Care of Wooden Floors

by Will Wiles

  The fourth key did not turn. The fifth key turned smoothly and the door opened, revealing a slice of crimson carpet, yellow-green wallpaper and a thick crowd of faded winter coats and plastic macs supported by a buried row of pegs. I opened the door wide and pulled the cleaner into the flat as quickly as I could, bringing in the bucket of bottles and sponges too, and then shutting myself in.

  With the door closed, I leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, trying to get oxygen back into my body. Sweat broke everywhere against my skin; I felt I could still hear footsteps on the street, on the stairs, ready to push through the door or round the corner and see me with the body, and I told myself over and over that it was OK, the danger had passed. The cleaner’s flat shared a plan with Oskar’s, but it was much darker. Where Oskar had inserted a glass partition between the hall and the kitchen, here the wall was still solid brick, creating a gloomy corridor hung with pictures and terminated by a bead curtain.

  Pressing myself against the wall, I listened intently. Nothing. The thick pile of the carpet made it easy to advance down the corridor without making a sound, but the bead curtain rattled as I parted it. The sea of swirling crimson underfoot flowed through to the living room, where a plastic-covered sofa faced a television, metal folding chairs were stacked against a small dining table and dressers and cabinets supported a large population of china and knick-knacks. It was cluttered, but there was no sign of any other inhabitants.

  I returned to the body – an indistinct shape in the under-lit hall, perhaps a coat fallen from the mass on the pegs. It was surprisingly difficult to drag it down the corridor – the deep carpet put up more resistance than tiles or polished wood. The added effort triggered a deep weariness in me, a desire to be finished with the corpse, and with the floors, and with Oskar’s flat – but the weight, the effort, also seemed appropriate, worthy of respect, a reminder that I was dealing with something substantial.

  In the living room I faced an unanticipated question: Where to leave the body? Face-down on the floor did not seem natural. It had to look as if it had not been moved – that she had simply dropped on the spot and stayed there. I pulled her into the centre of the room and turned her over. Her head, blank eyes still open, rolled as if she could not stand to look at me. Her arm, where I held it to flip her, was cool, and the flesh of her face was losing its colour, highlighting the little hairs on her cheeks and blue-tinged lips. As she turned over, the dark rosette of blood on her thigh was hidden, and I remembered my unfinished job upstairs, reversing the floorboards. There was all the more reason to do it now, with the possibility of rogue corpuscles of the cleaner’s blood somewhere in their grain, waiting to slander me to forensic investigators. Would it come to that? Not if I could leave her in the right condition down here.

  I sat on the cleaner’s sofa. Its clear plastic covering squeaked under me. Before this week I might have thought the plastic a fussy, unnecessary precaution; now it seemed very sensible indeed. And that crimson carpet looked very good for concealing stains. My initial impression of the cleaner’s apartment was gloomy disorder. Looking more closely, I saw how well kept it was. The kitschy china statues of shepherdesses were all carefully arranged. There was not a speck of dust on the lacquered surface of the low table beside the sofa. Next to the television remote control – the numbers rubbed off half its buttons by years of use – was a framed black-and-white photograph of a man in an anachronistic military uniform, three small medals on his breast. A husband? Father? Brother? Lost love? The portrait could have come from any year between 1930 and 1970, but something made me certain the man was dead. He looked away from the camera, lost in time. She would have relatives, of course, friends, acquaintances, neighbours here in the building – a personal cosmos orbiting around her, now gone. She would be missed, like this man in the uniform – and would anyone remember him, now? A desperate sadness mounted inside me, and I swallowed it, thinking hard about my breathing, thinking I’m not going to think about that.

  An arch, hung with another bead curtain, led to the kitchen, where pine-fronted cabinets skulked. Another thing swept away in Oskar’s remodelling, with all its structural solidity replaced by glass, openness, natural light and, presumably, somewhere, some heavy-duty steel taking the load. The side wall of the living room, where Oskar built his bookcases, was here entirely covered by a full-colour photograph of a waterfall in a forest, blown up to life size. This decoration had faded with time, taking on a bluish hue. A stag looked out nobly from the scene, peering over a sideboard loaded with ceramic animals.

