Chapter 12: Back to Work
On Monday morning, Cathy was at work smelling like soap and tropical shampoo. No one could tell be looking at her plain clothes and heavy shoes that she had been up to such mischief all weekend; her overalls were a uniform keeping her dirty activities a private little secret from the rest of her coworkers at the hardware store.
She clocked in. She took up her usual position behind the counter. Mr. Lopez didn't look at her twice. He never did. At least his wife was polite. Linda her usual routine questions about her weekend. Of course she Cathy lied. She said she hadn't been up to much, and she was pleased with herself for keeping her face straight and her expression calm. At least she hoped she did. But Linda wasn't really interested in her weekend, or her expressions. Mrs. Lopez asked everyone the same questions, every Monday. "How was your weekend?" Everyone knew to say it was fine. Certainly Cathy knew better than to say 'I got pissed on a lot.'
"You look nice today," Mrs. Lopez said. "So bright and fresh."
Cathy smiled. "Thank you, Linda." She didn't explain that she had taken a little extra care to soap and shower off the mess.
It was strange, like an episode of Twilight Zone, how everything seemed so normal, when everything should have been so different. She felt different. Or did she? Honestly, everything was exactly the way it had been. No one was looking at her any differently or teasing her; in fact, just like always, no one looked at her at all.
An hour and twenty minutes after the start of the morning shift, Sarah arrived. Mr. Lopez noticed. Nick and James, the guys who worked the aisles and the stock room and the yard, they always noticed Sarah, too. There was no official Sunyard Lumber uniform--it wasn't like a big warehouse store where they made you wear matching red shirts or orange aprons. Cathy wore baggy overalls and a thick hoodie because it felt like something a hardware store person would wear, even if all she really did was work at the registers.
Not Sarah. Sarah dressed like she still worked at Hot Topic or whatever mall job she used to have, in tight, stretchy jeans and shirts that always showed her cleavage, which she had plenty of. And she always caked her face in plenty of makeup, and had her hair done up. And Mr. Lopez always noticed her, and she was always late, and he never said anything to her about it.
"It's nice of you to finally join us, Sarah."
That was Linda. Linda didn't cut Sarah as much slack as her husband did.
"It's fine, my love," Mr. Lopez spoke up. "It's a slow morning."
It was a slow morning. A few customers had wandered in, but there was no great urgency, and no line for the register. And Linda didn't really mind the tardiness, either. If Sarah was an hour late, that meant one less hour they had to pay her.
"Hey Sarah."
That was Nick, who had ignored her completely. But for Sarah, he could surface from the stockroom where he hid from customers long enough to look Sarah over.
"Hello Nicolas."
Of course she had nothing but dismissive contempt for Nick in her voice when she spoke, but you wouldn't know that from the way she held herself, with her back straight and her chest thrust out like she was flashing her headlights at oncoming traffic. She dropped her purse behind the counter where Cathy was working and leaned up against the counter not far from where Mr. Lopez was fiddling with a multitool display.
"How was your weekend, Raul?" she asked.
Mr. Lopez smiled. "It was fine, very fine," he said. "We did inventory."
"You and Linda work too hard," she said. "Don't you ever take time off work?"
Cathy tried not to roll her eyes. Sarah was like that. She was pretty, and friendly, and she knew how to suck up, and that's how she got ahead. And it worked for her well enough. Abruptly, Mr. Lopez seemed to realize that both Nick and Linda were still hovering nearby, side-eyeing Sarah, who had taken up the central space behind the counter where Cathy had been working, and now occupied his full attention.
"Cathy," he said, shifting his attention. "There's no reason for the both of you to be working the counter. Why don't you give Nick a hand with the cleaning in the back while things are slow? You're good at that."
Cathy didn't argue. She followed Nick to the back, where he immediately went back to doing nothing where no one could see him--probably watching videos on his phone--and left her with a bucket and a mop to clean the floors. That's how it was, and Sunyard Lumber. She did all the unglamorous bullshit work, and everyone else hid or kissed ass.
"Just shout if you need anything," Nick called out, not looking up, and he vanished into the racks, as if he might do some sort of work among the shelves.
"I'll manage," Cathy murmured, but he was already gone.
She pushed the heavy bucket across the concrete, the wheels squeaking, and plunged the mop into the hot, soapy water. The first push sent a wave of grey suds across the floor, wiping away shoeprints and ghostly spills. The rhythmic slosh and scrape was monotonous, almost hypnotic. The draft lifted the fine hairs on her arms, and the sharp smell of the cleaner filled her nostrils.
She worked the mop back and forth in long, wet stripes. Her mind, freed from the need to engage with customers or coworkers, began to wander. It slipped from the chill of the stockroom to the humid, sticky warmth of the theater, and the way she had casually leaned forward just enough that her top had moved just so--and then her chest had been bared, and her breasts had been out, and Jason had been so riveted. He hadn't been able to look away. No one had.
She leaned into the mop handle, her pulse giving a single, hard thump against her ribs. It had been so audacious. So stupid, really. Anyone else could have turned around. An usher with a flashlight could have strolled by. The risk had been hot thrill humming under her skin, making everything feel brighter, more real, than this dim reality of industrial shelving and dirty water.
