donald goines by calvin westra

 He wrote a book called Donald Goines by Calvin Westra. He made a simple website to help people buy it, by putting all the links to buy it on one page.

"It'll be simpler that way," he said.

"Yeah," the other guy said.

"Like, I kind of want to make it like those old fashioned squeeze pages," he said.

"I don't know what that is," the other guy said.

"Think, like, infomercials. That kind of thing," he said.

"Oh haha," the other guy said.

"I'm gonna buy the domain www.buydonaldgoines.com," he said.

"Yeah, that seems good," the other guy said.

apartments 1

 He receives a phone call and sees it is Joe and answers it.

“Hey,” they say to each other.

“Can you guys do four apartment buildings?” Joe asks.

“I mean, what’s the timeframe?”

“Friday. Next Friday. By seven at night.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to [the other guy].”

They hang up and he calls the other guy and they talk about it and decide to sleep on it and then talk about it the next day. They agree they can do half the buildings, two.

“It’s like, a lot of work,” the other guy says.

“Yeah, like an extra forty hours, I think, for each of us,” he says.

He goes to the campus and tells the maintenance people what he will need and talks to a girl in the break room who says, “I thought I would have until 11 to prepare it.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine. Joe just told me to come by before 11. If you want to drop it off in one of the buildings whenever, that’s fine,” he says.

He goes back to his car and writes a text to the other guy about how funny it is to him that Joe wanted him there before 11 to get supplies because “the girls leave at 11” but the girls were planning on setting it up by 11 get so he just wasted his time. He had woken earlier than usual to be there before 11.

“Classic Joe,” the other guy texts.

They start cleaning the apartments at noon.

kaivac

“The floors are sticky in ER,” he says.

“Fuck,” the other guy says.

“Yeah,” he says. “They’re not like terrible but they’re pretty obviously sticky.”

“I’ll mop them.”

“Just seems like such a fucking waste of time to have to mop the floors the next night. Like it’s a huge time sink and I don’t think it leaves the bathroom any cleaner than just cleaning them by hand.”

“Yep. That’s the thing,” the other guy says. “I think if you have a super expensive tool for cleaning you probably shouldn’t have to fucking clean up after it.”

“We could tell Joe we don’t want to use it,” he says.

“Yeah,” the other guy says.

“But I also feel like he’ll be bummed out because he spent a ton of money on it.”

The other guy laughs.

“We can just keep making floors sticky so he feels like it was a smart purchase.

He laughs.

job

“If you’re not up in five seconds you can draw yourself a new job,” he says to the other guy who is drawing on a sketchpad.

The other guy says, “Heh. That’s funny.”

“If you’re not up in five seconds you can draw yourself a new job,” he says a few nights later and the other guy laughs again.

He is sitting staring at his phone when the other guy rounds the corner and says to him, “If you’re not up in five seconds you can tweet yourself a new job.”

“Nice,” he says.

“It would be funny if they got more syntactically insane over time,” he says.

“If you don’t have a new job in five seconds you can find yourself a new job a new job,” the other guy says.

They both laugh.

watch

“Do you wear watches?” his friend from the Internet asks. “If so I got one I can send you. Trying to get rid of a couple.”

“Seriously?” he asks.

“Yeah it’s nothing fancy,” his friend from the Internet says. “Just an extraneous Timex.”

“I never have but you bet your ass I’d wear a [friend from the Internet] exclusive watch,” he says.

“Haha,” his friend from the Internet says. “You must send a wrist shot immediately upon arrival.”

“Oh I absolutely will,” he says. “If my gf can help, I will sit on the hood of my Benz and send you a picture.”

“You actually drive a Mercedes Benz?”

“Absolutely. I actually drive two.”

mask

He parks in front of the gas station and gets out and walks in and walks straight to the cooler with the water and Gatorade.

“Wear a mask!” a lady shouts.

He turns around.

“I’m joking,” she says and he cannot determine if she was joking all along or if she is just joking now or if she is for some reason afraid of him.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says.

“No. No, it’s fine,” she says. She has a mask but it is only covering her chin.

