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The white vans of the cleaning company were lined up like piano keys before the bank, a block of anonymous reflective glass. I walked inside and upstairs to an empty office used by the cleaning company. The owner sat around a table with the crew bosses. They looked like a cross between a last supper painting and a BBQ where they serve poached alligator, calling it 'swamp chicken'. The owner with his long, grey hair was the white trash Jesus at the center. Upon seeing me, he nodded, looked at his watch and marked the time on a sheet of paper. Amen.
"I need to move you to Hill's crew. Go ahead and start on trash and vacuuming downstairs. When Hill gets here, she'll come get you," he said.
I loved my cleaning job. Alone amongst the empty cubicles, I pushed the vacuum and let my mind wander. I snooped inside desks and played detective with the occupant's personal lives. I marveled at the pinned up photos of family vacations and tried to guess which doughy but sun-burned face was that particular cubicle's occupant. Nine-to-five, these people sat on these wheeled chairs and banged away on these keyboards. Did they ever stare into these flickering screens and find meaning for this existence? When did they stop dreaming of something more, somewhere else? Did they ever start? Was this what's in store for me?
Management must have thought potted plants stuffed in the corners would make the dull waste of the cubicle people's lives more palatable. On a secretary's desk with a name plate that said, Anne Mullane, a post-it note reminded Anne to water them every Wednesday. Anne needed lots of notes. Her cubicle space was a mosaic of scribbled on neon post-its. I liked to add my own cryptic messages: remember form B for Tuesday - Bob. Anne had a hand-made calendar on her partition and each month showed a different photo of her two pugs. I added a note on the calendar on the day of my own birthday: Bob's birthday. v.v. important. He likes chocolate.
In the office with a door labeled, William Scott - Regional Operations Manager, I ate a peach-flavored Jolly Rancher candy taken from his desk drawer and studied a picture of a disinterested man holding a drooling, possibly retarded, toddler. Hill stepped into the room and pointed at me.
"Get in the van. We're running late because of that damn faggot."
Hill, short for Hillary, had a blue rinse perm and the dumpy figure of a cheap mall Santa. Every time she took a drag from her cigarette or formulate an insult, her lips pursed like a dog's asshole. She had recently declined an offer of retirement. The theory amongst the crews -- okay, the theory I spread amongst the crews -- was that she couldn't quit. She needed people working for her so she could spit venom and gossip on them and absorb their suffering like some kind of misery vampire.
"Should I finish this room?"
"I said we're late. Get in the van."
Russ was finishing a cigarette outside the van. He looked like concentration camp prisoner dressed as a trucker. His torn and dirty jeans hung from his boney frame. His hat and shirt were too big. His sallow face was wreathed by smoke.
"Were you late?" I asked.
"Not me. Her." He pointed a thumb behind him toward the van.
"How's this route?"
"Most nights we get finished early, but Hill's a nasty piece of work. Speak of the devil." He switched to a syrupy tone. "Hello Hill."
We sat according to the unspoken social hierarchy of bank cleaners. Crew bosses drove, second in command rode shotgun and the rest (most crews had four) had to fight for space amongst the vacuums and cleaning products. I got into the back.
Already occupying one of the back seats was an obese man squeezed into a black dress with green and purple polka dots. Her (I can hear her voice reminding me to use this pronoun) thinning hair was bubble gum pink. A pair of gold ballerina slippers laced around her thick calves.
"Hello, little boy. Come sit here by Momma." She patted the bench seat beside her. "Magnolia. Nice to meet you."
"Gavin."
"Enchanté," she said, righting the children's plastic tiara on her head, although it didn't need it.
"Hey Gavin, do you know why you should never eat at a gay picnic?" Russ asked.
"Honey, we don't have time for your jokes," Magnolia said.
"Because, the hotdogs taste like shit." Russ cackled at his own joke then said, "You know who I saw last night?"
"Who?" Magnolia asked.
"The Serial Killer."
"Oh Lord. You didn’t."
"I did. And, he was all up on me, thinking he was going to take me home. What a freak."
"Serial Killer?" I asked.
"Child, that story is too much for your little ears."
"Careful, Mags. He might catch the gays from you," Russ said.
"If he ain't already," Hill burbed out, still focusing on the road. She didn't care if anyone heard her salvos of nastiness.
"All right. All right. Now, child." Magnolia placed two fingers tips on my arm. "I hope you aren't too shocked by a lady kissing and telling. This here lady cannot help the men she attracts and I do confess I have a certain weakness for strong and hairy. So don't worry, a bare chinned young'un such as yourself is safe from my ample charms." She winked and adjusted her dress. "This here gentleman we are so callously calling a serial killer-"
"Because he was," Russ interrupted.
