Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

By Jack Steer

It was a frigid October night, and the streets were rainsoaked. Some buildings were immense black spires but others had pockets of light from corner stores and diners that never closed. Bright red brake lights on traffic-clogged highways; a river of unfortunates caught in amber. Watching the city unravel, seventy-two stories up, was Roy. 

He was just Roy. He cleaned the floors. He’d written his name on his tag in a curly font with a smiley face.

There was something about that skyscraper view that revealed life’s cogs, like seeing the machinations of a theme park ride. Sidewalks, streets, highways; everything ran on tracks. Night by night people traced the same paths. It made him realize that life had no twists and turns. There was no sense in regret. 

He was Roy. He cleaned the floors. He was exactly where he was supposed to be.

The office space was scrubbed of all character. Everywhere he turned, the same sanitized grey. The stale air smelled of fresh printer ink. Though the silence occasionally unnerved him, Roy always worked without music. With it he was prone to daydreaming, to turning that wedding band on his finger—its counterpart buried a decade ago. His wife had been buried with it at his request, as he thought it best he didn’t hold onto it. 

In that dark and vast tower Roy was alone in a way that people rarely were. Down below, there were always people close by, separated by the walls of apartments, or cubicles, or cars in traffic. But at the apex of the tower, in the middle of the night, Roy stood a half-mile from another living soul. He was invisible; he slept while the world played out around him, and worked in that quiet cavern of time when everyone else was asleep. The workers left in the evening and returned to spotless carpets. 

Moral character is truly tested when no one is looking. Floor by floor Roy was confronted by a sea of desks with hidden treasures, and as he vacuumed under each he tugged the drawers to see which came loose. Some were locked while others, workstations of the trusting and the careless, were open for rummaging. 

In one drawer Roy found an unmarked postcard from the Maldives. In another, a pocket knife, an old roll of peppermint candies, and a small baggy of cocaine. A secret flip phone tucked beneath a stack of paperwork. Desk by desk Roy trundled along like a shameless archaeologist. He was always careful to leave things how he found them. 

He was Roy. He cleaned the floors. He wasn’t supposed to leave a trace. 

A money clip pinching a wad of Japanese yen sat in one drawer, orange pill bottles rattling around in several others. Old packs of cigarettes. A little tin of marbles. A photograph gave him a jolt; a faded polaroid of a young couple giggling in a diner booth. He put it back gently and continued on. 

And then he found the sketch. A crude, awkward, smudged drawing of a bird done in ballpoint pen, etched in the margins of an old office memo. The drawing couldn’t have taken more than two minutes and it revealed a baffling lack of talent. But it was earnest, and it was unrestrained, and it was here, of all places; a radical and solitary creative spark in that sterilized place.

Roy couldn’t put it down.

It made him smile. He stood there in the halflight, pondering, turning the wedding band on his finger. After giving the drawing one final look, he slipped it into his pocket. He wished they’d realize it went missing.