...and Apex Janitorial Services employee, Lourdes Garcia, paused with her trash buggy outside Robert Bokitis’s half open office door. She was late making her rounds in the executive offices, which were normally long completed by the time anyone arrived there. She could hear people talking in Señor Bokitis’s office and hoped that would distract him. She took a deep breath, tapped lightly on the door and slipped through quietly, heading for the side of his desk to retrieve his waste basket. He was seated behind his desk and there were three women seated opposite, all looking at papers. She was almost there when he stopped talking and glared at her.
“Do you have to do that now? Can you not see we’re busy here?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I was late arriving this morning.” She paused, uncertain whether an explanation would help or hurt her case. “I had to take my daughter to emergency last night, and then the subway was stopped for 45 minutes.”
He snorted in a kind of contemptuous laugh. “A fucking jumper, no doubt. Don’t you have a mule or something you can ride to work?”
Tight lipped and swallowing her humiliation, she backed away. “No sir. I’ll come back later.”
She headed for the door quickly.
“Much later, please.”
He turned back to the three people seated opposite. Judy Somerset stared at him.
“Yes, Judy, did you have something to add?”
“I can’t possibly add to that, Robert.”
They stared at each other a moment longer. “Can we please get through this - today, if possible?” he asked.
They went over last week’s preliminary performance metrics reports, with Robert asking rapid fire questions of the three women, and Judy fielding most of them. When they were finished, the women stood to leave.
“Judy, can you stay behind please?”
The other two women made fleeting eye contact with Judy, who nodded, and then left the office.
“Close the door!” Robert called after them, as Judy sat back down.
“I didn’t like your tone, before, Judy.”
She sat still and said nothing.
“I can’t have you undermining my authority in front of the associates.”
“What, so they’ll lose respect for you?” she said in exactly the kind of earlier arch tone he had objected to.
“That’s a hell of a way to talk to your boss, Judy.”
His lips were pursed; his stare was intense. “Check the org chart. The little box with my name in it sits above the little box with your name in it. That means I get to decide your future.”
She leaned over the desk. “You don’t get to decide a fucking thing about me.”
Her voice was quiet and even; her eyes were wide and blazing. “The minute you find someone who can track what goes on here and keep you armed with data, so you can puff yourself up and lord it over the other executives, you hire her –trust me, it’ll be a ‘her’ – and turn me loose.”
Robert had leaned back involuntarily. His mouth was closed, but his cheeks rolled and puckered as he ground his back teeth. “Just get on with it, please.” He had a sudden riveting interest in the sheets on his desk that they had just gone over in detail.
Judy inhaled deeply, stood up and left the office.
She passed from the executive suite – ‘power alley’ as the young people called it, in equal parts resentment, envy and aspiration – to the row of managers’ offices along the south wall where her small office gave her a measure of privacy, and a degree of status she didn’t particularly care about, one way or the other. She replayed the interchange with Robert in her mind. One of these days she was going to push him too far – and he’d call her bluff and shit-can her.
Lourdes was almost done emptying the wastebaskets of the executives and their assistants, which had mostly gone unnoticed, her invisibility a blessing. When no one paid her the slightest attention, when she seemed not even to exist, it allowed her to feel as though her life – collecting garbage, vacuuming, mopping floors, cleaning toilets – cleaning up after other peoples’ shit – was a dream, a bad dream, that she would awaken from, sometime. Today, everything was off: she normally arrived at 6 am, with her main work usually done long before the employees started to stream in. She would then spend the morning in the shadows, checking the washrooms, replacing empty toilet paper rolls, picking up paper towels tossed carelessly and missing the wastebaskets, emptying the hygiene disposal containers in the ladies’ rooms, available when the facilities manager needed her to clean up some mess, and ending her shift by cleaning up the employee café after the lunch rush. She would then take the street car, a subway train and a bus to arrive just before her children’s school let out at 3:30. It was at that moment every day, that her actual life, her bearable life began. Her children ran out yelling “mama, mama!” and she knelt down and gathered them up in her arms and kissed their faces and heads and necks and looked from one to the other as they chattered away happily and at the same time about what they’d done at school. They’d speak in Spanish and she’d laugh and say “English, English!” and they’d say the same thing again in the language of the land she and her husband had brought them to, so they would grow up safe and well fed and with a future where hope was not a delusion. They’d walk home to their apartment on Weston Road, a child holding each of her hands, and find their father at home with a snack ready for them. They’d sit down as a family for the hour that was available to them each day, until their father left for his night shift at a propane distribution centre – obliquely related to his academic qualifications as a chemical engineer.