“I have one in my car,” he says. “I can go get it if you’d like.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she says again. She pays for her soda and her chips and she leaves.

He picks out a Fiji water and a lemon-lime Gatorade Zero and goes to the counter and pays the cashier who is also not wearing a mask.

kickflip

The other guy pushes a mop and bucket across the carpeted floor towards the mop closet. He carefully lifts the bucket with his foot beneath it, allowing the front wheels to hop over the vacuum cord on the floor.

“Mop kickflip,” the other guy says.

“Mop ollie,” he says.

“Mop ollie. Is it okay if – god that would be pretty ugly, a mop kickflip,” the other guy says.

“Do you think you’ll ever get to the end of that sentence?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Can we stop by my house so I can check on my chili? It’s in the instant pot,” the other guy says.

early

“You want to just head to the college now?” the other guy jokes.

“Hell yeah,” he says.

“We’ll just like sweep everyone out of the buildings,” he adds.

“Yeah. All right, welp, time to get the fuck out, we got janitoring to do,” the other guy says.

“We could just become the type of janitors who kick students out everywhere,” he says.

“Like, ‘this Kaivac ain’t just for hosing floors,” the other guy adds.

He laughs.

“Everything I know about cleaning I learned from America’s most prolific mass murderer,” the other guy says.

security

 “Does [security guard] like not really talk to you anymore?” he asks.

“Not really. I think it’s that they’re making him wear a mask now.”

“Hmm,” he says.

“Yeah,” the other guy says. “Like, he just looks like he’s tired and wants to get the buildings locked up as fast as he can.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I saw him in Science tonight and he didn’t have a mask but he’s still like, ‘hey, have a good night,’ and kind of stomped off.”

“Hmm,” the other guy says.

“Did we like fuck his wife or something?” he asks.

“Maybe he was allergic to the cookies we baked them,” the other guy says.

“Yeah,” he says and laughs. “He spent all Christmas break in the hospital because he’s like fucking allergic to peanuts or some shit. Haha.”

parking

He parks in a parking lot near the library because the way their dad and another person parked leaves no room for his car. He audibly sighs and gets out of the car and the other guy also groans a little.

“Can you please just park all the way up at the front of the curb,” he says to their dad.

“Oh, hey! I figured Karen would want to park there so I left room but then I guess this must be someone else’s vehicle,” their dad says.

“Yes. It is someone else’s vehicle. Can we just park in the order we arrive? I don’t see why Karen has the front of the curb reserved for her at all times and, like now, if it’s someone else working instead of her you’re leaving all this space and we have to park all the way in the parking lot. And I have to wear a mask when I drive right now because mom doesn’t want me potentially having the virus and giving it to [the other guy]. So my glasses fog and it’s just hard to drive, like, to park and stuff in general.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry,” their dad says.

He lets them all into the building and disarms the building and goes back outside to vape for a minute and says under his breath, “Why the fuck does he do more for random people he doesn’t even know then us? Like what the fuck is that about?”

boys

He and the other guy look for a mop closet or a closet that at least has a utility sink. He stands in the hallway while the other guys walks through the boys’ shower to the other hallway and looks there as well.

“Yeah, I found one,” the other guy says.

“Okay, I guess we wait until this dude finishes showering and then we can load up a mop and get to work,” he says.

“Sounds good,” the other guy says.

They stand around in the hallway. A boy walks through the wall and he nods at them and they each nod back.

The boy who was showering, still wet, walks back to his dorm room wearing nothing but a towel.

“Okay,” the other guy says. “I think I can start.”

He steps into the shower with his bucket and sets his bucket on the floor and starts towards the hallway with the utility closet.

“Oh wait,” the other guy says.

“What?” he asks, still standing in the first hallway.

“Someone else, I guess, has just started showering.”

“Oh. Wow. Okay fuck this. Let’s just go,” he says.

He and the other guy grab their buckets and walk back up the stairs towards the building’s exit.

“I’ll email Joe tomorrow and let him know he needs to talk to the RA or something,” he says.

“Yeah. Sounds good,” the other guy says.

groundhog day

 “Agh. Lights are still on in the student building,” he says.

“Yeah. Fuck,” the other guy says.

