Clean

“You’re early!”

I found Shelby and Theresa in the lobby of my building, half an hour sooner than I had expected them.

They were here to spend a few hours with me before the evening’s sex party.

I kissed Theresa on the check.

“Hey Jefferson,” she said, sweetly.

“You’re late!” Shelby scowled.

“Sorry, baby,” I bent to kiss her as she sat. “My meeting took longer than I thought. How is your foot? Can you walk?”

This was the first time I had seen her since a car accident a few days earlier. I had expected to see her still on crutches.

“No, I’m fine, just hobbling. Help me up.”

I offered an arm, and she stood. Her foot was tender, but she walked fine.

“I’m glad to see you walking so well,” I said. “And may I say, you’ve got it going on today.”

Shelby is a stylish thing. Her looks work my buttons.

In cold weather months, she is a Mod, with a cap and scarf that make you wonder where she parked the Vespa.

Now that the weather is warm, she veers to retro Seventies, with backless print blouses, hip-hugger Ali McGraw denims and wide Natalie Wood sunglasses.

I didn’t know I had a thing for that look. But it gets me going, sending my memory to mom’s Cosmopolitan magazines , the chief visual stimuli back in the sixth grade, when I was inventing masturbation.

You know, years before Shelby was born.

“Shelby, honey,” I said. “You are hotter than Rhoda Morgenstern.”

She stared at me blankly. I laughed.

“Rhoda? Mary’s best friend?”

Theresa joined in. “Oh come on, Shelby! Mary Tyler Moore! ‘Who can turn the world on with her smile . . .’”

“’ Who can take a nothing day . . . ” I tried.

Nothing. No television culture in this girl.

“Sorry, guys,” Shelby admitted. “Not much TV here.”

I shook my head, grimacing at Theresa. At least she, too, has worshipped at the Church of Mary Tyler Moore. She knows the liturgy.

She knows that Murray gets a kiss on his bald pate. She knows that Mr. Grant keeps a bottle of bourbon in his lower desk drawer.

Shelby fashioned her face into a Popeye squint, forgiving me her wait in the lobby.

“Yeah right, talked your way out of that one.”

The elevator took us to my floor.

“Theresa, honey, I have a surprise for you,” I said, unlocking my door.

“For me?” she beamed. “What?”

“Take a look! My kitchen is a mess. And it’s all yours!”

I had saved two days worth of dishes.

It was hard for me to endure the sight, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make for her.

Theresa loves to please. Cleaning also comes high on her list of favorite activities.

I decided to let my kitchen grow filthy as a consolation prize for her recent sojourn at Todd’s apartment.

Theresa and Todd have hit it off lately.

I’m glad for that, as they are both deserving friends. I’ve also enjoyed the thought of the notoriously messy bachelor meeting his match with a woman who loves to clean.

She had been there for a couple of days last week when I called to check in on things.

“So, I assume you are cleaning like crazy, huh?” I asked.

“No,” she sighed. “He won’t let me.”

“He won’t?”

“No.”

“Not even the kitchen?”

“He says the dishes have been dirty too long for me to do them.”

“Have you alphabetized his movies?”

“He says he likes them as they are.”

“You must be suffering!”

“I am sitting on my hands,” she despaired.

“But,” she brightened, “he did let me clean his bathroom sink! Did you know it is black? I think its marble!”

Poor Theresa. To be in a place that so needed to be cleaned and organized, and to be unable to do anything about it . . .

The very least I could do was to offer her a mess in need of her tender care.

She immediately set to the task of washing my dishes.

“Enjoy,” I said, kissing the back of her neck, my arms encircling her waist. “And later,” I whispered, “I will let you clean my bathroom.”

She mewed.

I took her best friend by the hand, and retired to the bedroom.

Later, as Shelby and I fucked, I caught a glimpse through the open door as Theresa moved on to clean my bathroom. I noted the time.

She had been at it for about a half hour when I went to check on her. The bathroom door was closed. I knocked.

“Yes?”

“May I come in?” I was nude, concerned about propriety.

