CLEANER: Chapter Five - Part Seven

The phone began to ring as I was dusting the shelves and I stopped irritably, glaring at it.

I’d been so relaxed; so lost in what I was doing. Jumping out of it was a nuisance; a breaking of the spell; almost a shock to the system. I’d been humming to myself, enjoying the tranquillity. The shrill insistence of the bleating ringer had no patience for that. It demanded my instant and total attention.

Grumbling to myself, I went over and picked up the phone on the desk. “Hello?”

“Dahlia?”

I frowned. “Yes.”

“It’s Tommy.” My agent.

“Hi. What do you want?”

He paused. “Er, you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I was getting tired of people asking me that. “What do you want?”

He chuckled. “I was calling to talk about our meeting yesterday with Leah.”

“What about it?”

“Are you sure you’re okay Dahlia? You seem a little... off.”

“I was in the middle of something,” I said.

“Okay. Er, sorry about that. I do need to talk to you though. About what happened.”

“What did happen?” I knew I shouldn’t be short with him but he was really rubbing me up the wrong way today.

“Just that... Well Leah was a little disappointed that you weren’t more...”

I waited.

“That you weren’t more – how to put it – enthusiastic... about the photo shoot.”

I looked across at the unfinished shelves; the can of furniture polish; the cloth.

“Dahlia?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you’d put the phone down.”

“No. I’m here.”

“So what do you think about that?”

“About what?”

“Leah. And the photo shoot. The magazine article.”

I shrugged an invisible shrug and opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Eventually I forced a half-hearted. “I may have been a bit distracted.”

“Distracted? Okay. Great.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ve put a lot on the line for this. I’ve called in favours. I owe Leah big for this when she was sceptical about it in the first place. We need to be giving her a hundred and fifty percent. We need to be wowing her. I mean it. News travels fast and we can’t mess too many people around.”

“You mean I can’t mess them around.”

“Yeah. Okay. You.”

“So you’re telling me to pull my finger out.”

“Basically...”

“Give my all. Push harder. Put some real effort in.”

“Hey I’m just trying to help you.”

“Help me.”

“Yeah. You know I am.”

“What did she say exactly; this Leah?” I asked.

Now it was Tommy that went quiet.

“Well? How exactly did she expect me to act?”

“Dahlia, calm down for a minute.”

“I am calm,” I snapped. “I’m just wondering how I failed this time; how this woman who met me for one hour decided that I didn’t meet her exacting standards.”

“Hey, look, slow down Dahlia. Listen to me. Let’s just cool off.”

“Don’t tell me to cool off Tommy. And don’t tell me to calm down. In fact don’t even talk to me at all.”

I slammed the phone down and the physical action was followed immediately be three crashing waves of emotion.

Anger at the way he’d spoken to me; the way he’d made me feel.

Sorrow that I’d been so tough on him when I knew he was only trying to help.

And then guilt and self-recrimination, because I knew that Tommy didn’t deserve that.

I stared at the phone, wondering if he would call back.

He didn’t.

I wondered if I should call him.

But I didn’t.

The spray can of furniture polish was still on the shelf next to the microfibre cloth. There were streaks in the dust where I'd worked.

I looked at the phone again.

Then I walked back to shelves and got back to work, trying to put it out of my head.