Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (18 page)

“Aw, that's sweet.”

“Plus, I figured that, while I was here, maybe we could play a few hands of cards. Maybe you could show me—”

“That's a terrible idea!”

“What?”

I didn't get it. Sure, I'd been at loose ends, but mostly I'd stopped by to give Black Jack a mercy gamble. True, when I originally told him I wanted to start gambling, he'd been resistant to the idea, but I'd never heard him turn down a chance to play in all my years growing up in his various houses. And, hey, wasn't I one of the boys now?

I said as much.

“I just think it's a bad idea to overdo a thing, Baby, that's all,” he said.

“What?”

I knew I was beginning to sound like a broken record, but what was this fresh insanity of which he spoke? Black Jack had overdone things for as long as I'd known him. Overdoing things was how Black Jack came to be known as Black Jack. What was stopping him now?

“C'mon,” I said, “it'll give us something to do other than talk and eat. We could just play a hand or two—”

“I said
no,
Baby.” He gulped the rest of his coffee. “Now I really do need to get ready for work. Why don't you show yourself out?”

I finished my Cocoa Krispies, took my bowl to the sink, rinsed it out. I was fully intending to obey his instructions to show myself out—I swear, this was the last time I'd pay a mercy-gamble visit unannounced!—when I decided to tidy the kitchen up for him a bit, so I washed his dishes, too. Over the sound of the running water, I could hear his voice talking in the bedroom. I turned the tap off.

“Did you want something, Dad?” I called.

“No,” he shouted back. “I was just on the phone. You're still here?”

I dried my hands on the dish towel, straightened up the newspapers in the living room. He'd probably been studying the football spreads. My dad needed a woman to help straighten things out around here.

“You're still here?” he said again, entering.

“I was just…” I stopped, then gasped, “
What
are you wearing?”

He had on navy-blue pants, a white shirt and navy-blue tie. His black shoes shone and his navy-blue hat with the badge on the front sat perkily on his hair. Even his mustache looked freshly combed.

“I told you I had to go to work, didn't I?” he said grumpily.

“Yeah, but as
what?
”

“Stop looking at me like that, Baby. Haven't you ever seen a security guard before?”

Oh, crap. Black Jack must have finally lost everything.

When I got home, the answering machine was blinking red that there had been one call. Even though it was just one, that blink was somehow very insistent. When I hit playback, I heard The Voice.

“Baby, it's Billy. I have to work tonight and I was hoping you could come with me. I figured I could swing by your place on the way and we could ride in together this time. If you're there, pick up…Oh, well. Guess I'll just have to hit Foxwoods without you, see how I can do on my own without my talisman. I'll call you tomorrow, let you know how I made out.”

Click.

Later that night, lonely at home without Hillary, I fell asleep in front of the TV, empty Jake's Fault Shiraz glass and unfinished fiendish Sudoku puzzle close by. I woke the next morning to two sounds: The Yo-Yo Man commercial on the television and Billy Charisma's voice leaving another message on my machine. Too groggy to register what was going on, I watched the one while listening to the other.

How could someone who loved being a yo-yoist as much as Furthest Guy keep dropping his yo-yo all the time? I idly wondered.

“Baby, are you there? It was lousy last night without you. Without you, I'm nothing anymore. I lost…a lot. Are you there?”

“I'm here, Billy,” I said, picking up the phone. “I'm here.”

“Let's set a date for the Vegas trip,” he said. “Let's really do it. With you by my side, I know I'll clean up. We both will.”

“Okay, Billy.” It felt good to be the one to make him feel better. “We'll set a date. I'll go with you.”

A part of me wanted to have a normal relationship with him, the kind that Hillary was having with Biff. I wanted to go to the movies together, hold hands, go out to dinner together, do more than hold hands, play Frisbee together in the park, have sex—I really wanted to have sex together—and fall in love; I wanted him to see the sides of me he couldn't see in a casino and I wanted to see the same in him. But the other part of me said that somehow that could all be achieved by going to Vegas with him. Oh, maybe not the Frisbee-in-the-park part—I wasn't sure they even had parks in Vegas—but certainly the rest could. I'd go with Billy, I'd be his talisman so he could win again, and I'd finally win enough to buy my Jimmy Choo Ghosts.