  Care, and time, and work had gone into this apartment – the same sort of devotion that Oskar expended on his own. It demanded that I leave the cleaner in some kind of respectful state, even after the monstrous disrespect I had so far piled upon her. Again, I had to fight with myself, to stop myself being overwhelmed with melancholy and what I supposed was guilt. I looked down at my hands, still in their stupid Tweetie Pie yellow rubber gloves, their insane, inappropriate jollity, and across at the corpse. She still didn’t look as if she had just fallen down – she was too straight, and her legs were awkwardly crossed at the ankle. But I had no idea how she might look if she had simply dropped on the floor from a heart attack – even the swandive that she had actually fallen into when she died up in Oskar’s kitchen didn’t look natural. The best I could think of was to sit her on the sofa, as if she had felt unwell and sat down, only to die.

  It was worth a try. I rose and tried to pick the body up, my hands under her armpits. But my arms were already tired after dragging her all the way down from Oskar’s flat; the muscles in my forearms ached and my bones were shadows. Although I could move the body to the foot of the sofa, there was no way I could lift it onto the cushions.

  Not with my arms outstretched, anyway. Taking a deep breath, I stood astride the cleaner’s body, hooked my arms under hers and put my remaining strength into lifting her off the ground. We were brought together into a kind of embrace, her cooling weight against me, her face dangerously near mine; a wrong move and her head could turn, her cold cheek could brush against mine...

  Her rump slid onto the squeaking cushions and I let her go, stepping back and brushing off my chest and forearms reflexively. She was on the sofa; her pose was all right, head against the cushions, one arm hanging limply over the side, legs apart but not obscenely so. A spasm of nausea gripped me, but I swiftly had it back under control – everything was fine, she was on the sofa, I could leave now.

  I returned to the front door to move the bucket of cleaning products from where I had left it to the kitchen. There had been something else, too – the mop, which would have to be fetched from upstairs.

  Turning to take the bucket back to the kitchen, something caught my eye. The clouds that filled the sky had parted enough to briefly reveal the sun, which was rising towards its peak. Light was spilling across the floor. Carved into the thick pile of the carpet were two clear grooves, parallel tracks leading into the living room and curving round to the foot of the sofa, where the cleaner was slumped. It was a trail, left by the cleaner’s feet dragging along the floor. And it was unmissable.

  Still holding the bucket, I rubbed the toe of my shoe against this groove. It was possible to obscure it, but only by replacing it with a scuffed, disordered patch that looked just a little more natural. I looked, slightly desperately, for an undisturbed area of carpet, to see how it should appear. It was...not exactly orderly, but its disorder had an unforced rightness about it. I worked my way down the corridor, trying to smooth out the grooves with the sole of my shoe. After leaving the bucket in the kitchen, I examined the results.

  It didn’t look quite right. The grooves were gone, but in their place was a pattern of strokes left by my foot. I walked up and down the corridor, toeing the carpet here and there to even out some patch or tuft that looked suspicious, feeling like a gardener tending to a prize lawn, but without the pleasure or pride. By the time I had finished, any pattern had gone, but I still felt the
texture of the path from door to sofa looked irregular, that aberrant activity could be detected in it. Was that really true, though? Wasn’t that just my mind, knowing what it knew, seeing signs that no one else would pick up – signs that might not even be there?

  Nothing could be done about it, in any case. I grabbed the keys and headed for the door. Again, the stairwell was clear; I locked the cleaner’s front door and affected nonchalance as I ascended the stairs.

  The keys, clutched in my gloved hand, gave me another nagging source of concern. They would have to be left in the cleaner’s flat, and ideally, to complete the illusion I wanted to create, her door should be locked from the inside. But then how would I get out?

