janus

She drove the switchbacks with joy and ferocity. It usually took an hour to reach the hovel after work, but she made it in half the time... If you're gonna quit, do it in style ...she thought, and opened the three locks at her small studio. The hovel was illegal because it had no shower, no tub, no heat, no closet and not even those locks protected her. But it was cheap. Ellen had books and clothes piled on wood-and-brick shelves, a futon, a few more items and a fat Siamese, Horace, to keep her warm.

    Ellen tore open the carton of Marlboros she bought... S**t, I forgot to get a lighter ...and used a box of wooden matches brought there long ago. It was the first cigarette she had in three years. The very first puff made her cough, but soon they were old buddies again. One pack equaled twenty little friends, important when alone a lot. She tickled Horace when he demanded it and thought about her last day at the store.

     At least she fired herself. She almost felt bad about giving zero notice, yet was happy. Ellen was bullied by so many opposing requests at work, she promised herself she'd never work retail again, not anywhere.

     "You're great with money, the best we have," said one owner. "But you need to work more with the customers. You must greet them all."

     "You're great with the customers, the best we have," said the other owner. "But you need to be sure the cash drawer balances down to the penny."

     "You're great at wrapping gifts for customers," said one owner. "But you must take less time and wrap them more quickly."

     "You're great at wrapping gifts quickly," said the other owner. "But you need to make them more neat and pretty."

     The manager said, "You're slow to acknowlege customers when they come in. You take too long wrapping gifts. You take too long counting the cash drawer when your shift is over, and you keep wearing all black, an unbecoming color to both you and to our store."

     Ellen requested a meeting in the stockroom with both owners and the manager.

     She pointed at one.
     "You tell me I'm great with money and need work on almost everything else."

     She pointed at the other.
     "You tell me I'm great with customers and need work on almost everything else."

     She pointed at the manager.
     "You tell me I'm bad at everything, including how I dress."

     She took the store label off her collar.
     "I quit," she said. "Right now." She saw three mouths drop open when she walked out.

     In the parking lot, Ellen felt her hands tremble and thought she might cry. Her eyes even filled with tears. She never left a job before without giving two weeks notice and felt terrible.

     It took Billie Holliday blasting through the speakers in her Renault Gordini 17 to pull her out of it and let her think about the long drive home. Her mood spun like the flags used by signal officers on aircraft carriers. What did it mean? A take-off or a landing?
     
     She decided to take off and once she reached the hovel, was pleased with herself: no speeding ticket. She figured now she'd have more time with Horace, books and cigarettes. It was a shame it was summer though. Screaming hordes of kids yelled "Marco" and "Polo" all day long in the unheated pool... S**t. Rent money, d****t. I've gotta get another job soon.

     The next week, Ellen read want ads in every newspaper she could. She was used to getting a new job soon after another was left behind. The problem was rejecting retail work. It was hard to sit home much. The hovel pleased Horace the most. Ellen wanted to move for years.

     She already lived there so long, her neighbors came and went with amazing regularity, usually around midnight. Management changed nearly as often. The couple there now liked holiday decorations in a big, big way. Big as in huge.
     Last Christmas, the sudden appearance of a giant inflated and glowing snowman made Ellen drop her library books. Sinister eyes, black hat, a small leak somewhere. It was lopsided and hissed. It was the scariest decoration she ever saw.

     I've gotta move away from here ...she thought... Hmm, what's this? A university wants new janitors? That's different. Wouldn't hurt to try, all they can do is say no. So what if it's an extra half hour away?...she circled that ad and called the number too.

     The next morning Ellen was on the road again, this time listening to Joplin for luck. She sang with Janis too, even though Janis was dead and gone. Ellen was desperate to stay upbeat. She wanted to be a person a boss would hire. The day before, she talked to a Mrs. Connelly, who told her to come to the school that day. It was a good sign. She was nervous but hopeful.

     Ellen wasn't a large girl. She was about five-five and one former employer called her 'Tinkerbell'. She gave herself plenty of time to reach the right building because she had little idea where to go. Mrs. Connelly gave her what were possibly excellent directions but Ellen wasn't exactly the best at following directions. Plus, it was a new university. Would Mrs. Connelly know how to give directions?

     Once she followed the city's four-lane main street and saw a turn-off that was unmistakable, she knew Connelly did know how to lead even a lamb to the slaughter. She parked and met Mr. "Just call me Bert, please" Lawrence... Huh. Burt Lawrence. Two first names ...and shook hands. Bert  towered over her when he stood to indicate a chair for her. He was all stringy muscle, broad shoulders, grizzled gray hair and a creased face that probably always needed a wash and shave.