“No biggie. We’ll do it tomorrow,” he says. They start to drive off.

“This shit is like groundhog day. We see our shadow and six more weeks of not doing our jobs.”

roads

 He is vacuuming when he discovers a text from Joe that says, “Call me when you can.” He calls Joe.

“Hey, can you do me a favor and call me when you’re finished tonight to let me know what the roads are like?”

“Sure,” he says. “I mean, we aren’t done until like two in the morning usually.”

“That’s fine,” Joe says. “I’m getting up at four anyway.

At the end of the night, he calls Joe from the campus and tells him about the roads. “Oh, and there is a lot of ice in front of the coffee shop and the academic center. Might want to have someone throw some salt down there as well.”

“Gotcha,” Joe says. “Are you home now?”

“No,” he says. “Still on campus.”

“Oh. I want to know what the roads in town are like.”

“Oh. My bad,” he says.

He and the other guy drive home and he drops the other guy off at his house and drives to his house and parks on the side yard and turns off the music in his car.

“Hey Joe, me again,” he says when he calls.

“Hey,” Joe says.

“Roads are pretty good. I mean, I have all wheel drive, but overall they aren’t really slick or anything. Pretty easy going.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Yep,” he says.

“Have a good night,” Joe says.

“Yep. You too, boss.”

vegan

 He orders two triple cheeseburgers, a Big Mac, fries, and a Diet Coke. He drives home with the food and unpacks it on the coffee table in the living room. He eats a cheeseburger.

“Perfect timing,” he says when she walks through the door. “I just got back.”

She sits down and opens her Big Mac and takes a bite.

“I don’t want to eat like this anymore,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“I think I hate meat,” she says.

“Seriously?” he asks. He takes another bite of his cheeseburger.

“Yeah. I want to go vegan. All I’m eating this for is like the special sauce and the pickle and stuff.”

“I love meat,” he says. He takes another bite.

“I don’t. I feel like shit because of it.”

“Yeah. I mean, I get that. It’s like really funny to me, though,” he says. “Like, I just love that we’re eating all these burgers while talking about going vegan.”

He finishes his cheeseburger and starts the next one.

ceiling

 He lies in bed and is thirsty. He sees a mostly empty glass of water on his bedside table, next to several other totally empty glasses.

He reaches for the glass and takes a drink and realizes that it tastes a little weird and that there are small specks in the glass.

“Fuck,” he says and sits still and stares at the wall for a minute.

“Babe, I just drank this water and it’s got like specks of some shit in it. Like, what could that be?”

“Oh god,” she says. “I don’t know. Like particles from the ceiling maybe?”

“Oh fuck, did I drink ceiling?”

“Oh no, honey. I don’t know. Maybe it’s cat dandruff?”

“Fuck.”

They’re both quiet for a minute. He asks, “Do you think I’ll die from drinking ceiling?”

“I don’t think so,” she says.

“I would be so embarrassed if that’s how I died,” he said. “Drank ceiling.”

pretzels

 He swipes his card through the reader on the vending machine that accepts credit cards. He buys potato chips and a candy bar and sits. The other guy says, “Oh I forgot that machine takes cards. I kinda want some pretzels.” He swipes his card and stares at the message.

“Hey, can you show me how you swipe your card? It’s not working for me.”

“Sure,” he says.

He shows the other guy and the other guy tries his card again.

“It isn’t working for my card,” the other guy says and walks away.

“Let me buy you pretzels,” he says.

“No, I’m fine,” the other guy says and sits on a bench.

“Let me buy you pretzels!” he says again.

“Okay,” the other guy says and stands from his bench.

eggs

 “I think someone egged my car,” she says.

“What?”

“Yeah. Like, there’s this shit on my back windshield. It looks nasty.”

“That’s fucked up,” he says. “It might be punks in the neighborhood or some shit. Someone ripped the front and back medallions off my old car.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. That’s why it doesn’t have medallions. Someone broke them off my car. Not long after I moved here.”

“What is wrong with people.”

They drive to a car wash. A piece of paper is taped over the instructions explaining that the lights don’t work. “Just drive forward. If you aren’t happy, bring your receipt and we’ll refund you,” it says.

