The days continued to move along, one into the next, punctuated by enough markers to keep Joe-Nathan moving almost as predictably as the days. He felt like a man he saw in a film once, who found his way through an underwater tunnel by pulling himself along a rope that had evenly spaced knots along its length. The weekdays were the knots and Joe focused on one knot at a time. Tuesday was as it should be, and so was Wednesday; nothing new, nothing eventful, nothing to consult the yellow book about.
On Thursday morning he had three full trolleys of go-backs to keep him busy and he carefully returned vases and packs of crayons and myriad other items to their own kind.
‘Hey, Joe-Nathan,’ said a voice.
He turned from the shelves to see Pip, with an upside-down smile.
‘I heard about your mum; I was really sorry to hear it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I had been looking forward to meeting her at the quiz night,’ said Pip.
‘You will never meet her now, at anything.’
‘That’s true,’ said Pip. ‘But hey, you should still plan on coming. When my uncle died, my aunty said that being around other people and doing normal things was the best thing.’
‘But quiz night is not normal.’
‘Oh, yes. I see,’ said Pip, pausing to consider the truth of his statement. ‘But you’ll be with me and Chloe. We can all dress up nice and it might be fun. So…’
‘Yes, it might be fun.’
‘Well, good, that’s settled, then,’ said Pip, and her smile turned the right way up.
At the end of the work day, Hugo rushed up to him, breathless.
‘Joe, there’s a spillage on aisle fifteen. Can you get a mop? And be careful, please, I’ll send someone to help you.’
‘What colour is it?’ Joe asked as Hugo dashed away.
‘It’s clear,’ Hugo called back over his shoulder.
‘Clear?’ Did that mean it would be clear what colour it was when Joe saw it, or clear as in transparent? Hugo would never, ever send Joe to clear up a red spillage, but he couldn’t recall what they sold in aisle fifteen. Joe fetched the mop, as instructed, but on his way he took a detour via the spillage, so that he could see what it was first. He left his go-back trolley and went to the mosaic, turned north-west and headed down aisle fifteen. He couldn’t see any spillage at all. He walked more quickly and was suddenly hit by an overwhelming aroma of the swimming pool.
‘Huh?’ he managed to say, just before his legs went from under him and he slipped onto the floor, something wet and slimy and transparent underneath him.
‘Bleach,’ he said to no one; the store was quiet and no customers were in the aisle. He put his hand to the floor and tried to push himself up. His hand slid away so that now he was laying on his side in it. He lay there for a moment, thinking that he would have to get onto his knees in order to get up, but all his clothes would be ruined as a result.
‘You idiot.’
Joe turned and saw Mean Charlie’s shoes. He craned his neck and saw that Charlie was smiling down at him, shaking his head. In one hand he held a mop, and in the other, two bright-yellow slip-hazard signs featuring a stickman image that looked exactly as Joe must have looked in the moment before he fell down.
Charlie placed the hazard signs at either end of the spill and then pulled on a plastic glove. He held his hand out to Joe, offering to help him up.
Joe had shaken a lot of hands but he had never touched Charlie. He looked at Charlie’s hand and hesitated.
‘Come on, grab hold,’ said Charlie.
He really didn’t want to, but he couldn’t get up by himself.
Joe reached up with a hand covered in bleach. He was glad that Charlie was wearing a glove, partly so he would be protected from the chemical, but also so they wouldn’t have any skin-to-skin contact. Joe braced himself to hold on tight, he wanted to get up in one go, so that it was over with quickly. The two men held hands and Charlie pulled hard, at the same time as Joe. Presumably it was because gravity was in Joe’s favour – what with him being on the ground pulling downwards – but whatever the reason, Mean Charlie overbalanced, and Joe pictured a different stickman in another awkward position, as Mean Charlie fell on top of him.
Joe inhaled sharply and squeezed his eyes tight shut. He started panting. Never ever in his life had anyone been on top of him.
‘You total fuckwit,’ said Charlie, who quickly lifted his weight off Joe and got onto his hands and knees in a crouching position above him.
Joe opened his eyes briefly but the smell of bleach and the bright lights framing Charlie’s angry face were too much to take and he shut them again.
‘Pip-pip-pip-byob-byob-byob-pip-pip-pip-byob-byob-byob,’ he repeated over and over.
‘What the fuck?’ said Charlie. He stood, but gingerly, and his feet were not in real contact with the ground, so that he looked like Bambi on ice for a moment before he went over sideways and landed with a grunt on the floor again, face-to-face this time with Joe. Joe locked eyes with Charlie and in the same way that he was normally compelled to look away, he found his gaze trapped; he stared into Charlie’s eyes in a way he had never done with anyone before, so why – no, how – could it be that he saw something familiar there? The answer came from nowhere and it came as a picture: it was the same look he had given himself in the bathroom mirror when his reflection had asked why he removed the little stickers from the Imperial Leather soaps. Mean Charlie was solemn; Mean Charlie was sad.
But Charlie broke eye contact, said ‘Fuck sake,’ and crawled away from Joe. Charlie sat in the bleach that he had now smeared across the floor while he took his shoes off and then planted his feet (just in socks) on a dry patch and stood.
‘You do the same,’ he said to Joe. ‘Just scooch over here and take your shoes off.’
It was nice – this sentence – thought Joe; it was a helpful sentence without a single swear word in it. Joe did as he was told and soon he and Charlie stood side-by-side in their socks; their clothes and hands covered in bleach.
‘Oh, boys, boys,’ said Hugo, hurrying up the aisle. ‘PAMELA!’ he shouted, and she bustled into view looking pink and pleased to be of help, in her green tabard. ‘Get more hazard signs and close this aisle off.’ Pamela nodded and disappeared. Hugo fumbled at a bunch of keys on his belt, muttering, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’, and gestured for Joe and Charlie to follow him. ‘No, leave your shoes. Quick, quick, we need to get you both into the shower.’