Mouse
by Jesse Salvo
Sofia says that I am not in love with her and to please stop showing up at her house. I should clarify that it is not her house and anyway I was invited and we are all I think at least capable of love.
“People are necessarily” she indicates with one hand “small, petty, jealous, weak-willed,
irritable, grasping.” “Yeah.” I say.
I am laid on my stomach using wood-glue against the baseboard. Sofia’s tenement was
constructed just after the Spanish Flu so all her building’s exterior walls are nearly a meter thick, but the entire floor of her place is slanted so that to glue and maintain pressure against the floor molding I must lay at a slight angle with my feet inclined above my head.
“You especially, I am saying, Cas.” “Is it a mouse you think.” I ask. “Have you found a job, Cas.” “Yes. Yeah.”
“Liar.”
“I have found part of a job.” I clarify.
“Well” she notes “You shouldn’t think about being with anyone until you are economically stable.”
“I’m not.”
“Until you have something to offer.” “No.” I say, “I wouldn’t.”
“Until you are more or less self-sufficient and broadly speaking well. Because.” She says. “It is not something I ever think about,” I clarify.
“Because otherwise, you are just lashing all your worrying pathologies to some second person who can’t handle them. Me, for example. Or another poor girl who is even less prepared.”
I make a noise in my throat to indicate I disagree but don’t necessarily have all the right arguments at my fingertips. When I lay on my chest for too long it aches and feels like my sternum is cracked or dented.
“My super thinks there could be a mouse.” She concedes pouring herself a cup of water from the sink. “But he is not a serious person. I have never seen a mouse in all my life. In this building.”
“I wouldn’t ask anybody to share a life I couldn’t fully account for.” I say.
“It could be chewing away at the baseboards.” She says. “or eating the glue. Or sometimes my sweaters have holes.”
“I think that is moths” I say, “Not mice.”
“But maybe” she says “a mouse will eat anything, I fear. Including glue. Including, whatever.”
Then she adds “You should see some other people.” “I thought you said I shouldn’t see anyone.”
“Preferably, no. But you should see the girl that you had been seeing before. Caitlyn.” “O.K.”
“Or no one. Preferably. Including, I mean, no one.”
I tug my ear and say, “Ideally long-term we would not be locked in this dynamic.”
Sofia pauses looking down at me.
“What dynamic.”
I say, “Where you bring me over here and then castigate me for coming when you call.” “I don’t do that.” She says.
“I think the molding will stay. Unless it is a mouse.” I say releasing some of the pressure. “Castigate. That is not something I do.”
“No.” I agree.
“I can’t believe you would believe I would.” “No.” I agree.
“That you would think that of me.”
“Whereas a moth” I say standing up “I think you are fine. There are things you can hang for a moth.”
“Did you press it for long enough.” She says offering me from her water glass. “There are things they find attractive.” I say.
“Will it stay like that. Fixed.”
“I can get out of your hair now.”
“What sorts of things do they find attractive.” She asks. “I should get going.” I say.
“It’s the middle of the day. Why.” “Because I have to go.”
“Right now. No. Very convenient. You do not.” She says. I look at her.
“Don’t touch me.” She says.
“Thank you for the water by the way.” I say, capping the wood glue and returning it to the highest shelf of the bookshelf.
“Don’t put your hands on my waist.” She says.
The highest shelf Sofia can’t reach without standing on a chair, and maybe still then no.
She stands there.
“You are blocking the door.” I say finally.
“I told myself: Sofia, no. No more. And he shouldn’t be coming over, by the way, to your house. With a flimsy excuse.”
The pressure of the apartment floor on my sternum lingers for a couple of minutes, which the term that I learned is Old Hag Syndrome, though probably there are others.
She says.
“I have more drinking water, if you want. If you stayed.”
This is not your house, by the way. I don’t say. This is your husband’s house. Not that it matters.
“If you stayed.” She tries again. “What would you want to do. Because we know you have nothing else today.”
When I arrive home to shower and change Sofia sends me a voice note explaining how she had asked me not to come over again and how befuddling she finds it that I came over and stayed and then left. And by the way how cruel we are. People, she says, generally. We exert our influence where it is not necessary or welcome. We dominate people we are supposed to love. We are high handed in charity. We strut our misfortunes. We are slow in forgiveness and quick to wrath. We steal. We kill, sometimes.
