Each day I would make an envelope for each person and hand them their allotment of cash while keeping track of the money put out so we could replace it later. We'd brought Kim and Mark in at twelve an hour, and we'd keep Doug at fourteen dollars an hour if he could get Kool to accept twelve dollars an hour as well. It was all part of the little maneuvering we had done to keep us in the black. But by the fifth day we were in trouble.
We knew we needed another dumpster and at least a full workday out of each person. Dirk had already called the head guy at the Public Guardian's office and managed to squeeze an extra nine hundred dollars out of them with the promise that not only were we going to empty the house of trash, but we were going to make it spotlessly clean. I didn't like that idea, but at least it kept us from losing money on the deal for another day.
Of course, that also added a day in cleaning costs. My plan was to call a cleaning service in and let them worry about scrubbing down the walls and shining the counters, removing the cobwebs and cleaning the excavated bathrooms. I was sick of being out there, dealing with the sights, the smells, the neighbors (particularly the witch, who would hang out for hours on end, running commentary on every item removed from the house), and just the overall misery of staring at a house for eight hours a day.
I had moved my director's chair indoors and would sit, cane in hand, keeping tabs on my crew. This, of course, had the added negative of the neighbors creeping closer, walking free range into the house and exploring. I frequently had to kick them out for "insurance reasons," particularly the witch, who knew all about a hidden ceiling compartment that she herself was interested in checking into.
Such was her fascination with the possibilities of the ceiling compartment that Dirk actually came out on that sixth day to supervise the opening of said compartment. But, alas, like some
Geraldo
special, it was empty. Dirk saw the mostly excavated house in person and maintained that we would not be in need of a cleaning service.
By the end of the sixth day we knew there'd be a seventh day. We definitely couldn't afford a seventh roll-off dumpster, so Dirk instead rented a small, rolling bin like you'd find behind a restaurant. There wasn't that much trash left, and we hoped we could fit it all in.
On the seventh day the crew was as miserable as I was, but they were at least getting paid. Finally, though, we had achieved the basic goal of removing all the trash. I was sick of seeing the house and its scummy walls, and the persistent smell of the toilet room, which we'd actually had to remove all the tiles from, so stained were they with caked shit.
At the end of the day, Dirk mandated that I ask the workers to return again to help clean the house the next day at reduced wages. He didn't want to hire a cleaning crew, because he was certain he could get our guys back for cheaper. Not surprisingly, the crew collectively told me to go to hell. I didn't blame them.
So Dirk had returned to his old buddy craigslist and mentioned that he'd gotten a husband-and-wife team who were eager for work and would clean anything for ten dollars an hour each plus lunch. I wasn't too worried. The Sewer House, once devoid of trash, actually looked like an otherwise average empty house with dirty walls, cobwebs, and stained carpeting. Sure it wasn't clean, but it was miles away from how it had looked, and for once I was optimistic about its potential.
The morning that I met the "husband and wife" team, though, I knew I was in for a rough ride. The "husband and wife" were actually a boyfriend and a girlfriend in their early twenties, and the girl's appearance screamed "problem worker."
The two of them had a seedy look, exactly the sort of people who would take a one-time cleaning job on craigslist. Right from the get-go, the man, a recent ex-Marine, said that his girl was strung out because they'd been the victims of a "home-invasion robbery" the previous evening. The boyfriend, Dill, had left the house for about twenty minutes, and all their nice, expensive new stuff that they "totally had receipts for" was jacked, receipts and everything. The girl, who we'll call Pickle, hadn't gotten a good look at the masked men, except that "they were black."
Fortuitously for all, the couple had just purchased theft insurance on all of their new stuff. Unfortunately for them, they were having a rough morning, because the insurance company didn't want to pony up the dough, mainly because the cops didn't believe in the slightest that three black men in ski masks had just stolen all their electronic goods. So now there was talk of plans to sue the police department and the insurance company…that was about the time that the couple entered my life.
