Mm

The first thing I ever stole from him was a cigarette.

Not from his hand. From the ashtray in his office, half-burned, the filter damp with his spit. I was nineteen and stupid and it was two in the morning and I'd been cleaning that building for three months, long enough to know he never left before midnight but sometimes stayed until three. That night he'd left at one. I found the cigarette still smoking. I put it in my mouth and I tasted him and I stood in the dark of his office with the vacuum humming somewhere down the hall and I felt something open in my chest like a door I didn't know was there.

That was four years ago. I'm not nineteen anymore. I'm not stupid either, or at least I tell myself that, but I'm still cleaning his building and I'm still taking things.

Tonight it's a pen. Black lacquer, heavy in the hand, the kind of thing a man buys when he wants people to notice his hands. He left it on the desk next to a stack of papers he doesn't want anyone to read. I know this because the papers are always face-down. I know this because I've never once seen him leave them face-up, not in four years, not even when he steps out to piss.

I take the pen. I don't need it. I don't even like it. But it's his and it's here and my fingers close around it before I've decided anything.

The office smells like him. Cedar and smoke and something underneath, something warm and animal that I've never been able to name. I breathe it in and I hate myself for breathing it in and I do it anyway. The cleaning cart is outside the door. The vacuum is running in the east wing where I left it so the noise would cover my footsteps. I've gotten good at this. Four years of practice.

I pocket the pen and I'm turning to leave when the door opens.

He's taller than I remember. That's not true. He's the same height. But he fills the frame in a way that makes me feel small, and I hate that, and I hate that I don't hate it enough.

"You're still here," he says.

His voice is low and flat. Not angry. Not anything. I've heard him on the phone with contractors, with lawyers, with his brother. He talks like every word costs him something and he's decided you're not worth the expense.

"I'm almost done," I say. "East wing."

"You're in my office."

"I was emptying the trash."

The trash can is by the door. Empty. I emptied it an hour ago. He looks at it and then he looks at me and I feel the pen in my pocket like a coal.

"Your cart's outside," he says.

"I know."

"You were in here."

"I was checking the windows. Sometimes they don't latch."

He steps into the room. The door swings shut behind him and the click of it is loud in the quiet. The vacuum is still running somewhere, a distant hum, and I hold onto that sound like a rope.

"What's your name?" he asks.

I've worked here four years. I've cleaned his office twice a week, every week, for four years. He's never asked my name.

"Marisol," I say.

"Marisol." He says it like he's testing the weight of it. "You've been here a while."

"Yes."

"You're good at your job."

"I try."

"You're good at other things too."

I don't say anything. My heart is doing something complicated in my chest, a kind of stutter, and I can feel the pen pressing against my thigh through the fabric of my pocket.

"The cigarette," he says. "Two years ago. The one I left in the ashtray."

I don't move. I don't breathe.

"I counted them," he says. "I always count them. I smoke four a night. That night I smoked three and left one burning and when I came back the next morning it was gone."

"It probably burned out."

"It probably didn't."

He takes another step toward me. He's close enough now that I can see the gray at his temples, the lines around his mouth, the way his collar sits open at the throat. He's fifty-something. Old enough to be my father. That's never mattered to me. That's part of it, maybe. That's the thing I don't say even to myself.

"I don't care about the cigarette," he says. "I cared that you thought I wouldn't notice."

"I didn't think anything."

"You thought I was careless. You thought I wouldn't see."

"I didn't think."

"You did." He's right in front of me now. I can smell the whiskey on his breath, faint, hours old. "You thought I was the kind of man who leaves things behind without knowing. And I am. But I know what I leave. I know what I lose."

"Then why didn't you say something?"

"Because I wanted to see what else you'd take."

The vacuum cuts off. The timer, probably, or a breaker. The silence that follows is total and I can hear my own breathing, too fast, too loud.

"Empty your pockets," he says.

"No."

"Do it."

"I don't have to do anything you say. You're not my boss. You're just the man who owns the building."

"Same thing."

"It's not."

He smiles. It's not a nice smile. It's the smile of a man who's been waiting for something and finally got it, and I don't know what he's been waiting for and I don't know what he got and I'm afraid to find out.

"You're right," he says. "I'm not your boss. So I can't fire you. I can only call the police."

"For what?"

"For theft."

"You don't know I stole anything."

"I know you have something in your pocket. I can see the shape of it."

I look down. He's right. The pen is visible through the thin fabric, a dark line against my thigh. I feel stupid. I feel like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar. I feel like I've been playing a game I didn't know had rules.

"Give it to me," he says.

"No."

"Marisol."

"I said no."

He reaches for me. Not fast. Slow, deliberate, giving me time to move away. I don't move. His hand closes around my wrist and his fingers are warm and dry and I can feel the callus on his palm, the roughness of a man who works with his hands even though he doesn't have to. He pulls my hand out of my pocket and the pen comes with it, black and gleaming in the low light, and he takes it from me without letting go of my wrist.

"You wanted me to catch you," he says.

"No."

"You did. You wanted me to see."

"I didn't."

"Then why did you take it? You don't need a pen. You don't even write."

I don't have an answer. Or I do, but it's not one I can say out loud. It's the kind of answer that lives in the body, in the throat, in the place where want and shame get tangled up together until you can't tell them apart.

"Let go of me," I say.

"Not yet."

"Let go."

"Tell me why you took it."

"I don't know why."

"You do."

"I don't."

"You do." He steps closer. His body is a wall of heat in front of me, and I can feel the pen in his hand, the same pen I held a minute ago, and I want it back. I want it back so badly it scares me. "Tell me."

"Because it was yours," I say. "Because I wanted something that was yours."

The words come out before I can stop them. They hang in the air between us, ugly and true, and I watch his face change. Not surprise. Not disgust. Something else. Something that looks almost like hunger.

"Good," he says. "That's good."

He lets go of my wrist. I step back, toward the door, and he doesn't stop me. I'm shaking. I don't know when I started shaking. The vacuum is still off. The building is silent. I can hear a car passing on the street below, the hiss of tires on wet asphalt, and I realize it's raining. I didn't know it was raining.

"Come back tomorrow," he says.

"I work tomorrow."

"I know. Come back after."

"I always come after."

"Then come to my office. Not the east wing. Here."

I should say no. I should quit, walk out, never come back. I should call the police myself, report him for something, anything, make it so I can't come back even if I want to. I should do a lot of things.

"Okay," I say.

He nods. He puts the pen in his pocket, the same pocket where I kept it, and I watch his hand disappear and reappear empty. He walks to his desk and sits down and picks up the papers and turns them over and starts reading. Like I'm not there. Like nothing happened.

I leave. I walk down the hall and I get my cart and I push it to the elevator and I press the button and I wait. My wrist still feels his fingers. My mouth still tastes the cigarette from two years ago. The elevator comes and I get in and I press the button for the lobby and I watch the numbers descend and I think about the pen in his pocket, the pen I stole, the pen he took back.

Tomorrow. After.

The doors open. The lobby is empty and bright and clean and I push my cart across the marble floor and I don't look back.