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The price has gone up, but you’re not about to complain. Your mouth is still too minty for smoking, so you'll grab a coffee from the machine by the second floor toilets. You close the door and make it back to the cupboard. Perhaps the earlier bus has been delayed just enough that you can catch it and avoid waiting in the dark, singing pale blinds drawn all day. It’s a payment to the universe, so perhaps the cigarette you’ll have on your walk home won’t be the one to give you cancer. Daydreaming these actions always makes you feel kinder. Consider uncovering its eyes, letting it take an unrestricted breath, to moisten its lips with water. The twitching is less than yesterday, even less than the day before, but perhaps that’s acceptance rather than anything more final. You know it wants to be touched, to be able to see. You cough loudly, so it knows that you are here, so it will call out in that language you don’t understand. A fleshy lump in the corner, quivering, a bag on its head. A pile of papers to shuffle, straighten, glance through. There is a water jug on the safe with three glasses, but you know better than to touch it. An accident of opportunity gave you pass, and you’re not about to give it up with any fake attempt at decency, of notions of "the right thing" so carefully primed in your childhood. Blue, blue, in your ears, and you’re not allowed inside this room at all, but that’s why you come here. You bring out your own brush from the pocket of your tabard and have a cheeky scrub, give some minty spit to the bin you then tie up and lug downstairs to the skip. In the evening’s hush you can take a moment here. One hundred and fifty brushes, and never enough toothpaste. You counted them once, when you were either curious or bored. On the far wall, rows of toothbrush holders have been fixed to cheap plastic shelving. Thai food in paper boxes, piles of fruit, apples and bananas arranged in balanced displays. The second is more of a kitchen, although there are no appliances. You rub a cloth over the fields and faces. Photographs of rural landscapes, oil wells, some school prize-giving where everyone is in animal masks, have been blown up, poster size, and bolted to the wall. #MATCHBOOK CREATIVE SKIN#Atrium first, then the halls, sucking the day’s skin cells from the nylon pile. You drop your tabard over your head, screw in your earbuds- blue, blue, electric blue-and drag the vacuum cleaner from its corner. Sometimes it’s written in red, sometimes in blue, but closes with the same smiley-face whose smile is more pointed than a curve. They are always the same, so you don’t know why she bothers. Margaret is always careful to mark up the set of instructions on the dry-wipe board. The cupboard of cleaning supplies is just large enough for a chair to fit between the boxes of bleach and stinky rags, so you can sit and look at the list of jobs for that night. By five to six the offices are empty, quiet-aired. The point of contact name is Jenny Dexter.Margaret is the boss, so you suppose it’s okay that she leaves early. The business address is 1317 N Pennsylvania St, Indianapolis, IN 46202-2412, USA.
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