I decide to liven up her day and mix up the conversation.
“It’s going real good, Sally. Just like all the other yesterdays. I like my job.”
“I like my job too,” she says, and then she lowers her voice even though there is nobody else here to overhear her, “but I must admit I find it a little boring. Don’t you ever feel like you want to do something else?” She walks over to the photocopier and leans against it. The records I printed off are safely in my overalls, and the originals back where they belong. “I mean, don’t you think there ought to be more to life?”
“Like what?” I ask, genuinely curious. I can learn from this woman. If she has low-end goals in this world, I can say I have those same goals if it will help my act. This is what Method actors do.
“Anything. Everything,” she says, and maybe it’s the smell of the vacuum cleaner, or the window-cleaner fumes getting to me, but for the first time Sally sounds as though she’s thinking outside the box, beyond her limitations.
“I don’t understand,” I tell her, and I really don’t.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m not making any sense. Don’t you have dreams, Joe? If you could be anything in the world, what would you want to be?”
The answer is simple. “Joe.”
“No, I mean a job. Any job in the world.”
“A cleaner.”
“Besides that?”
“I’m not quer. . qual. . fied for anything else.”
“Do you like the idea of being a fireman? Or a policeman? Or an artist?”
“I drew a house, once. It had no windows.”
She sighs, and for a moment I think about documentaries on TV where some retarded guy will marry his female equal. Surely these are the conversations they must have during foreplay before trying to make mentally disabled babies. I decide to put an end to it and help her out.
“I would like to be an astronaut.”
Her face beams at my answer. “Really?”
“Yeah. Ever since I was a boy,” I say, winging it now because even though it isn’t my fantasy, it sounds like the kind of thing any man-regardless of IQ-would like to do. “I looked up at the moon and wanted to walk there. I know you can’t live there, but I could at least fly there and make snow angels in the moon dirt.”
“That sounds nice, Joe.”
I’m sure it does. I decide to go another step further into this romantic notion. “I’d be alone up there. I’d not worry about what people think about me. It would be peaceful.”
Her smile starts to waver. “You worry about what other people think about you?”
“Sometimes,” I say, though that isn’t necessarily true. I only worry about what other people think I’m capable of. “It’s not easy being retarted,” I say, putting emphasis on the second t.
“Retarded.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “What about God?”
“God?” I ask, as if I’ve never heard of the guy. “Do you think he’s retarted?”
“Of course not. But do you ever worry about what He thinks?”
It’s a good question. And if I really believed in all those God-loves-you and God-will-smite-you fairy tales, then sure, I’d be worried. I look at the crucifix hanging from her neck. It’s an icon that introduces her to the world as somebody who believes in Heaven and Hell and all the good and bad things in between.
“I always worry, because God is always watching,” I say, and her face lights up again and I realize that if Sally doubled her IQ and halved her weight, she could be the kind of person I’d find myself following home.
“Do you ever go to church, Joe?”
“Church? No. Never.”
“You should.”
“I get confused,” I say, looking down while I say it, as if I’m admitting something that makes me feel ashamed of being a God-loving, God-fearing Christian. “I wish I could, but I can never make it all the way through the. .” The what? The lesson? The sermon? The boredom? I’m not sure of the answer. “You know. The three hours of sitting still and listening. Plus I find some of the things hard to understand. It seems to me that the Bible doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense.” Which I’m sure is true. I look back up and I smile away the ashamed look I had put on my face. The big-boy grin gives her smile a new lease on life.
“I go to church every Sunday,” she says, reaching up and touching the crucifix.
“That’s good.”
“You’re welcome to come along. I promise it won’t be boring.”
I have no idea how she can promise something like that unless the priest is planning on breaking at least half the commandments. “I’ll think about it.”
“Do your parents go to church?”
“No.”
“It’s good that you have faith, Joe.”
“The world needs faith,” I say, and then Sally prattles on for five minutes, telling me things she has been able to learn from the Bible. I figure that to absorb all that Christian bullshit she must have forgotten other things along the way, which is why she’s so incredibly dim.
At the end of it all she asks me what I have planned for my weekend. I tell her I have lots of plans, like watching TV and sleeping. I’m worried she might suddenly suggest we do either one of those things together at her place.
But she lets me off the hook. “Have I ever told you about my brother?” she asks.
“No.”
“You remind me of him.”
Her brother must have been awesome, but I find it a little sick that she must have wanted to fuck him, too. “That’s nice,” I guess.
“Anyway, I wanted to let you know that if you ever wanted help with anything, or wanted to just do something, like talk or have coffee or something, well, I’m always available.”
I’m sure she is. “Thanks.”
She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a business card. Her phone number is written on it-she has that same cute, happy handwriting that normal women have. Seeing it there makes me realize she had this whole speech planned out. She hands it over. I turn the card over and see it’s one of Detective Schroder’s cards. There’s also a coffee-colored ring stain on it-she’s recycled the card rather than stealing a new one.
“You ever need anything, Joe, I’m only a phone call away.”
“A phone call away,” I say, giving her my big-boy grin and tucking the number into my pocket while the back of my neck breaks out in goose bumps.
“Well, I guess I’d better get back to work,” she says.
“Me too,” I say, looking down at the vacuum cleaner.
She heads out of the room, closing the door behind her. I take her phone number out of my pocket and am about to tear it up, but she might come back through the door. Best to dispose of it after work. Maybe at home.
Four thirty rolls around. Time to stop working. It’s also Friday, so time to stop thinking. Putting in too many extra hours will only stress me out. A stressed cleaner is a sloppy cleaner. Therefore, when I climb off the bus near home, I decide not to continue investigating into the weekend. A stressed detective is a sloppy detective.
I will use this weekend to unwind. Try to enjoy myself. Spend some quality time with Joe. Perhaps watch my fish for a while. Perhaps visit Mom. Maybe read another romance novel. I walk up the stairs to my apartment, unlock the door, and push my way inside. A moment later I pull the folders from my briefcase. I’m telling myself not to open them up, not to start reading, but perhaps I’ll have a quick browse. .
No. Must. Not. Work.
I sit down on the sofa. Put down the files. Feed Pickle and Jehovah. While they’re eating, I check my answering machine. Mom hasn’t called. Odd.
I move back to the sofa and look at the files I don’t want to read. This must be how some cops become dedicated to solving a crime. Unfortunately, you only let yourself down, not for working so hard, but for working so hard and getting nowhere. You can’t stop working, because suddenly nothing else really matters anymore. You become obsessed.