The Dead Janitors Club (18 page)

    Maybe it was God punishing me for having bad thoughts about him several chapters earlier; maybe it was because I considered cheating on Kerry with Misty; or maybe because I had recently ingested a strawberry Danish washed down with a large Dr Pepper. But I knew, karma or not, that I had to shit my fucking brains out.

    I decided to race back to the gas station where I'd bought the cursed breakfast items, but I'd gone only half a block before I knew I wouldn't make it back down the hill before I painted my underwear like a Jackson Pollock. Anxious beads of sweat were puckering along my neckline, and I knew that if I didn't do something soon, it was going to be a photo finish. Clenching my ass cheeks together, I could feel the diarrhea pounding like infidels at the gate.

    I raced back to the crime scene, my upper canines biting into my lower lip, and glanced around for the presence of neighbors who might let me use their restroom. There were some, but I was fooling myself. In moments when a bad shit was imminent, you'd better believe I was shy and awkward Jeff.

    I waddled into the backyard and yanked on the sliding patio door, praying that they'd forgotten to lock it. They hadn't. I considered climbing the back wall to their balcony, hoping that that door would be unlocked, but there just wasn't any more time. Crying aloud with desperation and shame, I made a beeline for the pool shed, grabbing my plastic garbage bag and a roll of industrial shop towels.

    It was a small shed with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The engine for the pool's suction pumps took up most of the space, leaving me little to no privacy. With not a moment to spare, I yanked my shorts down and crouched over the bag, praying that it didn't explode outward and coat the pool engine in liquid brown, Type 6 shit.

    The sound of my dump was something akin to the racket you'd imagine a runaway freight train making if it jumped its tracks on a hillside covered in washing-machine parts and drum kits. The whole thing was a calamitous force of relentless blasting emanating from my colon as I made choking, relieved sobs, my naked, dirty ass squatting over a trash bag filled with dog blood.

    It was then that I noticed one of the neighbors standing outside. He wasn't looking in my direction, thank God, but assuredly he'd heard the noise, because it had sounded like an airplane full of chili had just exploded. His property was slightly elevated, so his view into the backyard where the shed sat was perfect. If he'd turned his head a bit more, he would have seen a pathetic large man, bare bottom stained with feces, a look of pained shame plastered across his face.

    Tears welled and I sniffled a little bit, anticipating my discovery. I tried in vain to crouch behind the pool engine and swore to myself that if I got through this, I would never even consider cheating on Kerry… or combining a strawberry Danish with Dr Pepper.

    God or Kerry must have heard my cry, because the man's phone rang and he stepped back inside to answer it. Quickly I wiped, using an entire roll of industrial shop towels in the process.

    In the clear, I stepped back out and resumed spraying the patio as if nothing had happened. I had been right to include the catchall about residual staining. The area of the patio where the blood had been was noticeably a darker shade of gray than the rest of the area. I chalked it up to the same effect that baby oil has on a tanning person and got the hell out of there.

    The ride home was especially miserable, because my car's broken trunk meant that the putrid bag of blood and excrement would be riding shotgun with me. The blood I could handle; the smell of excavated sewage from my small intestine was something else entirely.

* * *

My next job, though, made my broken trunk a real issue.

    An emergency situation had come up on a weekday, so Misty was once again unavailable. It was for the best, though. Being an attractive female, she might have been problematic at a medium-security prison.

    Again I didn't know the details in advance, but feeling confident that the job wouldn't involve a bed, carpeting, or large furniture, I rolled out in the Red Rocket. I'd never been to a prison before, much less juvenile hall or any other detention area. It wasn't that I was so good; it was just that I was lucky never to have been caught. I was excited, though, as there was an aura of danger about the job. Melodramatic notions of being caught in a prison riot and having to shoot my way to freedom swelled as I drove out. Why let the fact that I didn't carry a gun get in the way of a perfectly good fantasy?

    NORCO California Rehabilitation Center first opened as a luxury hotel in the late 1920s. During World War II it was converted into a naval hospital. After the war it was converted into a housing facility for narcotic addicts. In the 1980s they began taking on convicts as well. There are now roughly four thousand male and seven hundred female prisoners in residence there.

    It is the only California corrections center that houses male and female prisoners with a shared exterior perimeter. Whatever I was to do there, I really wanted it to be on the women's side. If there were a prison riot, I'd crack a bottle of bubbly and let the good times roll. (That is, I would if I hadn't vowed mid-diarrhea that I would stay faithful to my wonderful girlfriend.)

    I arrived at the prison on the fringes of Riverside, sweating profusely. The air conditioning in my car hadn't worked in years, and each summer seemed just a little bit worse than the one before. Hopefully, I wouldn't worry about the AC much longer, as Dirk maintained that I would soon have my very own work truck.

    Driving up to the prison, with its eighteen-foot-high chain-link fences topped with sprawling rows of razor wire, I felt like one bad motherfucker. I grinned an evil grin and pretended that all the guards and razor wire were to keep the inmates safe from me.

    An electronic gate at the entrance stayed shut as the guards considered my car. It didn't look like the usual vehicle that came crawling up to their delivery entrance. Feeling cool, I had my window down and some Chris Isaak belting out of my CD player. Fuck protocol, I was the Crime Scene Cleaner…too cool for school.

    Finally two guards stepped out, hands on their weapons. A call was made to the control booth. As the enormous metal gate slid open, my car sidled forward, stopping ten yards later at another enormous chain barrier. The rumble of the first gate sounded behind me as it clanged closed. Guards moved to either side of my vehicle, and I quickly turned off the Chris Isaak. A third guard stepped out of the booth and up to my car. "You are?" he asked.

    "I'm Jeff—from O.C. Crime Scene Cleaners…Apparently you have a scene for me?"

