Vacuum in the Dark

by Jen Beagin

  LITTLE SWEDEN

  THEY WERE LIVING IN BAKERSFIELD, in the motel Kurt inherited from his parents. The place was surrounded by fruit farms on a forgotten highway on the edge of nowhere. Kurt’s father had bought it off a Swedish immigrant who’d named it Little Sweden, but unless Swedes had a secret love for drab, mud-colored rooms overrun with carpet beetles, nothing about the place brought Sweden to mind.

  To spruce up, they’d repainted the doors Easter colors and commissioned a blinking red and blue neon windmill—her idea, even though she knew Sweden was not known for its windmills. They hired an exterminator and became pet-friendly, which gave them a competitive edge. The change in ownership went unnoticed and the motel continued to serve the needs of its regulars: truckers, hookers, fruit pickers, speed freaks, and “nooners”—couples from town who arrived in separate cars and rented a room on their lunch hour.

  They’d arrived in winter, when the tule fog settled thickly in the valley and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. In bed, they’d listened to cars crash on the shrouded highway. One of those cars had contained Connie, the middle-aged cleaning lady who’d come with the motel. She’d sped through the fog into a ditch and could no longer work. Mona had offered to step in for her, just until they found someone else. Almost two years later, she was still cleaning the twenty-two rooms as well as their apartment, a tidy two-bed above the office.

  Right now, she was sweating her ass off in the windowless laundry room. Only noon and already 105 degrees. She transferred a load of towels and bundled sheets into the washer. Bleach burned her nose and throat, tainting anything she put in her mouth. For lunch, bleach tacos. For dinner, pork chops and bleach sauce.

  “What about dessert?” Terry asked sweetly.

  “Bleach cobbler,” Mona said.

  “Mmm,” Terry said. “And where are you on the Sui-Scale today?”

  “Dude,” Mona said. “Way to kill my buzz.”

  “Well,” Terry said, “you haven’t mentioned it lately, and I’m wondering if you’re still keeping track.”

  When she’d first arrived in Bakersfield, she’d almost broken the scale. She could barely get out of bed. You seem down, Kurt had said. He’d whispered soothing nonsense into her ear and then read to her in a deep, calm voice. She preferred dry material, the drier the better, such as the instruction manual for their rice cooker.

  “I would say I’m three point four presently,” Mona told Terry.

  “Not too shabby,” Terry said.

  “We hired a new laundry person—she starts next week—and this Cat Piss certainly doesn’t hurt.”

  Last year, Kurt had converted the old fallout shelter into a grow room to indulge his interest in high-grade weed. The strains had names like Green Crack, Cheese, Panty Sweat, and Cat Piss, and had become a necessary component to Mona’s happiness. Sober, she felt trapped in a boring passage of a Steinbeck novel. Stoned on Panty Sweat, the place seemed a lot less grim. Either way, she’d never been a fan of hicks, rednecks, God and Country, and no amount of pot would ever change that.

  She smoked half a joint before cleaning Room 18 and very distinctly remembered being a bee in a past life. Weak limbed, bottom heavy, hyper-aware of the hairs on her arms and legs. For a few seconds, she was fully conscious of every hair on her body, including the individual strands on her head.

  “Did you know that bees have no idea they’re small?” she asked Terry.

  “I don’t like talking when you’re stoned,” Terry reminded her.

  Mona squeezed Terry’s shoulder. “Yes, Terry, I know. I’m sorry.”

  Terry had become more than just a voice in her head. Now Mona conjured Terry’s physical being: her face, arms, hands—even her toes. Terry’s toes, she imagined, were long, elegant, and unpainted.

  Mona liked to envision herself hanging out with Terry at WHYY. In the studio fantasies, she and Terry weren’t in separate booths, or even sitting across a table from each other, or on opposite sides of a console. Rather, Mona was sitting on Terry’s lap with her arm around Terry’s shoulders, and they were sharing a microphone.

  “Be a bee,” Terry said, and rubbed Mona’s lower back. “Talk to me later when you’re back in your body.”

  Terry didn’t get it, obviously. Mona couldn’t just “be a bee” whenever she wanted. It didn’t work like that!