     "So," he said, and made his chair creak when he sat. "Ellen Grant. Is that Miz or Miss or Mrs?"

     "Just Ellen, thank you, sir."

     "Bert. Just call me Bert." He smiled. "Alright. What we're trying to do here is this affirmative action thing. All the janitors here are men, or boys who like to think they're men...."

     Ellen's laugh was a nervous bark, quickly cut-off. "Sorry, Burt, "she said.

     "No problem. They asked us to hire a few women here to balance things out in my department. Your paperwork here tells me a lot already that seems pretty good. But I have to ask, can you lift fifty pounds? It's a requirement here. You won't have to much but, well. Can you?"

     "Sure, Mr. Lawrence I mean Burt," Ellen said. "I've worked lots stockrooms where we lifted goods about that heavy. Like a lot of women, I can lift a lot more than it looks like I can. Sir."
         
    Bert sighed. "Just Bert. I don't get fancy." He coughed, spat and said, "how does a little one like you lift heavy stuff anyway?"

     "I guess you never have worked with a woman," Ellen said, setting Bert laughing and coughing. "We lift with hips and legs. We don't use our arms as much as guys."

     "That's the right answer," he said. "Now, look me in the eye and tell me you can be here at 3:30am five days a week for eight hour days. If you can, I'll hire you, see how it turns out. If you miss many days, I'll fire you just as fast."

     Ellen grinned and her eyes lit up. "I like that. You bet I'll be here at that ridic ...um... hour. I'll be here five days a week. I'll lift a car off you if I have to so I can work here."

     "Done," Bert said. "I'm gonna put you in the Princeton Building, a three-story where they teach English and more stuff. Nursing, I think. That ole lady there'll know. She knows everything anyone does around here. That's Mrs. Connelly to you, Ellen. Sign a few papers with her and get situated. Your supervisor there will be Richie Fior...."

     "Richie?" Ellen interrupted. "Like in the old comics?"

     Bert only let his eyes laugh for that. "Yeah."

    "Oh. Okay. Thank you so much for hiring me! I love to work at night and it's one of the best things ever to watch the sun come up. It always gives me more energy." ...I'm babbling, d****t. He's gonna call me Tinkerbell too. Shut up, Ellen.

     Bert just said, "Oh you'll see plenty of that. I'm putting you with Jake so he can teach you the ropes and he takes a smoke break then. Most janitors like to see the sun rise. Good luck. Later."

     Bert shook her hand once more, turned to go and turned back. "You didn't ask about your salary. Starts at $10.50 and goes up the longer you're here. Some guys go for the Union, but not many. That's up to you. Alright then. I've gotta shove a few hundred folding chairs away. Go see the Battleaxe now. I mean Mrs. Connelly." He shook with one silent laugh and left.

     Mrs. Connelly did look like a well-used battleaxe, but acted like an eclair... very sweet. She gave Ellen a map of the school and a sticker for her car "So you aren't towed away, dear" and almost clucked her approval of a female janitor. "Mr. Bertram. I never thought I'd see this day," she said.

     Ellen raised her eyebrows. "Bertram?" she said. "Why yes, dear, " Mrs. Connelly said. "Did you think he meant B-u-r-t?" Mrs. Connelly's whole face smiled. "I did the exact thing about ten years ago."
     "Isn't this a new school?" Ellen asked.
     "Only about half is new. The rest was here before I became 'Ole Battleaxe'."
     Ellen laughed. "You don't miss much do you, Mrs. Connelly?"
     Mrs. Connelly looked down. "No." She put copies of Ellen's papers in a folder. "No, I don't, Ellen. Come see me again if you can."
     "If I can find this office again, I will."
                         ***
     Jake was a short, wide, older man who combed strands of hair across a balding head like some old guys do. Ellen wondered if he carried the fifty pounds with his belly. Richie looked just like an older version of the kid in the comic. He was the only one in the group who didn't smile at Ellen. S**t, I don't like my supervisor, it's cold and dark and I've been driving near two hours already. The other janitors were a really big guy who laughed his welcome and was called Little Jake, and a foreign guy everyone called George because no one could say his real name.

     A week into the job, Ellen knew she liked it. Everyone was friendly. Except Richie, who seemed pretty creepy in a weird way. But she usually only saw him at 3:30am each morning so it was fairly easy. Not so easy was learning all the tricks of the trade.
         
    It was the machinery that took time to learn. Every janitor had his (or her) own cart, a pretty large one filled with paper goods, buckets, a pushbroom, mops, dusters, cleansers...and the dreaded buffer. Jake did his best during his spare time to show Ellen how to use these items and most were easy.   

