Hiding Places

I knew management would come to me when he died. Next on the duty roster. They gave him a minute’s silence out of the morning meeting, then came the assignments. For management, one less name on a spreadsheet, one less check to cut. Retirement and heart attack: they see little difference. Soon there will be a new name, and they will need a cleaned, empty locker.

There’s no reason I should protest the assignment. We all do what we need to do for the promised land, the golden retirement. Just a few more years. He didn’t make it. I will.

His locker is against the back of the restaurant off the concourse, dead center in a long line. The advantage, he’d told me, of having both names start with a ‘J.’ Whether the order was alphabetical or reverse, first name or last, he’d always be in the middle. He liked to watch the first few people try something, in case they failed, but never wanted to be responsible for the final impression.

The locker’s handle is flesh-searing hot in the sun. I’ve been around long enough to expect this. I know to use my gloves. I remember a time, decades past, when I knew less but expected more, and a child threw up on the concourse. It was nasty stuff, slurpee and cotton candy, bright red with yellow lumps. The child had run while sick. They trailed puddles, left them behind planters, on seats, around and on the door to the restaurant. Management was screaming over the radio, clean it up, clean it up, nobody’s spending any money, as if we couldn’t see right in front of us.

He was calm, professional, jaded. He told me to get a broom from the closet behind the restrooms while he spread sawdust. I was new then. I didn’t realize he was nobody’s boss. I ran, management sobbing over the airwaves from my belt, and wrenched the closet door open. I didn’t look and instead grabbed a handful of black widow instead of the broom.

Lucky it didn't bite me. I've seen pictures of people with their arm swollen up purple like they're fruiting a plum. I threw it away. It hit the far wall in a jiggle of waving legs.I grabbed the broom and ran.

After we cleaned everything up and management had breathed into a paper bag, I told him about the spider. Oh, yeah, he said. That closet is lousy with them. Around here, every closet is. I asked him why he hadn’t warned me. He laughed in my face. Said it was a rite of passage. I didn’t know enough to be angry with him then. Yesterday, I would have screamed in his face. Today, I can’t.

I open his locker. There are no spiders inside. At least, no visible ones. The pile of trash underneath his spare uniforms would make a perfect hiding place, down among the candy wrappers and beer cans and fast food bags. The best idea would be to scoop the mess all into my trash bag at once and then hit the sticky walls with a hose. I’m paid by the hour, so instead I reach with my pickers and, like chopsticks for a single grain of rice, lift a Snickers wrapper. It’s as good a way to grind out my time as any other.

The pile dwindles. No unexpected visitors yet. I pull out an old paystub, its blue ink bleeding across the yellowed paper. I smile at the hourly rate. This was three raises ago. Nostalgic. I see he hadn’t withheld any money. He came to me three years back, asked me to look over his retirement paperwork. Two or three lost dreams ago, I’d taken some accounting courses at the community college. To his mind I was an expert. It didn’t need an expert to see that he’d be picking trash, cleaning vomit, and dodging spiders for the rest of his life. I told him this and he insisted I had run the numbers wrong. I told him to ask a professional if he didn’t trust me. He said he couldn’t afford one. Exactly.

My pickers select a beer can and pull it from the pile. It is ancient. I can’t tell what brand it is because the label has faded to white. We are not allowed to drink at work, never have been, which is why he did so often. He’d show up for work blitzed, slurring his words and unable to walk a straight line. Management would shove a picker and a trash cart at him because it was easier than finding someone else to do his job. If he’d been a belligerent drunk, rather than a melancholy one, I think things might have been different. A punched child, a broken window: that would have gotten him fired.

The beer can rattles as I move it into the trash bag. I freeze, then shake it again. Rattle.

The employee party, our first year working together, a few months after the black widow. Everyone else gathered in the concourse, one watered-down drink each, not enough food to go around. Me and him in the flower garden. It’s not there anymore. They paved it over and put up a roller coaster. That night, we drank beers, one after the other, and made love on a bench next to the roses and the artificial babbling brook. After, he picked up his pants and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket. We weren’t allowed to smoke at work either, which is why he did.

