Cleaning Up New York by Bob Rosenthal Page B

with yourself as the essence of each thing you clean is revealed to you. By soaring along with the free spirit of things, you meet parts of yourself on the frontier between your own spirit and all non-worldly spirits. The slowness and evenness of cleaning prevents you from being startled or blinded in your thoughts. The spirit of cleaning is a state of trance and fascination.

    In my first month with the agency, jobs fall into my lap at unexpected times. The strange hours and locations of these jobs make each one singular in my mind except for the number of them. The mystery and fear of “When will the phone ring?” and “Where do I go?” makes going to work like going on a caper. The phone is ringing. Barbara’s obstreperous voice is like a backstage knock: “Are you ready?” and soon I’m gone.
    I wash windows and wax the floors in a West End apartment newly occupied by two civil liberties lawyers soon to be married. I fatigue myself buffing a paste-waxed floor by hand and I take enough dope for a couple of joints from their modest supply of marijuana. I get called out to Bayside, Queens. An hour and a half on subways and a bus leads me to fresh air, grass and trees, and incredibly long rows of bungalows with six-digit house numbers. In my appointed house, I learn the use of acrylic floor wax. I have to clean and wax the floor in the largerecreation-basement room. Some of the brown-and-white asphalt tiles are bent to right angles with the floor. The atmosphere is dark and dank; the plastic wood-paneled walls hold large oil canvases, each picturing a particular fat naked man. He is the man who let me in the door; his wife must be the artist. The acrylic fluid splashes over my hands and dries into thin sheets of shine. I have to learn how to distance myself from this cosmetic cleaning product because it is dangerous to the user. Inhaling acrylic floor wax fumes clogs the lungs and prevents breathing for a few moments. Upstairs the artist gives me a tuna fish sandwich; I tell her that her paintings remind me of Alex Katz, because of their big flat colors. She hates Alex Katz, wowee! I go to the medicine chest and take some valium. It keeps me from worrying about if I will ever get done. I still have the downstairs and the upstairs left to do. As I vacuum the living room, she drinks a beer and watches a soap opera on TV. She lifts her feet and I vacuum under them, then she offers me a beer. A long day’s pay plus tip and carfare convinces me it was a good performance. “I pulled this caper off!”
    A businessman rents and sublets a studio in the East Fifties. The last person had left the place totally disheveled. The businessman tells me to throw out all the junk lying around or take it for myself. He thinks it is going to be a near impossible job and promises me a $10 tip. He goes on to work and I start to reconstitute the apartment. In about four hours, I have everything clean and straight and I have a BOAC bag filled with select items for me to take home. I have a new plant sprayer, new plant food, new earth, new Band-Aids, new shampoo, new blue jeans,new tools, and a little new grass. I meet my boss in the lobby of his office building and hide my bag of goods behind a desk in case he should reconsider that tip. He does think hard about the tip because I am faster than he thought possible; of course, he can’t see the finished product. I give him a look full of expectation; he shoots back a pained expression and hands me the tip. I tell him that he will love it and jump down into the subway rich with expensive household items plus hard cash.
    These capers teach me quick perceptions as to where dirt is and isn’t and how to organize a cleaning plan. When I go into a strange apartment, the standard procedure is for the employer to explain what is to be done and where the materials are kept. I learn how to begin. Beginning promptly builds trust in employers and relaxes them.