     Stripping, waxing and buffing long hallways, large classrooms and huge restrooms was nearly Ellen's downfall the first couple weeks. Jake showed her how to wrestle the large old buffer off the cart and how it worked... That looks simple ...Ellen thought... Hang on to the handles to make it go and steer, let go of the handles to stop it, easy ...but it wasn't.

     Ellen made an bad mistake and first used the buffer in a men's room on the second floor. Jake was busy on the first. The buffer was out of her control immediately. It wouldn't steer and crashed around the room like a demented bumper car on steroids. Ellen ran along behind it.

     She clung to the handles and watched, horrified, while the buffer tried to decapitate a toilet and cause one helluva flood. A geyser, probably full of... No! Don't even think it! ...and the porcelain even began to crack before she remembered to let go of the damn thing. Ellen heard her heart pound a rush to her ears in the sudden silence... Okay! Gotta get it together here. Drag the buffer out and don't hang on, start again in the hall ...and she did. In time she mastered it.

     George left a single carnation on the head secretary's desk each morning because, he said, the secretaries hated the janitors. "An' for good reason. We make a lot more of the money than they do. It is unfair, but what can we do? I am not in the union for my example. An' I leave my secret flower to appease them. When things are unfair..."

     Jake interrupted him the first time George talked like this. Later Ellen learned why. George's favorite method to deal with unfairness was to plot an assassination, usually of a politician. Little Jake said it was how 'they' dealt with 'things' wherever George was from... Oh, he's kidding! Boys!

     It was kind of a blast to have a master key to every door in the entire building. Little Jake said it was because janitors were 'doorkeepers'. It was like that myth about Janus, he told Ellen, a god with two faces who dealt with beginnings like a new day and with doors, or so ancient Romans believed. The key did give a sense of power. Even teachers' personal offices were open to them.
 
     But Horace wasn't a happy camper anymore, during the few hours Ellen was at the hovel. He yowled on her arrival and ignored her longer, until it was time to eat of course. She knew why. It took so long to get to work and back, the cat was more lonesome than he should be. Ellen herself knew she took less time at a laundromat, read less and slept whenever she could.

     It took a toll on them that she essentially worked eleven-hour days, though she often cut 'arriving-driving' speed in half. Who else drove around there at 2:30 am, listening to Warren Zevon? Not many. Mist sometimes made it difficult but she really, really knew the road. So she'd coax Horace onto the futon and let him sleep by her head, a former 'no-no' to make up for the hours lost on 'nice kitty' time... Get a great job, have a crummy home life, huh.

    Work and dawn smoke breaks were more fun all the time. At first, only Jake and Ellen sat inside at dawn, smoking by vending machines and kitty-litter ashtrays on the bottom floor, staring east out floor-to-ceiling windows. The other janitors working in Princeton soon joined them. There were only the four of them. Ellen decided maybe, maybe, they liked her a little. They never talked much, only watched a gray sky turn purple, pink, gold, and finally blue. The group sat in companionable silence.

     Once it was 8:00, the secretaries were the first to arrive, then students and teachers filled the halls and janitors retreated to their own 'office', a storeroom for paper towels and bleaches, with a table and four folding chairs. It was now their time to listen to the bustle outside and rest quietly there. George went on occasional hilarious rants and Jake snuck nips from a hip flask he carried.

     Little Jake showed up once with a Scrabble board and asked Ellen in his aw-shucks manner if she played the game. She certainly did. In two months, Little Jake and Ellen played for a penny a point, to be paid monthly. It was a highlight of Ellen's day... Killer! I can make more money! If I lose this job, I swear to god I won't speak to myself for a solid year. They were both good players, defensive and aggressive, always looking for that fifty-point-plus word every day. Ellen brought a dictionary and sometimes the winner could get up to about twenty bucks. Cool.

     The first semesters flew by and it was a year before Ellen fully realized it. She held a job she liked for a solid year, and now looked in the papers for a real apartment to rent, one close to campus. Sure, she still got scared she'd ruin it somehow, especially when Richie looked at her with a calculating eye and nit-picked if she ran five minutes late. Ellen sometimes watched Richie just as closely and hid to do it. Some of his activities seemed plain, but they were a blind for something else, she was sure of it. Ellen didn't know exactly what, just nothing good. He's a creep who sits in his office alone, except there's too much action around it and it stinks.

