Once reassembled, or as reassembled as he can manage, he grabs his bag and walks until the prices become reasonable, then hunkers down in a cafe with the cheapest possible cup of coffee, hooks his battered mobile up to a not-particularly-convenient outlet, and gamely navigates the world of flatshare websites. Something in budget, something not in a wildly depressing area, something without the word ‘student’ anywhere in it. He makes a few calls, trying to phrase “I need a place to sleep by yesterday” in a way that sounds calm and collected.
There’s a lead, maybe. The man on the phone sounds like an adult, the situation (three flatmates, a fourth one required, no pets or smoking, rent on a week-by-week basis) seems reasonable.
He shows up on the doorstep with his bag and his poorly-concealed desperation, runs a hand through his hair like that’ll fix it (he makes it worse), rings the bell. An improbably short and well put-together young woman opens the door. He takes a deep breath, hopes the smile he’s pasted on his face isn’t coming off as aggressive or psychotic, and holds out a wad of cash, says “I can pay in advance” and “I’m quiet and I keep to myself and I’m not a serial killer, I promise.” She gives him a once-over, hopefully determining that he’s harmless, and she shrugs, and now he has a place to live.
"You’re not the one on the phone," he says as he wanders after her through the foyer. "Derek."
"Danny," she says, "and no, that wasn’t me. Obviously. I’m Clara." She smiles brightly and sticks out her hand. He shakes it reluctantly, after a long pause that threatens to turn uncomfortable.
"Good to meet you, probably. I’m, uh. John Smith." It’s been so long since he’s used his real name. It’s small and unremarkable: he feels himself compressing down into it. He’s not sure he even remembers how to be that man anymore.
She gives him a look like yeah right, and he rolls his eyes like yeah I know I get that a lot, and fumbles his passport out of his coat pocket, flips it open to show her.
"Huh, whaddayaknow," she says. Her eyes flick up to him and then back down, probably comparing him to the decade-old photograph, and if she betrays even a hint of sympathy or concern he’s out, he will bolt right now and never look back. But she doesn’t, so he stays.
There’s a quick, unenthusiastic tour: living room here, kitchen there, her and Danny in this room and Osgood (who, she assures him, is a bit nervous but sweet and smart and he’ll like her for sure) in that room and the last room will be his. Two bathrooms, don’t leave hair in the tub or the hot water running too long.
She makes them a cup of tea, probably expecting a sit-down, get-to-know-you chat, but he just thanks her and apologizes and retreats to his room. He locks the door and lets his bag slip from his shoulders and stands there for a few minutes, breathing.
There’s a bed and a chair and a small table and a closet. It’s tiny, so tiny, the walls are pressing in and he is clenching his fists and he is not, cannot, be panicking. He’ll be fine. He’ll make this work.
He hasn’t stayed anywhere in so long. A room, that he’s paid for in advance, that he’ll wake up in tomorrow morning and the next morning and the one after that - all his days in a row, all his days the same. Like regular people do it. He’ll make it through. He has to.
The second step is the job. He doesn’t want a job. He hates the idea of literally every option. They are all terrible. He can’t answer phones or hold up a sign, no. He can’t be a ‘glamour model’ for a ‘web entertainment agency’, he can’t be a cocktail waitress. He is not a marketing rep (whatever those are) and the thought of standing behind a till interacting with people and all their needless acquisitions fills him with dread. The only thing available that he is capable of is cleaning. He can clean, he’s cleaned before, he can wash dishes and vacuum carpets and replace urinal cakes. And no one ever talks to the janitor. That’s a plus.
So he writes down a series of addresses and he takes a series of buses to a series of places, to fill in applications and be interviewed (if he’s lucky) by someone much younger than him clearly worried about the reasons a man of his age and education would want this sort of job. They tell him they’ll call back. They don’t call back. Days pass, a week passes, he is running out of places to go and ways to word it so he doesn’t sound like he’s begging, but also not like he’s above the position.
The last option aside from being a camgirl or a sign-holder, or just throwing himself into the River Clyde, is an opening at some further education college or other, the name of which he doesn’t remember from the last time he was here, but these places are always merging and rebranding and morphing into whatever the focus-group surveys say is best. It’s a place, housed in a series of charmless post-postmodern architectural mediocrities, the pamphlets are very festive. He doesn’t feel like dealing with the specifics.