A box cutter skittered across the floor ahead of her mop, knocked from a low shelf. She bent to pick it up, the cold metal in her palm another sharp contrast. Her mind jumped forward in the timeline of the weekend, bypassing the frightening parts with Carrey for now, holding onto the power. The security office. The way the guard’s sweaty face had gone slack with shock, then greedy understanding. She had been terrified, sure, but beneath the fear, there had been a terrifying, thrilling competence. She had handled it. She had used what she had to solve the problem.
Cathy swirled the mop in the bucket, watching the water darken. Her cheeks felt warm despite the draft. She thought of Jason’s face afterwards, in the hall, the awe in his eyes. It wasn’t disgust. It was reverence. He had looked at her like she’d performed magic, not something cheap.
She pushed forward, cleaning with a sudden, vigorous energy. The backroom of the theater, the grimy cement, the stink of stale beer and garbage. Even that, now, was transforming in her memory. The humiliation of rooting through bags, half-naked, was being reshaped. It was an adventure. A story. Their story.
“You alive back here?” Nick’s voice echoed, startling her.
She jerked upright, the mop handle clattering against a metal shelf. “Yeah. Just working.”
“Looks like it,” he said, ambling over to peer into his phone again. “Lopez says the truck’s delayed. No unloading till after lunch.” He said it like it was vital intelligence, then gestured vaguely at the now half-clean floor. “So, you know. No rush.”
“Great,” Cathy said, her voice flat.
He lingered, seemingly for no reason. “So, what’d you get up to this weekend? Do anything fun?”
“Not much,” she heard herself say to Nick, her tone perfectly normal, bored even. “Went to the movies.”
“Cool, cool,” Nick said, already losing interest. He headed back toward the comparative comfort of the office nook. “Yell if you need a break or whatever.”
She wouldn’t. The solitude of the chore was now a privacy booth for her thoughts. She returned to mopping, the rhythmic motion syncing with her heartbeat, which was no longer racing but was steady, persistently elevated. The plain, forgettable Cathy mopping the floor was just a shell. Inside, she was replaying it all, savoring the details she’d been too panicked or overwhelmed to taste in the moment. Cathy wasn't quite sure why she wasn't more traumatized by the whole experience--wasn't it technically kidnapping, what had happened? But it didn't feel so serious.
At lunchtime she sat in the break room and ate vending machine food--a bag of chips, and a couple of oatmeal cookies, and a fizzy water. Sarah, when she took her lunch break, always disappeared for an hour or two, but Nick and James usually wandered in to the break room. Today was no different.
Nick and James settled into the cracked vinyl chairs at the next table, their conversation flowing around her like she was part of the furniture. James scrolled through his phone, holding it up so Nick could see a series of graphic photos of a woman in a shower, someone he'd met at a concert. “Yeah, she was all over me Saturday,” James said, his voice a mixture of pride and routine appraisal.
Cathy tried but failed to keep her eyes fixed on her cookie, the sweet oatmeal taste turning gluey in her mouth as she listened to them dissect the woman’s body with a casual, clinical detachment, the size of her breasts and the bulge of her ass. Cathy said nothing, not even when James flashed the screen in her direction, as if to challenge her to look and object.
It was easier than usual to ignore James today. After her own weekend of misadventure, a naked woman on her coworkers phone hardly seemed offensive. Maybe mildly interesting.
"She seems nice," she said, glancing up from the screen casually, where a large pair of breasts glistened. "What's her name?"
But James didn't answer. He just grunted, realizing that Cathy wasn't taking the bate, and went back to scrolling through the photos for Nick, who was (of course) riveted by the nudity, and the story of how James convinced the poor, stupid girl to send nudes. The way he spoke reminded Cathy, vaguely, of Carrey talking to his friends.
After lunch she spent a few minutes at the register before Sarah returned. But then Sara did return, and Mr. Lopez had her go back to whatever cleaning he could think of. That meant more mopping. And then, when that was over, cleaning the bathrooms. And then scrubbing toilets. And then even the urinals in the men's bathrooms. She didn't mind. At least, she told herself she didn't mind. They gave her big rubber gloves for the scrubbing. And she needed the paycheck.
But the sharp, chemical scent of the cleaner couldn’t mask the, acrid smell of stale urine emanating from the porcelain urinals. The raw, ammoniac reek of old piss mixed with the pine-smelling cleaner to form a vapor that tightened the back of her throat.
All she could think about was Carrey and his friends, before they had tossed her into the trunk with Jason. They had filmed her. Filmed them both, naked. Inspected them. Humiliated them. She could practically feel the cold concrete of the alley under her feet, and see the blinding glare of a phone flashlight pinning her like a specimen, the guttural laughter that wasn't for her but at her. She dropped the toilet brush into the bucket with a clatter.
It was the piss smell, she realized. She was triggered by it. It was the scent of her own degradation, of kneeling on a public floor, of being reduced to a thing for their camera and their commentary. Her chest tightened.A cold sweat beaded on her upper lip.
Cathy locked the door and splashed cold water on her face. The shock of the water was a blunt reality. Droplets clung to her lashes and dripped from her chin onto the front of her overalls. She stared at her plain, pale reflection in the metal-framed mirror, her hair damp at the temples. The person staring back looked ordinary, drained, and real. The buzzing in her ears faded. She took a deep, ragged breath, then another, the air cool and clear.
It was closing time, or close enough. Her shift was over, anyway.
She unlocked the door, wheeled the cart out, and clocked out without a word to anyone. No one said goodbye. The evening air outside was cool and neutral, carrying only the distant smell of rain on asphalt.