The simplest joys live with mold. At the bottom of the bathtub, which I fill with Comet bleach powder and scrub until my nails start to turn black and blue from the pressing. Soap scum, detritus, hair—and then voila! White porcelain, the heat of the shower water draining away the dirt. Spray down the shower curtain to remove the black dots of mold. Take the bottle of 409 to the floor and mop up hair and snow salt. Clean out the gunk around the sink with a Q-Tip and wash the mirror with Windex using a piece of newspaper.
Listen to Chopin. Feel the cello’s vibrations loosening the shit stains for you.
Because the toilet, oh my what wonders we have invented for cleaning our commodes. Brushes and plastic sticks with disposable soap-laden sponges. Goose-necked bottles full of antibiotic fluids and industrial strength wet-naps. Empty the garbage and strip down and turn on the faucet. Lean a hand against the freshly odor-free wall. Water pours, opens up, breeds a forgetfulness, loosens muscles, steals away the loose parts and leaves behind the marble center.
**
“I cleaned my bathroom today,” David said to her, leaning across the table and still playing with his napkin.
Sophie looked away toward the set of bar stools. There were three men sitting there; the one on the left had his right hand on the man in the center, who hunched over the counter. The man on the right listened intently, leaning forward and looking at his two compatriots.
“Did you get the floor behind the toilet?” she asked.
He grinned. “Oh did I ever.”
**
Later, she sorted case files on his floor, looking through depositions in sweatpants. David stood on his toes in the corner, looking for a book. Had he arranged them alphabetically by author, or was it by subject? One time he arranged them by “guilt”—he put the ones he hadn’t read right at the eye-level of the viewer, so if they asked him about them, he would have to confess he hadn’t read them.
Sophie leaned over to highlight, underline, make notes in the margin. She took notes in different color pens. Red for questions, yellow for undisputed facts, green for surprises. She had maintained this system since law school and felt a strong connection to the rituals of organization.
The place still smelled of Lysol and other disinfectants, polishes, scrubbed metal surfaces, a friction and spent Brill-o dust, but a coconut scented candle was doing something in the way of loosening the hospital quality in the air.
The refrain of their lives together, these moments of inhabiting their patterns of organization. What comfort can be drawn from the silent inhabiting of different worlds from the perspective of a common neurosis, especially cleanliness?
Sterility came to mind with distinctly negative connotations, but the rules of their shared experience somehow negated or ignored truths that two other people would have seen clearly.
So for the time being, this was it.