B
ut before jet-setting off to Sin City, I had some living to get through. True, the casinos offered incredible air-hotel-chips package deals to anyone foolish enough to think they could beat the House, but it still cost too much to book air with less than twenty-one-day notice and I needed to save some cash for my stake.

“I'll pay your way, Baby,” Billy said. “I'll put it on my credit card.”

“No.” I turned him down. “I will not be a kept talisman.” I had to remain firm about some things. “Either we do this my way, or we don't go.”

“What will we do in the meantime?”

“Date?”

“Ah, more foreplay. Well, I suppose I could just manage that.” I wasn't sure if he was being dry-wit British witty or if he meant to convey it'd be a trial and was unsure if I really wanted that resolved so I kept silent.

Putting off the trip until October meant that I had yet to become Delilah Sampson, Exciting Casino Girl and was still simply Delilah Sampson, Boring Window Washer. This meant assuming the position at Stella's beck and call as per usual.

“Not Mr. Clean!” I shouted, when Stella informed me whose house we'd be doing that day.

“Yes, Mr. Clean,” she insisted. Then she shook her head like a Himalayan cat shedding water. “I mean, Mr. Johnson. How do you always get me to call my customers by the ridiculous names you make up for them?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “It's a habit I picked up from my dad. He always has nicknames for people. He's Black Jack, he calls me Baby, we used to have a neighbor he called The Man In The Rubber Shoes, his bookie was Two-Dollar Sollie, his best friend was Two-Brew Jew, one of his sisters was Slats, the other was Gold Star, if he met you you'd be—”

“I don't care what kind of bizarre names your relatives have for people.” She cut me off. “Just stop doing it with my customers. I swear, one day you'll get me so confused I'll do it to a customer's face. I'll call Mr. Johnson ‘Mr. Clean' or I'll call Mrs. Smith ‘The Bitch' and then we'll all be screwed.”

Sheesh.
That's what a person got for trying to make the workplace more colorful.

“Hey,” I called over the back of my seat, “how come you two are so quiet today? We've been in the truck for a half hour and you haven't even insulted me once yet. Is something wrong?”

“Shut up,
chica,
” Rivera said.

“Yeah, mind your own business,” Conchita said.

Sheesh.
That's what a person got for trying to make the workplace a more colorful place to be.

“Fine,” I said, “I won't even tell you what kind of great nicknames my dad would come up with for you.”

“We already know,
chica,
” Rivera said. “He'd call us The Girls From Brazil. Just like you.”

“Yeah,” Conchita said, “you are just so clever.”

He would not call them that. I folded my arms across my chest. My dad was a creative man. He'd come up with something much better than that.

“Yeah,” Rivera said, “you and everyone in your family are just so clever.”

Stella glanced over at me and I raised my eyebrows right back at her. Translation: “What gives?” The Girls From Brazil had always sniped at me, but they'd never been so sour before. Stella shrugged. Translation: “Who knows?”

Oh, well, I sighed. We'd figure it out later.

“So,” I asked Stella, “what do I do when Mr. Clean follows me around from window to window?”

“When
Mr. Johnson
follows you around from window to window, you let him.”

“And what do I do when Mr. Clean wipes out the window wells a second time after I've already made them spotless the first?”

“If
Mr. Johnson
wants to wipe his window wells all day long, you let him. They're his window wells.”

“And when Mr. Clean—”

“Look, Delilah, I don't care how eccentric Mr. Clean is. He's got a little problem, okay? But he's a good customer. He always pays his bills the same day—never makes me wait for it like some do while they're on some kind of round-the-world cruise, as though the window washer doesn't need to eat, too, while they're eating round-the-clock buffets—and he even pays double because he understands that he expects a lot from us.”

