Money

When he woke, for a happy moment, he forgot where he was, the world and its problems - his problems - evaporated, like the sweet high after inhaling some illicit drug. But then, his eyes adjusted, and he looked up from within the bed and saw the same old heavy crack, running through the ceiling, looking like a giant bolt of lightning, that seemed to be growing bigger every day. It would not have surprised him if, at some point, the entire roof would cave in, crushing him underneath its weight and killing him instantly. The sound of thumping came from above, and with it, the crack got just a little bit bigger. A slither of dust fell from its inside, landing on his bed, reminding him eternally that someday he was going to have to figure out a way to get out of here.

He rolled out of bed and grabbed a towel and a toothbrush and opened the door and peered down the hall. Nothing. All doors closed. Red, raggedy carpet running up the hall. He opened it as quietly as he could and made his way down to the communal shower, happy to find it unoccupied, stood and looked at himself in the mirror, saw that he was wasting away.

He turned the taps on, banging out brown water that, after a while, became hot and clear. He stood underneath it, showered, and shaved and got dressed then walked back to his room and dumped the towel then opened the door of the building and walked out onto the street. A cold mid-winter day; an overcast sky and threatening to rain. He looked up at it, then back down at the street, determined himself to make it outside, to find some shred of a victory, somewhere, then pulled his coat closer and started walking.  

A newspaper flew down the road and sailed off into the air. He walked through empty suburbs, passing the public-housing towers, then came to one of the main streets where he would spend his time away from the house, during the pandemic - a hole in the wall that was a booth where waitresses served coffee and sandwiches. He walked up to it and stood in a line-up of other people and waited his turn, and, after a while, made it to the front and waited. The same woman who always served him, looked down from the booth and smiled - long tassels of hair, flowing down her shoulders, a face like a baroque sculptures’ masterpiece.

She asked him if he wanted the usual and he agreed and then he moved away and waited his turn and stood amongst the others, waiting for their orders. A moment later, she called his name and handed him a roll and a cup of coffee, and he took them and started walking the streets, then found his usual iron seat on the pavement, and sat and watched the people walk past.

A tram clattered past. His phone rang in his pocket, and he took it: his employment officer, telling him that he was to report to an out-of-town area, somewhere in the next province, about an hour and a half by rail, for a cleaning job: 40 hours a week, minimum wage; after tax, just marginally better than the dole that was keeping him alive. The employment officer then hung up on him, and he sighed and put it back in his pocket and looked back at the road and the trams and the people. Fifteen years working as a high school teacher suddenly meant nothing. With that, he got off the bench and threw the scraps into the bin and started making his way back to his room, the sky, darkening, the clouds casting the world grey.

The house was a big old ramshackle place off the main road, surrounded by privately owned units in the inner-city suburb of St Kilda. He walked through an entrance and a garden and came to a big old front door, reached in his pocket, and badged the door open and nearly ran into one of the other residents: another skinny guy; pasty faced; another version of himself; wrapped in a coat and wearing sunglasses. A woman sat in the hallway, on the carpet, make-up running down her face in streaks, lipstick smeared across it, looking as if she’d been struck down by someone or something. She looked up at him as he made his way forward and held out her arms, as though wanting to be held, and suddenly started crying and he looked at her and didn’t know what to do; she seemed safe enough in the hallway. He badged the door and stepped inside.

The room was immaculate, a single bed standing against the wall, a tiny bookshelf filled with books. He sat on a leather recliner and watched the sun go down through the window, the last rays of gold fading up the carpet and into the night, then drifted into sleep and dreamed.

In his dream he saw himself married with a family, a house and a back-yard, kids and a dog, his wife standing at the door of the house that they owned, a green manicured lawn, and her, wearing a lemon-coloured dress. He walked up to her, close enough to see the colour and texture of her skin and hair, and suddenly their dog ran up to him and started barking. The barking grew louder and then became a banging sound, and, after a while, became so loud that it woke him, and then, he saw that it wasn’t the sound of a dog barking at all, but that someone was banging on the outside of the door, then realised that he’d been dreaming, and that it wasn’t even an original dream, images from some movie that he had seen somewhere, when he was a kid.  He got off the chair and opened the door and saw his mate, standing on the other side of it, looking at him and smiling, a bald head and a wrinkled face, blood-shot eyes.

‘You didn’t have to bang on the door, you know.’

‘I know, but I’d been knocking for a while. When no-one answered, I got nervous.’

‘Just don’t ever bang on it like that again, ok?’

‘Ok.’

‘So, what is it?’

‘I’ve got beer. I thought you might like one.’

He got up off the recliner and took another chair from across the room and moved it next to the recliner and they sat opposite each other. His mate took the two bottles of beer from within a paper bag and handed him one and they clinked them together and twisted the tops off and sipped. After a while, one of them spoke.

‘They got me doing a cleaning job, tomorrow.’

‘Cleaning, I wish! They got me doing rubbish removal, I’ve got to run behind a truck.’

‘No way, it’ll kill you. A guy your age. You’ll have a heart attack.’

