ORANGE JUICE

This mess has teeth and you’re too wide awake and alive and broke and out so he says he could do half now, half when you get paid Friday, if that works

Look, it’s just a regular job, supervisor tells you. Points to the linoleum, says, Sugar. Same as orange juice. He doesn’t explain any more.

He eyes you like he can tell you’re thinking this isn’t a toilet overflow, isn’t post-game-gym-sweat, isn’t neon orange macaroni and cheese crusted on cafeteria table bellies. This mess has teeth and you’re too wide awake and alive and broke and out so he says he could do half now, half when you get paid Friday, if that works. You hand him a wad of bills that smell like pit sweat, grateful, and he drops a bag of baby blue candies into your palm.

He nods and it feels more brother than business, then he turns and walks out and you fish out a pill and put it in your mouth before the door can click. Take one more, then another two just to be safe. Titrating is what doctors call it, adjusting to the shit life throws at you until you feel good.

Everything’s whiter, like the room got picked up and dropped on top of the sun and light is leaking up through all the cracks.

You slosh the head of your mop into the bleach bucket and think, Someone should have been more careful with the orange juice, ha, but then you feel like that’s fucked up so you cross yourself, mumble an apology to the linoleum, feel sorry for that and for everything that’s happened in here, sorry because it got you a job when nobody else would give you one.

The biggest patch of it is gone now, slurped into nothingness, suds in the mop bucket tinged pink like cotton candy. You wad up the yellow tape and stick it in your pocket, habit, then remember that’s illegal when it’s not duct tape, when it’s part of a crime scene. You drop it in the biohazard bag, wipe your hands on the seat of your pants.

There’s another spot to your left, roughly the size of a kid, fenced by more yellow tape strung across a few toppled desks. You kick the bucket towards it, swish the mop around the stain and watch it suck up, spit out, getting redder. Breathe in and it smells like orange juice, everything’s orange juice, whole world flooded with it.

The tiles around the kid shaped orange juice are glassy like somebody polished them, sticky shiny, the kind of trail a slug leaves behind. You bend down, get your face real close ‘cause you can almost see your reflection in it and you’d kill to see somebody you know right now. Up close the stink of piss socks you up the nose, piss like the orange juice kid wet himself.

The suds in the bucket are darker, thicker. They’re starting to pulse a little bit, or maybe it’s just the draft from the AC vent.

There’s splatter on the windows and the back wall, orange juice everywhere. You picture a kid slam-dunking a carton of it, kids screaming, ducking, diving under desks. A laugh crawls up your throat, drips out the corner of your mouth. It’s just orange juice, you say to them, or maybe to yourself but somebody echoes and it bounces around the room.

There’s a spray of colored pencils starting to congeal in a puddle under the big desk up front, all squat and stubby. You remember you’re here to fix this, clean it up, that’s your job, $9.50 an hour plus cafeteria lunch if you want it.

You pick the pencils out of their pool, wipe each one off on your knee. Orange juice streaks your jumpsuit, fingers, and you’re so thirsty. You put the red crayon in your mouth, roll it sideways across your tongue and suck the salt off.

You cradle the bouquet of pencils like it’s a baby, carry your baby over to the sharpener on the wall and gently grind each one, wind the crank until there’s nothing but sawdust and lead powder and it cakes your shoes like sugar.

There’s a pounding on the wall or maybe it’s just your heart because your chest is tight and now there’s light hot on your face and you don’t remember when it got dark but it’s dark, everything is except your face and it’s getting burned off by light blazing in from the door and somebody is saying, What the fuck happened, and you say, There’s a hole in your head and you realize it’s the supervisor and he touches his forehead real slow like he’s worried there might be a hole but says I’m not bleeding and he’s right but there’s a hole right smack in the middle of his forehead somehow and it’s gushing orange pulp and your throat is thick with sawdust and so damn thirsty so you press your mouth to it and it’s hot and sweet and you drink and think, I am saving a life.