Counterplan

1.

The overeducated janitor sensed that the end was near. He felt it in the same way that you can feel the closeness of a wall without actually touching it, with your shoulder, for example, just millimeters away.

And, the overeducated janitor had read enough novels to know how it ends.

The room, at the end of the story, is empty. Empty and tidy. So tidy, in fact, that it feels like it is no longer lived in. The bed is carefully made. The clothes are neatly folded, nestled in their drawers. The papers are in order on the desk in front of the window. All the pencils in the pencil holder. Paperweights on a stack of papers, a manuscript perhaps. There is a single envelope in the middle of the table, like a brave little insect of the rarest colors, legs trembling, wings as thin as rice paper and every bit as fragile. We all know that there is a letter inside the envelope, a short letter, written in love and haste, written in verses, worthy of Mayakovski. The curtains are, of course, drawn. The view from the window is the same as always, the same river, as moody as ever, taking out its anger on the rocks, sending foam bubbles spinning crazily around the bend. There are, perhaps, more bubbles than usual today.

Somehow, this is how it is supposed to end. An empty room. A letter. A hole in a chain-link fence. Bolt cutters in the weeds, left behind. Bubbles on the surface of the water. Like last time.

2.

It’s Monday morning, early, and the overeducated janitor is on the subway, dressed for a funeral.

3.

It was going to be tight, but the overeducated janitor was feeling confident that he could pull it off.

From his side of town, he had to go downtown to the campus of The Almost Ivy League University to speak with The Chair of the department and, from there, all the way to the other side of town for the memorial service that The Big Boss had organized for Arturo. All before noon. No problem, right?

The overeducated janitor was lucky enough to get a seat on the downtown train. He took off his backpack as he sat down and placed it on his lap. Then he removed his book and opened it to the right page. He did all of this without thinking. It was simply what he did whenever he got a seat on the train. It was his little ritual.

The overeducated janitor’s eyes scanned the page from left to right, row after row. But the words didn’t stick. The letters switched places. The words got jammed. Their meanings ran from the print.

By the time the overeducated janitor reached the end of the page, he realized that he hadn’t comprehended a single word. He went back to the top to try again. Slower this time, he read the first sentence. Once, twice, three times. He wasn’t even sure what language he was reading or whether he had ever seen it before.

The overeducated janitor stared blankly at the page and its incomprehensible words. The tiny lines that compose the letters that compose the words started to quiver. They became unstuck and started to rearrange themselves into what faintly appeared to be a visage of Arturo. There was something that Arturo was trying to tell him, but the overeducated janitor couldn’t make out the words. Unsettled, he closed the book.

No, it was no use. There was no point in trying to read. Darting this way and that, frothing at the mouth, his thoughts could not be caged. He felt an almost irresistible urge to stand up and pace the cars of the train, but the aisles were crowded with despondent commuters, looking at their phones, shifting their weight from one leg to another. He made to stand up but thought better of it and sat back down. He opened the backpack and stowed the book inside. Instead of returning the backpack to his lap, though, he hugged it to his chest, arms crossed, hands gripping the straps tightly, like a life vest.

Something wasn’t quite right, but the overeducated janitor couldn’t put his finger on it. No, he wasn’t nervous about his meeting with The Chair. He wasn’t mulling over what he was going to say. He knew exactly what had to be done. Simply, he was going to claim what was rightfully his. Years of sacrifice, of study, of teaching, of research, decades already, all of it was in preparation for this, for this moment, the moment when The Chair dropped a set of keys into his hand, the keys to his office, with its bookshelves for his books, with its desktop to prepare his classes, with its lamp and quiet corner for his research. It was his rightful place. He had earned it. The overeducated janitor would sign whatever papers there were to sign. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to talk about.

Perhaps the memorial service was the source of his unsettledness. To be sure, he was unsure how he felt about it. Arturo had specified that he did not want a wake or a funeral. The Big Boss, however, felt that it was important to honor his contribution to The Center. After all, Arturo had been there on the day it opened its doors. He was a part of its story. The Big Boss wanted us to have “chance to say thank you, a chance to say goodbye,” as she had put it. So, she suspended all the regular midday activities, decorated the gym with photos, lined the bleachers with tables topped with paper plates, napkins, snacks and sandwich wedges. Every single employee had responded to the invite. Some of clients, the regulars, would be in attendance as well.