  A man and two hookers had romped in Room 14 the previous night. She yanked the spread and surveyed the mattress: a romance cocktail of menstrual blood, come, and blue mascara. They’d used the nightstand drawer as an ashtray. She stripped the bed and sprayed it with Fantastik. After cleaning everything, she turned off the lights, closed the heavy curtains, and switched on the Eureka. She loved to vacuum in the dark, with only the warm, golden beam of the Eureka’s headlight to guide her.

  Room 16 had been used as a makeshift tinker space. Two tweakers had spent several days assembling and reassembling radios, lamps, a bicycle, and other crap. They’d left soot marks on the soiled, smelly sheets—apparently, they’d snuggled under the covers clutching their crack pipes. Since they hadn’t showered, the bathroom was a breeze, but they’d stolen all the toilet paper and two of the towels.

  The phone rang while she was wiping the TV screen. It was Kurt, as usual, calling from the front desk. He had a sixth sense and usually knew which room she was in at any given time.

  “My luscious Lum Lums,” he said when she picked up.

  “Nasty period sex in fourteen last night,” she said.

  “Just ordered new linens,” he said.

  “No more speed freaks,” Mona said. “And no more nooners. If they arrive in separate cars—”

  “We need the nooners,” he said.

  “Can we get rid of hookers on the rag?” she asked.

  “Hookers love us,” Kurt said.

  This was true. They actually rated Little Sweden online. Three stars. Everyone else gave the place two.

  “Let’s run away to Cambodia,” Mona said. “I’ll pretend I’m French and take your balls in my mouth.”

  “Mama,” Kurt said.

  “Please don’t call me that,” she said.

  He’d been talking like a hick for months, especially in the bedroom. The novelty had charmed her at first. Now it made her wish for another earthquake.

  “We’ll run away someday,” Kurt said. “Just not yet.”

  He meant never, she was beginning to realize. She’d asked to read his travel diaries, even though she’d read them already without his knowledge—twice. He’d traveled to places like Tasmania, Estonia, and Uruguay. On the page, he was edgy, adventurous. In person, he was lumpy oatmeal. Reconciling the two Kurts was difficult because the contrast was so extreme. “Like night and day,” she’d told him. He had only blinked and said, “But night and day are part of the same twenty-four hours.”

  Kurt cleared his throat. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

  “What?” she sniffed.

  “We can hire a cleaning lady really easily,” he said.

  They could, but what would she do? What else could she be? She supposed she could be a . . . writer. Waiter. Writer. Waiter. Both? In any case, Kurt paid her double the going rate, so for the first time in her life she’d built a savings account. Thirteen grand. Enough to start over somewhere.

  There was rustling on his end. She looked across the parking lot to the office window. She could see the top of his newly balding head above the desk.

  “I want to get away, too, but I’m worried,” he said. “I’m worried about this place. The plumbing’s bad, the water’s rusty, the roof’s a piece of crap.”

  “You’ll fix it,” she said.

  “I feel like a failure,” he said. “I’m forty-four. I don’t want to get old and have nothing.”

  They had their most intimate conversations on the motel line. The problem was, while he was sharing, expressing, confessing, and sometimes crying, she couldn’t stop yawning. Once she let one loose, they kept coming, one afte
r the next after the next, like waves crashing. They often came in sets of three. Then, a little break. Then another set arrived. They seemed to be generated by something deep inside her, deeper than boredom, some force she didn’t understand. Perhaps if she yawned openly and loudly, she wouldn’t have this problem. Instead, she yawned silently, out of politeness.

  “Maybe you should try slapping yourself,” Terry suggested.

  “Are you there?” he asked.

  “You don’t have nothing.” She held the phone away and yawned with her entire face. Her left eye always leaked more than the right. “You have me.”

  “You know what’s wrong with you, Mona?” he asked.

  “What?” she said.

  “Absolutely nothing,” he said.

  Soul juice. This was why she was here. And why she stayed. Right, Terry?

  She felt another one coming. A tidal wave. This one was impossible to contain. She made some weird noises toward the end of it, and then finished with, “Oh, God.”

