Dirty Girl

Schizophrenia.  Bi-polar.  Manic Depression.  These weren't just labels for Jim, they were the defining aspects of his life.  A life of brief periods of normalcy, before he inevitably stopped taking his meds.  And then it happened.  It always happened.  Which is why we find him in a woman's apartment at quarter till midnight.  He'd assure us he was not at fault for that, if he knew we were aware of it.  Hadn't everyone always told him that his mental diseases were not his fault?  

Didn't society always assure everyone that such was never the person's fault?  That the voices were irresistible, never to be denied?  We can't blame him - can we?

Did Jim know the woman who's apartment he was in?  No.  Or rather, he had no prior knowledge of her, before he'd seen her in a Starbucks a couple of weeks ago.  She was young, attractive, and while he had not admitted it, even to himself, she had a vaguely passing resemblance to his deceased mother.  Jim's mother had died when he was 15.  But not before she had impressed upon him the driving importance of keeping things clean and orderly.

Jim was all about keeping things clean and orderly.  

But this woman had not looked like she was clean and orderly.  Or well, he hadn't quite been able to put his finger on anything not clean or not orderly about her, but he had felt some noticeable amount of sexual interest in her, and he had always chose to interpret that kind of feeling as evidence that the woman in question must be a dirty girl.  

That she must surely not be so clean and orderly as she was fronting to the world.  As she was fronting to him.  "Why was she trying to fool me?" was the voice that had popped into Jim's unmedicated head back at that first sight of her.

He had selected her then, and above all the other "current candidates", as he thought of them.  There had already been four other women he was contemplating correcting, all vaguely cute, all vaguely reminiscent of his mom, all who had done nothing more than cross his path randomly.  But this one had grabbed his attention above and beyond the other four, he knew not why.

His program was practiced.  She would not be his first rodeo.  There had been previous women he had "corrected" in the past.  He started doing the preparatory things that the doctors had told him to never do.  He had followed her.  His disability check let him have all the free time in the world for that.  He had learned where she lived.  He had been through her trash.  He had her name, where she worked.  He had learned her schedule.  He had even peered in the window, of her first floor apartment.  More than once.

Was she unclean?  Was she disorderly?  Was she in need of correction?  These were the questions that were asked by such personalities as Jim had told his therapists that he heard during the times he was off his meds.  And those voices had got increasingly insistent in learning the answers.  And finally, those voices had started to instruct Jim about what Jim liked to think of as "his simple duty".

His mother had taught him about his simple duty.  Anything Jim was supposed to do was, to hear his mother, Jim's "simple duty".  

Knowing the potentially dirty girl's schedule, he knew that she'd be out late Friday night, and sure enough, he had watched her leave, all dressed up for Friday night fun, at 8:20pm that evening.  Jim had went over in a flash, opening the window he already knew was unlocked, and easing himself in quickly, lest a passing neighbor take note.  The need for speed meant that some items on the desk near the window fell off, but he could return those to where they were supposed to be.  

He knew from previous peekings into that window where such were supposed to be.

The temptation had been to rush, but Jim was nothing if not clean and orderly himself, and so had took the time to do the preparatory work that would make this go smoother.  Slowly he went about the room, learning and memorizing where each thing was, and the probability of it being where it was supposed to be, where it was meant to be.  Then he had gone to the next room, and the next, always staring intently at each item.

He knew that each item was something that she had picked out, or if not, had been an item gave to her that she had then chose to keep.  

Which meant then that each item, be it a spoon on the counter, or a sock on the arm of a chair, or a DVD on the shelf the flatscreen was on, was something "of" this woman.  She had to make a conscious choice in acquiring or retaining each of these seemingly innocuous items.  In learning of each of these items, he had felt he was learning of her.  Not just the item, but even it's place was important.  It's place where it should be.  And it's place where she had chose to have it.  

While his reveries, his rituals of learning of her, had gone a bit longer than he had planned, he had known he still had time.

At quarter till 12 he knew that she'd be home in another two and a half hours.  Give or take.  He knew she liked to be at the bar till close, and closing was at 2am.  And that it took her fifteen minutes to get back.  He knew she drove intoxicated, too.  Perhaps not as some would reckon, and her tolerance may well let her think such was okay, but he knew a breathalyzer would have her at .12.  Legally drunk and then some in any state.

He had determined that by taking her average drinks on a Friday evening and using that against his fairly accurate estimate of her 130 pounds of weight.  Though she only admitted to 121 on her license, as Jim had learned a few days ago when she had left her purse in the part of the shopping cart usually used for kids.  She had went to another aisle, leaving her cart behind, no doubt for "just a second".

He'd been on that in a flash.  He got her wallet out of the open purse, the wallet was unfastened as she had been in it for her list.  He opened it and sure enough - as was usual with 95% of women - her Driver's license was immediately visible through a clear plastic cover.  He had photographed it with his iPhone and had the wallet closed and back in her purse before she'd come back from the next aisle.  

She was not clean and orderly, he now determined as midnight rapidly approached.  He had all the data now.  Like the others before her, she was in need of correction, and a correction that Jim knew was his simple duty.  And Jim wasn't one to shirk his simple duty, oh no.  He knew that only bad boys, dirty boys, shirked their simple duty.  He had his memories of his mom, and the dreams of her that sometimes awoke him in the night, to remind him of that.  To remind him as he gasped awake in the wee hours, the sheets damp with sweat.

Jim had other reminders, in the voices.  They were not lax in reminding him of his simple duty.  They were, since his thorough search of her apartment, screaming to him about his simple duty.  Jim knew it would have to be.  Not that I like it, he assured himself.  He did not.  He was a man, after all, and real men did not act the way he knew he'd have to act.  He tried to reassure himself that doing what he was about to do, did not make him less a man, did not make him weak.

