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.”