“Yes.”

Theresa was humming as she scoured the towel rack.

“Finding everything you need?”

“Oh yes. I am about to scrub the tub!”

“Excellent work. Carry on.”

I closed the door, and went back to the bedroom.

After she had been at it for about an hour, Theresa came to join Shelby and me in the bedroom.

“How is it?” I asked, my fingers tracing lines on Shelby’s breasts. “Very clean?”

“Yes, I hope so.”

“Just in time, too,” Shelby noted. “Thomas will be here soon.”

Thomas periodically goes through ambivalent phases about the gatherings.

He likes them very much, but now and then, he needs to take a break. Still, he likes Shelby and Theresa, so he was stopping by after work to visit.

We dressed when Thomas arrived.

As the three of them chatted, I went to investigate Theresa’s work in the bathroom.

The porcelain gleamed.

The tile walls were spotless.

The mirror shone.

Most impressively, she had accomplished an impossible feat.

Over the sink are two porcelain fixtures—one to hold a bar of soap, the other to hold toothbrushes. The soap tray was, of course, thoroughly cleaned. It doesn’t take a dedicated cleaner to pull that off.

The toothbrush rack, on the other hand, had presented a special challenge.

When my son Jason was a toddler, his first toothbrush had become jammed in one of the holders. I had wriggled and tugged at that toothbrush for nearly a decade, to no effect. It would not budge.

I was resigned to the sight of it, forever marring the possibility of a perfectly tidy bathroom.

Somehow, in the course of her hour or so shut inside my bathroom, Theresa had removed it.

My eyes were drawn to its absence the moment I opened the door to begin my inspection.

I was very pleased.

Perhaps that bravura accomplishment is what blinded me to Theresa’s failing.

Impressed after inspecting the bathroom, I signed off on Theresa’s hard work by sitting on the shining, glistening toilet.

I relieved myself of a satisfying bowel movement.

Then, as I finished up, I noticed it.

While the bathroom was undeniably spotless at eye level, the floor had not been thoroughly mopped—much less scrubbed.

There were dustballs

In the bathroom!

And grit in the grout. And the remnants of a gummy stain. And dust in the corners. And . . .

My mind reeled.

From my bedroom, I could hear laughter.

Shelby was taunting Theresa that her blowjob was far superior to that of her friend.

“I wouldn’t know,” Thomas demurred. “You’ve only ever blown me for, like, two seconds.”

“Confess it, though,” I said, suddenly standing in the doorway. “Those were easily the happiest two seconds of your young life.”

“Oh,” Thomas concurred. “Easily.”

“Shut up, then,” Shelby said, pushing him on the bed. “Give me the cock.”

Thomas unzipped. Shelby tugged off his pants, then his underwear.

Theresa joined them on the bed.

Shelby looked Thomas square in the eye, then consumed his cock.

“Jesus!” Thomas was stunned.

Theresa removed her shirt and bra, giving her breasts to his face.

As I watched their bodies shed clothes, their skin moving their nerve endings to one another, I was left to wonder:

What was I to do about my bathroom floor?

I could not reprimand Theresa at this moment.

She was so intent on pleasing Thomas.

This threesome unfolded on my bed, against the light coming through my blinds as the sun set, with such beauty.

I could not worry about my bathroom now. Still, I was not about to mop my own bathroom floor.

I busied myself with preparing my back room for the party.

This room was a mess. A mess I have thus far denied to Theresa. I wondered if I could I ever trust her with it.

Perhaps this is a mess that remains my own to clear.

As I cleaned, I made forays into my bedroom. I set up candles as Theresa and Shelby traded Thomas’s cock.

I put away clothes. Thomas fucked Theresa.

At one point, Thomas laughed about my comings and goings.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“I dunno, Jefferson. I’m just not used to you passing by the hot sex.”

“I’ll get mine, Thomas. You get yours.” I said. “You having fun, Theresa?”

“Unh, yeah,” she moaned.

The next day, I would mop the bathroom floor myself.

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Ali McGraw
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Mary Tyler Moore
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