The old Sikh’s mop click-clacks as he drags it back and forth across the white-tiled floor. From his desk a security guard watches, mesmerised by the motion.
Outside is dark, the quiet still of 3am in the rain.
I stand half in, half out the doorway smoking a cigarette. I shouldn’t be here, taking a smoke break. It’s against regulations. Overhead, security cameras buzz and turn in electronic judgement. There’s no one to notice though. We work alone at night: me and the Vietnamese girl who doesn’t speak English but smiles all the time; the old bloke who wracks himself coughing with Emphysema. You can always hear him, even from several floors below.
The building is Bankers’ Tower, twenty-six stories, tallest in the city ‘til last year. Now it’s dwarfed by the Exxon oil building. That’s pissed the financial folks right off, so I hear. We pick up these rumours because we empty the bins and shred documents. My company does anyway. Me myself I never shred, just wheel the carts that take rubbish down to the garbage trucks waiting out back. You pick up plenty of rumours in a job like mine.
I notice the two girls when they turn a corner a couple of blocks down. I notice them because they’re tottering, holding one another to stay upright, scantily clad for the weather. Their occasional shrieked laughter shatters the night’s silence. They’re coming closer, towards the building, towards me. When they reach the corner of our block, I retreat back into the door, squeeze myself against the wall. I don’t want them to see me, because they’ll only give me hell. Girls like them always do. Industrial injury. Happened a couple of years back; dead, darkened skin pulled taut over cheekbones. Most folk don’t comment just look away or try not to stare. Drunken people though, they’re uninhibited. It’s worse at night too, when they’re shielded by darkness and when the normal world’s slipped away, leaving behind an uncanny shadow.
It’s best to stay unseen sometimes.
If I’m inside the building they won’t notice me.
My uniform is beige. It has a patch sewn onto the arm that says McKenzie Corporate Waste Services. It’s not too bad really, lets you blend in, you become part of the building. No one notices you anymore than they notice how sparkling the HSBC sign is, or how clean its glass walls are.
The company takes twenty-five a month out my pay to hire the uniform. I don’t complain. The security guys have to pay to rent their uniform and their radios and torches and they don‘t make any more than I do.
They stop - the girls - just down from our doorway. Their conversation is audible now. It isn’t very interesting, but I listen all the same, just to hear the voices. They speak in drunken drawl. One of them has just split up with a boyfriend. I can see why they were tottering now. The recently single one is wearing shoes with unfeasibly high heels. They’re kept on just by straps which go up her leg in a criss-cross. The other one is carrying her shoes, walking in stocking soles on the rain soaked pavement. Both of them are wearing short skirts and sleeveless tops that stop at the belly-button.
The click-clack of the Sikh’s mop stops. He rests for a moment, leaning on its plastic handle, running a hand across his forehead, just below the turban. The security guard looks up, startled by the silence. Then the monotonous sound begins again. He’s only half way across the foyer floor. The sharp smell of his disinfectant mingles with the fast food smells that pervade downtown, indistinguishable, a catch-all grease and frying.
Somewhere a few blocks off, a siren calls out.
The shoeless girl lifts a foot to pick at a stone stuck to her tights. She hops, unsteady on one leg, begins to keel over, grabs onto the other girl, both of them laughing now. The steady one pulls a packet of cigarettes out of her handbag and takes two out. They both lean on the glass wall of the building, legs and arms sticky with sweat and rainwater that will leave smudges on the pristine glass. It’s washed every night both from inside and out, so that the sunlight glints off it every day. From a distance, when the sun is setting, the building can look as if it’s on fire, a towering inferno in the heart of downtown. It takes six men with pulleys twelve hours to clean every window. You know it’s worth it when you catch the flame effect some summer evening round sunset. I can see the building from my apartment. It can be seen from almost everywhere in the city: that and the new Exxon oil tower.
This is McKenzie’s biggest contract, the name Bankers’ Tower emblazoned across all our adverts. Makes you feel good to be a part of it, important. You’d think they’d pay you more for being in a prestigious place, for being one of the ones who keeps their star contract for them; they don’t. They pay less. It’s an honour to work here, reserved for their most loyal staff, for those who wear their uniform with pride and don’t whinge about minimum wage minus deductions. What they pay more for is the shitty areas no one wants to work. There’s an old brewery everyone says is haunted. You have to work in damp, stone tunnels that howl all night. Myself, I wouldn’t do that place for double. This job suits me just fine.
I’m still watching the girls when this guy walks up to them. He’s a homeless bloke, wheeling a shopping trolley, wearing baggy combats and a grey sweat-shirt. I’ve seen him around before. He’s a regular in this area. Says hello to me sometimes when he’s passing, if he’s not too out of it; I give him money now and again, if he’s not too out of it.
‘Spare a cigarette?’ he says
‘No.’ The girls speak in unison.
‘Go on, eh? Just the one.’
‘No,’ the dumped one says. ’Leave us alone.’
He’s moving close to them now, too close. They seem uneasy. Really, two girls drunk and dressed that way shouldn’t be on the streets round here at this time. It’s not safe. A guy was shot by druggies just last week, at the corner where Starbucks sits. I wasn’t working that night but I heard about it from the security guard here. Whole night went to chaos afterwards, flashing lights and emergency services all over the place almost ‘til sun-rise.
’Spare any change then?’
‘Fuck off,’ the other one says.
‘Just a couple bucks for a Big Mac.’
