Matt turned. Behind him, panting, damp with fog and perspiration, was the big woman who'd chased him away from her Corolla.
"Oh, no, you don't, Hirotachi." The big woman rolled her eyes and shoved the pink palm of her hand towards the manager. "Talk to the white girl, 'cause the black girl ain't listenin'."
"Don't you use that tone of voice with me. Your shift starts at three!"
Another eye roll. "I… had… a flat, arright?"
Hirotachi (apparently the clerk had not been speaking in tongues) put her hands on her hips. "For thirty minutes you had a flat? Without calling? Why should I believe that?"
"Because it's true," Matt said.
Both Hirotachi and Maloria looked at him in surprise.
"I can vouch for her. She got a flat back there. I told her not to call, said I'd fix the flat. But I couldn't get the tire off, took forever trying. So it's all my fault, not hers."
Hirotachi opened her vast, amphibian maw, then closed it. She sucked in her thin lips and glared at him.
"See?" Maloria crowed. "What I tell you, bitch?"
"Don't you dare disrespect me," Hirotachi snarled.
"Oh, shut the fuck up," Maloria said, grabbing the clipboard out of her hand and signing in. "Talk to my union rep, you don't like it."
"Oh, I will, and I'll write it up in a report, too. But in the meantime, you might as well know you're being assigned to do janitorial in Module One."
Maloria put her fat hands on her mythological hips. "That ain't my job."
"It is now. Roger called off. Stay here; I'll get you a bucket." She spat out this last word and stormed into a back hallway, slamming the door behind her as she went.
Maloria turned to Matt immediately, cackling, holding out her fist.
"Dag, was I wrong about you. You white, but you right! Give some love, boy."
Matt executed the most Caucasian fist bump in history.
"Hope I haven't gotten you into more trouble," he said.
"Nah, nah, she just trippin' 'cause her man a freak. Hey, look…" She stepped in close, pulled Matt away from the desk clerk, and lowered her voice. "You mean what you said, about it bein' a matter of life and death-you meeting with Dr. Dindren?"
"Yeah, I did. And it is."
She pursed her full lips, gave a curt nod. "Meet me around back in twenty minutes; I'll take you to him."
Matt stared at her. "But Hirotachi said he isn't here anymore."
Maloria snorted. "You got to listen better, boy. She say he don't work here no more, and he don't."
"But then why would he be…"
She raised an eyebrow.
Suddenly, he got it. "Oh my God."
"That's right." Her gold tooth glittered. "He a resident now."
CHAPTER TWO
Twenty minutes later, as instructed, Matt stepped out of the fog to meet Maloria at the Admin Building's back loading dock. She gave him a mop, a bucket, and a maroon knit golf shirt with "Carthage Janitorial" embroidered on the chest, below a gold plastic name tag that said "Sid."
"So if I've got this, what's Sid wearing?" Matt asked, unbuttoning his flannel shirt and tying it around his waist.
"Orange fuckin' jumpsuit is what that cracker got on, after the shit he played with that retarded girl we got sent on accident last month." She shook her gold streak ruefully. "This place gone to hell is what, and that's no joke. First they cut the fundin' to nothin', then they lay off, then they start usin' part-timers. But with shit pay, shit hours, no benefits, an' no supervision, who you gonna get? Buncha kiddie-porn-watchin', methamphetamine-cookin', probation-dodgin', dead-beat, crackhead, stripper-for-a-girlfriend, no-count ma'fuckahs, is what."
"And you can work with that?"
"Fuck no. Three weeks from now? I'll be onna South Side of Chicago, with my moms and sister. That's where I'm from. When I make forty in April, I'm 'a be with my moms for sure. 'Til then, I collect my pay, and any one of them fuckheads tries somethin'?" She patted her huge purse.
"You'll Tase their ass."
"Damn straight. Paid three hundred twenty-five dollars for this shit. Now, come on, follow me."
He had the shirt on now. Together they took the mops and buckets and began walking across a quad towards the four modules out back.
"Arright, listen up. Way it's gonna work is, you keep your mouth shut and stay with me. We got to clean Module One. People ask, just say you fillin' in as a swing. Dr. Dindren's in Module Two. Hirotachi in charge of that module, but she always take a meal break around five o'clock. That's when I'll take you over there, an' you can talk to your friend."
"Sounds good."
"Yeah, but hear this: I'm only workin' a half shift today, so at seven I got to leave. You stay longer than that, you on your own."
"Understood. If I'm still here after that, I'll let myself out."
"Yeah, but night shift come on at eleven. You got to be gone by then."
"Sure, I'll do my best, so long as I finish up with Dindren by-"
He looked down. She had grabbed his arm. And not gently.
"Listen what I tell you, boy. You got to be gone by shift change. Got to." Her eyes were wide, dark, and deep. Dead serious. "Them fucked-up niggahs workin' midnights? They don't play. I'm tellin' you now: you stay after eleven, I can't account for your ass. Arright?"
"Arright."
They crossed the rest of the quad together in silence. Then she dug out a ring of keys and fit one into the door of the nearest building.
A click.
Together they stepped into Module One.
Matt didn't know what exactly he'd expected, but it wasn't this.
He was in a central living area, set up with a worn sectional couch facing an old TV that was deeper than it was wide. The room had avocado shag carpeting and card tables set up in the corners. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Butts littered the carpet, along with hundreds of puzzle pieces, soft drink cans, deflated balloons, napkins, craft junk, pieces of popcorn, and scattered pills. A radio in the corner was playing top forty, and the vintage TV was turned to Maury Povich, with the volume cranked. Matt saw three therapy aides, all wearing the same maroon golf shirt. Two were smoking and watching TV, talking back to the screen. The third, deafened with earbuds, was texting.
And then there were the residents: six of them. An older woman was rocking back and forth on her chair, eyes closed, making a loud quacking noise. A laughing bald guy was drawing mazes on a wall in permanent marker. Two flabby men in sweatpants were arguing over a teddy bear at the top of their lungs. A way-too-skinny blond teenage girl was sobbing in a corner. And then, against the far wall, standing on a table, was a man built like an NFL linebacker. He couldn't have weighed less than three hundred pounds. He had a crew cut, deeply crossed eyes, and a protruding lower jaw. He stood on the table ramrod straight, unmoving, unblinking, his huge arms engulfed in yellow and red flame tattoos. Dark-complected, he wore a shirt that said "Ojibwe Pride". He stared straight ahead in cross-eyed, jut-jawed silence.
Apart from him, it was utter chaos.
"Jesus Christ," Matt said, and got an elbow in the ribs from Maloria. Matt's skin crawled as he looked around. He had no problem being around disabled people. But the filth of the room, the deafening wall of noise, the half dozen types of madness on display, and the fact that the residents were going untreated-totally ignored by the therapy aides, who clearly didn't give a shit-gave him a twist in his gut. The place felt wrong. Sick.
Maloria hissed at him to start working, so he pulled a garbage bag off his rolling yellow bucket and began picking at the carpet of trash. He watched as Maloria took the stuffed animal from the fighting men, barked at the texting aide to "take off those ma'fuckin' earbuds," turned down the TV, and took the weeping teen by her bony arm and let her through an entryway to the left that led to a corridor marked "Women's Dorm." On the right was a corridor leading to the men's.