But, today, Jesús Cristo, today had been a disaster. Her daughter, Pilar, had woken up crying in the middle of the night, her forehead on fire. She had carried her sleeping son to a neighbour and then called a taxi and gone to the emergency ward of Humber Hospital with Pilar. Four hours later – 5:00 am with no hope of arriving to work on time now - they were seen by an ER doctor. To her great relief, the doctor had said Pilar had a common fever, children’s Tylenol and bed rest was all she needed. A taxi home – now half a day’s wages spent in taxi fares – picking up her son from the neighbour and exchanging him for her daughter - ¡gracias a dios for the kindness of neighbours - she had raced to the bus stop and fidgeted as the bus lumbered slowly to the subway station, glancing at her watch compulsively. She had arrived to join a mob of people pressed 10 deep from the edge of the platform, with the loudspeaker announcing that service would be delayed. She had heard mumblings from among the waiting passengers that someone had jumped onto the tracks dios se apiade de su alma. She felt guilty and had made a tiny cross as her thoughts ran between the poor soul in such despair that he had stepped in front of the train and the reprimand she would receive for arriving late and messing up in her duties. Dios, she needed this job – hateful though it was. Both her meagre earnings and her husband’s were needed to pay rent, buy food, clothes – and the children grew bigger by the week. But, that poor person, lying smashed on the tracks…She crossed herself again, barely moving her hand. She understood despair: were it not for her children…
And that man, that awful man, Señor Bokitis, knew, somehow, he knew, instantly, why the train was late, as though some poor person’s anguish were a petty amusement. If anyone should be lying, broken and bleeding…she shook her head, admonishing herself for thinking evil thoughts. She pushed her buggy toward the next office.
The assistant was not at her workstation. This was the office that had been empty for several weeks. The light was on and someone was in there. She took a breath, knocked lightly and entered.
A man was working at the laptop on his desk.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. May I please empty your wastebasket?”
The man looked up.
“Do you know what? I just started today, and I have an empty wastebasket – but I make a lot of mistakes, so it’s bound to be full by tomorrow.”
His smile was warm and friendly.
He looked at her; he saw her.
“My name is Lourdes, sir, if you need anything.”
To her surprise, he stood and offered his hand. “Hi Lourdes, I’m Steve.”
For an instant she held back, embarrassed by the hand that picked through garbage and wiped up splotches and spills. But then she extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“I can tell from your accent that you’re from somewhere south of here.”
“I come from Peru, sir.”
“Ah, Peru. I’ve travelled all over South America, but never there. I hear the beaches are spectacular.”
“Oh my, yes, they are breath-taking. The sand is like sugar, and the colour of the water is– “she sought the English word for indescriptible–“not describable.”
Her gaze strayed for a moment as, in her mind, she stood again in warm sand, smelled the sea air, felt the warm breeze.
“You miss home.”
She hadn’t expected to talk of this, to talk of anything. She swallowed and kept her composure. “Very much, sir.”
“I live in the beaches neighbourhood, here in Toronto. Have you been there?”
“Yes, sir, my husband and I have taken our children there. For a picnic.”
“Hmmm, I guess it didn’t quite compare to the beaches you’re used to.”
She considered his comment. “Well, here it is a fresh water lake, not the ocean, but is still very nice.”
He laughed. “Lourdes, I think you’d make a great diplomat.”
“No sir, I’m an engineer.”
She had blurted it out, unintentionally. It had flowed easily from their conversation but now she felt awkward, and conscious that she was wearing a blue smock and picking up garbage. He continued to smile but he had cocked his head slightly, his brow had knit – she was self-conscious, stripped of her invisibility - he was assessing her – was he judging her? What was he thinking – surprise, disdain, pity?
She cast her eyes down and stepped back. “I’ll let you return to your work, sir.”
“It was very nice to meet you, Lourdes.”
“You too, sir.” She headed for the door.
“Gracias, buen día.”
She turned to look back at him.
“That’s about all the Spanish I know.” He had a sheepish look, like a little boy. It made her smile.
“Your accent is very good.”
He laughed. “No, it’s not – but thanks for letting me show off.”
She stepped out of the office and took hold of her buggy, not quite sure what to feel. It occurred to her that she had just had the first, the very first, actual, adult conversation with anyone in the four years she’d been coming to work at this building. Dios mio, what a day.
She let go of the buggy and walked swiftly toward the ladies’ room.
Dawn clicked on Reply to the email she’d just finished reading, mentally composing her response as she jiggled her leg. She stood up. Damn, she’d needed to pee for the last hour, looked at her screen, and went to the ladies’ room. She sat in the cubicle and wrote and edited her email reply in her mind. She raised her head as she realized that the girl in the next cubicle was crying softly. Oh, that poor thing, she thought. She raised her hand to rap her knuckles on the metal partition, to ask her if she was okay, then decided to let her have her privacy. I wonder what’s going on with her? she thought sympathetically.
She’d sat here herself, more than once, in tears…
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