He finds his way to the correct floor and room after a great deal of trial and error and opening the wrong doors. The office is beige and grey and plastic, everything here is beige and grey and plastic. He announces himself to the secretary, who looks like she’s taken boredom to a deep, Zen place. He sits on a beige plastic chair, which might as well be child-sized for how comfortably he fits into it, and fills in the application. He waits. A clock ticks, the secretary pops her gum.
He’s considering leaving when today’s much younger man beckons him down a hallway and into another beige, stifling room.
"Mr., ah, Smith. You’re here for the Waste Management and Cleanliness Initiative position, yes?"
"Janitor, yeah."
The man smiles blandly, then does a little tut-tut motion at his clipboard. “You haven’t filled this in all the way.”
"I did what I could."
"It’s just that we’ve had several applicants already, all with experience and - phone numbers." The man purses his lips and pulls an expression that’s probably meant to communicate regret and understanding. It doesn’t.
"Yeah," John says again. "Well. That makes sense, you’d want - "
There’s a knock on the door.
"If you don’t send around someone to clean the windows in my office, I’ll be forced to have you killed," says the woman who sort of oozes her way around the doorframe. She’s all curly black updo and Gabardine wool and cheekbones, and John finds himself staring. "Some greasy creature put their tentacles all over it, the view is the one saving grace of that horrible little cage and now it’s ruined. De-smudge it, now.”
"Working on it now, Tremas." The man - and the name plate on his desk says Sebastian Fredkin but that information vanishes from John’s memory the second he looks away - the man in the tasteful grey suit gestures towards the paperwork in front of him. "As soon as we find a replacement for Mr. Fletcher, I’ll be sure to send them ‘round."
It’s clear that John is not that replacement. He’d figured as much.
The woman - Tremas, John thinks, and works hard to keep hold of the name, for reasons he can’t explain - Professor Tremas looks at him and then somehow into him. A shudder runs through him, some long-dormant thing awakening. He realizes with a flash that he wants her. It’s been so long since he’s felt like this.
"And you are?" she asks. Or purrs. She’s so very - present, right now. So much space taken up.
"About to be politely turned away, I think." He twitches the corner of his mouth up; it could pass for a smile.
"Oh, no, really?" She puts on an exaggeratedly sad expression, pouting with those full red lips. "Who could turn you away? Look at his face, Sebastian, tell me you wouldn’t want to see that face around the department. Hire him, go on, give the poor thing a job, he could clearly use it."
John squirms. He’s not exactly used to attention like that. He’s spent the last few decades trying to disappear, there haven’t been many women (or men) treating him as a, what, sex object? It would be flirting if she were acting more like he was listening.
"You do remember you’re not actually my boss, yes? You just enjoy ordering me around. You can’t - "
"I’ll call in a favor. Half the faculty owes me, shouldn’t be too hard. And it’s Waste Management, darling, hardly something that requires vetting and hemming and hawing. Just hire him. What’s the worst that could possibly happen?" And with that, she sweeps out with as much of a flourish as when she entered, blowing John a kiss.
They give him a beige jacket that’s about five sizes too big, and they give him a grey nametag, and they give him a walkie-talkie that squawks angrily whenever he tries to use it, and they give him a keyring with approximately five hundred keys, and they give him a cart filled with disinfectants and loo rolls. They give him a job.
A job, he’s got a job now. Jobs are good.
Clara seems oddly pleased for him, and Danny says something about at least the rent will keep being paid on time, and Osgood is doing that thing where she looks at him like she thinks maybe he is a wizard or someone she has mistaken for a role model. He’d made the error of telling her all the places he’d been, because it’d been late and she’d shared her biscuit stash with him, and now she has an odd little asexual crush on him, he thinks, or the idea of what he used to be.
But they’re happy, or happy-ish, and he’s relieved if not actually happy himself, and now he can buy a new pair of shoes without worrying that it’ll be the last thing he’ll ever able to purchase.