And it is not a way to behave, by the way to come over laying down glue and telling someone that you love them, when you are not in the end even capable.
My first shift as night porter at a ghost kitchen is Monday. I have to be able to hoist 50 pounds. I have to be able to communicate in English for at least five years. There are other things too, I need to scour pans and have a positive outlook. I need to be a night owl and have experience in high pressure situations.
There is a heavyset young man who runs the facilities who meets me at the back door and walks me through. The other two women who are also here sit in the back of the ghost kitchen offices with iPads and when I arrive to fill out the starting paperwork they seem caught off guard and upset that the company has hired someone like me to be cleaning the kitchen at night.
“What do you suppose you’ll need to fill out.” the left woman, named I guess Ellie from her nameplate, asks.
“Whatever I would need to fill out to start.” I say. “I don’t know.”
“How can you begin to start.” Ellie asks baffled, “If you don’t know. How could I know.” “They didn’t call or send an email” I ask. “About me starting.”
“You expect me to know.” Ellie asks. “Who they called and why.” “No.” I say. “Obviously. Sorry.”
“You expect us to have received an email.” Her office mate, whose name is not prominently displayed inquires. “About what, exactly.
“Not necessarily, I don’t know.” I say.
Ellie looks at me over the rims of her bifocal glasses.
“You expect to start, then, without any call, without any anything. And we are supposed to just work out.”
My pocket lights up and I see that I have received another voice message from Sofia but I ignore it. Immediately a second message emphasizing the urgency of the first message appears.
“I can come back another day.” I suggest putting my phone back in my pocket. “If that is more convenient.”
Ellie’s office mate laughs.
“We are pretty far from the zip code of convenient at this point, wouldn’t you say.” “Yeah.” I agree apologetically. “Yes.”
“So it would not make sense to just prolong this process, doubling, then, everyone’s inconvenience. Logically, I am asking.”
I concede it would not.
“Well let’s you sit down and start filling out your name and details. You do know your name and details, at least.”
“I do.”
“Miracle of miracles.” Laughs Ellie, good-natured, indicating a chair. I sit and begin trying to fill out the details. “Hallelujah.” She says.
After I’ve finished the forms but before I am allowed to begin, I step outside for a second to listen to Sofia’s note which is short.
“I think there is a mouse.” She remarks. “It is becoming clearer and clearer to me. I may need you. I don’t know yet. If it is a mouse, obviously, all bets are off.”
The facilities guy who seems friendly and adept leads me around the building.
“The thing I would say, if you like for example to listen to music. In this job.” He confides. “You just put in music for hours, and you’re done, and nobody bothers you.”
“Thanks” I say.
“You clean some pots. You mop the floors. And nobody bothers you.” “I do like music.” I admit.
“A music man.” He says admiringly. “What kind do you like. For example.”
“I guess all kinds.” I say. “I like lately some pieces for piano. I like the Goldberg Variations.”
“Goldberg, no I don’t know.” “They’re pieces for piano.”
“A piano man.” He says smiling.
He shows me where they keep steel wool and kitchen scissors to cut new sponges. “Me I like all kinds.” He confides. “Like everything, everything. I am obsessed.” “Do you like punk music.” I say.
“No.” he says.
“Oh.”
“I love everything, practically. But punk for me—I can’t. Because I have certain opinions.” “Right.” I say.
“Which I will just keep between you and me.” He winks, but doesn’t expand. “Otherwise, though. For me it is like a life-force. Like blood in your heart. Music.” “Reggaeton” I ask.
“No.” he says. “I don’t listen to that.” “Any genre in particular.” I ask.
“Just all of it. Anything.” He repeats, “It is my obsession.”
I get home tired and wash the grease from my body. I get an automated message from my new part time employer asking me to fill out starting paperwork if I haven’t already. I see that Ellie and her officemate who is apparently named Brynn are both copied on the email. Then I see Ellie has commented on the email, DEAR CAS, PLEASE SEE AND RESPOND. But I cannot determine if she means that something is incorrect about the paperwork we just filled out or she is drawing my attention to the email for other reasons.
The next day I go on a date with a friend of a friend of Sofia’s who I had met six months ago at a party when she (Sofia) had first asked me to cut off all contact with her.
“Did you have trouble getting here.” She asks smiling. “Hi Caitlyn. No. It’s so nice to see you.”
“Good. Because I know for some people it is like a nightmare.” Caitlyn says laughing.
