Clean
July 31, 2012 Leave a comment
By Tom Boyle
Sweep sweep sweep, thought John Brothers as he lead his broom like a well-trained dog around the halls of the high school. For all the cleaning I do here, the janitor thought, you’d think I’d be done some day. Damn kids.
And, he laughed at the irony to himself, you wouldn’t think my life would be such a mess. The last thought stung, because it brought Darcie back into his mind. Darcie had left him two months earlier, after he broke his forty-eighth — she counted? — vow to quit drinking. What else was there to do?
John vowed to himself that he wouldn’t go begging back to her. Not this time. Why should he? He was twenty-eight, had a steady income. He was still attractive. Who needs Darcie? Who needs her and her preaching? Her smothering? Her constant mothering?
Darcie’s dotingly attentive kisses and cuddles crept back into John’s mind. He swept them into the large pile of dust and dried gum he had gathered. He headed toward the gymnasium.
The basketball practice should be over. Just as John turned the corner, a basketball came soaring through the opening of the double doors to the gym. A girl followed with equal swiftness, equal bounce. The girl, Missy Collins, calmed the ball down; John stood still. Missy, without so much as a glance at John, turned her back and bent to pick up the ball. John could swear she paused for a moment longer as her shorts rode slightly up the curve where leg meets torso. John caught himself in a stare, then allowed it to continue as Missy stood, took a few awkward steps toward practice, then freed her bunched up shorts. She pulled at her underwear and bounded through the door.
John was sorry to see the flesh covered. It was as if he had been given privy to the most secret and sacred of things — the Lost Ark, the Lost City of Atlantis, Elvis’s hiding place.
John swept toward the bathroom.
She meant to do that, John was sure. Or was he? These fresh, young, privileged girls with all the world at their pretty little feet don’t even notice janitors, bus drivers, parents. He stood before a urinal. A nickel rested against the scent puck. He flushed clean water over the coin and picked it out.
For some reason, he mused as he began to relax, they get into teachers. They pay a lot more attention than he did when he was a kid.
Missy was a bright kid. John began to wonder if she really knew he was standing behind her. She knew him; they had been neighbors when she was ten and he was just graduating. But after that he moved in with Darcie and landed this job. Darcie… Amazing she had stayed with him that long.
The bathroom was beginning to depress him.
As John stepped into the hall, he nearly struck the back of Mr. English (that’s what John called him) with the door. Sorry, he muttered and took up his broom. Mr. English was talking to the coach. The coach was all right, John thought, real down to Earth. But Mr. English is a little flaky.
John remembered something about some girls (was Missy one of them?) that would go by the apartment of some of the single teachers – Mr. English included – to clean. To clean, a sly smile invaded John’s face.
John was about to sweep his way back to the gym — if practice wasn’t over, at least the coach wasn’t watching the girls — when something Mr. English said caught his attention.
…No, it’s fine. Missy just helps me occasionally with, uh, with a project I’m working on. Mr. English added, a novel I’m writing.
The next day in the cafeteria, John lifted his head after cleaning a spill of beige gravy and soppy bread, just to see Missy Collins as she spread a folded dollar on her sweatshirt-covered chest. She lingered a moment in the task. God! She’s grown, Brothers smirked. She sure ain’t the little girl next door no more.
Missy looked up as she passed, tray in hand, and smiled at John; a smile of recognition. She knew him. She knew he stood behind her yesterday. Maybe she — John almost didn’t want to think it — maybe she smiled for some other reason. Maybe she wanted him. Maybe she liked that he watched her. Maybe she wanted to tumble to the cafeteria floor with him and shred one another’s clothes before all of her schoolmates.
Maybe he was grasping.
He had been hardest hit today since the night Darcie left. It seemed everything that could remind him of Darcie had been carefully placed in his path. A grey and orange cat, like Darcie’s Mickey, was in his lawn. Had it come home? He scared it away before he could tell for sure if it was Mickey. The secretary had a copy of Darcie’s favorite magazine, True Slayings, on her desk. John was certain no one else ever read that magazine. Eric Clapton’s “You Were Wonderful Tonight,” was on the truck radio on the way to work. It was their song. Brothers couldn’t bring himself to turn it off.
