Scab

It had been over a month since the overeducated janitor had last checked his email.

What was the point? Nobody was writing him back. More than a year had passed since he left The Almost Ivy League University, and he still hadn’t heard back from any of the seventy-three teaching and research jobs that he had applied to. His research grants had all been rejected due to a lack of institutional affiliation. He tried to defend his trade as an independent researcher, but, from the looks of it, his interlocutors were less excited about the prospect of autonomy than he was. Apparently, his email account just didn’t have the right letters after the dot. Apparently, he wasn’t in the right domain.

It didn’t happen all at once. From several times a day to once a day to every other day to a couple of times a week to once a week to this. A sure sign that he was throwing in the proverbial towel. A sure sign that he was going to be behind the push-broom for the long haul. Might as well get used to the idea.

When he finally did get around to checking his email, on his break at The Community Center, on the floor in the supply closet, it was perhaps more out of boredom than anything else. For old time’s sake, he thought himself, flipping open his laptop.

She was the last person that he expected to hear from. The Chair of the Department. He burned that bridge, he thought, back when he ditched The Dinner Party, back when he passed up the opportunity to get his foot back in the door, to patch things up, to smooth over some of the creases in his relationship with The Department.

The subject of the email was urgent. All caps. Nothing else. Just URGENT. The overeducated janitor had the impression that The Chair of the Department wasn’t typing but yelling at him. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

The tone of the email, however, once he opened it, was informal, warm, intimate almost. Long time, no see, it read. We missed you at The Dinner Party, it read. Jean-Christophe really outdid himself this year, it read. The homemade panettone, it read, was to die for. You remember Jean-Christophe’s homemade panettones, don’t you? It would be hard to find, it read, another panettone as soft and fluffy.

The overeducated janitor stopped reading right there at the end of the first paragraph. He closed his eyes. The supply closet was suddenly transformed. The Zamboni walk-behind automatic floor scrubber, plugged in to the charging station; the color-coded cleaning-solution dispenser, mounted to the wall; the black-and-yellow Rubbermaid cleaning supply cart, parked in the corner; the shelf of replacement trash bags, recently reorganized; all of it, gone, long gone.

Or maybe it was the overeducated janitor who was gone, transported to faraway places. He could smell the panettones, fresh out of the oven. He could see delicate wisps of steam, even, rising from the dough as he removed a slice from the freshly cut loaf. He could feel the dough tear ever so delicately as he pinched off a morsel and raised it to his lips. He heard laughter, like waves hitting the shore, distant at first but growing closer. He felt the warmth from the fireplace on the back of his pant legs, a fresh log recently having been added to the hearth.

Out of nowhere, a little brown bird had alighted on his shoulder. He turned to face it. It turned to face him, its head tilted inquisitively, trustingly, understandingly. Perhaps it wanted some crumbs from the panettone. A truly serendipitous event.

Yes, the overeducated janitor let his guard down for a second. He indulged himself. He let out a sigh so visceral that it seemed as if he had been holding his breath for months, for a whole year even. In its wake, in the fuzziness that followed, he had the distinct feeling that he was a part of something again. It was as if he belonged. As if his presence was welcome. As if his skills were valued.

A mouse darted into the supply closet through the little space beneath the closed door. The brusque intrusion startled the overeducated janitor from his reveries. The mouse stopped in its tracks, exchanging glances with the overeducated janitor. It would have been impossible to determine who was more surprised. Then it darted back under the door, leaving the supply closet even faster than it had entered.

The overeducated janitor regained his composure. “It’s just me,” he muttered, but it was too late. The mouse was long gone. “You’re welcome to stay.” His voice trailed off towards the end of the phrase. “You should know that by now,” he added, more to himself than to his tiny friend, his last night companion, a co-conspirator, if you will.

The spell had been definitively broken. The overeducated janitor had now returned to his senses. The supply closet was once again the supply closet. There was no fresh log in the fireplace, no soft laughter in the background, no warm panettone. And the little brown bird, it turned out, was just the little brown mouse that lives in the crack beneath the doorframe and ventures out to forage once The Community Center starts to empty.

His break, in fact, was nearly over. The second half of his shift was waiting for him, all the heavy lifting. There was barely enough time to finish reading the email.

The overeducated janitor upbraided himself for having let his guard down and returned to the text with different eyes. Sensing danger, a trap even, he braced himself for the second paragraph.