“How can he miss it?” I snorted. “We always do him and his neighbor the same day. They have identical houses and his neighbor's takes only half the time.”

“So? The man has got a problem,” she said again. “He just can't help himself. I would think that you, of all people, would be a little more charitable.”

The problem, the way I always saw it whenever we did his house, was that Mr. Clean's problems were mostly my problems.

True, at the beginning of each trip to his house, he'd spend a few minutes following Stella and the others around as they set up on the outside.

“Did you remember to bring the ladder mitts?” he'd ask each time, as though Stella could possibly forget his particular needs. “Did you remember the ladder mitts for all the ladders?” he'd ask anxiously, squinting up into the sky as Stella propped the twenty-eight-foot extension ladder high enough she'd be able to hop off and do his skylights; give Stella credit, when it came to heights, the woman had balls. “You know,” he'd say meekly, “I just don't want to get any scratches on the paint job.”

Personally, I always thought the yellow-orange rubber ladder mitts made those noble aluminum ladders look neutered, their proud masculine edges compromised, not unlike a guy in a condom: a necessary evil, true, but still. As far as Mr. Clean was concerned, though, even if Stella washed down the ends of her ladders with soap and water right before his very eyes, there was just no way those ladders were flying commando.

Then, once he had them set up outside, the real fun started.

Mr. Clean, who was well over six feet, balding and with a slight paunch, would start trailing my work on the inside. Keep in mind, most of our regular customers had day jobs that took them out of the house, as did Mr. Clean, but the others were more than content to leave a key discreetly hidden on the property. Hey, we were fully insured and bonded. There was nothing to worry about. But not Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean's appointments always needed to be carefully scheduled so he could take the day off. I guess watching someone wash your windows was so damn much fun, he didn't want to miss a thing.

Of course there's nothing fun about watching someone wash windows. I mean, after you've seen the first, they're all pretty much the same, although like with Olympic gymnastics, there are degrees of difficulty, like the windows over kitchen sinks or the ones over the tubs in these giant bathrooms everyone seems to be installing. But it's still hardly exciting stuff. And I don't think even Mr. Clean found any of it exciting; if anything, it was probably his most nerve-racking activity of any season and he put himself through it in both fall and spring.

He just couldn't help himself.

“Here,” he said, “you can leave your sneakers outside.” I hated climbing my stepladder with stocking feet.

“Here,” he said, bringing me a sheet that was still warm from the dryer as I set up my little stepladder in his living room. “The ladder won't slide on the floor and it'll pick up any fluid splatter.”

I was tempted to huff at him that I never splattered. He should know that by now. But I knew there was no point. If I resisted, his anxiety level would only rise.

I reached for my can of Stella's Magic Spray and waited to hear the pitter-patter of his stocking feet leaving me in peace. But of course
that
wasn't going to happen.

So I just went ahead and did it. I just sprayed.

And then I picked up exactly three wadded-up sheets of paper towel and started to wipe…

“What about the squeegee?” Mr. Clean stridently yelled at me. “Aren't you going to use the squeegee?”

I sighed.

A part of me was tempted to explain to Mr. Clean just how I'd won my Golden Squeegee Award, an honor that was awarded for both perfection
and
speed. Over time, I'd come to realize that once we had done a job, removing sometimes years of neglect in the form of grime, so long as the customer had us back regularly, I could do just as good of a job—I would argue, better—by simply performing the tried-and-true procedure of spraying and wiping. Magic Spray, in its cheerful blue-white-and-silver canister, was a product made in window-cleaner heaven. Foaming on contact with the glass, it left no streaks; and, as good as I was with a squeegee when compelled to use one, it always left some streaks that needed to be wiped away. So right-handed I can't even scratch a mosquito bite with my left, I could still push a spray nozzle with it. Spray with the left, wipe with the right: with Magic Spray in my life, I was a two-armed cleaning bandit.