  He cleared his throat. “Hey, I need your keys. I can’t find mine. Also, Hugh called—he needs fresh towels.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes,” she said, and hung up.

  * * *

  FOUR OF THE ROOMS WERE efficiencies rented by the month. Hugh, an off-the-boat Irishman and former drunk, rented the end unit. He always answered the door in his bathrobe. What had brought him here, of all places, she never knew and never asked, but she suspected it was a tragic story. She called him Mr. Terrible News.

  “How are you, Hugh?” she asked when he opened the door.

  “I used to work so that I could drink,” he said. “Now, what’s the point?”

  “What’s the point” was Hugh’s favorite phrase. Except, in his brogue, it came out as, “What’s the pint? What’s the fecken pint?”

  “I got fresh towels for you, Hugh.” She noticed his cat curled up on the bed. “Hello, Ingrid.”

  “She hates me,” Hugh said.

  Mona frowned and handed him the towels. “Who was that lady visiting last week?”

  “My mother,” he said. “She hates me, too.”

  Poor beast in the rain, she thought. It was another of Hugh’s favorite phrases, one she repeated many times a day. If Hugh weren’t prone to paranoia and sober, she’d have offered him some Master Kush to take the edge off.

  “The stupid post office lost a package,” he said. “I broke my glasses, so I can’t read the paper. Now my sciatica is acting up.”

  “Poor beast,” Mona said, and smiled.

  “Fair play to you,” Hugh said.

  * * *

  ACROSS THE LOT, KURT WAS eating a microwaved soft pretzel. She hated what he was wearing—a pair of too-tight cut-off jeans trimmed too short, a too-big rumpled plaid shirt, and too-girly yellow flip-flops. He wrapped her up and kissed her wetly on the mouth. She kept her eyes open and stared at his eyelids fluttering behind his glasses. He was wearing his emergency pair, which looked like they’d been issued by the military. Birth control glasses, he called them.

  “How’s Mr. Terrible News?” he asked.

  “Fresh and clean as a whistle, cool like an Irish spring,” Mona said, faking a brogue.

  “It’s slow today,” he said. “How about a siesta later?”

  “We’ll see, mister,” she said. She stepped into his blind spot. The cloud in his eye was a favorite hiding place. “I want to work on my painting for a bit.”

  She was doing a landscape of the view outside their bedroom window. It was the most uninspired view she’d ever attempted to render, but lately it offered her a convenient out. Kurt had gained weight, even in his nipples, and had stopped cutting his hair. He was becoming his own country. Kurtfoundland. Kurtganistan. Kurtvania.

  “Maybe you can squeeze me in,” he said, touching her on the shoulder. “It might help you . . . relax.”

  Impatiently, she watched him finish his pretzel. He chewed each bite twenty-five times—she counted. They hadn’t had sex since his birthday last month. She remembered lying there like a starfish, gazing at the lampshade.

  “Mind bringing my cart to the office?” she asked. “I need to restock.”

  She missed the days when all her supplies fit into a bucket. Kurt pushed the heavy cart toward the office, one-handed.

  “Like walking a fat girl home,” he said.

  She smiled. Sometimes she wondered if Kurt wanted her to expand and soften, to lose all her edges. He did the cooking. And the cocktails. He’d been plumping her with extra cheese and guacamole and basting her with mojitos. If she became hugely, disgustingly fat, perhaps they’d live happily ever after.

  “Where’re you taking Maxine?” she asked.

  “Oil change.”

  She handed him the keys and watched him climb into their car, which she still thought of as her car. Maxine stalled as he backed out.

  “Just tap the gas!” Mona yelled.

  “Tap my ass!” he yelled back.

  He peeled out, and she stood there briefly, admiring Maxine’s rear end.

  * * *

  AS SHE CROSSED THE LOT, a blackbird swooped down and clawed at her. She shrieked and ran under the awning near Room 5. She looked around. Any witnesses? A tall, lanky guy wearing a cowboy hat and mirrored sunglasses stood in the doorway to Room 8.

  “You saw that?” she called out.

  She could still hear the noise she’d made.

  “Likely an omen of some kind,” he said solemnly.

