Housesitting at my brother’s place and the biweekly cleaners are whirring, whooshing and wizzing their arsenal of electrical contraptions, a cacophony of vacuums, dusters and busters.
It’s a racket, and the animals shudder and hide. I won’t see them for a good two hours. Then they’ll re-emerge with bristled fur and indignant scowls. The word balloon above their collective head will read: You S.O.B.
Who, after all, is partial to the rambunctious suckery of the vacuum cleaner? It’s a veritable monster, roaring, devouring.
I’m more a Swiffer guy. That gauzy glide across wood and linoleum, affably gathering dirt and dust, soundlessly, like cotton candy. But rugs and carpets demand plugged-in hardware, and there goes the neighborhood.
Right now, a cleaner is banging a handheld duster against the wooden window blinds and it almost evokes Latin percussion. A drummer, I’m tempted to pull out my cowbell and a tom-tom and fashion some dance jams. But suddenly there are multiple flushes from the bathrooms and a buzz has been decisively killed.
Obviously I could split this joint, go to a cafe to write, see a movie, vandalize some Teslas. But it’s too warm and I can manage the madness for a couple noisy hours.
Yet I feel a little odd sitting about while they clean around me. On an ancient episode of “Seinfeld,” Jerry riffs about being home when the maid comes and gets all embarrassed that he just as well have cleaned but, you know, you’re here and all, and he offers a wincing apology and a pained shrug.
This isn’t like that. This is my brother’s abode and I’m but an innocent bystander. I’m on good, first-name terms with the lead cleaner, Delsy, and we banter a bit and joke about the animals. Then she hits the “on” switch and my brain rattles in its tiny pan, and I either leave or tolerate it. Today was the latter, as noted. I don’t know where the hell the pets are.
Delsy is cool. A young mother from Guatemala, petite with a helium voice, she once polished the wood floors so well that I slipped on my ass and about broke in half. That’s a compliment. She’s good. And when I’m there, she’s sweet as can be. She has the laugh of a cartoon elf.
She runs a mean vacuum, scouring the carpets and attacking the stairs. She even sucks the sofa with that terrible tube. It’s all good, if benignly violent.
And then it’s over and Delsy and crew politely exit, while the animals skulk out of hiding, wanting nothing more than to bite me.
GNASHING. 