And now he has a routine, he has a bus route and things to take care of and accomplish, even if he always needs to do them again, and it’s good and it’s fine, even if staying in one place is eating away at him, even if the thing inside him that wants to run and keep running is trying to claw its way out. He can push his anxieties down. He can move past them. He can lead a regular life. He can, he does.
He’s making the rounds late one Thursday evening, doing the things he does now. Loo rolls in their dispensers, hallways swept and mopped. He doesn’t realize that it’s her office until he realizes that she’s still in it, lurking in the shadows like a cartoon villain.
"John Smith," she says, and he’s never heard his name said so - sexually. Threateningly.
He stands with his hands in his pockets and looks at her, like, yeah, what? “Professor Tremas-“
"Please, John. The students call me that. My name is Katherine, I go by Kathy, I’d very much like to hear you say it. You have the most marvelous voice, are you aware?" She locks the door and pulls down the blinds. "I want you to come over here, and I want you to fuck me so hard I forget everything I know about electrical engineering."
He gawps at her. She really can’t have just said that. He must have misheard. “Sorry, what?”
"The birds do it, the bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s have tawdry office sex." She grins, teeth bared, and giggles.
A grown woman, a stranger, is giggling at him and undoing the buttons on her blouse. He could be on a train going somewhere. He could be anywhere but here. He doesn’t like being here. He doesn’t like that he’s almost willing to do what she says.
"You move awfully fast," he says, stalling. She’s moving towards him. He’s moving away from her. Lockstep, in a circle. Her clothes are all coming off and he is shutting down, somehow unable to exit the roundabout.
"I don’t do dates. They’re boring. I’m a busy woman, John, I don’t have time to play teenaged lovebird."
"Well, I don’t do - this." He gestures wildly at the space between them.
She stops moving. Thank God. “At all? Or in particular?”
He pauses, rifling through his brain for something to say that would explain his position without shutting down any possibility of this happening. “Can I come back later?”
"You’ll come back every day, if you’re doing your job." For the first time there’s something nearly soft about her, behind all the gloss and steel. It vanishes almost instantly. He doesn’t know what that means. But he’s sure, or mostly sure, that he wants to see it again.
So he nods, and waves awkwardly, and leaves quickly. He wheels the cart out of her office and down the hall and he does his job, as he is now contractually obligated to do. The smooth figure-eight of the mop, the spritz and polish, the emptying of trashcans, the detritus of other lives. He puts everything else out of his mind.
The second time he attempts to cleans Tremas’ office, she’s not in. There’s a muffin and a mini-bar bottle of vodka on her desk, and a DVD of La Strada, and a post-it attached:
Your dinner and a movie, Mr. Janitor.
He thinks about leaving everything untouched. That’s not a date, that’s stale pastry and a microscopic quantity of booze and a copy of a movie he doesn’t care about for the entertainment system he does not have. And he’s too old for trysts like this, too used to being alone to jump back into even knowing other people, let alone fucking them, without easing in gently. There’s nothing gentle about this, very little gentle about her. He knows better than to play along.
But he slips the vodka into his jacket pocket and the muffin, wrapped in a paper towel, into his other pocket, and tucks the note into the DVD case and the case in between the box of latex gloves and the lemon-scented trash bags.
And after Clara and Danny have left for a night on the town, and Osgood’s sequestered herself in her room with the World of Warlocks or whatever it is she plays, he takes Kathy’s half-arsed attempt at wooing him downstairs to the common room.
It’s been a few months but he still feels vaguely unwelcome, out of place in this bastion of young-professional rest and relaxation. It’s all Ikea furniture and generically hip whatsits, little embroidered birds on the throw pillows, a bowl of rocks on the coffee table. Are they artisanal rocks? Who has so many things for such tenuous reasons? But there’s a television and a dozen different devices attached. And he’s got a movie to watch.
He pops the DVD in and tries to make himself comfortable on the couch. Eats the dry chocolate-chip muffin and washes it down with the tiny vodka and obediently follows along with the subtitles. It is not a satisfying or enjoyable experience, but on the whole he is glad to have done it.
