Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

She seems to take that as some sort of answer to some half-formed dilemma going on inside her head, because she smiles, tells me she should get back to work, and leaves.

Sally disappears, but my paranoia remains, my earlier thought that she could have come to my house is enough to make me nauseous. If Sally did come to my house, then I might have to repay the favor. There are things she might have seen, things I might have told her that would mean a visit to her house in the middle of the night would be in order.

I sit on the bunk in the cell I’m cleaning and lean my forehead against the broom handle. Over the following minutes, I slowly convince myself that I’m going crazy. No way could Sally have come around to my apartment. If she had, she wouldn’t be able to shut up about it. She would be asking me how my testicle was. She would think that the very fact that she saw me naked meant we were engaged to be married. Sally is too dim-witted to have helped me, too innocent not to have called the police, too in love with me not to have stayed by my side every minute of the week I was laid up in bed. She’s too many lots of things. And I can’t imagine Sally getting hold of any antibiotics. No, it had to have been Melissa. Which means she is still up to something.

Before lunch I spend twenty minutes in the conference room studying the information and swapping my tapes while I clean the windows and wipe down the blinds. I’m reading statements, studying photographs, making sure nobody is watching me. The sky outside the conference room window is getting darker, and as it does it feels like it’s getting closer, like the world is closing in on me.

I discover several local prostitutes have been approached in connection with the deaths. Hmm. . interesting. Questions have been asked about their clients. Is there anybody who has a bizarre fetish? Somebody who enjoys perverse sexual acts? Somebody abusive with unusual requests? It’s a feeble and wasted effort. They’re hoping that at some point in my life I’ve vented my sexual aspirations on a whore. I’d never do that. I mean, I’d never do that and keep one alive.

The prostitutes have provided a list to the police. An extremely short list. Not many names and, so far, not many leads.

Before my workday ends, I successfully get four color photographs, one each of the four men on my list. Schroder and McCoy each have recent photographs in their files, but it’s a struggle to get current pictures for the other two-until I realize they’ve most likely been photographed by journalists and cameramen over the last few weeks. While I vacuum a room upstairs, I use the Internet and search through newspaper sites until I find pictures of a high enough standard I can print out.

When I leave work Sally offers me a lift home along with the chance to talk about my mother, and I decline. I forgo my usual bus, and stop at a bank and draw out some cash, figuring I’m going to need it over the next few nights. Melissa took all the cash I was using a few weeks ago, along with my ATM card. Stepping into the bank is like stepping into a small nature reserve. With a few floor-to-ceiling potted plants brightly lit under the glare of halogen lights, and several small ones crammed into most available spaces, it wouldn’t be a surprise if there were wild animals living in here. Standing in a line from the counter to the wall is a line of people I don’t want to join, but I have no choice. We stand waiting together without daring to make conversation because if any of us did, we’d look like freaks. Eventually the line shuffles forward a few times, and I make it to the teller. She is a tall, masculine woman with large hands who smiles at me a lot, but no amount of smiling would ever get me to sneak through her front door late at night.

From the bank I walk over the road to a supermarket, since most of the food in my house has expired. I walk around, allowing myself to limp slightly now that I’m away from work. It seems strange being here, as if I’ve slipped into a slice of life that I shouldn’t be allowed in, as if the supermarket for serial killers and men who have been assaulted with pliers is the supermarket down the road next to the deli. I stare at beautiful women as I shop, and I begin to feel ill. These women would laugh at me if I attacked them. They would call me Numb Nuts, or maybe even One Nut.

The girl working the checkout smiles at me and asks how my day is going. I want to unzip my fly and show her just how okay it’s going. I’m angry as hell. The left one was my favorite.

I climb on the bus and the bumpy bus ride threatens to tear my testicle open. When I reach home it takes me five minutes to climb the stairs. Much harder than climbing down them. I enter my apartment. The light on the answering machine is flashing. A sliver of sunlight arcs through the window as part of the sky clears up. At least the place doesn’t smell of disinfectant and stale piss. I can smell the food that has started to go off, though. I open a window before throwing out the old food and replacing it with the new. I sit down on the sofa and try to relax, to regain some energy. Pickle and Jehovah swim for me after they swallow every grain of fish food in sight.

I push play on the answering machine, fearful of what Mom will have to say, but it’s the woman from the vet. Jennifer. And she has good news, and good news is something I haven’t had in a while. She tells me the cat has made a full recovery. The owners haven’t contacted them. She wants to know exactly where I found poor little puss, wants to know if I know anybody who wants a cat. Tells me to call her when I get in tonight. She’ll be at work until two o’clock.

Do I want a damn cat? Not really, but I’ve become somewhat responsible for it. I wonder if I could give the thing to Mom. It would keep her company. Might mean she won’t feel the need to call me every two minutes to ask why I don’t love her. Hell, she can even cook the fluffy bastard meatloaf every day.

Only she would think I was somehow trying to kill her-the cat would give her allergies, or would suffocate her during the night, or pour rat poison into her coffee.

After four rings, Jennifer answers, and her voice suddenly takes on an excitable tone when I identify myself. She explains in her seductive voice everything she already explained on the answering machine. She makes cat surgery sound sexy. She wants to know if I want to keep the cat, the whole time sounding as though she is only a step away from asking me if I’ll sleep with her. I tell her I’ll think about the cat and contact her tomorrow night. We wish each other a good night and hang up. I’m expecting her to say No, you hang up first, and when she doesn’t it makes me a little sad.

At six o’clock, I arrive at Mom’s. We make the sort of conversation that makes me wonder how the hell she really could be my mother. We eat dinner, and then I have to watch her do some of her jigsaw puzzle for thirty minutes before we catch up with her soap-opera friends. I feel violently ill and manage to excuse myself from Mom and her Monday night and, amid the complaints of how I never treat her right, I make my way outside.

It’s starting to rain. I catch a bus back into town, keeping my hand on my briefcase the entire journey, staring out the window as fat drops of rain smash against it, the attack lasting only five minutes. I take a detour past Daniela Walker’s house and she doesn’t seem to mind. Two blocks away I steal a car. It’s nearly ten o’clock when I reach Manchester Street, armed with photographs and cash. Hookers are walking the streets, some starting work, others back from ten- or fifteen-minute gigs sitting in parked cars in dark alleyways. In the back of my mind I keep asking myself whether this is a valid line of investigation. It didn’t work for the police. Why would it work for me? For a start, I have photographs to show them. The detectives didn’t. Prostitutes probably need visual stimulation to jog their memories. I watch as two of them get into a shoving match, which is broken up by a third, then a moment later it’s hugs all around. Within a minute all three have been picked up by three different cars, making me think their fight was a show for the kind of people who like picking up hair-pulling, palm-slapping girls.