"His name was Felipe. And I promise you this, he was a Cuban god. I mean, chiseled. Oh Lord. I'm feeling all flush just thinking about him. One night he appeared at the Rooster. It was like a dream. And he sat down next to little ole me and asked to buy me a drink in that sexy accent of his. I mean, how could I say no? Well, I didn't say no to the next few either, or the bump or two he was giving me off the back of his lovely man hands. Mmmm. Well toute suite, we ended up back at his place, letting nature take its course and he was nibbling and biting me all over. He had me begging for a little sugar in my bowl."
"Bowel." Russ said from a devilish grin.
"But, a little too much of a lot of good things went to my head and I passed out. I don't know for how long. But when I woke up, Felipe had tied me up and, remember I am out of my mind at this point, he was cutting my thigh with a razor blade. I didn't know where I was or what the fuck was going on. He was making little rows of cuts and watching the drops of blood. I go, 'What the fuck are you doing?' 'Don't you like it?' he asks. 'Fuck no,' I told him, 'and you better untie me'. Well, I got my ass out of there before that freak tried to cut it off me."
"The next night he picked up Chelsea," Russ interrupted again.
"I never liked that queen but I never wished her dead," Magnolia said.
"This guy Filipe killed someone?" I asked.
"Cut her up bad. She bled to death. And the Cuban freak went to prison," Russ said.
"And he's out already?" I asked.
"Oh honey. They don't care who's killing queens," Magnolia said. While I tried to reconcile the gruesome story with their nonchalant discussion, they continued their conversation. No one in my life had died, never mind been murdered, but to Magnolia it was unremarkable. I didn't expect the toughest guy I had ever met to clean bank toilets and wear gold ballerina slippers.
"We're here," Hill said. "Russ, show what's his name what to do at all the sites tonight. He's on vacuum."
"Aye. Aye. Captain." He turned to me, "C'mon. Grab your shit."
Hill marched to the back of the ophthalmology clinic to turn off the alarm, switch on the lights and let us in. When she opened the front door, I followed Russ's quick, prancing steps and the black plastic veil of garbage bags in his hands. Behind me I dragged the ancient bulk of a vacuum cleaner, trailing its tangle of cord. We left Magnolia to gather her cleaning products from the back of the van.
As we walked through the hallway, Russ flicked a hand at the rooms that needed vacuuming. He pointed at a wall plug and said to start there. I plugged in the cord and navigated from room to room by the light on the front of the vintage machine. After a few rooms of sucking up nothing greater than wayward staples or the paper remains of band-aids, I left the vacuum running and paused to investigate the drawers of an examination room. I put on thick black-framed glasses that made my vision distorted and blurry. I continued my work bespectacled, bumping into blurred chairs and unseen room corners.
"What the hell are doing?" Russ said.
I handed the glasses to him. His eyes blinked huge as he looked at me.
"Where'd you get them?" he asked.
I pointed to the nearest countertop. Russ motioned for me to follow.
"You want to see something cool? A photography dark room." He pointed at the floor-to-ceiling black cylinder. "Step into it and push the handle. The thing will spin around and let you in on the other side. Here. Empty the trash while you're in there."
After I rotated the cylinder, I stepped into the small room filled with a pleasant smell of vinegar and exotic equipment bathed in sleepy red light. I walked to the garbage and dug out a few pieces of photographic paper. Each one showed a glossy orange optic disk marbled with red veins. They looked more like fried eggs than the back of someone's eyeball.
I heard the door slide around and Magnolia's voice crooned, "Hush now dear and let me hold that little pecker of yours".
"Get out of here, dirty old man," I said a little more angrily than I meant and pushed her hand off my shoulder.
While Russ cackled from the other side of the door, Magnolia admonished with a smile, "Relax. I'm only playing. And by the way, Sugar, I am a lady. Don't you forget."
I felt embarrassed by my rudeness, and tried to laugh it off as Russ and Magnolia teased me.
Alone in the dark hallway, I continued my work and ruminated on ways of letting Magnolia know I was comfortable with her strange sexuality, but it was impossible. She was too far removed from my experience. She was a being from another world, and I couldn't believe people like her existed amongst all the strip mall normality of this town.
I was the last to finish. Hill stood by the door with keys already in the lock and sucked at a cigarette. Magnolia and Russ were already in the van.
"There I am center stage." Magnolia said, "I'm all made up like Miss Saigon, red sequined ao dai with black piping. The. Works. I'm holding this big ole' sledgehammer painted with silver and glitter. You know, Maxwell's silver hammer came down up his head, clang, clang," she sang. "On my cue the girls wheeled out the television with an old Reagan film playing, you know, the one with the monkey. Oh honey, it was wonderful. I hit the thing. Sparks, fire, the works. The girls lit flash pots; confetti exploded all over the stage. I'm telling you. It was fierce, child."
