Ed rapped the door in annoyance, then shoved the key into the lock.
“Management! Who’s here?” He’d had enough of these kids dropping out of East Coast prep schools to live the starving artists’ life just for kicks. His arthritis got bad this time of night, especially after a full shift as the night janitor, and he wanted more than anything to lock up and go home. Dim light came from a lamp in the back corner. It lit up a single table and two chairs against the back wall. A peculiar man appeared out of the gloom, wiping his hands with an artist’s rag. Homeless, Ed thought. “You must be Ed! The night janitor, right? Name’s Elliot Manuel, good to meet you.” Ed eyed the vacant unit’s latest nuisance. He was wearing a relatively clean-looking shirt and some paint-spattered jeans. A squatter then, or a burglar, he thought. The nerve—and so casual about being caught! “Can’t stay here. It’s not zoned for residential, only commercial.” Elliot didn’t seem surprised. Instead he reached back somewhere into the gloom, pulling out a bottle of Johnnie Walker and two glasses. Setting them on the table, he laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He looked up at Ed. “But I do need to polish this off before I head out- no good carrying glass when you travel. You’re welcome to stay.” “Can’t have you in here. Now I don’t mean to get pushy but I will if I have—“ Elliot was already sitting, a full glass across from him, pouring a second. His smile was so oddly magnetic that Ed felt as if he’d rudely knocked on a stranger’s door and they’d been kind enough to invite him in. He studied the bottle. Blue label. The good stuff. Muttering something about keeping an eye on any occupied units, he shuffled over and took his seat. Elliot seemed pleased, stretching back in his chair and settling in. “So. Ed.” Elliot formed his name deliberately. “Something tells me this isn’t the first time you’ve found someone unexpected in this unit.” “Yeah, damn kids most of the time. Drop out of Columbia so they can smoke dope and live on the streets.” Elliot laughed. “And you think I’m one of them.” Ed paused. “I think you’re in the last room I need to lock up before I get out of here.” Elliott sipped slowly, considering. “Why are you so desperate to get home?” “Just part of my routine. Don’t like when my routine gets messed up.” “A man of habit, eh?” Elliot said. Silence. Elliot tried again. “So how long have you worked here?” Ed was beginning to resent his new acquaintance's nosiness. “That’s none of your business. I should be asking what you do for work!” Elliot took another sip. “I’m a collector. I collect things. A creator, you could even say.” So he is a thief. Ed applauded his own foresight. “I’m not a thief. I just take the broken bits people cast off and make them beautiful again.” “So you’re a dumpster diver.” “You said it, not me. And who are you to judge what I do? You clearly don’t love being a night janitor!” “What of it?!” Ed couldn’t decide which emotion was stronger - his gratitude for the whiskey or his annoyance with Elliot’s questions. “It’s a damn job and gets the bills paid and it keeps me from sitting at home every night thinking about Ginny—” Ed paused, shocked at what had almost slipped out. “Look,” he said. “ Here’s how life works. You wake up, you go to work. You take orders from somebody who takes them from somebody else who both expect you to smile when they pick your pockets on pay day. That’s life. You take it all with a grain of salt.” He looked at Elliot and gave a hollow laugh. “Or a glass of whiskey if you have it.” Elliot considered Ed’s appraisal. “Life?” He looked out the window, silent for a moment. “Are you sure?” “Ed, did you know that this morning the buds opened up on the tree out there?” He nodded up at the window. “Or how downstairs in the basement unit the couple’s baby is finally sleeping through the night?” “Or did you look up as you walked to work this morning? Did you notice how the sun rose and all morning the edges of the building were lit gold?” And when you walked past the children’s hospital, did you know that a boy named Josh is finally going home to live with his aunt after a car accident?” Elliot looked over at Ed. Ed stared down at his cup for a while. He knew the answer before he asked. “Why the aunt?” Grief passed across Elliot’s face for a moment. He spoke with tenderness. “They were in the car with him. They didn’t make it.” Ed slammed his cup against the tabletop and stood. He’d had enough. “His parents are dead. Dead! How dare you! He survives? They’re dead. He walks? They’re dead. He runs? They’re still dead and he has to go on living and breathing and watching the world piss on everything he’s ever loved!” His blood felt electric, dizzying his mind, full of rage and sadness and pain. Elliot waited until he sat back down, then spoke quietly. “You loved her.” Ed set his glass down slowly. “Of course I damn well did.” He looked down at the floor, then spoke. “I wanted to be a carpenter. I built