The Box

Final for now.
Here is a word doc form, if you’re interested: fiction-piece-final1

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Leffel asked me one day if I wanted to smoke a bowl with him before we went to work. I didn’t like weed but I was so intrigued by him and wanted to be friends that I told him yeah, maybe someday. He was washing almost directly below me, straining to clean the mud layers off glass of the house’s window wells. Up on the ladder, I was working on these little windows with wooden panes criss-crossing over the glass. They were such a pain in the ass – you had to wash them by hand because the brush and squeegee were too small to fit between the slats. At least the sun was warm on my back and the breeze was comfortable. Up there from the second floor, I could see the sweat marks on the back of Leffel’s t-shirt as he bent over the window wells almost right beneath my ladder. He was straining to get at that mud-caked glass below ground level. They were even worse down there than mine.

A few days ago Leffel told me he had smoked up on the way to Dave’s house (we met there in the mornings to take the work van to the site). He said sorry for not asking me to join but that next time he would. I said OK. That day I could tell he was high, scrubbing away at the smallest speck of dirt. He moved so slowly and methodically and didn’t say a word. Today though he was quick, ready to be done. Dave sauntered over and shot us some of his standard snide comments: “You guys done yet? What’s taking so long?” “You getting these windows clean? What’s that spot there?” He would point with eyebrows raised and one of us would say, Dave that’s a hard water stain. He wouldn’t believe it and would scrape at it himself. Water stains don’t come off. “Come on, pick it up guys. We’ve got half the outside and all the inside yet.” I told him I was almost finished, he said then start on the other side. Leffel asked him if he had seen how dirty those wells were. Dave said of course he had; he’d washed fifty times as many windows as us. Hurry up. Leffel looked at me after Dave went back to his side of the house and shook his head: “Fucking asshole. God.” “I know man.”

I looked back to my window and continued scraping. We used razor blades on the heavier dirt – its surprising, I know. But since the glass surface is so smooth, the razor doesn’t scratch it. I noticed a small crack in the corner of one of the panes. I remembered the last time I saw a crack like that – it was one of the worst days on the job which also happened to be the first day on the job. Nicer homes have storm windows that you have to take out of their frames and wash separately by hand. One of these had this crack in the corner, maybe from a frisbee or baseball. I was almost done with it – I pressed my towel to the surface to wipe away a last spider dropping or something and bam: that little crack had crawled all over the glass. Shards exploded all over the kitchen floor. Oh shit. Oh my god. Shit. Then Leffel broke a window. And four screens. We ended the day with a furious boss and a fuming cardiologist. Dave screamed “FUCK” about twenty times in the van on the way home. Leffel and I were silent.

Ever since that day, we have been painstakingly on edge around the windows. Luckily Dave didn’t make us pay for anything with money, but we did pay with more of his snide comments pulled from a now much larger vat. It felt like we were scrambling around keeping Dave satisfied while desperately trying not to bump into anything or anyone.

I carried the ladder around to the west side of the house and started on an identical set of slatted windows. Leffel had already moved over here and was working on another round of wells. “So, what’d you do last night,” I asked.
“Oh I just hung out, had a few beers. One of my buddies had some people over so I was there for a bit. You?”
“Oh I didn’t do much, just chilled at home mostly.”
“Cool.” I knew that he had been at that party. Jenn, my girlfriend, was there and told me she had seen him. She told me a lot more about him, actually. Like how they used to smoke together and go on drives along the ocean, how they used to go to the beach or the city together. She also told me about how fun she thought it’d be to live like he did: you know, so uninhibited. He seemed to know what was worth living out of all the choices we had. They actually dated about a year ago and I could tell a part of her was still in love with him.

A lot of people went to Leffel when they were looking for social things to do. When people would ask me about my job, they would usually say how “cool” or “great” he was when I mentioned he worked with me too. It was the same with adults – so many owners would know him or his parents and have so many things to talk with him about. And I wanted to be his friend for the same reasons as everyone else. He was interesting and unique, and in lives like ours, that was even more interesting and unique.

I wiped away the last streak of washing fluid and climbed back down the ladder. My feet ached in the centers where the rung had been digging into them for the last hour. Leffel was sitting on the stoop of the well, looking off into the yard of the house. The lot was set on a cliff that dropped off to a road that bordered the pacific. The view was amazing, but it just meant more and bigger windows.

