Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

I roll her onto her side in an attempt to fit her back in nicely, but finish with one of her legs sticking out. When I slam the trunk down I break her ankle. She doesn’t mind.

I decide to leave the trunk open. I shake the container back and forth, listening as the gas inside sloshes around. It’s about a quarter full. I use what’s there to soak Candy’s clothes, then toss the container in there with her. I reach into the car for my briefcase and use a knife to cut away Candy’s blouse. Once I pop the gas cap on the side of the car, I stuff the blouse inside, leaving a tongue hanging out.

The car’s cigarette lighter does the job.

I am most of the way back into town when I remember the cat. There is nobody to see me as I steal my second car for the evening.

Jennifer smiles at me when I walk through the door. She looks at me as if we’re long-lost friends. “Hi there, Joe,” she says, her voice sounding seductive.

“Hi.”

She waits for a few seconds, checking to see if that’s all I’m going to say. “I’ll just get him for you.”

“Thanks.”

I’m picturing how Melissa would look in a studded dog collar when Jennifer brings the cat out in a small cage.

“I didn’t think you wanted to take him,” Jennifer says, “after last week.”

“Last week?”

“When I rang to give you an update, you said you didn’t want any more cats. How many have you got?”

“Last week?” I repeat.

Her smile disappears and is replaced with one of caution. “I called you last week.”

“Oh. I was sick last week, really sick. To be honest, I don’t even remember you calling. I was in bed all week. I don’t know what the hell it was I had, but I was pretty delirious. If you called and I was a bastard or something, I’m really sorry.” Though she’s the one who ought to be feeling sorry-I’m the one with a missing testicle. Her caution turns to sympathy. “Are you okay now?”

“Getting better. The strange part is that I don’t even have any cats.”

She smiles, and I wonder why I must keep being nice to people. Why can’t I just take her somewhere and do to her what I’ve been doing to everybody else?

“Well, you’ve got one now. What are you going to call him?”

“I haven’t really given it any thought. Any suggestions?”

“Maybe we could figure one out over coffee?” she offers.

“I didn’t know cats drink coffee,” I tell her.

She smiles, then stops smiling, and looks a little confused.

“What do I owe you for the cage?” I ask, figuring it wouldn’t look good if I pulled a plastic bag out of my pocket and stuffed the cat inside. I bet the cage is going to add a good chunk to what is already an expensive mammal.

“Can I trust you to bring it back?”

“I’m a trustworthy guy.”

“Then it costs nothing.” She smiles. “You want a lift home, or have you got a car?”

A lift home would be good, since it would give me a chance to test a few things out that haven’t been used since my half castration. But my name’s on record here, and it wouldn’t take long for the police to come.

I thank her for her offer, promise to bring the cage back before the week is out, and ask her to call me a taxi.

The cage moves around beneath my grip. The taxi driver makes some comment on the cat, figuring he can strike up a conversation with me. He figures wrong. When I get home I put the cat in the bathroom and shut the door. When I go to bed, I can hear it crying. Tomorrow I’ll buy it some food and myself some earplugs. Then I’ll show it around my apartment.

The following morning my internal alarm clock doesn’t let me down. Things are getting back to as normal as they can be for a guy missing his left testicle. I’m still dreaming, though, which is a concern. Last night I was talking to Dad. The dream was disjointed, but I can remember fragments where he was asking me what I was doing. I guess he was asking me because I was stuffing him into the front of the car he was found in. I’d wrapped foam around his wrists, foam and padding, so the rope wouldn’t leave bruises. He couldn’t wind down the windows or open the doors. He couldn’t adjust the air-conditioning or turn off the engine as the carbon monoxide flooded in. He turned blue as he asked me over and over to stop. Mom wasn’t there. She was playing bridge down at the local bingo hall. In fact, that was the last time she ever played. He stopped asking me to stop, then told me that he loved me. Then he died. One moment he was my dad. The next moment he was nothing.

I’m not growing at all accustomed to dreams and I’ve woken from this one feeling shaky and ill. Of course I didn’t kill my father. I loved him dearly and, like my mother, I’d never have done anything to harm him. Walt mentioning my father’s suicide must have given me the imagery. Nobody knows why Dad did what he did. Why he sat himself inside the car parked in the garage and pumped carbon monoxide through the side window with a hose. He didn’t even leave a note.

I give the cat explicit instructions not to claw the furniture or walls. He doesn’t. He looks around for a few seconds before deciding the best way to take a break from being locked inside the bathroom is to hide beneath my bed. I feed my fish, make a mental note to buy some food for the cat, go through the usual routines, then fight the cat back into the bathroom with the aid of a broom.

I turn the radio on, listen to the news.

The fire from the car spread, as I predicted, but the rain over the last day stopped it from spreading far. They say this as if anybody could care about trees and crops, as if the country’s running low on them. The news guy makes no mention of the dead hookers. Instead he moves on to a report about sheep. Tells us that we’re now outnumbered by them ten to one. He doesn’t mention anything about a revolt, doesn’t explain why we need to increase their numbers by cloning them.

The walk downstairs is easier than yesterday. The bus ride is also easier. The weather a little worse. It’s raining steadily. I learn nothing at work except that the people I work with have no Goddamn idea what they’re doing.

“I’ve made you some sandwiches,” Sally says, when she meets me outside my office just before lunch.

“Thanks.”

I eat her sandwiches and take another of the pills. It feels like it goes down my throat sideways, and I don’t feel any better for it. I think about my dream, and wonder why I’m having so many these days. I put it down to the fact that at the moment I’m not getting to do all the things other people only fantasize about.

A few hours after lunch I’m carrying my bucket and mop when I see her: Melissa, sitting at a desk. For a second, perhaps even two, the world comes to a complete standstill. I can hear blood pulsing in my head, which is a neat trick because I can swear my heart stops beating. She turns to me and winks. I start toward her, then begin to back away, so I end up motionless. I want to look around at the police who are going to start jumping on me, but I can’t look away from her. After all she’s done to me, there’s something about her I can’t help but admire.

Today she’s wearing an expensive light gray suit that makes her look like an overpaid lawyer. Her hair is pulled back neatly, and she is wearing little makeup. She looks like a woman any man would desperately want to believe.

She flashes a smile at me before turning her attention back to Detective Calhoun. Are they working together?

“Afternoon, Joe. How’s it going there?”

I jump and turn and see Schroder standing next to me, sipping from a cup of coffee that I haven’t made. He’s smiling at me. “Fine, Detective Schroder.”