The overeducated janitor had wanted to write something to read at the event, something about the Arturo that he knew, who wasn’t the same Arturo that the rest of them knew. He wanted to tell Arturo’s story, which was, in part, his story as well. He wanted to talk about their respective failed revolutions, about The Price, about the long years of defeat that followed in the wake. He wanted to come out into the open, to come out, once and for all, of the supply closet. But the overeducated janitor couldn’t find the words. He couldn’t find the words to make their lives intelligible. He couldn’t translate their dead language.

The train doors hissed open, and the commuters filed out onto the platform. Pulling himself together, the overeducated janitor scrambled to make it through the doors before they closed.

He took the old way, the old short cut to campus, through the tunnels that connect the buildings downtown, as if he had just done it yesterday, though it had been more than a year.

He caught himself just in time. Before getting too far off course, he remembered that the department had changed locations. Chronically underfunded, repeatedly downsized, the department lost its historic spot near the quad, the center of campus, and was subsequently relegated to the outskirts, across the busy avenue, in a building not fit for the brochures, hidden amongst the offices of the multinational corporations, which was fitting, the undereducated janitor thought, considering the course the university has taken in recent decades, riding high on the winds of neoliberalism, sails flapping wildly, slashing salaries here, cutting benefits there, restricting intellectual freedom everywhere.

It wasn’t difficult for the overeducated janitor to find the new building. He knew downtown well, which is to say that he remembered it well, more a part of his past than his present. The lobby was more corporate than collegiate, the elevators in an alcove just passed the information desk and security guards.

The doors to an elevator were closing as he approached. It was packed with men in suits. Nobody held the door.

It didn’t take long, however, for another elevator to arrive. He stepped inside and pressed the button for the seventeenth floor. He was alone. He breathed a sigh of relief. The doors closed.

The doors opened again on the fourth floor, and Joshland stepped in. The suit was a clever disguise, but it wasn’t enough to fool the overeducated janitor. He could recognize his archenemy anywhere.

Joshland, for his part, did not seem to register the overeducated janitor. It must have been because he wasn’t wearing his usual uniform, the beige coveralls, the oversized keyring, flat cap, the indispensable Sketchers steel-toed, waterproof, slip-on work shoes. Joshland leaned in front of the overeducated janitor to press the button for his floor, the seventeenth, as it turned out. But, since it had already been pressed, its numbers already illuminated, Joshland stood at attention, arms folded in front of him, gaze pinned stoically to the closed doors.

“So, we meet again,” the overeducated janitor exclaimed, aware of the comic book register of his comment. Joshland, eyes wide, turned to face his interlocutor. Surely, he had recognized the overeducated janitor’s voice.

“What? You’re not even going to say hello to your old friend,” the overeducated janitor chided.

“I’m sorry? Do I know you? No, you must have me mistaken for someone else.” Feigning composure, furrowing his brow histrionically, Joshland smoothed out the front of his suit coat. His face was pale.

“Let me guess. You have army knives in your briefcase. How many? Twenty?” Joshland didn’t respond to the question. Instead, he pressed the button for the next floor.

“Leaving already? Well, don’t worry, it’s going to be like old times. We’re going to be working on the same floor…” The overeducated janitor’s voice trailed off. Joshland had scurried out of the elevator, down the carpeted hallway, in the direction of the stairwell.

Alone again, the overeducated janitor contemplated possible courses of action to take regarding Joshland. His thoughts were interrupted, however, by the bell that indicated that he had arrived at the seventeenth floor. He would have to figure it out later. He had his meeting with The Chair to deal with.

4.

When he was young, in his punk past life, the overeducated janitor, before he was overeducated, before he was a janitor, thought a lot about the end.

He was convinced that he knew how it ended, how it had to end. Try as he might, he couldn’t envision any other outcome. He could see it so clearly that he even wrote it out, in all the details, the time of day, the setting, down by the train tracks, in the industrial corridor, moonlight on the tracks, and of course the empty room with the letter on the desktop. He played it over and over in his thoughts.

He didn’t desire this ending. He didn’t will it. It was simply there. A certainty that he carried around with him, at the shows, on tour, at the skate spots, on the rooftops and fire escapes, the same sad certainty, a ghost that, once befriended, refused to leave his side. It followed him everywhere he went.

Unable to rid himself of its presence, unable to wiggle himself from underneath its weight, the overeducated janitor turned to face it. And, once he engaged with it, once he began to stay up all night, once he started work on the blueprints, he was able to work out a deal, he was able to devise a counterplan.  