He had tapped one halfway out and offered it to me. I took it. He struck a match, lit mine first and then his. The DJ at the party was playing dance music. I couldn’t tell what the song was. Only the bass made it up to us, thumping through the bench and up my torso. I put my head on his shoulder, cigarette in hand. I didn’t smoke, not really, but I never told him that. He took a long drag and let it out, smoke curling around his mustache and hanging in the still air.

What was he thinking about? I asked him. He shook his head and held up his left hand. The one with the ring on it.

He was very proud of his wedding ring. He had designed them himself, one for him and one for his wife, given the instructions to the jewler. Twenty-four carat gold, like in the movies. All his spending money for three months. A good partner is hard to find, he said, you can’t afford to be cheap. Not if you wanted to keep them.

I was wearing my wedding ring too. Mine was silver in color, not in metal. I used my pinkie and thumb to slip it into my palm. I asked him if she knew about us. He said no, of course not, it would devastate her. He returned the question. No. Another long drag. He turned the ring over and over in his other hand. I put a hand on his leg. He flinched but didn’t move away.

He told me he was starting to feel cheap, like an alloy, and he didn’t like it. I told him I didn’t have any expectations. I knew what we were doing. I knew what people might think. He shook his head. That wasn’t it at all. He dropped the ring into the beer can. It rattled around. He threw it into the babbling brook. It bobbed past the boulders and vanished. He cried. I put my arm around his shoulder. It didn’t help. After a few minutes of sobbing, I got dressed and left.

Two weeks later, two weeks of dodging each other at work, he called me. He said things couldn’t go on the way they had been. I told him it wasn’t up to him anymore. He asked what I meant. I told him we were over. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Was he still there? He was. He’d been thinking through things, he said. He was getting a divorce. I called him an idiot and hung up.

I cut the can open. It was the one. He’d saved it all these years, saved it for decades. I shake the ring into my hand. I’d always assumed he’d been ripped off, that the jeweler knew he wouldn’t see any difference. The ring I am holding is just as gorgeous, just as yellow, just as pure as that day he threw it down a brook. Not a fortune, not really, but probably a few hundred dollars melted down. Maybe more if his design is worth anything.

The ring slips into my chest pocket. A little step closer to retirement.

There is no more treasure to be found. Nothing but piles and piles of trash. I take an hour to bag it up, then another ten minutes running his uniforms to the wardrobe office. They will cut his nametag off and stitch a new one on. The attendant asks if my shirt is fitting properly. I don’t think about it before I touch my chest. There’s the ring. I shake my head. They ask if I’m feeling well. I nod, it’s a hot day, that’s all, excuse me please. Break, lunch, six more hours of patrolling the concourse, stabbing stray hot dogs and napkins and paper cups.

I don’t change out of my uniform shirt when I leave. I slide into my car still reeking of popcorn and face paint. My first stop will be a jewelry store, I figure. Then a pawn shop if they don’t offer to buy it. They might ask where I got the ring from. From a friend, I could say. That would be true. From a lover. That would be true as well, though the size might lead to awkward follow-up questions.

Only the weight of the ring alters my course. It feels as though it is dragging down the right half of my body, forcing me to take a turn where I don’t mean. But that’s not exactly it. I drive down one street after another as if on autopilot, until I end up at his house. He hasn’t lived in it since he called me. I think his wife, his ex-wife, might still be here.

The street is quiet, suburban. Nobody is outside. Not in this heat. I walk to the front door. There is no window. No camera. No way to see me. A line of cinderblocks marks an untended rose garden. I pick up the third brick in the row. It’s slightly different in color and much lighter, because it’s made out of plastic.

Look, he had said, the first time I came over. He had slid a tiny compartment open to show me the spare key. Isn’t that clever? And he really did think so.

I slide the compartment open. There’s a house spider hiding in there. I shake it out. No key. His wife, or whoever lives here now, they don’t think as highly of the false cinderblock as he had. I put his ring in the little hiding place. I should leave before anyone sees me, but I can’t quite bring myself to. I had been planning a good riddance. I would have told that to his face. To the hidden compartment, I can only muster a goodbye.