"That was a terrible date," he says the next time he sees her. It’s still office hours, he’s come in to work early, because maybe he’s worried what she’d do if they were alone. Maybe he’s worried what he might do. "The food and drink were awful, the movie was unbearably sentimental, and I was alone. I’d give it a two on a scale of one to ten."
"To be fair, I wasn’t really trying. Give me the chance and I could wow you, I really could. Oh, I could take you places."
"I gave you the chance. You gave me canteen leftovers and Fellini." He folds his arms and looks as cross as he can, which he knows is really quite cross. The older he gets the more frightening he can make himself, which is one of the few benefits of the whole process.
It doesn’t seem to phase her. She moves in close to him, confident and coy. She brushes some of the dust off his shoulder and lets her hand rest there, thumb rubbing circles. “I don’t think you need me to show you the world. I think you’ve already seen it. What you need, what you desire, is something else entirely.”
"And what’s that?" His voice comes out as a near-whisper, hoarse and cracked.
"A reason to stay in." She licks her lips, drags her hand from his shoulder, over his chest and folded arms, down to the jacket’s hem and up underneath, and the warm pressure of her through the thin cotton t-shirt is moving something in him he thought he’d left behind long ago.
"It’s been," he says, and "I don’t," and "This isn’t."
She shushes him and pulls his arms down, unzips his comedically oversized, standard-issue beige jacket and slides it off. He hates wearing the damn thing but he misses it instantly, misses the barrier it provides. Now he’s just - here. Exposed and shivering and intensely aware of the fact of himself; his body is a vessel and a vehicle and he’s never paid it much mind, never taken the best care of it. Maybe she wants him but he can’t for the life of him figure out why.
He starts to cross his arms again but she grabs him by the wrists, wraps him around her, then wraps herself around him. One hand threaded through the hair at the nape of his neck, the other flat against the small of his back.
This is a problem. She is a problem. Blood rushing and heart racing. She’s staring at him, open-mouthed, like she wants to break him apart and then put him back together again. It’s terrifying.
And when she pulls him down into a kiss, chaste at first then hungrier than anything, he’s got about five seconds of remembering the reasons this is a mistake before he gives in. She’s all tongue and teeth, trying to suck his soul out through his throat, sharp nails raking down his back. He doesn’t quite mean to but he tightens his grip on her, pulls her closer and closer until they occupy the same space, just about.
She pulls back suddenly, pushes him away, a little bit harder than would be considered playful. The want written clear on her face as he falls back against her desk, as he flinches and his breath hitches and his fingers flex, tells him he’s being just as obvious. He waits there, open and vulnerable, watching her perform possibly the most theatrical strip-tease ever performed outside of a club. Blazer helicoptered to the wall, skirt shimmied out of, the snaps on her blouse popped apart one by one. And then it’s just her and her hair and her high heels, black lace bra and panties. He wants to look at her forever and all at once, wants to memorize her, but he just gets flashes - clavicle, calves, the curve of her waist - before she’s on him and too close to see.
They make it to the couch, somehow. She pours herself into his lap, and she’s everywhere, tugging his shirt out of his trousers and pulling it over his head, squeezing the air out of him, laughing at the moan that elicits. She’s biting his lower lip, biting his nose, his ears, once actually his eyebrows and he thinks she might be literally bonkers, if that’s the sort of activity she enjoys. She’s unbuckling and unbuttoning and unzipping him; he’s unhooking her bra, pulling her panties aside.
And, for the first time in more years than he’d care to count, he’s fucking something other than his own hand. She guides him in and settles down, pausing briefly to bite his nose again, then starts riding him. Hard enough that, if he were a dispassionate observer, he might wonder if it were actually possible to have your dick fucked off. But he’s not, and he doesn’t, and the only things in the universe are: the feeling of her around him, her fingernails digging deep into his skin, her mouth hot and wet on the soft spot under his jaw.
There’s a needy, mewling sound coming out of him. She’s giggling. She’s possibly drawing blood. He’s regretting his callouses, because he can’t really feel her, just the roughness of his fingers catching and scraping on her smooth skin. But she seems to like it, at least. Urging him to be rougher and less careful, to go faster, to not be so damn delicate about it. She sure as hell isn’t.