She is wearing a dark formal outfit. It looks like she must have her clothing dry-cleaned regularly or maybe she just has a more advanced sense of how to look presentable than I do. She has on a thin gold necklace and small earrings. Her presentation has the kind of plain startling visual unity of the working wealthy. I remember her job being in the arts but economically stable somehow.
“No” I say again. “It was really easy to find.”
“So, when I got your message.” She begins. “I was so surprised. Astounded. Cas. How are you.”
“Well.” I say, “I aim to astound.”
“Yes of course.” She laughs and orders a wine.
She’s got this really open, bright but guileless face. She has a way of conversing that seems cornfed and correctly raised and still effortlessly contemporary. Like Freud and Death would both pass right over her house, untouched and unremarked upon. My phone buzzes in my pocket with a voice message from Sofia I ignore.
“It is really really nice to see you but I am kind of surprised.” She says restating the thesis. “I understand.” I say
“We had talked briefly but maybe I had got the wrong impression?” she says, knitting together her eyebrows, smiling.
“What was your impression.” I say.
“I don’t know. Maybe it was wrong.” She says. “Remind me what you’re doing.” “Yeah.” I say.
“Or are you quitting everything and not working, leaving the material world.” “Yes. No. I wish, ha-ha.”
“I wish too, ha-ha. But no for me as well.”
“No, I’m working—it’s a little embarrassing actually, but I’m working as a night porter right
now.”
She bites her lip, regards me a second.
“I don’t know why that would be embarrassing.” She says, “They pay you a wage, right.
You’re not working for free.”
“Ou, yes. They do. Pay me.”
“Then, I don’t think it’s very embarrassing at all,” She says. “No I guess, of course.” I say.
“Maybe you think that I would think that. Or look down my nose.” The remark seems half-inward-directed. As if wondering how she appears to people outside herself. Then she slides her hand across to my hand and takes it at the wrist looping her fingers around.
“No.” I say “Not necessarily. I think.”
“But I hope you wouldn’t, because I can’t think of anything wrong with it. And I would have to be really pigheaded, wouldn’t I.”
“I don’t think you are. Pigheaded, meaning.”
“Well, good.” She laughs “Because I think you’re really nice, Cas. You feel really safe. I
know some people think that’s an insult.”
“And I’m looking for other work.” I say “But just as a stopgap for the moment.”
She appears to process something, some dropped cue on my part, and squeezes my wrist once with her thumb.
“How is your friend Sofia, by the way.” She says.
“Ou, interesting. Are you two not—. I had imagined for some reason you were close.” “We like each other’s photos.”
“You seemed like you would get along. Or have gotten along.” “I imagine it must be really hard. Well, I can’t imagine, really. “No, she’s good.” I say.
Caitlyn raises her eyebrows.
“She is?”
“Not good, well. No, I guess.” I correct. “No.” “Oh. Well, I’m sorry to hear.”
“But it was years.” I say. “It was drawn out and difficult. In a way it was a relief, I think finally.”
She returns her attention to our environs, briefly.
“I’ve never been before,” I say looking around.
“Would it bother you if you learned I brought other men here? In the past I mean.” “No. I don’t know why it would.” I say. “Do you enjoy dates. I mean generally. The
format.”
“Oh?” She deadpans. “Do you consider this a date.”
“Well.” I suck the inside of my cheek. “I do not really. Enjoy them.” “Why not?”
“I mean that I object to the format.”
“There’s a certain format we’re required to observe, on our dates?” “And I don’t like sex hanging like a sword of Damocles over everything.”
“I should have prepared ahead of time. I didn’t realize we would be talking so much about format.”
“And questions that are meant to be, both, not important but also cannot be banal. And we are supposed glean enormous amounts of valuable information about each other, from these things designed to seem trivial but also to elucidate. And the performance of not performing.”
“We could disrupt the format or change around the things we don’t like.” She suggests. “I really wish I had done some reading in advance. If I had just known.”
Her eyes are sparkling.
“You’re mocking me.”
“No. Yes, well yes. I am. But I see your point.” “I’m not sure that I see my point.”
“You want me to ask you something that’s not trivial. Is your point.” “Yes. Well no, actually.”
“You want me to ask: what’s your family history of mental illness or: do you find it painful to be alive.”
“No, I don’t. Really, I don’t.” I say.
“And you don’t want sex to hang over everything we do.”
She bites the tip of her tongue wide eyed serious.