It was only his simple duty.  And this was all her fault, anyway.  She needed the correction.  Needed it!  Jim assured himself he was blameless.

His voices assured him of that, too.

With a start, he realized an hour had gone by, as he stood there going over all this with himself.  He shook his head, as if to clear it.  That didn't work.  He knew what would, though.

With a soft sigh, he got to work.  He regarded the sink with disgust, as it was filled on each side with dirty dishes.  He first got all the dishes out and stacked to the side of the sink.  He cleaned the sink.  Then he filled one side with hot soapy water.  He then scraped off each dish and pan into the trash.  Then he rinsed off each dish and utensil and pan before dropping it into the soapy side.  Then he scrubbed each and rinsed each, and put each in the dish rack.  A little used dish rack, he guessed.

He was practiced at this, and in 30 minutes had that all done.  Before drying and putting the dishes away, he checked the washer, and sure enough, the clothes he had put in just before he started the dishes were done.  He'd not heard the buzzer while being occupied with the dishes.  He put them in the dryer.  Then went and dried the dishes.  He put those away.  Then he looked at the dryer darkly, but it hadn't buzzed yet.  Suspicious, he opened the door to it, felt the clothes - hot, but not dry.  He closed it and started it again.

Going to her living room, he started putting things in their real places.  He got everything off the floor or furniture and in it's proper place.  He dusted as he did so, with his own personal duster, Jim was proud of his multi-tasking abilities.  He was done with the living room and halfway through organizing her bedroom when the dryer buzzed.  Perfect, he thought, and got those clothes out, folded them up like the professional he was, and put them away in her chest of drawers.  Such that needed hanging, he hung up in the bedroom closet.  

He finished the bedroom, and moved to the bathroom, starting to feel a faint bit of alarm.  Would he have enough time?  He'd been at it for an hour and fifteen minutes, it was 2am now!  Fifteen minutes left!  The cries of the voices intensified!  Unbearably so!  Jim gripped his head with both hands and let out a whimper, a whimper his mother would have recognized, but no other living soul would have.  It was like the sound of a trapped animal.

Then through the swelling cacophony of the panicky chorus, a new voice said coldly and loudly "GET A GRIP!"  The other voices at once stopped in surprise.  "DO YOUR SIMPLE DUTY" the new voice continued into the blessed silence.  Jim did so.  The new voice was only new this evening.  It was the voice that only came if things might go wrong during a correction.

It also reminded him that she always spent about fifteen minutes in the parking lot, chatting, so he probably had half an hour.  He thought about this while working, and thought that yes, that was invariably true of her.

Sink and toilet gleaming, shower and tub clean, and five minutes to go.  "Were the cleaning supplies back where they belonged?", whispered a previously silenced voice, and Jim was grateful to know the answer was "yes", they were back where she had stored them, but neatly placed in order now.  And the cleaning supplies that Jim had brought along he had safely in his backpack, that he'd already put back on.  He always brought a backpack of cleaning supplies - you never knew with some of these dirty, dirty girls.  

But mother had known how such dirty girls could be.  So Jim could know.  And he did.

He made sure the living room window was locked.  So she'd not know how anyone could have got in.  And he boldly walked out the front door, boldly but quietly.  He locked the door knob from the inside, and shut it firmly from the outside.  Nothing he could do about the deadlock, but she might assume she had forgot to lock that.  Or trying out of habit to unlock it, and being drunk, she might not even register that it hadn't been her key that unlocked it.  He exited the building, not slowly, but not quickly, either.  

Jeans, a jean jacket, a college style backpack, a ball cap with the Cubs logo, glasses he did not need - let any random surveillance camera get any decent pic of him!  It wasn't going to happen.  The police would hem and haw, and give each other "the look", but they'd not do anything.  They'd pull no film, they'd dust for no prints - not that he'd left any.  They'd only hang around and be polite for a bit, and then only for the dirty girl being young and somewhat cute.

Jim chuckled as he reached his bicycle.  He rode the bike five blocks over, and then placed that bike in his blue van.  Then he drove that van to a grocery store near his home.  The plates on it were in the name of a homeless man who's ID he had bought, it could not be traced to him.  He'd leave it there overnight, then if there was no visit to it or him, he'd drive it to a storage place.  Also in someone else's name.

Meanwhile he walked the block home.  One hand holding his souvenir.  He always took a little memento.  A trophy.  He got home, slipped in the back door, so no one saw him enter.  Turning on no lights, he went to his bedroom where a small light was already on.  Thus it being on now attracted no attention, and his bedroom was in the back, anyway.  He went to his chest of drawers, which was only four feet high, but very, very long.  On top of it were all the other trophies.

Two dozen - and then some - bars of soap, each that had been acquired in various states of use, some almost new, some just slivers, were laid out neatly.  Under each was a small slip of paper that had names like "Jennifer Grattan" or "Ruth Kelly" or "Trisha West".  Near the end of the last row, a piece of paper without any soap said "Rondi Aldridge".  He gently set down the soap he had got from her bathroom sink this evening.  And like with all the other dirty girls, he had had to clean off soap scum from the part of the sink where it had been resting, because none of these dirty girls believed in soap dishes any more.

They each believed in soap dishes now, though.  Because Jim always left a soap dish behind.  With a new bar of soap on it.  Jim was no thief.

He was just a man who heard voices, and no less of a man for obeying those voices.

He was a serial cleaner.  And he vowed again, as he always did after a job, that they'd never catch him, nor take him alive.  The good work must continue, the dirty girls must be corrected, mother must be appeased.

It was his simple duty.