I coughed on my beer, laughing as I recovered. “If I’m hungover, I’m staying in bed as long as I possibly can.”
Lilith leaned forward, swatting me with a towel. “See? You’re just like my ex-boyfriend,” she teased. “Anyway, you’re still bouncing around like a maniac. Why don’t you get up from the stool and burn off some of that energy before you end up punching out one of our regulars?”
I noticed that my leg was bouncing against the side of the stool, my boot landing with a clinking sound against the metal bar. A picture of Ezra jumped to mind, and I chuckled to remember the way he had skipped around nervously each time we talked.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I answered, rising to my feet. “Can’t be that hard to find something to do around this dump.”
I strolled across the bar for a minute, glancing at tables and checking on the few customers. When I noticed a bucket and rag discarded in the back corner, I got an impulse that seemed like a decent idea. I rummaged around in the storage room until I found a jug of the industrial cleaner we used in the bathrooms, then filled the bucket with water and hauled it all back toward the entrance.
“Where you going with that? Cleaning the sidewalk or something?” Lilith called after me.
“It’s a filthy sidewalk!” I hollered over my shoulder, joking back. “We can’t have that. What will the customers think?”
The street was dark, and down the steep incline of the hill, I could see the comic book shop, covered in shadows. The workers there had been leaving a few lights on in the evening, but it was only enough to cast a faint glow through the front windows. As I stared, I felt another rush of energy surge through my body. My fist clenched around the handle to the bucket, and I almost kicked the wall.
Well, at least there’s plenty to be pissed about, I thought as I walked down the block. When I got to the store, it was still covered with the spray paint from earlier, the red and blackX’s sprawled across the front window like scars.
Maybe I had been feeling guilty for taking fifty bucks from Ezra and then missing the pricks when they messed the place up again. Maybe I was still frustrated that I couldn’t even get a blowjob from a stranger without freaking out about my past. Or maybe it was just the fight from earlier, who knew?
But once I was scrubbing away that paint, I started to feel better. I’d plunge the rag in the bucket, then rub that cloth against the paint in vigorous circles, working the surface hard. My arm ached from it, but just like I figured, as soon as the cleaner started working its magic, the paint was lifted. There were big, messy splotches left from the rag, but that didn’t bother me. The paint was gone.
It felt good. It felt like doing something for once, instead of just feeling pissed.
Maybe most of all, it felt like doing something for someone else.
I smiled a bit, thinking of how the workers at the shop would react the next morning. It wasn’t like I really solved their problems, and I knew it was likely the vandals would come back and mess them up again. But at least they wouldn’t have to be the ones to clean it up this time. That was something.
And so I did what I could, working that rags in circles until the paint was gone and I was finally tired enough to go back in the bar and call it a night.
