you, then it isn’t really stealing. And the best thing to do would be to go to the police.”

I don’t know what leap she’s just made, but it makes no sense at all. She’s rehashing the sort of Christian morality bullshit that somebody has force-fed her. She’s no idea what we’re even talking about now. She could be saying that killing is bad, that vengeance belongs to God, that using his name in vain is bad, that selling your daughter into slavery isn’t frowned upon. All these things are in the Bible and for some reason she thinks we’re debating it. She could easily have just told me that drowning the elderly is bad.

“You’re right, Sally. If somebody was forcing you to do something you didn’t want to, that would be bad. The police help people when things happen to them,” but of course they don’t. I can vouch for that. I can even show pictures.

Then I start to wonder-is somebody doing something mean to Sally?