2. Cleaning

In the morning, I wake up tired, sometimes hung over and my feet hurt and my legs hurt. I sit on the edge of my bed and take somber stock and wish I could get back under the covers. Then I take a shower and shave. Then I put on my clothes and kiss my wife and go to work, stopping at a bodega on the way for a cup of shitty, bitter coffee.

Luckily my only duties upon arriving at ten are cleaning duties and these are non-social. First, I clock in, dropping my time card into one of those old school punch clocks. For some reason this pleases me because it makes a nice, heavy thuck and there you are. It seems honest. Then I retrieve a clean rag from the basement and, sit at one of the tables (usually table 32) and begin to clean the menus.

The menus are vast. They are at least two feet long and one foot wide. But they open up to about two feet wide. They’re like black and white murals covered from corner to corner in strange squiggles, clip art and stories. The main feature on the front of the menu is a long, rambling, barely comprehensible history of the restaurant. Alongside is an enormous drawing of the Twin Towers made out of sandwiches with a big sign that says “THE WORLD TRADE SANDWICHES!” This menu was made up before 9/11 and although I do not know, I imagine that they left the drawing as some sort of bizarre homage. I am disturbed by the World Trade Sandwiches.

There are a ludicrous number of menu items, one of which is the $1000 ice cream sundae (but that story is for another time). Often when I hand patrons their menus, they say “Wow!” or “Oh my god!” or “Whoa, do you think the menus are big enough?” Then I respond with a little joke of my own like, “Actually, today is small menu day and unfortunately we only have these small ones.” Upon receiving his menu, one person actual said (and I quote) “fuck me in the ear, that’s the biggest fucking menu I’ve ever seen in my fucking life!” Yup. That pretty much sums it up.

So I have to clean these expansive monstrosities. Then I clean the check books and the little centerpiece advertisements. I am mostly looking for bits of chocolate. At Zemblanity, I and all my co-workers are awed and troubled by the quantity and location of chocolate splatters that we find. It can only be caused by sheer animalistic carnage on a scale that would astonish and confound even the most brilliant of forensic examiners.

Then I repeat this upstairs.

Now I Windex the front door windows, which are oddly shaped. The nouveau windows were specially designed and created for Zemblanity. Old photographs, like the ones with Andy Warhol and Jackie O. show normal square windows, which would be easier to clean. Then I clean the front display windows, which always houses a very post-modern installation of the most colorful and glittery of our “general store’s” tchotchkes. Passersby on the sidewalk often frown in confusion as they catch a glimpse of it. Or they freak out because of the sheer, delirious cuteness of it all. I am actually a fan of the window displays.

Then I do the mirrors. There are a lot of mirrors. This morning I counted 14 upstairs; some small, some from floor to ceiling and as wide as I am tall. One is in the shape of a butterfly and hangs from the ceiling. I don’t clean this one because I would need a ladder to do so. Next, I clean all the mirrors downstairs. One of the mirrors is a fun house mirror and rubbing its curved glass makes me a little dizzy. Some of the mirrors are so old that they look scratched but it fact, it’s the silver showing through. You can actually see the brush strokes on the eldest of the mirrors where the silver was painted on by hand. During this part of the morning, I spend a good deal of time looking at my reflection and watching myself work.

My favorite cleaning comes at the end. Let’s call it discretionary cleaning. I pick random objects and corners of the restaurant and run a wet rag over them. This aspect of my cleaning regimen was initiated at the urging of Mr. Charles who wants everything to be “tidied up” for the 55^th anniversary. This is a sort of exploratory cleaning. I dust the Edison Gramophone, which doesn’t work but is a beautiful artifact and the huge metal Gramophone bell. I clean the actual Tiffany lamps (there are four actual Tiffanys in the place, the rest are knockoffs). I dust the enormous key hanging from the ceiling and the red chair hanging from the ceiling and the mounted bull horns and the Andy Warhol effigy that dangles above table 14. I clean the face of the enormous clock and the tiny wind-up clock that has a car that spins on the hour (if it worked, which it doesn’t). I clean the large red Mobile gasoline Pegasus emblem and the odd cupboard with the Mardi Gras doll in one of the drawers. I dust the little birds, the ancient café signs, the plaster swirls, the empty jars, the statues, the ugly paintings, the pipes and the broken fan blades. I stand on a chair and clean the indescribable mirrored object that hangs by the kitchen, which looks as though it might belong in a dentist’s office but could also be considered (I suppose) some kind of art.

Always at the end of this exploration, my rag is so filthy that it’s mostly black. I like to think of it as famous dirt and I’m a little proud because only I have found it. I also get to look very closely at these quirky historical objects that no one gives a second thought to except, perhaps, Mr. Charles.

Now it is 11:25 am and there are five minutes until opening. My last duty, now that the busboys have mopped the floor, is to roll out the red carpet. Sometimes it is unsatisfactorily dirty but every now and again it is bright and red as blood. Then it feels special. I straighten it out a bit and step back behind the host’s podium.

It is time to let in the customers.