I watched Magnolia as she described the rest of the show. Her face had a soft roundness, but her thick skin, marked and pitted, ruined any illusion of femininity. The concealing make up she used only accentuated the deep lines and bad skin. She looked tired, maybe weary. As she leaned forward, telling the story to Russ, one of her dark nipples peered out like a roach investigating a silent kitchen. I waited to see if it was going to scurry back into the safety of her top.
I snapped out of it when Russ shouted, "put your cock away, woman!"
Magnolia leaned back, the nipple disappeared. She crossed her legs, throwing the hem of the dress over her knees.
"Where are your drawers?" Russ asked.
Magnolia shrugged and went on with her story.
***
For our dinner break, Hill chose a homey diner with raw wood shelves, blue porcelain plates and pots of fake flowers. I became self-conscious of myself and my companions when I realized the diner was run by Mennonites. Near the edge of our town, slowly being pushed out by the pastel condos that sprout like mushrooms along grocery stores and fast food places, a community of Mennonites lived. As they enjoy such modern excesses as driving cars and owning diners, Mennonites are considered more progressive than their Amish counterparts.
However I suspected this liberalness was about to be tested when we walked in: a messy haired teenage boy, a homosexual man who loudly referred to himself in the third person vulgar ('the faggot wants pecan pie tonight'), a transsexual whose full name was Magnolia Thunderpussy and, their boss, an old woman who used the word 'shit' like others use 'um' and 'err'.
The waitresses, from beneath their perfect organdie bonnets, stared. Magnolia sashayed, almost on tiptoes, toward them and spoke in her most honeyed tone. She complimented their outfits, suggested a table in the back and acted as if their dumbstruck faces meant nothing.
She whispered to me, "Honey, they don’t mean nothing. These women are just happy to be allowed out of the basement. Of course, almost no one is ready to see a divinity such as myself."
Through out our meal, Magnolia’s charm soothed the Mennonite women’s anxiety and by the time our pies were served they had stopped flashing nervous looks at us.
Instead the waitresses worried about a group of drunks at the counter. Their loud shouts and cat-calls made the women linger in the kitchen while the only male Mennonite employee tried to calm them with soft entreaties. His thick long beard, manicured like a hedge, rubbed against his shirt as he pleaded with the three men.
"Gentleman, please pay your bill and be on your way. I do not want have to call the police. We do not want trouble."
The drunks were leaning against their truck when we left the diner. They nudged each other and looked at us with smirks and viciousness. Hill and Russ, neither looking in the direction of the cat calls, hurried to the van. Magnolia maintained her usual catwalk pace. I stuck to her side trying not to look at them. The curses and insults flew at us and I wasn’t spared. Magnolia pointed a raised eyebrow at them and clicked her tongue.
When one of the men jumped from the hood of their truck and started to walk over, Magnolia whispered, "Get in the van, boy."
"I’m talking to you faggots. Where’s your little boyfriend going, huh?"
It was easy to forget how big Magnolia was, but it was obvious when she squared her shoulders toward him. The contrast between her solid masculine frame and her garish woman's clothes was shocking.
The redneck paused and shouted with a little less certainty, "What you gonna do? Why don’t you just go back to faggot town?" He turned and shouted something to his friends. They laughed.
"Listen here, you piece of shit. Just because I'm in a dress doesn't mean I won't whup your ass." Her voice was the full and deep rumble of a man. She shouted to the men beside their truck, "I suggest you take your drunk friend home before he has to explain getting a beat down from a man with tits."
The aggressor deflated and looked confused.
"C'mon, Billy," his friends shouted. He turned and walked away throwing a few insults over his shoulders.
"That’s what I thought." Her southern madam falsetto returned. She smiled and continued toward the van. I slid the door open for her and before stepping in she said, "Child, I’ve been despised all my life. I ran away from my family, because they couldn’t accept who I was. It’s God's fault that the equipment delivered didn’t match the order form. Not my fault, no sir. This is me. I am a woman despite any evidence to the contrary. If I went around dressing like one of those inbred rednecks," She lowered her chin and her voice, "talking about drinkin’ and fightin’ and all that macho bullshit. They’d still know I was some weirdo faggot queen and they’d go on hating me, tearing my clothes, beating me or whatever. But it would be worse, because I would be lying and hating myself all the while. I am who I am and I might as well be proud of it. Listen boy, this fine little ensemble you see, don’t tell me, I know I look good," she said, touching the edges of her dress, "this here is a suit of armor. They cannot and will not touch me. If I spent my life worrying about what these stupid crackers thought, I would crawl under my bed and die. I don’t have time for that shit. Life is too short. And when you figure out who and what you are, you’d be wise not to give a shit about these fuckers either. Now quit looking at me like that and get in the damn van."."
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