“This is so fucking cool,” he says. Rubber tentacles drape across the car, get temporarily stuck in her car’s windshield wipers.

“Isn’t it? My dad used to take me to car washes when I was kid.”

“Same,” he says. “Felt like a fucking roller coaster. Still does kinda.”

The hoses wash over the car front to back.

“What about my eggs! My fucking eggs!” she shouts.

He reaches around himself and watches the hoses gently pouring over the rear windshield, the egg stains still hardened and stuck.

“Fuck,” he says.

“It’s not dealing with my fucking eggs!”

“This is fucked,” he says.

The driers run and they watch beads of water roll up and over the windshield and they drive off.

“We probably could have gotten a refund,” she says, “but I forgot to get a receipt. I was so excited to get rid of my eggs.”

meeting

 “We wanted to have this meeting to talk about cleaning – or, rather, a lack of cleaning,” the small boss says.

“Are you still cleaning here? I feel like I don’t see you anymore,” the big boss says.

“Yeah, of course, I’m still here at least five days a week,” he says.

“Okay,” the big boss says. “What we wanted to do this for, is, well, the last company we had we weren’t happy with their bathroom floor cleaning and to be honest, I think we’ve lost two or three companies over bathroom floors at this point. So we want to have this meeting early to make sure we’re all on the same page.

“Okay, yeah,” he says and he adjusts himself on the couch.

“Well, let’s take a look at the floors together,” the big boss says.

They walk down a hall and into a bathroom and he says, “Maintenance,” relatively loudly before entering.

They look at the floor together and the big boss says, “Oh, this is just normal dirt from a day of people.”

He looks at the floor. It looks fine to him.

“I know that Diane upstairs was saying there’s a stain that they haven’t cleaned in days,” the small boss says to the big boss.

“Okay, let’s take a look at that too,” the big boss says.

They go upstairs and the big boss says, “Diane, can I have you for a minute?” and she introduces him to Diane and Diane to him and Diane looks at him oddly for a few seconds.

In the bathroom they look at the stain together.

“I think that’s a rust stain,” he says, “but I’m not sure.”

“Yeah,” the big boss says. “Let me, hold on,” and the big boss grabs a paper towel and wets it and gets on her knees and attempts to wipe away the stain, which does not go away. “Yeah. Yeah that’s a rust stain. Okay, that makes sense.”

They leave the bathroom and talk about other cleaning solutions and equipment. They express fear that their new floors will become tarnished over time by gradual grease and residue.

They thank him for having the meeting with them.

chud buddies

 One of the cats tries to squeeze himself behind a box in his office.

“What is he doing?” she asks him.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I think there’s a mouse or something.”

“God. Look at his fucking thighs.”

“I know. He’s got a big booty.”

She laughs.

The cat keeps trying to jam his head behind the box. His legs are positioned funny and she comments on it.

“When he was a kitten his dad took him to the cat equivalent of Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Oh yeah?” she asks.

“Yeah. Like, ‘Hey dad, can we go to Chud Buddies?”

She laughs. “Chud Buddies.”

“And all the games are like this. You jam your face behind a box or some shit and try to catch a mouse. And all the rewards are dead mice and shit.”

She laughs again. “Gross,” she says.

nocturne

He parks on his yard next to his house, gets out of his car, and sees a small black cat staring at him.

“Hello mister guy,” he says.

The cat stares at him.

“Mister guy, are we hungry? Are we a hungry guy?”

The cat doesn’t move.

He steps toward the cat slowly, cautiously, but the cat immediately sprints down the sidewalk and across the road and out of sight.

He goes into his house, says hi to his girlfriend, and digs his hand into the sack of cat food on the pantry shelf. One of his cats comes trotting into the room and waits in front of his bowl.

“No, not for you, buddy. You get to starve. This is for Nocturne.”

“Who is Nocturne?” she asks from the other room.

“I met a cat friend and he’s black and his name is Nocturne,” he says.

“Oh, nice,” she says from the other room.

He finds a plate and sets the dry cat food on the plate and goes outside and sets it on the porch for Nocturne, if he returns.