Gritting my teeth as I listened to the rants, I reminded myself to curse Dirk. I pulled a recently purchased collection of cleaning supplies out of the truck and handed them to the couple while I unlocked the house door. After letting them inside to go nuts on the place, I returned to the lawn to set up my director's chair.
No sooner had I sat down than Pickle came storming out of the house, got into the couple's car, and drove off, old brakes squealing as she went. I waited about forty minutes, honestly figuring that maybe she went to pee at a fast-food joint up the street or something. Finally, I went in and confronted Dill, who gave me a sob story about her wanting to get a charger cord for her cell phone so that she could call her mother.
"I can't pay her for the time she's gone," I said stiffly, feeling very much like some sort of plantation owner.
Dill was out on the lawn, jawing at me during his fifth smoke break of the morning, when Pickle came roaring back onto the street. Relieved, Dill went to talk to her. They argued for a few minutes, then kissed and made up, whereby she once again drove off. Dill came back to me.
"She's not going to work today," he said, shrugging casually.
My vision actually blurred with the intensity of my rage, but I wanted to keep cool and keep him going to not waste the day completely. Besides, he assured me that he could easily clean the entire house by himself by the end of the day.
"I did much harder work in Iraq," he reminded me.
At lunchtime he walked down the street and made a phone call, then came back to sit near me on the lawn. "Is it all right if we have Subway today?"
I had just learned of a Subway in the area, and after a week of eating pizzas and burgers, which we had supplied the crew with daily, I needed a fresh alternative. "Sure," I said. "If you keep working while I'm gone, I'll run out and pick it up."
"Do you have a pen handy?" he asked, and I retrieved my clipboard to write down his order. "I want a foot-long sub with turkey, lettuce, sprouts, vinegar, mustard, bell peppers, and ranch dressing," he ordered. "Make sure there aren't any tomatoes, onions, or pickles on the thing."
I suddenly felt like I was his lackey, but if that was what it took for me to escape the Sewer House, that was what I would do.
"Also I want a Diet Coke to drink," he added.
When I returned with the food and his Diet Coke, I shouldn't have been surprised to see that Pickle had returned and was sitting next to him on the lawn, neither of them working. When Pickle saw me, she took off running to the protective custody of her car while Dill stood up sheepishly. "She thinks you're angry at her," he admitted.
"Why would I be angry at her?" I said, really letting the sarcasm hang out there. Apparently he was oblivious to sarcasm, though.
"Oh, good," he answered reaching for his sandwich. "I told her that you were a nice guy." I shrugged, feeling proud of that for some stupid reason.
He then broke his sandwich into halves and set one down on the wrapper while taking a bite of the other one. I settled into my own sandwich, feeling happy about the fact that he thought I was a nice boss.
Dill then waved his girlfriend over while I was in mid-chew and pointed at me, giving her the thumbs up.
Slowly she came out of the car like an overly cautious squirrel and walked up on the lawn. Dill handed her the other half of the sandwich, which she quickly bit into, holding it protectively with both hands, squatting in a feral posture while she ate. If there had been food in my mouth, it would have tumbled out when my jaw dropped open. But I didn't say anything, because I was a "nice boss." I never felt like a bigger pussy in all my life.
After the meal, he burped and lit a cigarette while she returned to the car, not thanking me, and drove away once more.
"She's thinks you're nice, too," he said, though she hadn't said a single word during lunch to either of us. I could only shake my head and wait for the fuzzy visions of shapeless rage to abate.
He returned to work once more, and I called Dirk, asking him to come out and make sure the house was clean enough for what we had pledged to the Public Guardian's office.
When Dirk arrived at the end of the day, driving up in my Cavalier, Dill was full of excuses for the both of us about how the house was dirtier than anything he'd seen in Iraq after all. It still wasn't done, but it was passably clean in my opinion. Dirk, on the other hand, wasn't so impressed.
