Termination Man: a novel (13 page)

She supposed that was why she got along so well with Tiffany. Tiffany desperately wanted to be one of the laughing, carefree, popular girls; but she was no more suited for the task than Alyssa was. And so the two of them would invariably end up gravitating toward each other, where they could talk about homework assignments or the latest young-adult novels. Alyssa and Tiffany were both voracious readers.

How pretentious you are
, Alyssa thought to herself. On the heels of that thought came the realization that “pretentious” was another word that would baffle the average New Hastings teenager.

Perhaps her love of books and schoolwork was a defense mechanism of sorts: She felt out-of-step with the world of her peers, so she had invented a world of her own in which she would not feel intimidated.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard her name spoken aloud.

Alyssa’s mother, Donna, had poked her head into the bedroom. Donna Chalmers was dressed for a night of cleaning: jeans, a scarf over her head, and a sweatshirt.

“How’s the homework coming?” Donna asked.

“I’m done. I’m just reviewing now.”

“Do you want to stay home tonight?”

This was the second time in the past week that her mother had asked this question. Did she sense that something was not quite right at the company facility they cleaned every night—United Press & Stamping?

Alyssa removed her headphones.

“No, that’s okay. I’ve got my homework done. I’ll go.” She knew that the cleaning job at United Press & Stamping entailed a lot of work. Without her help, her mother would be there until the wee hours of the morning.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. I’m going to get ready. We’ll leave in a few minutes.”

Alyssa wondered if she should tell her mother why being at the automotive components plant made her feel uncomfortable.

She decided that she should say nothing, at least not for now. If she told her mother, there was a good chance that Donna would overreact, provoking an argument with UP&S’s management, or owners—whoever decided which cleaning company would be paid for cleaning the factory’s front offices.

That could result in the loss of the cleaning contract, which would only make things more difficult for her mother.

At fifteen, Alyssa left the details of the household finances to Donna; but she knew that the little family of two was not exactly prosperous. Alyssa’s father had left his wife with considerable financial liabilities—and not much in the way of assets.

And besides, the man named Shawn Myers had not actually
done
anything, had he?

No—but he ha
s
said
a few things
;
and then there
i
s that way he always look
s at you
.

Yes, he looked at her a lot. And this was enough to make her nervous. Shawn’s gaze followed her whenever she walked across the space of the factory office, dragging a garbage can or a vacuum cleaner. Just last week Shawn Myers had looked up from his desk and said—

“We’ve got to get going soon,” her mother called from the opposite side of the house. “If you’re coming, that is.”

“I’m coming!” Alyssa called back. “Be there in a minute!”

Alyssa sighed, closed her algebra book, and began to change out of her school clothes, and into the clothes that she wore when helping her mother.

Today had been a difficult day at school. New Hastings had a reputation for being a rough school district. If you hadn’t grown up in town, you were an outsider. And Alyssa and her mother had moved to New Hastings only last year. 

As was so often the case when things were difficult, Alyssa looked at the framed photograph on her dresser. The old Florida vacation picture contained three people: her mother, her father, and a ten-year-old version of herself. There was a sun-baked beach behind them, and the choppy waters of the Atlantic.

The three of them were laughing. Her father had his arm around her mother. Her father, tall and confident and protecting, beamed expansively at the camera, his longish hair blowing in the semi-tropical wind.

She still missed her father, whom she saw only rarely nowadays. Her father had remarried recently, and his new wife had given birth to a baby last year.

“Alyssa!”

“Coming, Mom!”

Dressed now much like her mother, Alyssa Chalmers wiped her eyes dry with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, then stepped out of her bedroom and into the hall.

It was nearly full dark by the time Donna Chalmers started the Ford Econoline van that had the words “Chalmers Cleaning Service” painted on its side in curlicue letters. The inside of the van smelled of cleaning supplies: ammonia, bleach, and other caustic substances. As always, Donna cracked the window on the driver’s side: The smells could become overpowering without proper ventilation.

As she cranked the Ford’s engine to life, she remembered Todd’s words the night he had pitched to her his grand idea: The two of them would quit their salaried jobs and start a cleaning company.
“Then we won’t have to work for anyone,”
Todd had said.
“We won’t have to take orders from idiots anymore.”

Donna had agreed—despite the fact that her job as a junior bookkeeper had
not
required her to work for idiots. She had rather enjoyed her old job, in fact. But she had wanted to please her husband. And then there was Todd’s charisma: We he got an idea in his head, he had a way of convincing others to go along with him.

And so Donna had started the cleaning company with her husband, Todd, who was now no longer her husband. She rarely heard from Todd these days, and he was frequently behind on his child support payments.

The plan for the cleaning company had been based on the premise that they would operate it as a couple; and its viability had been severely undermined—crippled, really—by Todd’s departure. Todd had done the heavy work at their cleaning sites. Now there was no money to hire a male assistant; and Alyssa was even more diminutive than she was. Donna’s back often ached at the end of an evening of cleaning.

“How’s school going?” Donna asked her daughter, who was seated in the van’s passenger seat.

“Fine,” Alyssa said.

Donna had noticed recently that Alyssa had entered that teenage phase in which she responded to most questions with monosyllabic responses.
Well, that came with the territory of being fifteen, didn’t it?
Donna vaguely remembered going through a similar phase herself at approximately the same age.