  “I think they’re protecting their nests,” she said. “It’s hatching season.”

  He sauntered out to her abandoned cart and pushed it toward her. He was dressed like a mechanic. “Leonard” was stitched onto his jacket and the knees of his trousers were dirty.

  “Maybe the omen is me,” he said, leaving the cart at her side.

  Who was this joker?

  “Your apron matches the door to my room,” he said. “Is that on purpose?”

  One look at his hands and her mouth went dry. Her surprise must have shown, because he quickly removed his sunglasses and hooked them onto his T-shirt, and then he took off his hat and held it in his MORE hand.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  He looked handsomer than she remembered.

  “Your name is attached to this place,” Dark said. “On the Internet.”

  She scanned the mostly empty parking lot. Where had he come from? Was he an actual guest, or was he trespassing? Kurt must have checked him in and forgotten to tell her. She tried to picture Dark filling out the form at the front desk and making chitchat with Kurt. He must have used a fake address—Kurt would’ve mentioned someone visiting from Taos.

  “How did you get here?” she asked.

  “I drove,” he said. “But I broke down a few miles outside of town. Car’s in the shop, so it looks like I’m here for a day or two.” He smiled.

  A day or two. It was Monday. He would be gone by Wednesday, so she had until then to . . . what?

  “I want to talk about what happened between us,” he said.

  “It’s all water under the et cetera,” she said.

  “What?”

  She waved her hand dismissively and knocked a couple of shampoo bottles off the cart. They rolled to his feet. He crouched down and picked them up with his LOVE hand. She remembered him on his knees with his head under her apron. He used to pet her with one finger before putting his mouth on her. He was looking up at her now, holding the shampoo bottles in his outstretched hand. There it was, his goddamn pencil smell, freshly sharpened, erasing everything.

  “You keep those,” she said.

  She wheeled her cart a few doors down, shoes squeaking on the cement. When she looked back he was still crouched there, staring at her. She dragged the Eureka into Room 3 and shut the door. The room was already clean, but you couldn’t vacuum these floors too often. She went over the carpet three times and then fixed her hair in the mirror. Maybe she could get away with sniffing his armpit and nothing else. Ma
ybe she was a dog trapped in a woman’s—

  “Don’t,” Terry snapped. “Don’t do this. Kurt lights your cigarettes and he doesn’t even smoke. He cuts the calluses off your feet. He brings you coffee in bed, and he bakes scones on Sundays. From scratch.”

  Mona didn’t say anything.

  “The man bakes scones,” Terry repeated. “With teeny golden raisins.”

  She had a point. Kurt was oatmeal and he gave her the hard-core yawns, but he was warm—always. And kind.

  “He kisses like a guppy,” Mona said.

  “Only when he’s drunk,” Terry reminded her.

  She decided to seek a second opinion. Who would she call? Clare and Frank were vacationing in Hawaii. She pulled out her phone and dialed Yoko and Yoko. They sent each other handwritten notes every couple of months, but they rarely talked on the phone. To her surprise, Nigel answered on the first ring.

  “Are you taking care of yourself?” he asked.

  She asked him if he remembered Dark, the blind lady’s husband, the one she used to have loud sex with three nights a week.

  “Well, he’s here,” Mona said. “In Bakersfield. In my motel. Room Eight. I didn’t recognize him at first, but when I did, it all came rushing back. It felt like licking a nine-volt battery.”

  “Was he wearing a disguise?” Nigel mysteriously asked.

  “Sort of,” she said. “He looked like a gas station cowboy.”

  “When Odysseus returns home after twenty years—”

  “Oh God,” Mona said. “No Homer, Nigel. Not now.”

  “It’s relevant,” Nigel assured her. “When Odysseus returns home—at long last, two decades later—he disguises himself as a beggar, and the only person who recognizes him is Eurycleia, his former maid—”

  “Don’t forget the dog,” Shiori said.

  “I’m on speaker?” Mona asked.

  “The dog recognizes him and dies of excitement,” Nigel continued. “But Eurycleia is a maid, like you, and she was also Odysseus’s wet nurse, and so she knows him better than anyone. She washes his feet and recognizes the scar on his leg.”