In the time that he had known The Chair, he had never once known her to do anything that wasn’t informed by the most unabashed self-interest, often with a characteristically unflinching disregard for the interests and needs of others, bordering on cruelty. He mustn’t forget who he was dealing with. He mustn’t forget what happened last time he let his guard down. He mustn’t forget The Great Debacle, his painful falling out with The Department. It would be a mistake, a potentially dangerous one, to take her pleasantries at face value. There had to be an ulterior motive lurking somewhere beneath The Chair’s rosy disposition, beneath the cheery surface of the email.

It only took a few words from next paragraph for the overeducated janitor to discover the snake in the grass, just in time to avoid to getting bit on the ankle.

“I’m sure you’ve heard by now,” The Chair started. “The Department is in quite a jiffy, what with the strike and all.” She was referring of course to the fact that the lowly lecturers, tired of a subsistence wage, had gone on strike at the end of the semester. If The Department did not find a solution fast, it would be impossible to administer final exams, grades would not be process in time, and the graduating class would not graduate. “These are unfortunate times,” she continued, setting the stage, “unfortunate for all of those involved.” The overeducated janitor could feel it coming, the kicker.

“At times like these, we have to pull together.” The Chair was including him in the first-person plural subject pronoun, yet, in the same breath, she was acknowledging the distance between them, seemingly unsalvageable, from the point of view of the overeducated janitor. The period at the end of the sentence was more than a little pause, more than syntaxis. It was a lacuna in the text, a crater, a deep-deep dark-dark deep-dark pit where the memory of The Great Debacle lived. The full weight of the unsaid rested there, his troubled past with The Department and his painful departure.  

Then The Chair pivoted.

“From what I understand, you are in a rather delicate situation yourself…” The suspension points were a power move. Now, there’s The Chair I know, the overeducated janitor thought to himself.

“Fortunately, it’s not all doom and gloom,” she continued. “Fortunately, in these trying times, we have each other. You know, it’s true what they say. Sometimes it really does that something like this to make you realize who your friends are.” The overeducated janitor felt his stomach turn. The appeal to friendship, histrionic, exceeded the needs of the situation. 

“The bottom line is that few people know the courses as well as you do.” The overeducated janitor had reached the hard kernel of the email, The Chair’s pitch. “You could just jump right in there, you know, hit the ground running, and get the courses back on track. You’re the one for the job. You know it. I know it. The whole department knows it.”

The Chair offered to personally take care of the unpleasantries. She would have a “heart-to-heart” with the dean and clear up the whole issue of the disciplinary action taken against the overeducated janitor by The Department for his failure to fall in line with university policy, that is, for his refusal to conceal his opposition to the war. She was confident that she could “make the problem go away.” Looking back, it really wasn’t that big of a deal after all. Nothing that we couldn’t overcome, together, The Chair suggested. One day we will all look back and laugh about it.

“Stop by my office on Monday morning to discuss the details of your contract.” The Chair was careful to preclude the possibility that the overeducated janitor would refuse the offer. At the same time, she strained to make her proposal as attractive as possible, irresistible even. “And don’t think that this is just until the end of the term. I could extend the contract to include next semesters courses as well.” The overeducated janitor was shocked. The Chair must really be desperate. It would be the first time that the overeducated janitor had anything other than the infamous hire-and-fire contracts, by which the university contracted the services of lecturers on a semester-by-semester basis, hiring them on the first day of classes and firing them on the last.

The overeducated janitor had no illusions about what was being requested of him.  The Chair needed him to break the strike. Those same two words had come back to haunt him: sell out.

At the end of her email, The Chair specified that her offer was “time sensitive.” He had until noon on Monday. She would be in her office Monday morning to speak with him. The door would be open.

The overeducated janitor checked the time signature of The Chair’s email. Friday. It had been sent earlier in the day.

The overeducated janitor’s break was over. He didn’t, however, want to put off his response. Four words were all he needed. “See you on Monday.” Send.

He was about to sign off his email when he received the notification of The Chair’s response. “I’ll have the contract prepared for you to sign.”

It was as if she had been sitting by the computer awaiting his response, as if she was losing sleep over him, just as he had lost sleep over her when The Department annulled his contract and revoked his courses, back before he moved into The Halfway House, back before he stepped into the beige coveralls for the first time, back before he took up his place behind the push broom.