Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

Joe and the second man had been inside for at least an hour. She had been relieved when Joe came out okay, and tempted to follow him, but she was more curious about who the second man was. She’d waited another half hour, but he hadn’t shown up. Most likely he lived there.

She starts brushing her hands back and forth through the grass, letting the soft textures tickle her palms. The grass is wet. She had written down the address before leaving. What she would do with that information she wasn’t sure. Probably just leave it scrawled across the notepad in her front seat for the next few weeks before balling it up and tossing it out.

Joe driving different cars. Joe with files at his house. Joe with a missing testicle. Joe secretly meeting people.

Well, okay, Joe went to somebody’s house, the same way she’s gone to other people’s houses. Gone there and had coffee, played some cards, killed some time, ate some dinner. What is so suspicious about that?

Nothing. Except Joe parked two blocks away and left in a different car. Plus the house-somehow she knows that house.

“So what do I do, Martin?”

If her brother could reach out from his grave and offer her some advice, it wouldn’t be Do nothing. It was her doing nothing that had got Martin killed five years ago. It has been her lack of responsibility, her laziness, her unawareness. She was doing nothing five years ago when she should have been doing something. She should have been doing anything to stop Martin from being hit at forty miles an hour in a thirty-mile zone. It wasn’t the school’s fault. It wasn’t even really the driver’s fault. It was her fault. She knows some people would blame God, and she suspects her parents split the blame between her and Him.

That’s why her mother flinches when she puts an arm around her. That’s why her parents didn’t try to convince her to stay at nursing school, and allowed her to give up her career to help them pay the bills.

It was difficult not to hate God. It was His fault for making Martin intellectually handicapped. It was easy to lay blame with her, though. It was her fault that Martin had run out into traffic. Her fault for forgetting how excitable he could be when she finished her studies early and got the chance to pick him up from school. She’d rung home to say she could pick Martin up. Her mother had told her not to worry, but Sally had gone ahead and worried. She loved the look on Martin’s face when he stepped out of school and saw her waiting there for him.

The rules were always simple. Her parents had told Martin a thousand times. He was never to cross the road. And she knew the rules too. She was never to park across the road and wait for him there; she either parked on his side of the road, or she walked over. Her parents reminded her time and time again, but the problem when people remind you so often is that you start to ignore it. The words go in, but they don’t settle anywhere. The other problem was she was late. Only by two minutes. How many times has she remembered the route she took to his school that day? A red light there that could have been green. A person towing a trailer ahead of her at twenty-five instead of thirty miles an hour. A pedestrian crossing with people taking their time to cross it. It all added up, and in the end it came to two minutes. It all added up the same way all the ages in the graveyard add up and divide to get an average of sixty-two. Just simple mathematics combining to end a life.

She’d pulled up outside the school two minutes later than she should have. She’d opened her car door two minutes after she should have opened it. And Martin had seen her from across the road. It all came down to mathematics, basic physics, and human dynamics. Martin getting excited. Martin running over the road to meet her while she was getting out of her car. Martin getting in the way of an object moving much faster than he was, weighing much more than he did. She’d run to him and knelt by his side. He was alive, but that had changed two days later. She’d let her brother down when he’d needed her most.

She won’t let Joe down. He needs her. He needs somebody to look out for him, to protect him from whatever madness he’s got himself involved in.

The walk home takes me through streets that smell like wet dog. My clothes stick to me, my underwear keeps on bunching up into my ass. When I get home, I bury the murder weapon and the gloves in the yard. I make my way upstairs, pulling my keys from my pocket to. .

For fuck’s sake!

On the floor directly outside my apartment door is Pickle. Or Jehovah. It’s too damn difficult to tell. I spin around, looking for the fluffy bastard that did this, but it’s gone. I crouch down, and touch my dead fish with my finger. It feels rubbery.

I find an evidence bag in the kitchen. I’m bending over the fish when I hear the meowing. I look up, and at the end of the hall is the Goddamn cat. On the floor ahead of it is the other goldfish. Slowly the cat reaches forward with its paw, pushes the fish a few inches toward me, then pulls its paw back. He tilts his head, then meows at me. I take a knife from my briefcase, which is still by the door. Keeping his eyes on me, the cat reaches forward and pushes the fish even further toward me. Then it sits. What the hell is it trying to do? I get hold of the biggest knife I can find.

“Come on, pussycat. Come on.”

It starts toward me, covers half the distance, stops, turns back toward the fish, stops, then turns back toward me. It meows. I tighten my grip on the knife. Then it moves slowly back to the fish, picks it up softly between its teeth, and carries it toward me. It stops a few feet away, lowers the fish to the floor, then takes a few steps back. Once again it meows. I get on my hands and knees so I can slowly crawl forward. I keep the blade of the knife ahead of me.

And then I understand what it’s doing. It’s offering my fish back to me. It meows again, but this time it is more of a whispering whine.

“There’s a good boy,” I say in my friendly voice, happy to lull it into believing I no longer have any urge to see it skinned.

“Come on, fella. I’m not going to kill you, boy. I’m not going to break your neck.”

It meows and comes another few steps closer. I keep moving toward it. Closer now. Less than an arm’s length away. Closer still. .

We reach each other, and it pushes its head down and head-butts my fist.

Then the bastard starts purring.

And me? What do I do?

I start petting the damn thing. I’m tickling it beneath its chin as if it’s just the greatest little cat in the world.

I look to the floor where my two dead goldfish are. I’m going to have to bury them again. I tighten the grip on my knife, then use the tip of it to start scratching the top of the cat’s head. It tilts its face sideways to get a better scratching position for itself.

All I have to do is thrust down, and this little cat that I saved will. .

Saved. Now that’s the key word. I saved this thing, I spent money on it, I brought it into my home, it repaid me by killing my goldfish, and after all of this I’m saving it again. Saving it by not killing it. I put the knife away.

Under the observing eyes of the cat, I put the two goldfish into an evidence bag. I will bury them later.

Back inside I sit down on the sofa. The cat jumps onto my knee and I keep petting it. After a few minutes it falls asleep.

Before I go to bed, I stare at the coffee table and wonder if I will buy any more fish. Maybe when all of this is over. Without them, I feel like a piece of my life is missing. I feel empty. Though not as empty as I felt yesterday.

When I wake the next morning, I’m sweating and the cat’s on the end of my bed. I’ve had another dream. I can remember Melissa. We were together somewhere, I think a beach or an island, and I realized I’d formed a misconception about our violent relationship. Rather than killing her, I was lying with her, both of us enjoying the sand, the sound of the sea, and the sun. It was as though we were having a good time.