The room is so quiet he can hear the clock’s three metal plates fall over, turning 6-5-9 into 7-0-0. A gentle click of a sound. The radio lazily comes on (ten seconds after the changing of the numerical guard, he notes) and the room fills with shootings, traffic backups, baseball disappointments and heat indices.
“O-kay,” he exhales, and pushes himself to the edge of the mattress, legs dangling, feet brushing the dusty hardwood floor.
Soon the two-room apartment fills with the sounds of morning: shower spray hitting the tub, clock radio blaring, the blip blip blip of the coffeemaker forcing water through the tiny hole into the small glass pot beneath it. Once the shower’s been on a full three minutes Henry gets in, sure it’s hot enough. The mirror above the sink is already fogged up.
Four minutes into soaking with eyes closed, he feels along the tiled wall to the soap shelf. Lather is created. Private parts are soaped and rinsed. Two more minutes under the shower head that’s so old errant streams of water break rank and hit at odd angles. Water is turned off. Towel is found by groping hands. Body is dried and ready to step out onto the cold floor.
Like the childhood game of red light/green light, Henry freezes in exactly the position he’s in: toweling out his right ear. Was that the phone? He waits three seconds and yes, sure enough, the phone is ringing.
“Hello?” He holds his towel around his waist even though he is alone.
“Henry? Henry, it’s Mr. Beardsley.” He doesn’t wait for Henry to murmur hello, which he does, inaudibly. “You’ve got to come right in. Can you? Can you come in right now? I need you right now.”
“Yeah, sure,” he says with a glance over to the clock. It’s seven nineteen. “What’s going on?”
“Just come in as soon as you can get here.” Click. Mr. Beardsley—of all people—didn’t say goodbye. Just hung up.
He pulls a pair of briefs out of his underwear drawer. Boxers are too free form for a day that very well may require some kind of physical exertion. Better to go with briefs. Then khakis, his staple blue oxford and blue blazer. The neat sound of the tightly woven silk tie being pulled off the rack and he’s out the door. No time for his customary commuter cup of coffee, he’s pleased that at least he remembered to turn off the coffeemaker before locking up.
England Dan and John Ford Coley are singing far too loudly, the sound a shock to the morning quiet—it takes a moment for him to turn the knob down. Lite rock never is, in the morning.
His jaw is clenched in what’s become his natural expression. “You mad about something?” his friend Tom Geigan asked him not too long ago even though they were enjoying a Mets game on TV. Indeed, when he opened his mouth to answer no it was a relief to his jaw muscles. Since then he has to consciously relax his mouth throughout the day.
The hard rain that lulled him to sleep the night before has changed the landscape of his morning drive. He passes three plugged-up gutters on his way in to work, pools of stagnant water circling out into the middle of Main Street. The single traffic light that forces hesitation between his apartment complex and his job blinks red and no one else is on the road so he makes it downtown in minutes. He skims through the last pool and sails into a parking space right in front of the building.
But instead of rushing in, his hand remains on the gearshift long after he is parked. For here she is. The girl he noticed two days ago getting into her car, parked alongside his. Even though she’s got a whole street full of empty parking spaces, she is once again pulling in to the one alongside his.
“Hey,” he says, careful to appear casual with a half-head nod in her direction. He tries to look as if he, too, is juggling too much to fully concentrate on the morning greeting. But he doesn’t have a coffee cup or an armful of papers and books like she does. He is holding his tie in one hand, keys in the other.
“Hi.” She says it as more of an apology than a greeting. “Some rain, huh?” She juts out her chin and blows her bangs out of her eyes since her hands are full. Then she moves up to the curb, where he’s standing.
“Yeah,” he says. “You need some help?” he reaches out to indicate he means the books she’s loaded down with.
“Uh, no,” she says. “I’ve got it. Thanks, though.” He turns to go.
Then, providence intervenes. The sound forces her to reconsider. They both turn and face the source, knowing that it will require her to submit to his offer.
Splayed out on the wet pavement is her key chain, mocking the distance between them.
“Here, let me …” Henry doesn’t finish the sentence, aware now that she is strangely embarrassed at having to accept help. He leans down and scoops up the keys and tries to hand them back to her but quickly realizes she’s got no free hand with which to accept them.
“What d’you …”
“Could you …” They speak at the same time. Then she starts over. “Could you just … would you mind just grabbing that door—no, down there. I work at Cup-a-Joe,” she explains while walking. “You probably think I’m nutso, drinking coffee on my way to a coffee shop.”
“I didn’t even notice—”
“It’s just that it takes a while to brew. At the store. It takes a while to get everything up and running so I drink coffee on my way in. The key with that purple dot? Yeah, that one. I put permanent marker on my keys to tell them apart better. It’s the bottom lock first. No, turn it to the right. I know it’s stupid. My roommate makes fun of me. Counterclockwise. No, other way … Yeah. But this way I don’t waste time trying every single key on my key chain before hitting the right one. Okay, then the top one is the key with the black dot.…”
“Henry!” Mr. Beardsley bellows down the sidewalk. “What’re you doing?”
They turn to Henry’s boss, the dripping mop an explanation for his early-morning call.
“I’ll be right there,” Henry calls over. He knows this exchange has cost him response time.
“I can take it from here,” she’s saying, “thanks so much. I can get it. Oh, great.”
Henry’s unlocked the top lock and is pushing the glass door open for her.
“Thanks a lot.” She collapses her load of papers and books onto the bar-height counter along the front window that enables coffee drinkers to face out and watch nothing happen. “Phew.” She pushes her hair out of her face with a finality that blown air cannot achieve. “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble for being late.”
“Oh, no.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m Cathy,” she says, extending her hand for a shake. “Cathy Nicholas.”
The morning is spent pressing water out of the sopped carpet in the front of the store. The plastic sealants surrounding the double glass doors failed to keep the rain out, most likely because the wind blew it sideways throughout the night. Henry’s job is to twist the soaked mop out, which he does over and over again out at the curb. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice he marches to and from the curb and each time he glances down toward Cup-a-Joe. It takes three hours before most of the heavy damage is controlled. Mr. Beardsley has set up little yellow sandwich boards that read Caution: Wet Floor and depict stick men falling.
For the first time in Mr. Beardsley’s years at Baxter’s the store is closed during regular business hours. Customers would track this all through the store, he tells Henry, and then the whole carpet would be ruined. The smell of mildew is already threatening the inventory.
Henry and Mr. Beardsley set up two industrial-size fans on either side of the worst part of the damage and face them out to the street, opening up the double doors. The hope is that the moisture will be pulled from the ground and carried off, like a drunk is peeled off the sticky barroom floor and deposited elsewhere to sleep it off.
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