That Kind of Cleaning

Robert Lopez

No one makes movies about bathrooms.

About cleaning bathrooms.

About cleaning the bathroom for two hours because your mother is in town visiting.
No one has a movie star scrubbing the sink, the mirror above the sink, the bathtub, etc. They might have her in there for a minute or two, maybe she’s smoking a cigarette, has her hair under a bandana, is wearing blue rubber gloves. She’s in there cleaning and her husband cheated on her with her best friend so she’s cleaning the bathroom and drinking gin and listening to the stereo loud. But then the phone will ring and it will be the husband who cheated on her or it will be the best friend who he cheated on her with and they will talk and cry and yell and scream and forgive and forget and then the mother who is in town visiting will ring the door bell and the mother will hug the daughter and the daughter will tell her mother what happened and all of them will go all together out for a pancake breakfast because you can’t have the movie star in there cleaning the bathroom for more than two minutes. You can’t have her hair under a bandana and drinking gin and hugging her mother for too long. People won’t stand for it and the movie star won’t stand for it either.

But one time there should be a movie where the movie star is in the bathroom cleaning for the whole movie. She should drink a quart of gin and smoke four packs of cigarettes and keep all of her hair up under that bandana and listen to every album in her collection loud. Sometimes it takes that long to clean a bathroom. Sometimes the bathroom needs that kind of cleaning.

The Difference Between Home and Here

Robert Lopez

Sometimes I wonder how much they’ll pay me when they do finally pay me. I’m not sure how much money I’ll need to make it back home because I don’t know how far I’m away from home here. Home is where the TV and refrigerator is and here is where all these blindsters are including Blind Betty and Pity Jimmy. The TV it squeals like a wounded bird and the refrigerator light never turns off and the blindsters I have to walk around land mines and obstacles so they don’t trip over something and crack their heads open. That’s the difference between the two and how you tell them apart. There are no blindsters at home and while there is a refrigerator here there is no TV. When I was first brought here I wondered why there was no TV and then I realized even if there was one who would watch it. Blindsters can’t watch TV any more than they can walk themselves around without tripping over something and cracking their heads open. I know I would watch TV but since they never seem to pay me there’s no way they would ever buy me a TV to watch. This is something you know without having to ask. If they ever did pay me I could buy myself a TV but it’s more likely if they did pay me I’d use that money to find my way home. I will probably have to take a bus home because they put me on a bus to get here. I didn’t notice what kind of bus it was or what direction the bus was driving is the problem. I think I was on the bus a long time so I think I might be a long way from home. This is why they can give me what for whenever they want and get away with it. They know it and I know it and even the blindsters know it. This is what I call my tragedy but Blind Betty says I don’t know nothing about tragedy. She says she’s read all the Braille books on tragedy and if I’m comparing myself to Oedipus then I have another thing coming. I don’t know who Oedipus is or what his tragedy is and I don’t bother asking Blind Betty because why bother. I don’t know how much they’ll pay me when they do finally pay me but I think it should be somewhere between one hundred and one million dollars. Meantime I imagine what’d be like if they did have a TV for me to watch set up in the cafeteria. I would be watching the TV with my feet up on the table and the blindsters would be all over the cafeteria with nothing on their trays doing god knows what to each other and they’d come in and say this is not what we pay you for and then I’d say which is my point exactly.

Robert Lopez's novel, Part of the World, was published by Calamari Press in early 2007. His fiction has appeared in dozens of journals, including; BOMB, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Indiana Review, The Barcelona Review, Denver Quarterly, Willow Springs, Nerve, etc. His poetry is in current issues of The Mississippi Review, Blackbird, and Elimae.