“It’s without cost. There’s never any cost. You paid your cost.” George took the mop, pushed it down into the pail, showed him how to mop.
“How come I don’t have any money?”
“The same reason you don’t have any wallet or any last name. It’ll be given back to you, all given back. That’s what we want to do: give you back what’s been taken away from you.”
He said, “These shoes don’t fit.”
“We depend on donations, but new ones only, from stores. Later on maybe we can measure you. Did you try all the shoes in the carton?”
“Yes,” he said.
“All right, this is the bathroom here on the basement floor; do it first. Then when that’s done, really done well, really perfect, then go upstairs—bring the mop and bucket—and I’ll show you the bathroom up there, and then after that the bathroom on the third floor. But you got to get permission to go up there to the third floor, because that’s where the chicks live, so ask one of the staff first; never go up there without permission.” He slapped him on the back. “All right, Bruce? Understand?”
“Okay,” Bruce said, mopping.
George said, “You’ll be doing this kind of work, cleaning these bathrooms, until you get so you can do a good job. It doesn’t matter what a person does; it’s that he gets so he can do it right and be proud of it.”
“Will I ever be like I was again?” Bruce asked.
“What you were brought you here. If you become what you were again then sooner or later it’d bring you here again. Next time you might not make it here, even. Isn’t that right? You’re lucky you got here; you almost didn’t get here.”
“Somebody else drove me here.”
“You’re fortunate. The next time they might not. They might dump you on the side of the freeway somewhere and say the hell with it.”
He continued mopping.
“The best way is to do the bowls first, then the tub, then the toilets, and the floor last.”
“Okay,” he said, and put the mop away.
“There’s a certain knack to it. You’ll master it.”
Concentrating, he saw before him cracks in the enamel of the basin; he dribbled cleaner down into the cracks and ran hot water. The steam rose, and he stood within it, unmoving, as the steam grew. He liked the smell.
After lunch he sat in the lounge drinking coffee. No one spoke to him, because they understood he was withdrawing. Sitting drinking from his cup, he could hear their conversation. They all knew one another.
“If you could see out from inside a dead person you could still see, but you couldn’t operate the eye muscles, so you couldn’t focus. You couldn’t turn your head or your eyeballs. All you could do would be wait until some object passed by. You’d be frozen. Just wait and wait. It’d be a terrible scene.”
He gazed down at the steam of his coffee, only that. The steam rose; he liked the smell.
“Hey.”
A hand touched him. From a woman.
“Hey.”
He looked sideways a little.
“How you doing?”
“Okay,” he said.
“Feel any better?”
“I feel okay,” he said.
He watched his coffee and the steam and did not look at her or any of them; he looked down and down at the coffee. He liked the warmth of the smell.
“You could see somebody when they passed by directly in front of you, and only then. Or whichever way you were looking, no other. If a leaf or something floated over your eye, that would be it, forever. Only the leaf. Nothing more; you couldn’t turn.”
“Okay,” he said, holding the coffee, the cup with both his hands.
“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person’s eyes maybe died back in childhood. What’s dead in there still looks out. It’s not just the body looking at you with nothing in it; there’s still something in there but it died and just keeps on looking and looking; it can’t stop looking.”
Another person said, “That’s what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever’s in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it such as selecting anything or changing anything. You can only accept what’s put there as it is.”
“How’d you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There’d be nothing to fear.”
Before dinner, which was served to them in the dining room, they had Concept time. Several Concepts were put on the blackboard by different staff members and discussed.
He sat with his hands folded in his lap, watching the floor and listening to the big coffee urn heating up; it went whoopwhoop, and the sound frightened him.
“Living and unliving things are exchanging properties.”
Seated here and there on folding chairs, everyone discussed that. They seemed familiar with the Concept. Evidently these were parts of New-Path’s way of thought, perhaps even memorized and then thought about again and again. Whoop-whoop.
“The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living things.”
They talked about that. Whoop-whoop. The noise of the coffee urn got louder and louder and scared him more, but he did not move or look; he sat where he was, listening. It was hard to hear what they were saying, because of the urn.
“We are incorporating too much unliving drive within us. And exchanging—Will somebody go look at that damn coffeepot to see why it’s doing that?”
There was a break while someone examined the coffee urn. He sat staring down, waiting.
“I’ll write this again. ‘We are exchanging too much passive life for the reality outside us.’ ”
They discussed that. The coffee urn became silent, and they trooped over to get coffee.
“Don’t you want some coffee?” A voice behind him, touching him. “Ned? Bruce? What’s his name—Bruce?”
“Okay.” He got up and followed them to the coffee urn. He waited his turn. They watched as he put cream and sugar into his cup. They watched him return to his chair, the same one; he made certain he found it again, to reseat himself and go on listening. The warm coffee, its steam, made him feel good.
“Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.”
He sat looking at the empty cup; it was a china mug. Turning it over, he discovered printing on the bottom, and cracked glaze. The mug looked old, but it had been made in Detroit.