Artwork from Alexander's Flycycle (1967), written by Elizabeth Rose and illustrated by Gerald Rose

Yes, the overeducated janitor did commit suicide. The attempt was successful. The plan couldn’t have been designed better. Its execution was immaculate.

His punk past life, his skater past life, and the one before that, the saddest of all, his childhood, with its hate churches, with its evangelical militancy, with its exorcisms, with its political fanaticism, with its malice and malaise, with the family that had disinherited him, with the inheritance that he rejected, with the country in a death trance, overtaken with bloodlust, yes, all of it, overeducated pulled the trigger on all of it on that night when he took the bolt-cutters down to the fence. He put it to rest when squeezed through the freshly cut hole in the chain link like a snake shedding its skin.

When he emerged on The Other Side, he had a new name, a newfound agency, a different way of seeing things, a different way of being in the world. The person he left behind ceased to exist. The person he left behind was dead to him. The person he was struggling to become had taken its first step. He never looked back.

5.

The door to The Chair’s office is closed. It’s a thick door, thick enough to muffle the voices on the inside, the voices of The Chair and the overeducated janitor.

The meeting is not going according to plan, not going how The Chair expected, not going how the overeducated janitor expected. He is saying things that he hadn’t planned on saying, things about the department, things about the conditions under which the course lecturers work, things about the strike, things about the war, things that the overeducated janitor will not be able to retract, things after which there will be no turning back.

The Chair raises her voice for a few sharp sentences, her words like bullets. Then the door to her office goes completely silent. It cracks open, swinging easy on its hinges, unhurried.

The overeducated janitor emerges into an afterlife of sorts, light-footed, transformed.

6.

For the second time in the same day, the overeducated janitor got a window seat on the train, headed outbound this time, all the way to the other side of town, all the way to The Community Center, with just enough time to make it to Arturo’s memorial.

The overeducated janitor opened his backpack to extract his notebook and mechanical pencil. Setting the backpack on his lap to use as a desktop, he opened the notebook to the next available page and starting writing.

The stops came and went. The aisles filled with commuters and then emptied again. The overeducated janitor didn’t look up. He wrote without turning back.

He was so absorbed in his counterplan, putting on the finishing touches, that he almost missed his stop. The brakes screeched and the doors hissed open. The overeducated janitor gathered his notebook and backpack in his arms and ran out the door just in time.

His bus, the 275 to Berissault, was waiting at the curb when the overeducated janitor emerged from the subway station. He caught a glimpse of the sky as he stepped aboard. How hadn’t he noticed it earlier? The last slabs of snow had melted. You could smell it in the air, the softening of the soil, the expansiveness. The sky was a hue than it had been in a long time. He almost didn’t recognize it. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. A flock of birds, in a V formation, passed overheard, returning from migration, coming home.

The overeducated janitor didn’t get a window seat this time. Nor did he need one. The plan had been written, the counterplan. It was ready to be enacted.

The overeducated janitor was not willing to give up on his profession. He was not willing to change who he was, who he had become. Even if it meant sacrificing his career. Even if it meant that he would have to separate his profession, his calling, from what he did for a living, from what paid the rent.

He envisioned a small room, in the basement of a large building, in the entrance to what had once been a tunnel, perhaps, a tunnel to a nearby library. He would have a desk, and it would be lined with his books and stacked with his papers. He would collect the quotes. He would write his analyses. He would assemble his texts. He would craft them, like a joiner, like a carpenter, a craftsman but with ideas. A DIY scholar. Yes, he liked the sound of that. He would conserve the craft, conserve his autonomy, even if it meant sacrificing his career. All he needed now was a small place to read and write. All he needed was a few hours before or after his shift.

He would walk through the double doors of The Community Center. There was just enough time to speak with The Big Boss before the memorial. He would lay his cards out on the table. He would show his hand. It wouldn’t take long.

The overeducated janitor would ask The Big Boss if he could take over Arturo’s position as head janitor. Just as he inherited the Violeta Parra coffee mug, he would assume all the responsibilities of his predecessor, his mentor, his co-conspirator. They were boots that only he could fill, the DIY Scholar. All he asked in return was a little space in the basement, somewhere out of the way, in the corner, in the entrance of what had once been a tunnel to the library, perhaps, just enough space for a desk, a chair and, of course, his notebooks.

It was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Artwork from Alexander's Flycycle (1967), written by Elizabeth Rose and illustrated by Gerald Rose