Authors: Michael Boehm
The Maestro bowed to his audience.
WHEEZE
He was vacuuming when the phone rang.
He w
ould push the machine the
length of the w
all-to-wall carpeting, then make
a careful U-turn and push it along the next row.
He hated to be interrupted while vacuuming, for fear of not being certain where he left off.
A single square inch of unvacuumed carpet could contain hundreds of dust mites, or thousands of grains of pollen, or millions of mold spores.
Best not to take any chances.
So, he let the answering machine get it.
"Mister Gerber?
This is the front desk.
There's a gentleman here says he's supposed to meet with you, something about a presentation you signed up for.
He's got a letter here from you saying to let him in, so unless you say otherwise I'll send him on up..."
Gerber returned the vacuum to its upright position and switched it off.
Damn that watchman, I told him not to do these kinds of things.
Peeling off his rubber gloves, he snatched the phone from its cradle.
"Hello?
Don't send him up, you hear me...?"
A faint clicking at the end of the line was his only response.
The watchman had already hung up.
Gerber would have to file another letter of complaint against him.
For the amount of
money the condo
owners’ a
ssociation charges, they should hire some quality people to work the front desk.
And they expected him to tip them every Christmas?
He went to the front door, opened it a foot, and peered out.
The hallway beyond floated in a white-on-white fluorescent haze.
It was empty, but then the elevator at the far end chimed softly.
He quickly closed and latched the door.
Perhaps I won't answer,
he thought.
He would just stand there, silently, for as long as it took.
From beyond the door he heard a soft shuffling sound.
The plush carpeting muffled most noises, but Gerber would have swore he heard the man dragging one foot as he walked.
The shuffling paused outside his door.
Gerber held his breath.
There was a knock.
I will just wait until he goes away.
Gerber stood there, one minute, four, eight.
His left foot was going numb.
He shifted his weight to his right foot, and the floor groaned.
There was another knock.
Gerber sighed.
R
esigned to his fate
,
he unlatched the door and pulled it open a few inches.
Outside stood a tall, bulky man.
The scraggly black hair on his head seemed to have slid down to the bottom of his chin, leaving his bald pate to glimmer in the fluorescent light.
Heavy glasses glinted at him from in front of narrow eyes.
"Mister Gerber?
I'm Wilson.
From the HomePure website? Remember? You were interested in cleaning equipment."
Gerber blinked.
"Oh yes," he said, "Right.
The free product demonstration.
I thought you were going to mail me a DVD."
"Video cannot express the true value of our products.
May I?"
He inquired, still grinning.
Grudgingly, Gerber edged backwards, opening the door wider.
The man was surprisingly large
.
He wore a beaten
leather duster
coat
over a suit that had been, at one point, quite fine, but was now threadbare.
He reached behind him and pulled a large suitcase into the condominium.
Gerber winced as he saw the suitcase's wheels leaving deep tracks in the plush cream-colored carpet.
"The pro
ducts I am going to show you
are unparalleled in the industry.
No one, and I mean no one, can match our filtering technology."
He stood the suitcase upright in the middle of Gerber's living room, unlatched it, and pulled the halves apart, standing behind it as if it were a lectern.
"Have you heard of HEPA filters?" Wilson asked.
"Of course," said Gerber.
"Trash," s
aid Wilson.
"Utter trash.
HEPA filters c
atch 99.97 percent of all particles.
Sounds good at first, until you realize that that 0.03 percent of the typical household's dust-load still represents millions of particles.
That is more than enough to cause symptoms in sensitive individuals."
He withdrew a bulky apparatus from the suitcase.
Gleaming chrome and black plastic wrapped around each other to give a sense of motion and finesse to the collection of tubes, cords, and canisters that he placed on the carpet.
Gerber was not impressed.
As Wilson searched for a power plug, he prattled on.
"Five horsepower motor, a six-quart dustbin, and a three-stage magneto-hydro-dynamic centripetal filtering apparatus. This is the type of technology they use for filtering the air on the Space Shuttle."
Gerber refrained from pointing
out that
the Space Shuttle represented technology that was thirty years old.
But then, snapping out of his reverie, he noticed Wilson had a paper bag in his hands.
He marched out into the middle of the rug and began opening it.
"Hold on.
What are you doing there?"
Wilson looked up, his eyes bright.
"Your apartment is too clean.
To truly demonstrate the capabilities of the apparatus, we need to dirty things up a bit."
With that, he tipped the bag over, and several tablespoons of grimy soot spilled out onto the carpet.
Gerber's reaction was immediate.
His eyes instantly started watering.
His skin crawled. A sick, heavy feeling settled into hi
s stomach.
"What are you doing!"
H
e shrieked.
Wilson continued on nonplussed, spreading the filth around the carpet, swinging the bag back and forth.
Gerber's fingers curled into claws.
"Stop it, stop it, stop it!"
Gerber cried.
Wilson did not look up as he started working the soot into the thick pile with his foot.
"Gotta make sure its in there good... this will illustrate the deep cleaning action..."
Gerber
had had enough.
His face red, the veins on his neck bulging, he snarled at the interloper.
"Get out!
Get out of here now!"
He charged Wilson, grabbing his coat, twisting him, pushing him.
Gerber pulled him to the door and shoved him out, throwing all his equipment out after him.
Finally, he was alone.
He threw the bolt on the door and leaned up against it, exhaling deeply.
He looked over at the devastation that had
been wreaked on his
carpet.
Tears filled his eyes and his knees became shaky a
t
the tracts of soot.
Edging carefully around the perimeter of the room to avoid stepping on any of the filth, he retrieved his vacuum from the closet and began trying to undo the damage.
Frantically, he pushed and pulled the machine back and forth, on the ragged edge of hysteria. He filled up bag after bag of soot, carefully removing them from his machine, placing them in a larger plastic bag, and putting it carefully by the front door.
When he could no longer see any soot on the surface, he took his hand vacuum and crawled across the carpet, prying the fibers apart looking for particles that had fallen down deep into the matrix.
Then, he carefully sprayed carpet freshening solution over every square inch.
Sweating, shaking, exhausted, he was done.
The carpet was clean again.
He sat on that vast expanse of white for a while, running his hand over it.
Never again
, he thought.
That's what I get for letting strangers in. I don't care what my therapist says.
Never again.
He looked at the clock and was startled to see that it was past two A. M.
He showered, changed, and was about to go to bed when he remembered the tr
ash bag
by the door.
He went to his entryway and snatched it up.
It seemed heavier than what he would expect.
He shuddered to recall the image of that filth pouring out of Wilson's paper bag; but, in reviewing the scene, the amount of soot seemed to be significantly less than what was now in his hand.
Shrugging, he undid the latches on th
e front door and carried it
out into the hallway.
Feeling like Perseus delivering the severed head of Medusa, he triumphantly carried the bag to the trash chute and stuffed it in.