Though he didn't say more than two words to Dill, Dirk leaned close and gave me an earful. "Pay him, and get him the fuck out of here," Dirk concluded, his round eyes narrowed to slits.
"I can tell your boss doesn't like me," Dill said when I pulled him aside to pay him off. "You're a nice guy, but he's a dick," he said, raising his voice and looking in the direction of the house, where Dirk was investigating the work. I handed him his envelope. "Will you call me out to work for you again?" he asked earnestly, as if he actually thought I might.
"Sure, sure," I said, desperate to get the bastard out of my line of sight. He'd managed to make me feel like a chump enough that day.
"You're a good boss," he reiterated, though this time I didn't fall for the line. "That other guy really sucks. And besides that," he said, looking over at the Red Rocket, which Dirk had parked across the street, "he drives a really shitty car."
Pickle once again returned to pick him up, and they left my life, hopefully to go get shot in some convenience store robbery that I might later be lucky enough to clean up.
"Can we just be done with this thing?" I begged Dirk as he surveyed the house with disdain.
"No," he shook his head. "You're coming back tomorrow with chunties." "Chuntie" was slang for Mexican Americans who acted more Mexican than those born there. I knew that wasn't what he meant, but I couldn't be bothered to correct him.
* * *
The next morning, I drove out in Dirk's truck to the Home Depot near his house. I'd never hired illegal laborers before and wasn't eager to start. Driving over to their side of the parking lot caused a huge swarm of them to surround my truck, waving their hands to get my attention.
"I need someone who can speak English," I said to the crowd.
"I speak English," one of the men yelled. I pointed to him and two others, and they piled into the truck's king cab around me.
We drove down to the Sewer House, and it was just as I'd left it, horribly dismal-looking. The whole way down, I'd avoided making small talk with the guys, not wanting to incur some guilt about my own lofty position. But at the job site, I unlocked the house and turned to the English speaker.
"Will you make sure that the walls, counters, and bathrooms get wiped down extra clean?" I asked, speaking slowly. He stared at me blankly.
"Will you make sure the walls…" I began to repeat to him and then suddenly realized the problem. "Do you speak English?" I asked him again.
"I speak English," he said enthusiastically. It was the only English he knew.
Determined, I mimicked the motions of scrubbing and cleaning as I led them throughout the house and even donned gloves of my own to help get the work done faster.
The three of them put Dill to shame with their steady work pace, their silence, and their not needing a goddamned cigarette every twenty minutes. We all scrubbed tirelessly throughout the day, stopping only for burgers, which they scarfed down while working. At the end of the day, I once more called out Dirk to assess our work, finally feeling like we had done it.
"Nope, you're going to be out here one more day," he said upon taking a quick look around. "I told the Public Guardian's office that we'd clean this place spotlessly. You and your workers have failed to do that again."
At that point, retail business or not, I lost it on him. Feeling the sting of tears at the corner of my eyes, I was broken down, sore, and exhausted. My back was throbbing from the intense work, and he'd simply dismissed it. I cussed and yelled and told him where he could stick his job, because he was going to be one employee less, which was a serious issue, considering he really only had one.
Dirk considered that and asked me to calm down. I didn't want to calm down, but he apologized for marooning me out there as long as he had. He knew I was working hard, but he also knew how important the Public Guardian's office was to our success. With the patience of a father, he soothingly talked me down off my emotional ledge and promised that with one more day of hard work, we'd be finished. Once more we paid the workers off with dirty cash from the house.
On the last day, I returned to the parking lot at Home Depot for crew members. The other two hadn't shown up that day, but my nonEnglish, English-speaking guy was there. Since he had knowledge of the job, I once again selected him. For good measure, I also chose a father and his teenage son. It was a bit unfair perhaps to the other workmen that this guy would get his family a double payday while they would bring home nothing, but I needed someone slender and tall who could clean out the grease traps above the stove. It proved to be a good choice on my part.