“How much longer do we have?” Leffel asked me. “It’s almost noon. Should we see if Dave wants to eat?” He agreed so we went to look for Dave. Every day we got thirty minutes to sit down somewhere around the house and eat a lunch that we packed. Dave was strict to the minute about the time limit. “Where the hell is he,” Leffel asked.

We finally found him sitting under a tree near the cliff, eating and talking on his cell phone. Leffel make a snort and muttered, “figures.” Dave looked at Leffel for a moment, his stare piercing and his lips up on the edges as if he was smiling. He told the person on the phone that he’d call back. “I don’t want to hear any of that. You guys are lucky I pay you for lunch breaks.”

The thing about Dave is that he is our age and was our friend through high school. The only reason he claimed the right to be our boss was that he was in our position last summer under a boss he claims was even more “demanding” than he is. It was tough to willingly let him boss us around. But he paid us.

“Yeah, whatever,” Leffel replied to him.
“Alright, that’s one week at six an hour. For both of you.”
“Whatever dude.”
“Two weeks. Six dollars an hour.”

I started my objection, but all I could get out was “But–” before Dave said, “That’s enough. Shut up and get back to the windows.” Leffel had already turned away and was walking toward the house. I looked back at Dave who was shaking his head and swearing under his breath. He pressed redial on his phone and held it up to his ear. “Get to work!” he yelled when he saw I was watching.

To be honest, I couldn’t figure out why Dave was being such a jerk – when we were off the job he went back to his old, friendly self. Maybe it was because he knew he wasn’t doing a good job running this business and wanted to blame it on us. Whatever; it was weird, it sucked, and now we were getting paid a dollar less an hour.

At about one o’clock we moved inside. This was going to be a long day – every window had a storm on it and Dave wanted us to wash everything. The owners were somewhere on vacation, and they had shut off the air conditioning. It was boiling. Our shirts were soaked after only a few minutes.

And then I broke another window. Leffel and I had turned on all the ceiling fans we could find to try to deal with the heat, and I was lifting a long, skinny storm up high to check the bottom for spots when it got smacked by the blades of a fan. It shattered. I had nothing to say or think. Leffel came in, “Shit man.” Then Dave came stomping down the stairs, breathing heavy, “What…the hell…was that?” I couldn’t say anything besides “The fan…it got…”
“That’s it. You’re not getting paid today. Clean it up.” He went in to where Leffel had retreated and was washing again. I heard Dave shout, “Have you even washed this yet? Are you fucking kidding me? It looks dirtier than it did this morning! You’re not getting paid today either. Worthless… God damn.”

It was silent for a while. I sat in my puddle of shards. Then I heard a sound that was too familiar today. I went into the living room to see the colossal landscape window frame looking out to the water completely glass-less. There was Leffel standing in front of it with a look of calmness, even happiness. A thick stone bowl that had been sitting on the table was laying in the lawn, surrounded by chips of glass. Dave had a look of shock and horror slapped onto his face. Leffel said, “I quit.” And stepped through the frame. He walked across the lawn, out to the street, and turned the corner east. The only noises in the house were the fans and the waves on the ocean. Dave said, “Clean this up.” I couldn’t believe what Leffel had done. Wow. And now he was gone.

“Clean this up now,” Dave repeated. I just stood there. For the second time in five minutes I had nothing to say or do. Then just like that, I said, “No, I quit.” And I stepped through the frame.

When I got down the street I couldn’t find Leffel anywhere, so I walked home. My senses were heightened: I saw the dark, rich colors of the sunset in the trees along the street and in the faces of the houses behind them. I heard the rustle of the leaves above me and the rumble of the sea off in the distance. I felt the breeze twist through my fingers and my palms as I walked. I felt lighter, more intimate with the world. As if I had flailed around enough that I finally crashed into reality and stepped through it.

My thoughts eventually wandered back to Dave and I wondered what he did after we both left. I haven’t talked to him since – I suppose he took care of the damages and finished washing himself. We never could quite figure out why Dave acted the way he did as our boss. Maybe he just needed to break some glass. I know I did.

~ by doug on April 21, 2008.