     When Mr. Lawrence... Bert, Bertram ...got sick, she was as nervous as she felt during her interview. Their sporadic conversations had been good. It was Mrs. Connelly who called Ellen at home and told her Bert had emphysema, had to retire and use an oxygen tank.
    "Can I see him again?" she asked Mrs. Connelly. "I mean, I don't know him like you do, but..." her voice trailed off into uncertainty.
     "I don't think he'd like that, dear. You know how he is," Mrs. Connelly told her. "Just bring a card or something to me... oh, he likes argyle socks, God knows why ...and I'll be sure he gets it."
     "Okay. I'll bring you some things. Thanks for calling, Mrs. Connelly," Ellen said. She hung up and let tears fall unchecked. She hadn't seen Bert since graduation, when every janitor on campus had to arrive early to set up a million and a half chairs for proud students and relatives.

     He coughed a lot then but he was nice. D****t! ...She got out a Marlboro to calm herself and lit it even while she thought... God, I'm stupid, smoking about a friend, my boss, sick from smoking! S**t! ...She smoked the cigarette all the way down and lit another immediately. She stopped crying too, and listened to kids yell "Marco" and "Polo" and make general mayhem by the pool.
                          ***
          The same day she collected a record thirty-two dollars and seventy-two cents for the monthly Scrabble tournament between her and Little Jake, bald Jake came in looking so sad, Ellen already knew what he'd say. George was the only one surprised to hear that Bertram Lawrence was dead. "But his kids and all were with him at the end and Connelly said it was easy," Jake said. "She was with him too." Silence. More silence.

     "But..." George began and Jake said, "just shut up, George. There ain't no 'buts' or 'ifs' or 'anythings' now. We gotta think about him and then we gotta think about what you guys'll do next."
    "What do you mean 'you guys'?" Ellen asked. Jake looked away. "I'm gonna retire," he said. "Met a Florida lady who just happens to like me enough to put up with me, and that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna retire. I'm gonna get married again and I'm gonna retire! Okay?" Silence. More silence.

     Richie suddenly burst into the room without knocking. "What are you people doing?" he said, his voice hot with anger. "Is that a game there? You're supposed to be working. Go on, go on, go on! Now!" His eyes were narrow and glittered in the bright light.
     Ellen felt her old fear about confrontation rise. They spun her around again, a towel in a dryer. Huh ...she thought... I got a surprise for you, Richie Rich, if I had the guts to say it. Ah man, I can't.

     Little Jake spoke up first. "We knock on doors in this building, Richie. We're polite. Yeah, it's a game. You have somethin to say about it?" He stood then, making Richie look up to meet his eyes. It didn't faze Richie a bit. "Yes, Jake, I do." Richie swept the old board aside. "No more games here. No more sitting around. I tell you people..."
     George was next, striking like a snake behind Richie. "I am thinking maybe this one is ready for the assassination, yes? You ready, rich boy?"

     Balding, stout Jake raised his hands in a gesture of reconciliation.
     "Just stop that, everybody. Obviously Mr. Fiorini here hasn't heard the latest news."
     "What, old man?" Richie said. "That you're leaving? Oh yes, I know. I think all you people will be off this campus before long."
     Help them, I gotta help! Richie's the only one doesn't know he's caught by my pictures... Ellen finally cleared her throat. "I...um...I...yes. I know, Richie."
     Richie looked smug.
     "Tell him, Elly" Little Jake said. "You can do it. We have your proof. We have the cops waiting."

     Richie's eyes widened and Ellen wondered how everyone missed his pinpoint pupils so long. His face showed everything bad about his drugs and how he both used and sold them to kids. He looked like the awful person she'd taken secret photos of near his office.
     Little Jake spoke again. "Mr. Lawrence and Mrs. Connelly just found out about your operation, Richie. You're one shut-down drug-dealin sellin-to-kids scumbag. Tell the cops on your way out."
     In one quick move, Richie turned and left their office. He didn't get far before campus police met him right there in the hall.

     Jake closed the door on Richie's whining denials to the cops. "Ellen? What happened, sweetie?"
     Ellen wept again. "I can't sometimes. Sometimes I can, and other times...Oh this is much harder than retail ...I can't... But I took the pictures, see, and Bert saw them. I showed him the proof. I mean Bert knew then ...right before he...died and...."
     She straightened, wiped her face and looked around. "Hey guys. We did it, didn't we? Got rid of the biggest dealer on campus. I think we can make Little Jake our new boss now, like Bert said he should be. But I...I didn't say anything. Little Jake said it. Well, he said stuff I never thought I'd hear anybody say to a supervisor ever and now I think I'm gonna laugh. Hysterically. Man oh man." She blew her nose instead. "I feel so bad we can't tell Bert it's over now."

     Little Jake held her a moment, and said "Connelly prob'ly did. Take it easy." She mumbled, "I think you should ask Mrs. Connelly anything you may need to know in the future, Boss."