“I don’t mean so much you or me.”
“And would you be a good father, if I wanted kids. Or a good lover. Would you be patient with me if I were unreasonable. And would you care for me if I one day went insane.”
“No.” I say.
“Like Sofia’s husband did.”
“Nothing like that, just how odd and stilted the ritual appears.”
I notice her fingernails dig a little into the skin of my inner arm.
“Or certain things I know about myself, that I could never ask you. Like how immediate desire feels in my body. How I’ve humiliated myself for desire. And how could I possibly ever ask if you’re the same? if you feel the same? Because neither of us would feel safe living with that answer, right?”
“Right.”
“And that is a mild example.” She says with high color in her face, sipping from the wine glass. “In the interest of politeness. With edges sanded down.”
“Right.”
“Because we both know there are certain things about having a body. Which we cannot really talk about. Not really. Sort of violent things. About being alive.”
“I think you’re really beautiful.” I say.
“And the mind is conditioned constantly to want. And it is banal, you’re right.” “I think you’re really really really beautiful.” I say.
“The question is: Will you hurt me. That is the question women are asking you, in a hundred trivial ways. Under what conditions would you hurt me.”
“I don’t know” I say “how I never registered it before. But you are really.”
My phone goes off again. I pull it from my pocket automatically and check the screen and ignore. Caitlyn sits back in her chair now, the pink receded finally from her face.
“How is Sofia doing, you said.” “Oh.” I say. “I don’t know, really.”
She smiles and withdraws her hand from my wrist.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea for us to see each other.” She says. “Do you.” “I’m sorry.” I say.
“I don’t think it would be very nice.” She smiles.
“I can walk you home at least.” I say. “If you want.” “Please don’t.”
Caitlyn squeezes my wrist again, finishes her drink, pays and leaves.
The next evening at the ghost kitchen I remove and soak the stove grates. Then while the stove grates are soaking, I pull out and clean the oven racks one by one by one. I unplug and dump the deep fryers, spray the insides and wait until they’re cool enough to clean.
At eleven the facilities manager comes in and invites me to some coffee in the office. I trail him in through the door and I say hello to Brynn. Hello to Ellie. The facilities manager teases them both. Brynn and Ellie cackle. I lay my mug on the counter and go across to the fridge to search for milk. He pours himself a black coffee winks at me and departs blowing kisses at the two women.
Brynn remarks to Ellie, watching
“One thing to recommend him: that is a well-proportioned man.”
“A man with some meat on his bones, you mean.”
“Me personally I cannot do anything with the skinnier men.”
“I like my men with a little bit of an appetite.” relates Ellie
“You cannot have good taste without good appetite. Now can you.”
“He is a person who you can tell basically from looking at him. He enjoys a well-cooked meal.”
“The finer things in life. A well-prepared steak. For example.”
“A filet mignon. A New York strip. A man who eats with abandon.”
“You cannot trust a man who does not know how to eat well.” Bryn says.
“A man who is just skin and bones, I have no use for that.” Ellie says.
I shut the fridge and reenter the office.
“I’m really sorry to interrupt.” I say.
“And yet here you are, interrupting.” Ellie smiles. “Is there any milk somewhere that is not expired.” Brynn raises her eyebrows.
“Have you checked the milk in the fridge.” She says. “Yes, yeah.” I say. “Sorry.”
“Have you checked the expiration date, on said milk.” “Yes.” I say. “Expired, unfortunately.”
“So what are you asking me exactly.”
“Right, sorry. Just if there were any other milk that I didn’t know about somewhere, that might not be expired.”
“I do not know of any secret milk.” Brynn remarks cooly. “Eleanor, do you have any knowledge of secret milk.”
Ellie laughs.
I retrieve my coffee and go back to cleaning the kitchen, listen to Bach.
I replace all the kitchen grates. Then I remember Sofia’s voice message from yesterday and
toggle over to listen.
“I have laid eyes on what feels very confidently to be a mouse.” She says. “I need you to please come over as a favor to me because my super is basically incompetent. I would not want to see you except that I am alone with this thing which is larger than expected and cannot sleep.”
I finish up at the kitchen around 6 am and message Sofia asking whether I should come straight over. She explains how being that mice are nocturnal it would be essentially a futile gesture for me to come straight from work as it would be impossible at this moment to help catch or kill the animal.
I tell her alright.