So, fine. He lets go. Maybe an animal in him, maybe a devil once buried deep. He abandons himself to it, and to her. And he’s nothing now, nothing but a cock and a pair of hands too hard-worn to do much more than claw at her. This frightening, baffling woman writhing around him, clenching around him, her rhythm brutal and wild. Her fingernails scraping down his back and he’s choking back a shout, he’s scrunching his eyes shut, he’s coming.
And she’s not, which when he calms down and looks at her and realizes what he’s done, or more accurately failed to do, is more than a little embarrassing. But she’s got a sort of sweet, sympathetic expression on her face, and for once that doesn’t make him want to run, and besides, she looks mostly happy, if not exactly - satisfied.
With a grunt and a stubbornly dredged-up burst of energy that he’ll be paying for in the morning, he stands up, turns around, and deposits her on the couch. Spreads her legs open, kneels between them (he’ll be paying for that as well), kisses his way up her calves and over her knees, slowly, across her inner thighs. Her hands in his hair, pulling hard, and he resists just long enough to hear the impatient, frustrated noise she makes, then he reaches up, pulls her hips towards him. Pulls her open, and pulls her apart, nose in her well-manicured landing strip and tongue on her clit.
Feeling for what works, listening for the murmurs he knows now mean she likes it. Her hands in his hair, alternately stroking and yanking. Chasing it with his mouth and his hands, running the calloused pad of his thumb through her; chasing and catching the edge of it, and drawing it out, and she doesn’t bother to stifle the scream. Makes it louder than necessary, if anything, not faking as such, just - amplifying.
Hands on her thighs for balance, he pulls himself up, joints creaking. He kisses her, lets her taste herself in him, and keeps it as gentle as she’ll allow. Maybe show her the kindness and sadness inside, maybe admit to all the broken things. If she wants him, she’ll have to deal with it. He’s past the point where pretending is a viable option.
"Where did you come from, John Smith?" She’s languid and boneless, puddled into the couch cushions. "Why are you a janitor at a second-rate polytechnic?"
"I made some choices. They might not have been the best. I’m just trying to get back on my feet." He settles in next to her, finds a place for his arms and legs to be. They're always just a touch too long. He’s resisting the impulse to cradle her face; he’s thinking she wouldn’t appreciate it much.
"Are you happy here?"
"I live with children," he says. "They’re all very nice, but. They make me feel like the most catastrophic fuck-up. Which I am, I suppose. They’ve got their whole lives ahead of them. I’m a living reminder of why you should plan for retirement. I’m saving up, I’m getting out, I can’t…"
"Oooh, your own flat, you could throw parties, just for you and me."
"No," he says. He shifts onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. "I’m saving for a plane ticket. And enough to keep me going wherever I land."
"You’re leaving."
"I always do."
"But I just found you. Take me with you, won’t you? When you leave. Let me come with you." She’s staring at him, wide-eyed, and with a start he realizes she’s serious.
"I just met you."
"I feel like I’ve known you forever," she whispers, and leans over to rest her forehead on his. "You were inevitable for me, John Smith." She rolls away, sighing dramatically. "To lose you so soon would be a crime. I won’t let it happen."
"You’re bananas, you know that?" She huffs. He smiles, even if she can’t see it. "I’ll think about it," he says.
He’ll wake up at some point in the night, sticky and sore and ashamed, and he will leave without waking her up. He will go to the flat he’s currently calling home and he’ll take a shower, not running the hot water for too long, and he will wash the smell of her off him. That’s what he does now, he cleans things. He will clean the last remnants of her from his body and his mind and then he’ll just be a janitor earning a paycheck until his bank account can support, who knows, Madrid, Johannesburg, Guadalajara, Kiev. He’ll change his currency and learn a new language and walk a new city and be a new man again, where no one knows his name.
But for now, he’s content to fall asleep with her. He likes listening to her breathe, he likes how she’s curled her hand up with his. He likes her hair tickling his nose. It’s the smallest of moments, the most insignificant of events, but then he’s always been a collector of insignificant events. He smiles again, feeling the oddness of it on the corners of his mouth. He falls asleep.