Alyssa probably had a crush on a boy. And as always, she was taking her father’s absence hard.

For the thousandth time she began to walk down the bitter road of resentment. In the weeks and months after Todd’s departure (and especially during the weeks and months following the completion of the divorce) that road had proved to be more than she could resist.

So she cheered herself with her usual formulaic but positive thoughts: They had the cleaning company. And hey, things were actually looking up:
We’ve got this contract with UP&S, and
it
pays better than most
.

But still there was the issue of her daughter. There must be some way to pull Alyssa out of her glumness.

“I’m really proud of you,” Donna said. “Making the honor roll and all. You’ve got to be one of the top students at New Hastings High School, huh?”

Alyssa shrugged.

“I guess so. I don’t know. Maybe.”

This idea seemed to darken Alyssa’s spirits even more.
Teenagers. There was no wa
y
to figure them out.

It was a short drive. Soon the white monolith of the UP&S plant came into view, its walls lit up by exterior floodlights. Donna guided the van into the factory’s parking lot. She parked in her usual space near the service entrance. The cars of the second-shift employees were darkened hulks beneath the halogen lamps that were mounted on poles overhead. At this late hour, most of the first-shift office staff had departed.

Together they hauled in the equipment they would need: mops, buckets, and a steam cleaning machine that they used to polish the tile floors. Even with the two of them, they had to make two trips.

As was their habit, they assembled all of their accoutrements at the edge of the main office area. This was the central point of the non-manufacturing portion of the building, which they were paid to clean.

Donna noticed Shawn Myers at his desk near the front of the room. As a cleaning contractor, she didn’t know much about the internal politics of UP&S. She did know that Shawn was an employee of TP Automotive, the conglomerate that had recently acquired UP&S. She also knew that he was the son of Kurt Myers, the acting CEO of the company.

Shawn looked up from his computer. He had seemed very intent on whatever was displayed on the computer’s screen. But as soon as he heard Donna and Alyssa enter, his attention was refocused on them.

“Good evening,” he said. He had an intense stare.
Well, all of those executive types were intense, weren’t they?
Donna recalled that much from her days as a bookkeeper. 

Something about Shawn provoked a sense of unease in Donna, though she couldn’t put her finger on the exact cause. Maybe it was simply jealousy. He was probably three or four years younger than her, and a high-paying career had been handed to him, simply because of who his father was.

Of course, it was possible that she was completely incorrect about this. Perhaps Shawn was actually quite brilliant in his own right. But he didn’t
strike
Donna as brilliant. He struck Donna as an aging frat boy.

“So nice of you both to come,” Shawn said. “So very nice.”

“Thank you,” Donna replied evenly.
A strange remark
, she thought.
A strange remark to make to the cleaning crew, even if there were only two of them
.

Speaking of which—

“Alyssa?”  Donna turned and looked for her daughter. Alyssa was lingering several paces behind her. She was standing so that she would be outside the line of sight of Shawn Myers.

Well, Donna knew that Alyssa was a shy one. But they had work to get done.

“You take the front desks,” Donna said, turning away from Shawn Myers. “I’ll take the rear hallways and the bathrooms.”

Donna always divvied the work up this way: The front office area was the easy part. Each desk had to be wiped down with a moist rag, and each wastepaper basket emptied. However you looked at it, this was light work.

On the other hand, the hallway floors were high-traffic areas. Therefore, they had to be cleaned with the steam cleaner every night. And the employee restrooms were wild cards. Sometimes they were only moderately distasteful; occasionally they were downright disgusting. Donna had no intention of making her daughter clean the rims of toilet bowls that had been splattered by the bowel movements of strangers, nor floors that had been soiled by a day’s worth of male office workers misaiming at urinals.

“Let’s get on it,” Donna said, dragging the steam-cleaning machine behind her. “And we might get done around nine o’clock.”

Her mother in one of the rear hallways now, Alyssa found herself alone in the front office area with Shawn Myers. She began
to clean
the row of desks that was farthest from him, working her way unavoidably in his direction.

As soon as her mother had disappeared down the hallway, Shawn Myers had lost all interest in his computer. He sat at his desk in the front of the room, openly staring at her.

She deliberately looked away from him, inevitably finding herself tortured by the question:
Is he still looking?
And then when she permitted herself a glance in his direction, her fears were confirmed: He was still staring at her.

It was creepy. When she caught him staring, his face abruptly changed. His intense expression of (
something like anger
) melted into a contrived smile. As if that smile was all that was necessary to make this situation perfectly normal and comfortable.

“How old are you, Alyssa?” she heard him ask.

She wanted to remain silent, to avoid giving him anything that he could use as leverage. She knew, though, that he would persist if she did not answer.

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen,” Shawn said, as if this were a profound revelation. She heard him lean back in the chair behind his desk, the springs creaking under his weight. “When I was fifteen, I was already starting to mess around with girls, you know?”

But of course Alyssa did not know—and anyway, why was a grown man nearly her mother’s age telling her something like this?

“Oh, don’t pretend like you’re shocked,” Shawn said. “And don't think that I don't know what young girls are like nowadays—how early you start messing around. What about you, Alyssa? Have you ever gone all the way with a boy?”