    "Please step out of your car, sir."

    I felt like I was on an episode of Candid Camera or one of those reality shows with the goal of making regular assholes look like stupid assholes.

    "I'm here to clean a crime scene for you…" I persisted, not wanting to leave the sanctity of my car.

    "Please step out of your car, sir. It's routine."

    Grudgingly I exited the vehicle, imagining that if I had a gun like they did, maybe I would be the one coming up with the routines. The security guards checked the inside of my car for contraband or prisoners that I was apparently trying to sneak
into
the prison and then the backseat, glancing through my supply crates. I had several razor blades in there, but I felt like the guards were on a need-to-know basis.

    "Pop your trunk, sir."

    The question blindsided me completely, as never once had I considered that I might have to open my trunk for them. Suddenly I felt a million miles away from that confident son of a bitch with his Hawaiian seat covers.

    "My trunk doesn't open," I said, feeling like I'd been caught committing a crime.

    "We need to be able to search your trunk, sir."

    "It's broken," I said with an awkward shrug, my cheeks crimson. I expected the guards to start shooting at any moment.

    "Can we go in through the backseat?" the officer inquired, though it wasn't really a question at all.

    I like to think that I'm not a messy person, but that's miles from the truth. Since using my car as a "crime scene vessel," I'd been especially prone to throwing water bottles and fast-food wrappers behind my seats, expecting my slobby ways never to come to light. And now, in front of these trained soldiers with their immaculate uniforms, I was to be unmasked.

    I couldn't pass on doing their crime scene; if I tried to leave, there was a better-than-good chance they'd detain me and search my car anyway, just to see what I was hiding. Ever more frantic, I tried to remember the last time that I'd had any…
my friends
had had any drugs in my car. I thought it had been awhile, but what a way for it to be discovered, if that turned out not to be the truth.

    With no other choice, I began the long process of removing the trash from my car so that they could investigate the trunk. The crates came out first and most easily, and then empty plastic bottles slipped out and clattered to the ground. And then more plastic bottles fell out, one even rolling beneath my car. I saw the guards notice it, and my shame grew.

    Worse still, cheese residue from food wrappers had melted in the heat and attached to my seat backs, and I had to peel it off quickly, the loopy strands of dairy stretching long before the officers. After many uncomfortable minutes made worse by the desert sun, I was finally able to pull down the backseat so that a disgusted guard could climb in and shine his light across the span of darkness.

    "It's clean," he announced, though I knew he was using that term loosely. I felt very naked in the gated enclosure.

    "Feel free to put your supplies back in," the guard said. I quickly heaped all the water bottles and sticky wrappers onto my front passenger seat, resolving to clean them out when I got home. Back in the driver's seat, I awaited the opening of the gate. Then another guard came out of the control booth and spoke with the head officer.

    "One more thing, sir," he waved me out of the car again, and I could tell that he was enjoying making me look like a dickhead. He pointed to my khaki knee-length shorts. "We can't have you wearing shorts inside the prison grounds…The prisoners wear shorts. Wouldn't want you to get mistaken for a prisoner and get shot," he added matter-of-factly, pointing to one of several guard towers.

    The officer pulled a pair of humongous, gray elastic-waisted pants off the gate from a stack that looked like they stayed outdoors no matter what the elements. Sizing me up and then looking at the pants, he quickly rummaged for an even bigger pair. Beyond any point of dignity, I reached for the zipper on my shorts.

    "No, no, just slide them on over your pants," he said quickly, embarrassed for me. I did so, struggling to get the bottoms over my bulky sneakers. The pants were hot and stiff, and they felt gross where they rubbed against my legs.

    "Our delivery drivers know not to wear shorts," he said, as if that were some sort of explanation. Once more I waited for them to open the gate. "Williams will ride with you up to the scene," the officer added politely.

    Williams, a fit black guy who looked like you expected a cop to look, stepped up from behind my car and tugged at the passenger door handle, which was locked. I leaned across, opening it for him, and then we both looked at the mound of refuse on my passenger seat. Exasperated, I swept it back to the floor, where it would doubtlessly remain for several more months.

    Finally, with Williams securely on board, the officer gave the order to open the gate. We started to roll forward once more, but the guard, who was smirking by this point, flagged me down yet again.

    "You forgot this," he added, handing the errant water bottle back through my window.

    We rolled through the prison's winding pathways with Williams pointing out the various officer-related mishaps along the way…the night guard who'd fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed through a portion of the fence here; the infirmary nurse who'd fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed through a different portion of the fence there. While looking at the various sights, I almost crashed into the fence.

    Finally we rolled up to the scene of the crime. Williams was eager to see the damage. Normally consigned to the delivery gate, this was a welcome change of scenery and source of excitement for him. I waited as he climbed out first, having been shamed into complying with protocol. A fire truck staffed with prisoners waited in the wings, and several official-looking vehicles were positioned around an expanse of yellow tape.

    Not expecting anyone to stop me, I walked up to the tape. A mustachioed older guard quickly held his hand up before me, but without the glee that the gate guards had exhibited.

    Behind him I could see that the ground was mottled with blood and hideously large chunks of flesh and brain. I looked at the drab tan building before me, stretching up five stories or more. Near the top, an impossibly small window section was missing a board. Apparently the prison didn't feel the need for bars on the windows of a bathroom five stories up and with a sheer drop.

    "Was this a suicide?" I asked the mustachioed guard.

    "Homicide, most likely," the guard said. "The other inmates tossed a Chester out the fifth-floor window."

    "His name was Chester?" I asked.

    "No," the guard corrected me good-naturedly. "Chester…molester," he said, clueing me in to the prison lingo. "They threw a child molester out the fifth-floor bathroom window. Child molesters don't last in prison."