  Standing once again in Oskar’s flat, wiping the mop handle with a tea towel to remove any prints my fingers might have left on it, I mused on the problem of the door. Successfully moving the body downstairs without being seen had given me a surge of confidence. Finessing the job by locking the door from the inside would satisfy me, and reassure me that I had thwarted any possible investigation. As ever, the floor was the obstacle – the direct route without using the door or the stairs would be straight up, through all the plaster, joists and boards. If I were more familiar with the building I might have known of secret passages, servants’ stairs, dumb waiters – but for all my intimacy with Oskar’s possessions and floors, I barely knew anything of the rest of the structure he inhabited. No doubt the cleaner had known it best.

  The air had thickened with moisture and the flat was warmer; I was paying in sweat for my fight with the cleaner and the effort of moving her remains. I took off the gloves, went into the bathroom, washed my hands under the cold tap, and splashed water on my face. The mirror was in front of me, and I examined what I saw. Those eyes had seen a dead body now, up close. Did they look any different? Was something added, or gone?

  In the living room, the light had diminished, squeezed out by the gathering weight of purple-grey clouds. A stray gust of wind thumped the windows, hurling a few fat drops of rain against the glass. Thunder sounded, like furniture being moved in a flat above. I had to leave, I had to get home, if not today then tomorrow. There was nothing more to stay for, not after what had happened. I telephoned the airline and asked about flights; there was nothing today, but seats were available tomorrow afternoon. I gave my card numbers, having barely listened to the substantial price the operator gave me. Then I dialled the number of Oskar’s hotel room from the note on the table. It would be very late in Los Angeles, but maybe not too late. But the phone rang unanswered; seven rings, eight, nine...I killed the connection and dialled the second number, for the hotel reception. The calm American voice announcing the name of the international chain was so welcome it seemed almost angelic.

  Was Oskar in his room? The receptionist rang up; there was no answer. I left a message, asking Oskar to call me, thanked her, and put down the phone.

  Oskar didn’t strike me as a heavy sleeper – unless he had taken a pill or was drunk, I was prepared to believe that he was not in the room. Terror washed through my gut: maybe he had left, checked out of the hotel, was already in a Lufthansa jet headed for Frankfurt. No – wait. Surely the hotel would have told me if he had checked out. But shadows of the fear still lingered. I had been thinking of Oskar as connected to his location; checking there and finding him gone was unnerving.

  Steady, heavy rain began to fall. I could not remember if I had left the bedroom window open or closed, and hurried through to check. It was closed, bolted, and the cat had not reappeared on the balcony.

  The balcony. The cat. That was how to leave the cleaner’s front door locked. I slid back the bolt on the window and stepped out. The street was loud with drumming, running, splashing water and the occasional whoosh of a car. Another balcony was directly below Oskar’s – attached to the cleaner’s bedroom, I imagined – and beneath that was the drenched street.

  Now or never, while it was raining and there were few people out. After putting the marigolds back on – an act that now seemed horribly associated with criminality – I grabbed the mop and the keys and left Oskar’s flat. The hallway was of course empty; by now I expected it to be empty. It rang with a sound of rain hitting skylights and windows. Drainpipes concealed somewhere in the building’s fabric gurgled.

  I let myself into the cleaner’s flat in a rush – too quickly, in fact, without any preparation for what I would find in there. As soon as I was through the door, I saw the corpse where I had left it on the sofa, outlined in the grey light from the windows. It made me jump, like seeing a mannequin or a dressmaker’s dummy at the wrong moment in the wrong circumstances. The rain filled the flat with sounds and for a dumbstruck, nervy few seconds I stared at the body, its head at an uncanny angle, trying to tell if it had been moved or not since I had been here last.

  But the plan was the plan. I hunted through the keys and, finding the right one, double-locked the front door. Now locked in, I took the mop through to the kitchen and left it leaning on the wall. The keys I put on the counter above the bucket of cleaning supplies. Passing back through the living room took me near the corpse again, and I found myself compelled to look at it. Its attitude, the position it took on the sofa, sickened me somehow – there was something foully unnatural about it, as if it were a caricature of something that had been alive. And its deadness, the fact that the life it was once home to was irretrievable, could never return to this vessel, seemed to mock me. There was no going back now, its inner renewal had ceased, it was on the path to decay and dispersal.