‘Fuck off, I said. Leave us alone.’ This time she’s real angry, spitting her words at the man, right into his face which is too close to hers. His beard and long hair is matted and dirty. He stares down into his shopping trolley and begins to walk off. Maybe he’s mumbling something to himself as he goes. I’m not sure. I don’t hear him say anything else. All I hear is the squeak of the wheels on his trolley as he leaves. It’s full of black bags and holdalls. He’s probably collecting cans and bottles from the street, or all the clothes and household goods folks throw out; you can get junk money for them see, bits and bobs. They’re doing a service in a way, guys like that, recycling. For those in the daytime world of suits and offices the few pennies isn’t worth the hassle; to others it’s a lifeline. It’s no worse a job than most.
Anyway, he shuffles onward, maybe mumbling to himself, maybe not.
Then I’m not sure what happens because it all goes too fast. I think the dumped girl spits on him. He wheels around, rubbing his neck, cursing at them. I’m not sure if she spat on him: I can’t swear. He might just have turned around and cursed, unprovoked, but I’m pretty sure she spat. The other girl yells, ‘Loser’ and the dumped girl says, ‘Why don’t you get a job, eh?’
He turns away from them again, head bowed, and trundles onward, his trolley creaking and bumping over the uneven paving stones. But the girls haven’t finished. They follow him. They’re laughing and jeering. I know what that feels like, and it haunts me to watch it, because the guy, he’s decent you know? I know his life story from those days when he’s not too out of it.
One of the wheels of his trolley becomes stuck on a grating, turns backwards. He pushes at the cart but it doesn’t move, so he pulls it backwards instead. I head back into the doorway now that they’re moving on and drop my cigarette butt, treading it onto the wet pavement. A car passes too fast, music blaring from its stereo. Its tyres suck up the surface water, making a slurping sound, leaving a trail of spittle.
I figure I should be getting back because I still have four floors to do. There’s hell to pay if the job isn’t finished by 6.30am when the first of the office workers arrive to start the day. We shouldn’t still be here then. We’re the trash fairies: people don’t want to believe in our existence. Stuff disappears overnight, and in the morning the offices are clean and rubbish free, and the floors are mopped, and the windows gleam, and all the jostling bright signs sparkle.
That’s the way it has to be. The city is a glass and neon paradise then, a testament to prosperity. It’s taken for granted that the world sparkles in the daytime.
A security guard comes out of the construction site across the road. They’re building executive, riverside “condos” there. I heard they’ll be going for upwards of a million. He hooks his thumbs into his belt and patrols around the perimeter fence protecting the site.
The homeless guy’s voice echoes in the quiet when he shouts, ’Shut up!’
‘Trash.’ I hear one girl say. She’s standing right over him, her mouth close to his face.
He pushes her away. She stumbles, screaming as she totters on her high heels, struggling to remain upright.
‘Asshole!’ her shoeless friend yells, thrusting a fist into his back. The guy is crying. I can see tears. He wipes his sleeve across his nose.
Over the road, the security guard looks across. Behind me, I feel the warmth of Banker’s Tower drift towards me as the inner doors swish open and I know our security guy is there too.
‘Hey what’s happening?’ he asks?
I shrug. I’m about to tell him all I know when one of the girls shoves the guy’s trolley over into the street. There’s a clatter of metal against asphalt. Bags fall and burst open all over the road, cans and clothes tumble into the mud-sodden gutter. He starts to pick stuff up then just stops dead still, stands for a moment, a pile of old clothes in his arms. Then he chucks it all back down again and lets out this scream. I can only call it a scream; it sends chills right through me, reverberates all around the steel and glass towers here on Main Street. He turns to the girls who aren’t laughing any more. They back off instead, closer to the tower.
Next thing our security guard’s running out, shoving past me, going for the bloke like some Hollywood hero, racing to save the dames. And security from over the road is running across too, his black boots splashing with every heavy step.
There’s a moment when everything seems to stop, like a stilled film frame. Both the guards have this homeless guy pinned against the glass wall of the tower, and the girls huddle there, watching. The only sound and movement is the wind blowing one of his empty Coke cans along the gutter. Our guy goes for his radio, calls the cops.
And the scene stands still once more.
That’s when I light another cigarette and decide that tonight, I‘m not going to finish the other floors. I know it’s mean of me, because it’s the smiling Vietnamese girl and the old bloke with the bad chest who’ll be in trouble when not all the office bins are empty in the morning. We work as a team, and I’m letting them down.
They’ll get over it.
It’s just that tonight I’ve decided, just for once, I don’t want to remain unnoticed.
It’s strange these days - the way a person can remain invisible only when they’re present; noticed only when absent. The way some folk’s work is only remarked when it remains undone. It’s like a negative tension underpinning everything; one that, if it’s stretched to breaking point no one will notice until it snaps. We’re not really supposed to exist, the trash faeries who flit in and out through the night, making everything right for the day time, preparing the canvas of reality the city sits on in sunlight.
I go back in to pick up my rucksack, cigarette still in my hand, real careful not to drop cigarette ash on the old Sikh’s clean floor. His mop is still clacking away, back and forward and he doesn’t look up from the task as I pass.
There’s a dark, unpainted passage at the back of Banker’s tower that’s locked all the time. It’s where our base is, where I take my one meal break if I‘m not outside smoking. It’s never cleaned and hasn’t even been plastered past the concrete. I change into jeans, and fold the uniform neatly on the table, then slip out the back way into the alley that runs between Banker’s Tower and the next high-rise.
Outside the rain is coming down heavier now.
As I steal into the dark of a back alley, a distant siren wail moves closer, ready to keep on making sure the world’s as it should be for the good folks at sun rise.
Ends
2374 words