‘I’ve applied for a transfer.’

‘You’d better.’

They sipped the beer in unison.

‘I tell ya, I’ve had enough of it.’

‘Had enough of what?’

‘Everything.’

‘Don’t talk like that, you’re making me nervous.’

The beer was cold and refreshing in their mouths and they sat and looked at each other, but there was nothing more to be said and, after a while, they finished the bottles and called it a night and his mate got up off the chair and made his way out of the room. He sat back down on the recliner and looked out at the night, through the window, and, after a while, got up and turned the gas heater on and sat back down on his chair and slept.

The alarm on his phone woke him, vibrating from within his pocket. He started moving, chiding himself for not bothering to get into bed the night before, then got up and walked across the room, looked through a chest of drawers for some clothes, found something to wear, found some underwear, a pair of jeans and a shirt, walked down the hall and threw himself into the shower. He then brushed his teeth and shaved and made his way out into the day that was cold and dark. He made it onto the street and started the walk to the tram stop, crossed the road, and came to it, sat, and waited. A girl was sitting on the seat, hair pulled back into a bun, wearing a coat and earphones, and he saw that she was beautiful. A moment later, the tram came clattered up the tracks, metal screeching, a spark flying off the electric cables, pulling up, mechanical doors, opening. He let the girl on first, then found an empty seat amongst other commuters - an old lady in a scarf and glasses, a man in a three-piece suite, a woman in a nurse’s uniform.  He looked out the window and watched the road go past, watched a gold ban of light coming up on the horizon, then looked at his phone and checked the weather and directions on where to go to get to the job.

After a while, the tram came to the city and he got off and made his way to the train station, bought a ticket from a machine, made his way down a long steel escalator to come to a long platform, and sat on it and looked up at a sign that showed arrival times, the next one due in 15 minutes. A cold wind blew whistled through the tunnel, and he checked his phone and pulled his coat close and saw that he was on time. The train roared up the tracks and he got on and found a seat by the window, watched the city go past, then looked around and saw that the carriage was mostly full. It was almost 5.30am and he wondered what had happened that suddenly everyone was commuting to work at 5.30 in the morning.

It came to one of the inner-city stops, and he got off, and made his way up the platform, a sea of heads and bodies, all jammed up against each other and walking in the same direction, people, heading off to work, and again, he wondered when it was that so many people were all clambering off to jobs at dawn. He kept walking, squashed in by the crowd, came to an exit where people were putting tickets through booths and making their way out, and he did the same, then checked his phone and followed the directions of where he had to be, and when.

He walked the few blocks to get there and came to it: ‘The Windsor Hotel’, one of the plushest hotels in the city. He looked up at it. Doric pillars, two gargoyles resting on top, a big and imposing building, built centuries earlier. How many times had he gone passed it in trams? He walked up to the front of it then came to a glass entrance with revolving doors, stepped inside and followed a set of automatic swivel doors until he came to a marble atrium.

A lounge area where a woman sat, alone and reading, a desk at the far end, that was attended by workers dressed in uniform. He crossed the floor and walked up to them. A woman with straight black hair, like a helmet, looked down at a computer screen. After a while, she looked up at him, her face grimacing for a second at the sight of him. He told her that he was reporting for the cleaning job, and he saw her features grimace further, and she gave him directions to take the elevator down to the basement where he would find ‘maintenance crew’, and he thanked her and turned and walked the marble to the elevator, pressed down, and waited, marveled at the size of the place, the size of the tower and wondered just who it was that stayed here.

The elevator rattled its way down the daft, hit the floor with a thud. The doors opened and he stepped inside an empty compartment and pressed ‘basement’ on the plastic button that lit up as he pressed it, and then it banged into gear and clicked its way down the several flights of the shaft, the light inside, flickering and then it halted and slammed itself stopped and the doors opened and he stood, for a moment, surprised by the darkness.

He stepped outside of the shaft and the doors closed and it headed back up the shaft and he stood and looked around and couldn’t see much in the dark; a passageway; down the end of it, in each direction, a tiny neon glow of white fluorescent light. He stood and couldn’t be sure which direction to head into, and then, he saw what looked like a trolley, coming towards him, the sounded of age-old rusted wheels squeaking. It come coming closer and he pressed himself against the cement wall, watched it pass. Some giant parcel holding who knew what inside. He saw an old man pushing it, who turned and looked at him for a second, eyes that were tiny why orbs. The trolley and the old man wheeled their way into the distance, wheels scrapping on dirt concrete floor, and he decided to follow the old man.

The old man wheeled the trolley around a corner, and he followed him and saw that another tunnel lay ahead, then kept walking, came to a small green door that was old and ornate and looked as if it was from another time, some relic from another generation, part of the building itself. A large metal knob stood at its centre. He tried to twist it, but it seemed locked, and so, he knocked, and, after a moment, heard a chair squeaking and then the door opened and an old man with a bald head and a white moustache was sticking his head out. The old man adjusted a pair of glasses that hung from his nose then looked him in the eye, and he looked back at the old man and suddenly didn’t know what to say.

‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ said the old man.

He kept looking at him but was suddenly lost for words.

‘Come on, lad, I don’t have all day, what is it?’

‘Uh, I’m here about the cleaning job.’

‘Cleaning job? No-one told me about any sort of cleaning job. Do you know anything about this, Ray?’

The old man then pulled his head back from behind the door and slammed it shut, leaving him to stand in the tunnel. He heard some murmuring and the chair squeaking again, and he stood for a few moments, wondering if he just call the whole thing off and head on back home, but then, they would cut his dole, for failing to interview, and then he’d end up homeless, broke and destitute. Suddenly, the door opened again, and the old man held it open a little more, revealing a small lit room behind him.

‘Well, you’re not going to just stand there, are you?’

He looked back at the old man and didn’t know what to say.

‘Well, come in then lad, we can’t have you loitering around the building.’

He opened the door a little then turned and left it open and Jake walked inside. Another old man was sitting inside, behind a table, sipping on a cup, studying what look to be a technical document. The two men looked at each for a moment, as if they could read each other’s thoughts, and the old man offered him a seat at the other end of the table.

‘It’s the new kid. Says he’s come for the cleaning job.’

The old man looked up again and then raised his hand and waved him away, and the other old man then walked around to a filing cabinet and pulled out a photocopied sheet of paper, handed it to him.

‘It’s your time sheet. Read over it. You’re gonna have to report here every morning: 6am for duties. Don’t be late.’

With that the old man poured himself a coffee from a rusted urn that stood in the corner of the room, stirred it with a spoon, then put the spoon into a metal sink that stood opposite, then looked back at him.

‘You still here? I told you what to do, now get the hell outa here, we got work to do. And don’t be late tomorrow, whatever your name is.’

‘It’s Jake.’

The old man suddenly looked up at him with a look that said suggested violence and he turned and looked at the both of them, as if trying to gain some insight, about them and their lives. He became philosophical for a moment: two men in overalls, well into their seventies, sitting behind a second-hand table, working God knew how many hours in the week. Was it possible that they actually lived down here in the basement? He shuddered at the thought of it; opened the old mahogany door and closed it again; stood in the tunnel and looked in both directions and tried to remember from which way he had come in.  On a whim he picked a direction and followed the tunnel, came to a fork, and picked another direction, followed it, and, like a miracle, found the elevator. Like another miracle, the button lit up in the dark when he pressed it, and he heard it rattling down the shaft, then a moment later, landed on the ground, the metal doors opening. 

He stepped inside and wondered for a moment how he had gotten here, how his whole life had led him to cleaning a hotel in the city, and yet, for a moment, it didn’t seem all that bad; after all, life was what you made it, wasn’t it?

As it made its way up the shaft, he wondered what it was that separated someone like him, who lived in government assisted housing, to someone, say, who lived in the plush suites in a place like this. But there was no answer to the question. People like the political class, surgeons, high flying lawyers, and CEO’s, they lived in another world. Was it all really based on merit? Were these people simply ‘better’ human beings than he was? It was such an ugly question, and yet it was always there, swirling around in the background. Were they simply more capable than him? The simple answer was yes, and it depressed him further. His crime was that he lacked ambition, and for that, he must be forever persecuted. But that wasn’t entirely true, either was it. For he had always secretly dreamed of raising a family, and yet, the wealthy - the working professionals - were the only ones seemingly capable on doing it. But that wasn't true, either; there were plenty of working class, salt of the earth people, raising families; probably, the whole thing was just his ego talking.

 Maybe, he could go back to teaching, practice in the field that he had already trained in? But now, he was committed to this new job, and he could see his teaching registration slipping away; and yet, it was worth reviving it, wasn’t it, after all the years he had put in?   

He chided himself inwardly, for even thinking such a thing; after all, people had died in the pandemic; and the death of his casual teaching work paled into comparison. 

Still, he supposed that he could continue to apply for teaching jobs, even whilst working at the hotel. Perhaps it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Probably, he was lucky to even have a job, considering the state the world was in.

And then, he thought about all the effort that other people had put into him, raising him, teaching him, then realised that, in actual fact, he hardly had recourse to complain.

He made it out of the hotel and back onto the street. A bright sunny day. He admired all the people out in the city and thought about the likelihood that the pandemic would one day come to an end, and it gave him hope. He made it back to the big old run-down building where he lived and sat on a chair on the veranda and watched the sun go down, and his mate came out and sat with him and handed him a beer.

‘How’d the cleaning job go?’

‘Yeah, not bad, they’re starting me tomorrow.’

‘Nice one.’

‘How’d the garbo job go?’

‘Yeah, not good, I couldn’t keep up with the truck.’

They sat and sipped the stubbies and watched the sun go down, and he thought to himself that maybe it wasn’t all that bad. Who knew, maybe, he didn’t have to give up on his dreams after all; maybe he was just being melodramatic; had gotten himself into a funk. After all, there was more to life than just money, wasn't there?