  My mouth was dry; I swallowed. Outside, it was still raining, and although the body had not started to corrupt the air in the room, it felt distinctly unhealthy. Entering the cleaner’s bedroom gave me a searing dose of guilt – an uninvited stranger, I felt I was perpetrating a further profanation. Moving the corpse was one thing – I knew the body, I had met it when it was alive, I had been involved (however indirectly and innocently) in its demise, and my transporting of it could be interpreted as an act of respect. But I had no business in this intimate space; I was an even greater intruder here. I hurried through the room, deliberately paying as little attention as possible to its contents, registering only details – the sheets on the bed tucked in hotel-tight, a cross on the wall, a dressing table, coats and dressing gowns on hangers on the wardrobe door. The window onto the balcony was not bolted, a good omen. Once on the balcony itself, I quickly shut it behind me to prevent rain getting into the bedroom.

  As I had hoped, the rain meant that few people were on the streets. As I stepped out someone walked briskly underneath, umbrella up, oblivious to everything above eye level. I crouched down all the same, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. The street was clear. I stood and lifted a leg over the curved wall, resting it on a slender decorative ridge around the bottom of the balcony; then I brought over the other leg. Without anything protecting me from a fall, the street now seemed further down. My shirt was quickly soaked through. The cats had made it look so easy, so graceful, but there was no easy halfway stage for me between where I was and the ground.

  I started to lower myself into a crouching position, still clutching the lip of the wall. For the first time, I was grateful for the rubber gloves – without them, it would have been difficult to maintain a grip with cold, wet hands. I took one of my feet off the balcony and let it dangle free in space. I lowered my centre of gravity as far as possible, before letting the other foot slip, hanging, all my weight on my arms. My upper arms burned, taut; my shoulders strained and I expected for a sick moment the popping pain of dislocation. Swollen drops of water fell from the balconies above and splashed distractingly on me, trickling down my neck. The shining flagstones still seemed a long way beneath my feet. But every second I delayed was another chance to be discovered. I let go.

  The landing jarred my ankles, winded me, and cracked my jaws together painfully. Water splashed my ankles and into my shoes. As I tried to recapture my breath, a tram passed by the c
rossroads on the perpendicular street. Inside it, the lights were on – a row of pale, blank faces stared out through condensation-streaked glass like baguettes behind a sneezeguard in a café. They stared at me, but I don’t know if they saw me in the moment they whisked by, a sodden figure in inadequate clothes and washing-up gloves, hair plastered to his head, standing dazed on a cross street. There was nothing to connect me with the balcony above my head, no way of knowing what was behind that window, and they would have no explanation for the grin of victory spread across my face.

  The low throb of the dishwasher, steadily disposing of evidence, still permeated Oskar’s flat. Its gargling rhythm was a comforting domestic sound, and I thought of home, my own home. Restlessly, I turned the Earth in my mind, watching its dark and light halves, conjuring flight times. If Oskar had departed in the Californian morning...if I left now...

  Time passed and I fretted, fearing that at any moment I might hear a policeman’s gloved hand hammering on the door. My legs and arms shivered and twitched in the dry clothes I had put on, a delayed reaction to the earlier heavy lifting and my drop from the balcony – and, no doubt to the adrenalin leaving my system. I poured wine into a dirty glass, the same glass I had drunk from last night after clearing away the fragments of its shattered brother.

  The floorboard in the kitchen was still loose, lifted out of its place. It was as if a secret switch had been found somewhere, pushed, and pop, up came the board, revealing a secret stash of gems or a hidden warren of forgotten rooms. A loose board like that exerted a powerful and mysterious appeal – the lure of an excavated road or a peephole in a featureless fence. And if there really was a simple way of just hiding the stains, of reversing all that had happened, I realised I could not let it pass by before I left. Fooling Oskar, leaving the damage almost in plain sight, but where he would never find it, was too tempting to resist.