joke

 They get out of his car and grab their buckets from the back seat and walk up to the main entrance of the building. The other guy calls security and tells them, “Hey, it’s us again. Yeah can you let us into AC?”

They wait about eight seconds and hear the click of the lock and try the door and it opens. He holds the door and the other guy grabs both their buckets and enters and he follows the other guy in.

Someone smiles at them and walks as if to move between them and the other guy backs up and he holds the door open so the student can walk out the door.

“Thanks,” the student says and he says, “sure.”

“The building is probably full of students,” he says to the other guy, “or, dirt makers as we call them.”

“We’ve never called them that,” the other guy says.

emergency

He gets a call from the client while he is wiping tables and bleaching them. He sets down his bleach bottle and takes off the glove on his left hand. He answers his phone.

The client wants to know if they can clean a different building tonight. Use the Kaivac.

He says, “Sure,” and hangs up and finishes what he is doing before finding the other guy and telling him what the client said.

They finish the building and agree to put off their coffee and snack break to drive to the other building and talk to the client.

The client is wearing gym shorts and a loose t shirt. He says, “A pipe burst and the basement flooded.”

“Oh, damn,” the other guy says.

“The bathrooms were all flooded and they smell. Can you Kaivac all three of them and then maybe spray them down with bleach or use the Clorox 360 or something? These girls have been through a lot tonight and I want to make sure their bathroom is nice and clean.”

“Oh, of course,” he says.

“Yeah, makes sense,” the other guy says.

“Why don’t I go do the library and the music building and you just stay here? Just text me when you’re finished,” he says.

“Yeah, that works,” the other guy says.

“Oh, wait,” the other guy says. “I might need my bucket.”

“Should I drop it off in the lobby?” he asks.

“Sure.”

“Oh, you know what? Let me go get your bucket and I’ll bring it right down to you and then I’ll go clean the library.”

“Oh, are you sure?” the other guy asks.

“Yeah, no problem,” he says.

“Thanks,” the other guy says.

He cleans the library bathrooms and then the student rec area bathrooms and then the music building bathrooms and then the coffee shop bathrooms where there is no janitor’s closet to fill a mop bucket. And then he cleans the bathrooms by the gymnasium. He texts the other guy to find out what is taking so long.

“Hose broke,” the other guy texts back.

“Shit. Need help?” he asks.

“Nah. Joe is getting me a replacement.”

“All right.”

When the other guy finishes, he meets him at the music building and they chat about the broken hose and the other guy compliments him for finishing all the other buildings alone.

“You really are the MVP tonight,” the other guy says.

“Nah, man, I think that’s you. I just speed-ran the same shit we do every night. Like I blitzed so many bathrooms, just like acid washing the toilet bowls, spritzing some bleach and shit. Just really fast and sloppy.”

“Yeah,” the other guy says.

“But like, you had to be around a bunch of people having an emergency and all that and then the fucking Kaivac broke.”

“Yeah. Fucking hose,” the other guy says.

“Yeah. I honestly worried about you a little because I knew you’d be stuck working around so many people.”

“Thanks, man. It was awkward when the hose broke and I had nothing to do so I just like wiped shit down with my bleach and waited for them to get me a replacement.”

“Do you want to get Taco Bell?”

“Yeah, actually. That sounds nice.”

“I need gas so if you want coffee or something from the gas station we can do that too.”

“I’m all right. But Taco Bell sounds nice.”

basketball

He drives himself and the other guy through the parking lot because their legs are tired. He carries a bucket and so does the other guy. The one with a card key unlocks the door and the one without a card key holds the door for both of them. They shuffle into the gym with their bleach and their paper towels and their masks and their goggles.

There are forty-one stalls in the women’s room and sixteen stalls in the men’s room plus twenty-two urinals. He bleaches the men’s room while the other guy bleaches the women’s room. They meet in the lobby and sit for a minute and refill their bleach spray bottles.

They walk through the gymnasium. The floor is shiny. He comments that he hopes their tennis shoes don’t scuff the gymnasium and the other guy says they probably will.

“Is this really the size of a basketball court?” he asks. “I remember seeing a basketball game and thinking the court was a lot bigger.

“Not sure,” the other guy says.

“I think the lockers are this way,” the other guy says. They walk through a door and a second door and he uses his card key to unlock a third. Behind the door is a weight room.

“Shit. I thought this was where the locker room was,” the other guy says.

“Fuck it. We can skip it,” he says.

He walks back through the gym with the other guy and he comments again about the size of basketball courts and also that there are six hoops. “I don’t think basketball has six hoops,” he says.

“Would be funny though,” the other guy says. “Like if that one and that one you score in and if you score in any other goal you’re disqualified or you score for the other team or something.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Would be funny if we brought a basketball one night and had a game. Imagine if one of the security guards came through the building and saw us.”

“Ha. Yeah. Two thirty-year olds with knee problems learning to play basketball in the middle of the night.”

“That would be funny,” he says.