“They won’t get mad at you,” Barry said.
I rolled my eyes, but he didn’t see—he was very focused on cleaning the bench in front of him.
“You can do all the doorknobs and light switches when you’re done there,” I told him.
“You do this every day?” Barry asked.
I attached the dry mophead and started wiping the rubber floor. “Yeah, two of us work in the morning and a few days a week someone comes to do the pools, and then two come in at night for the public spaces,” I said. I didn’t add that I am often one of the ones who comes in at night, too.
He and I worked in silence for a little while, just the breathing of the air vents, the swiping of the mop, and our light steps on the floor. Before he was done with half of the lockers, I had moved on to the damp mop. I could tell he was using more spray than he needed, but I wasn’t going to correct him. Even though he was slower than me, we were getting through faster than I would’ve alone, which was something.
If he was going to ask questions, though, I wanted him to just ask them. The silence was giving me sweaty armpits, I didn’t know what to do with it.
“You look tired,” Barry said once he finished the doorknobs. There was a crease between his eyebrows.
“It’s 5:40,” I said. “Tired seems reasonable.”
I turned my attention back to my clipboard, initialing what we’d finished. I stepped up into the shower area where I wiped the metal knobs first. Barry followed suit for the stalls on the opposite wall.
“And you clean every day?”
“Weekdays, yeah.”
“Do you work at any other buildings or just this one?”
“Usually just mornings here, and a full day every other Sunday, but I fill in on afternoon shifts a couple times a week.” Ipushed the cart toward the bathroom, but Barry intercepted me, shouldering me away and moving it along himself.
I gave him a brief rundown of the bathroom tasks when we got there, and he set about spraying all the surfaces while I reloaded the paper goods.
“Have you eaten?” Barry asked. He was feigning this casualness that was really off-putting. I almost told him to just get on with it.
“I had a banana,” I said slowly.
“Just a banana?”
“Well, I’ll have a hamburger in an hour.”
“Every day?” Barry asked.
My eyebrows certainly shot up at this as I looked at him through the mirror in the men’s room where he scrubbed the urinals. The secret with mirrors was that you didn’t usually need Windex, just some cold water.
“Well, sometimes I get a grilled cheese or a BLT,” I said, and watched for his reaction. He looked over his shoulder, and seeing my expectant face in the reflection, quickly turned back and flushed the urinal.
We kept cleaning. I swept, but Barry insisted that he mop, even though mopping was way harder than sweeping for someone who hadn’t spent most of his life mopping, and Barry had almost certainly never used anything other than a Swiffer. After watching him struggle with the mop for a few minutes, never ringing it out enough before slopping it on the floor, I shooed him to the hall and told him to clean the windows that looked into the therapy offices. He went with little protest.
When I’d checked off the bathroom from the sheet and made my way into the hall, Barry was muttering something to himself. I stood at the door, watching him rehearse words I couldn’t hear as he paced.
“How’s it going here?” I asked. Barry dropped the glass cleaner, and it rolled toward me.
“Great.” He retrieved the cleaner and sprayed the nextwindow like nothing had happened. When he wiped it, he left streaks on the glass, but I wasn’t going to fix it. They’d suffice.
I was constantly aware of him as we went room to room, moving closer and farther from me as we cleaned. We were almost dancing, a sort of waltz around each other as we worked through the list of tasks.
We checked off the bathroom, steam room, and sauna in this fashion. Barry insisted he vacuum the player dining room, and I didn’t fight it because it did sometimes hurt my back to do the whole area.
Once everything on the clipboard was checked off, I looked longingly at the corner couch in the lounge, the leather one that was better than my mattress.
“Hannah,” Barry said, in a way that made me think he said my name multiple times and I wasn’t listening.