She says I should come over at least so she can explain in the clear light of day the exact nature of the problem.
I tell her I’ll be over soon.
She says that for me to come over now, after we both know the mouse has bedded down for the day, before tomorrow evening’s forward assault on the apartment’s wainscotting, smacks basically of me exploiting the crisis of the mouse in order to come over.
I tell her I’m sorry and that I’m happy to do what’s best.
She says, you might as well come over.
I arrive. There is, as she promised, no mouse.
“Did you find a mousehole, somewhere.” I ask.
“Are we sure about them actually living in mouseholes.” She says.
“Yes.” I say.
“Or is that just propaganda.” She says.
“That is where they live, Sof.”
“Under certain circumstances, I would grant you, maybe.”
“Under all circumstances.”
“Well.”
“The baseboard looks fine, at least.”
“You smell awful, your clothes.”
“It’s kitchen grease.” I say, irritable.
“This is your version of being employed, is kitchen grease.” She says.
“I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a job.”
“Part of a job.” She corrects.
“For Christ’s sake Sofia.” I say loudly, “Are you going to punish me for the rest of my life for something we did when your husband was sick?”
The muscles in Sofia’s face contract and expand and contract again. Everything in my stomach goes sideways and my face grows warm.
“How have I punished you.” She says “When.” “No.” I say swallowing, “Never.”
“By inviting you over here to talk to me and fuck me and leave when you want. That’s my form of punishing you. Poor, you know.”
“You haven’t. No. I’m sorry I said.”
“Poor you. Jesus. You can leave if you want.” “I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“In fact I want you to. If it’s so painful Cas, me punishing you this way.” “No, no, no, no, no.”
“Then you can just leave. And that will be easy at least.” “I’m sorry I blew up. Where did you see the mouse.” She stares at me, at my face.
“Where did you see the mouse. I’d love to see.”
She seems to consider if it will be worth it to explain, then relents.
“You have to lay down on your chest to see. Just in the kitchen here.” She indicates along the floor and I lower myself.
“I don’t know if you want, after all night spent basically working in a kitchen.” “It’s fine, yes.”
“To lay down, again, on the floor of a different kitchen.” “It’s fine, I don’t mind.”
“Which is your version I suppose of utilizing the potential of your life, Cas. Working cleaning up someone else’s messes.”
When I peer along the wainscotting I see the rubber scuffmarks from the sides of Sofia’s shoes, gathers of gray dust, chipped enamel, sedimentary accumulations of victual crud.
“You should shower.” Sofia says. “You can use my shower if you want. I have shampoo.” “I don’t see any sign of a mouse.” I say.
“The mouse is sign enough of himself.” She remarks. “The fact I saw him, for example, and couldn’t sleep.”
“I can shower when I get home.” I say.
“It’s fine.” She says, “Don’t be stupid.”
“Thank you.”
“You shouldn’t show up here when I call, you know. If I’ve told you not to come, then you should know better. I would have never asked if I thought you would come. There is such a thing as being a plaster saint, Cas.”
“No. Yes. I understand.”
“There is such a thing as standing on ceremony.”
Sofia explains to me about self-reliance and strong interior virtue. She explains how we are all seductively the heroes of our own stories. How we manipulate one another, preen, catastrophize, revel in wounding and playing victims.
“If you would say, for example, you loved me, it wouldn’t mean anything. Outside the moment of your saying it. Under certain duress, the subject and object of desire both are rendered meaningless. If you would ask somebody to share a life you couldn’t fully account for, Cas. It would be an act of enormous cruelty.” “Have you slept at all.” I say. “I’m fine.”
“You need to sleep.” I say.
“Shower and I’ll make you breakfast.”
“Go lay down. I can let myself out.”
“Don’t be stupid just stay here and sleep.”
I say, “I’ll get cleaned up and go.”
“Don’t be stupid. Stay. Stay. It’s not a punishment.”
Sofia lays her hand on the back of my neck then goes and runs the hot water in the shower.
I hoist myself up from the ground and stand awhile waiting, but the weight of the floor stays pressed against me breathing.
Jesse Salvo‘s short fiction has appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Hobart, X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Flash Fiction Magazine, other journals. His debut novel Blue Rhinoceros was purchased by New Meridian Arts in 2022 . His second novel Nuclea, CO is set to be published by Whiskey Tit in March 2027. Originally from New York, Salvo lives and works in Seville, Spain.