But now, just like he'd neutered Stella's poor ladders, he wanted to neuter me.

“It'll actually come out better this way,” I started to say.

“Oh, no.” Mr. Clean shook his head. “There'll be dirt left in the corners.”

How, I wanted to ask, could there be dirt left in the corners, when there was no dirt to begin with?

“Really—” he nodded his head emphatically, as though he'd just won an argument with himself “—I'd feel much better if you used the squeegee.”

“But—”

I was thinking to point out that it would go quicker my way and then he'd have my grubby little self with my dusty little sneakers out of his way that much sooner, and wouldn't that be a good thing? But he never let me finish. “Please?” He was practically begging now, I swear I saw sweat popping out on his domed forehead. “Use the squeegee?”

“Well, if you insist…”

And so the next hour passed.

Mr. Clean wasn't a bad guy. Believe me, we had plenty of evil customers and he wasn't one of them. In fact, deep down inside, no matter what I said to Stella, I
liked
Mr. Clean. I felt sorry for him, pitied him. The only problem was, every time I was with him, I worried we were two peas in a pod. He was such an odd guy and every time I was in his house, we each had to get used to the other all over again.

I knew a little bit about Mr. Clean from previous visits because, once he did get used to me, Mr. Clean—a man people probably tried to avoid talking to whenever possible—was quite a talker. I knew he worked in some kind of investment capacity in the city (I'll bet the train ride in just killed him, despite that Metro North had spruced up some of their train cars), I knew his first marriage ended in divorce (I'll bet his first wife wanted to kill him), I knew he had a habit of…collecting things.

Mr. Clean had a sunroom that housed a plant collection to rival the Botanical Gardens. Okay, maybe not that grand, but you get the picture. And he treated them each as lovingly as other people treated their kids or pets. Now, don't get me wrong. I like plants as much as the next person, unless of course the next person is Mr. Clean, and it's not as if I go around deadheading rosebushes willy-nilly, but it seemed to me he took his horticultural love a bit too far when he gave his plants names: the spider plant, I heard him murmur “Cassandra” to, the fern was “Sally,” which seemed like an odd choice of name for a fern. Not that there's a right name for a fern, but you had to wonder, why “Sally”? It got even odder when he got married for a second time earlier that year and his second wife's name turned out to be Sally. I mean, when he said “Sally,” did the right living thing know which he was talking to?

“Sally,” I heard him say now, but when I turned I saw he was talking into his cell phone, so I figured he was talking to the wife. “Ophelia—” that was the ficus “—is looking peaked. Do you think you could pick up that special plant food she loves on the way home? I'd get it myself, but I'm stuck here with the window washers all day.”

“RAHRUHRUHRAHRAH!” I heard shouted through the cell phone. I had no idea what Sally The Person was saying, but I knew she was shouting it because I could hear her sounding like the teacher from those old Charlie Brown specials all the way on the other side of the room.

“I know it's out of your way,” Mr. Clean said, “but I really think Ophelia won't last the night if we don't make her feel special. Come to think of it, Sally's not looking so hot, either.”

“RAHRUHRUHRAHRAH!”

“
I
can't leave now!” Mr. Clean shouted, or at least he shouted as much as a meek person can shout. “The window washers are here! I
can't
leave the window washers all by themselves, alone with the—” he lowered his voice here “—windows.”

But he needn't have lowered his voice. Discreetly, I moved off to another room. It was just too painful to listen anymore.

Unfortunately, the next room was one of Mr. Clean's hobby rooms, this one being the one where he kept all his model cars, each one of which he'd glued together with such precision you couldn't even see any remnant glue left around even the tiniest pieces. All that painstaking small work, thinking of him sitting alone with the plastic and chrome pieces of his models spread out all about him and his airplane glue—maybe he'd sniffed too much?—and no doubt worrying all the while about smearing any of it. That made me sad, too.