Carpet Cleaner

The flat had not been a success, and he was leaving with rent owing, which would be taken from his bond and still need a little extra 'paying back'. He was processing the best way to deal with this. And he had to come up with money to steam-clean the carpet, and there was obviously no bond money left to cover the costs with his sudden breaking of his lease and the rest of it, which was another complexity he couldn't quite work through, and the real estate company would blacklist him and pursue him for cleaning costs in a very legal way. The shit was piling up.

Things weren't good and were cascading and making him jittery, or more jittery, but he wanted to hold on to his semi-sort-of 'good standing' if he could, his partially damaged 'on the record' image, for a little longer at least. All wasn't lost if he could sort out this latest mess before it became entrenched and had consequences well beyond its 'worth'. Out of all proportion, he said to himself, to the blank walls.

He was irritated and frustrated and angry in all sorts of undefined ways but knew he wanted to and could unravel this particular mess. There were other messes, much bigger messes beyond his immediate abilities, but he could unravel this one. Though he was going into rehab for a couple of weeks and then coming out to a month or two with family 'down south', his aim was to emerge from the shit again, pick up a part-time job—enough to cover the bond for a new flat, pay a month or two's rent up front, sort food and so on—and have another go at finishing his degree.

He needed to get the carpet cleaned, as that was in his contract. He detested contracts. He would call on one more family favour—enough to cover the cheapest carpet cleaning job—and he wouldn't stuff it up, wouldn't misspend the money, would use the money precisely as it was intended. They could trust him in this. He'd even agree to the given family member paying the carpet cleaning firm or carpet cleaner direct. He wouldn't skim a cent for anything at all.

He sat cross-legged on the bong-water-with-the-bits-picked-out-andbooze-stained carpet next to the phone with its long lead in snaking coils and flicked through the Yellow Pages. It was a fresh, crisp, new Yellow Pages that smelt weirdly ink-pleasant, just delivered. He was going to leave it on the mat on the balcony after hearing it plop on the mat—he remembered that plop from other years in other flats—but finding some modicum of neighbourliness in himself, opened the door, looked out cautiously, and picked it up so others wouldn't trip over it.

Now, he was being rewarded for his communal gesture—it was actually proving useful. It was maybe only the third time in his life he'd used the Yellow Pages. He came across a couple of pages, no, four pages, of carpet cleaning services. That many in Perth alone? Wow. It struck him as weird. Late eighties Perth was growing fast, but who would have thought there'd be that kind of demand. He looked for the smallest advert because he figured the lowest fee would be charged by the business or person who could afford only a small ad. Smallest would seem cheapest.

He looked for a pen to underline the number because he was out of it just enough for his eyes to lose track and mix numbers near each other. He didn't want half of one and half of another. He couldn't find the pen he was sure he had somewhere close, and then squiggling around realised he was sitting on it—on it, the only one. He marked the page and then looked for somewhere to put the pen. There was almost no other furniture in the flat—a table, a chair, a single-seat lounge chair, a...