things when the kids were little. Nothing special, but there was this one rocking horse that I really knocked out of the park. Painted it red any everything. I could have been good, you know? If I’d given it a shot. Ginny always told me I should. But I was too busy. God I was always so busy! Spreadsheets. Corporate BS. And then one day I come home and Ginny doesn’t. And the PD comes by and asks me when the last time I talked to her was, and I realize I didn’t say a word to her that morning. Not one. Where was she going? Hell if I knew!” Elliot waited across the table. Ed was shaking. “And the next morning. They call and say they found her... Dead. Purse missing. Beaten to death with a hammer and some two-by-fours.” Ed stood up again, knocking his chair over. “What the hell was she doing with those? You want to know about my life? You want to know why she had those? You so interested in my personal story?” He tasted warm, salty tears at the corners of his mouth. “She was bringing them home for me! She saw what I’d built. She believed I could do something great. And you know why she died? Because it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if you’re a saint or a murderer or a night janitor, I’ve been around long enough to know that eventually world will find a way to take whatever small, beautiful thing you have and watch it burn.” Ed realized he was sobbing. He watched himself sit back down. He watched himself pick up the glass and take a sip. He was certain he could not feel his toes. Elliot let him sit. He said nothing. He only waited quietly. After a long while, he spoke. “Can I show you something?” Ed nodded, exhausted. Elliot got up from the table and walked away into the gloomy corner of the room. Ed heard him fumbling with a lamp, and suddenly the back wall was filled with light. He nearly dropped his whiskey to the floor. The entire wall was covered with the most dazzling, intricate map he had ever seen. It was the earth. The whole earth. Africa, South America, Asia, all of it. He stared, in silence. Incredible. He thought. And what appeared to be a seamless blend of colors at first was actually, well, junk. Colorful junk. He stepped closer. Bottlecaps, bent nails and old wrappers made up most of the continental United States. The Pacific Ocean read Aquafina in a few places, Dasani in a few others. Southeast Asia shimmered with broken necklace chains, single earrings, and scraps of foil. Antarctica was jagged with broken glass, and Saharan Africa was covered in bits of old sandpaper. “Where did you find all of this?” Ed asked. “It’s everywhere. In subway cars, hotel rooms… You know, the edges of places most people are too busy to see. They’ve got their heads down thinking about the next place they’re supposed to be. But I just… am. I never get too ahead of myself.” “But it’s all… garbage.” Ed still couldn’t understand how stunning a work could be made of what he rightly considered trash. “You know Ed? I don’t want brand new things when I create something like this.” Elliot looked over at him. “I’d rather make old things new.” Elliot looked back at the map, gazing intently at one spot and then stepping back so Ed could see. Ed followed his gaze. There was a Christmas ornament hanging where New York City sat on the edge of the Hudson Bay. It was a tiny, wooden rocking horse. Ed took in the map and all the discarded fragments of people’s lives. Tokens of moments they would never remember. And there, in the middle, a rocking horse just like the one he’d made so many years ago. For a long while, they stood in silence. Then from across the room he heard, “Some people hold onto this kind of stuff, instead of letting me build something with it.” Ed jumped, not sure how long he’d been taking it all in. The room was empty. The whiskey still sat on the table, and the two empty glasses. It was as though the words lingered for a moment in the dusty corners of the loft. Something inside of him felt released, like when he unclicked the pressure valve on the basement boiler every night at the end of his shift. The usual tightness in his chest faded a bit, and something he might have called rest settled in its place. Ed took one final gaze at the map, and the tiny rocking horse. He didn’t know when the next tenant would move into the unit. He wasn’t even sure the map would be there the following morning. Slowly he crossed the room and closed the door. After fumbling for the right key for a minute or two, he locked it and headed for home. * * * * * A week later, Ed returned to the vacant first floor unit. It was still without a tenant, and he had work to do. After hauling everything he’d purchased into a far corner of the room, he opened a window to let in some light. Then he took out his hammer and nails, and began to hum.
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ABOUT...Writer/social worker/(seriously) amateur baker out of Minneapolis, MN. Archives
June 2017
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