An image of Darcie, as beautiful on prom night as she was for the wedding, danced through his head. John admitted that perhaps his memory had been touched up, like a senior portrait; that maybe Darcie wasn’t that beautiful. But she was always better looking than Brenda and Selma, his previous girlfriends. They weren’t exactly Christie Brinkley and Cindy Crawford. No, Darcie was the best thing he’d had. Damn.
That was then, now John stood at the corner before the gym wondering whether or not to make an early pass — then maybe several others — while the girl’s basketball team practiced. He heard the rumblings of band practice and howlings of chorus behind him. John shivered.
She’s not that young. It’s not like she’s a little girl. She’s eighteen, he reaffirmed himself as Missy leaped into his mind and bent over before him, or soon will be eighteen. Maybe this was a little perverted, like peeking-Tom on her. What harm can it do? He wanted to know.
He rounded the corner, took a deep breath and held it and his tube of a stomach in, and passed by the door trying to look casual. The gym was empty. An away game; his spying had been foiled by an away game.
Basketball season had ended and school followed closely. Missy had graduated and would soon go off and meet some Frat guy and that’d be the end of it. John never was able to fulfill his desire to sneak peeks at Missy as she practiced; the away game had been for the championship. The school lost; John felt like consoling Missy long into the night.
John’s obsession for Missy had grown, despite relatively few encounters, and overshadowed all memory of Darcie. He had picked up a copy of the yearbook; marked each page with a photo of Missy with pink plastic paper clips left behind by Darcie. He had even stolen a self-portrait of Missy from the art class late one night after everyone was gone. It hung above his bed.
John thought he would burst; that he’d run uncontrollably at Missy in her practically see-through graduation gown and… and… He was afraid of what he might do. Brothers usually dreaded graduation because of all he’d have to clean, but this year he was devastated. He almost called in sick. Missy was leaving him. That thought hurt more than Darcie leaving him. Leave him?! John caught himself. She’s not leaving him, she was never with him. She seemed more interested in Mr. English. Still, he convinced himself, he had a chance, if only she wasn’t leaving.
Right at the end of the ceremony Missy approached John.
Hey, she said jutting her hip to the left so that the gown cascade from her curves and cupped her breast. Funny how he noticed these things.
Hey, Missy repeated, could you — would… She paused. John was staring into her eyes. Missy quickly looked down, then looked up and wide-eyed, then down again, drawing John’s eyes to her hands. She held a cylinder of Rollos gingerly between the circle of her fingers. She bounced the candies on the palm of her other hand. John gulped, Missy unwrapped a Rollo; John’s eyes followed it’s journey to her soft lips and in. He tried to gulp, but his mouth was dry.
Anyway, she finally said through a mouthful of sticky caramel and chocolate, some parent spilled something in the hall by the English room.
John nearly passed out (over a high-schooler?… a freshman coed) when she added Come on, I’ll show you. John gasped, o.k. As they walked, John’s eyes constantly peering from their corners, he felt as if he should hold her hand. Maybe this was her way of seducing him. It was the end of her time here, she wouldn’t have another chance and no one needed to know. They’d just slip into some empty room.
John had mentally gotten her gown off and blouse unbuttoned — even imagined a scenario where there was no blouse, nothing beneath the robe — when Missy said There, and disappeared into the English room.
John cleaned the mess up, half dried and sticky soda, and gave quickly into the urge to look through the thin door window to the English room.
Those teachers are so damn lucky, John thought as Missy hugged Mr. English deeply. I didn’t get any hug.
Then she kissed him, not a peck, either.
John felt like he was in one of those movies where the character goes zooming backward down a corridor in horror. He wasn’t sure if he had screamed, though the two were still locked in a lover’s kiss behind the door. Lovers!
That little bitch! That slut! All he had to do was grab her ass that day and she’d wax his floors. Damn! Or maybe it’s that smooth Mr. English using his knowledge of language to woo and hypnotize her.
Oh, who was he kidding? Even Darcie, with her infinite patience, left him. Missy wouldn’t put up with a drunk janitor; she’s going places. He’s not. Brother’s was stuck in a nowhere job, alone and a drunk.
Marry you, John almost didn’t hear Missy’s ecstatic screech, Oh, yes! I’ll marry you. I love you. John heard Darcie the night he proposed at his parents’ place. She yelled so loud she woke his folks up.
John, head whirling, ran down the hall on the verge of regurgitation or revelation. He stopped, nearly sliding on the mop-slippery floor, and grabbed the phone.
Thank Heavens he remembered Darcie’s number.
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