The Street Sweeper (3 page)

Once he had been screened, approved and accepted, Lamont had been treated like any other new employee at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and placed on six months’ probation. The first three days had gone well enough and now, notwithstanding his humiliating paralysis in the face of the bus driver’s ordeal, Lamont had arrived on time for day four. He liked the fact that he was working in a hospital. It pleased him. He liked being able to ask someone from another department a question by simply picking up the internal phone, dialling the other person’s extension and beginning with, ‘This is Lamont Williams from Building Services …’

He entered from First Avenue and signed in, but was told that as soon as he was in his uniform he should go immediately to the York Avenue entrance. He was needed for something and he would be told what it was when he got there. When he arrived at the York Avenue entrance, he couldn’t see anyone from Building Services, and certainly not anyone senior to him. He looked around and decided to wait a little while. Maybe the supervisor was just about to arrive? Although he was wearing a watch, he had forgotten to take notice of the time he’d got to the York Avenue entrance. He had not expected to be interested in what time it was precisely that he had got there – it couldn’t have been long after the shift had started – but now it seemed to him as though he had been waiting ages. Surely it had been only minutes? Maybe he was meant to be waiting outside, on the street side of the entrance. Maybe that’s where the supervisor was already. He quickly stuck his head through the doors to the street side of the York Avenue entrance, but he couldn’t see the supervisor there either. Should he find an internal phone and call
someone? Maybe he had misheard the instruction in the first place. This was only day four. This was a good job. He had to get past probation. It was only six months. They told him that after twelve months, you were eligible to have the company pay for your college tuition if you were able to get into a college. How good would that sound – a hospital employee for twelve months and going to college? How good would that sound to a judge? If he had to apply to a court to see his daughter, how good would that sound? He asked one of the others if he had understood the policy correctly. It sounded too good. ‘Yeah, when you get into Harvard, they’ll pay.’

Probation lasts six months. This was the first hour of day four, and the supervisor wasn’t to be found outside either. Maybe Lamont was meant to
see
the job at hand, to identify the problem himself and show some initiative. He looked outside to see if there was anything that looked like an obvious job for someone in Building Services. Everyone outside was smoking under the hospital awning – paramedics, anxious family members, even patients themselves. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe they were all just about to quit. Maybe the patients among the smokers had a cancer
other
than lung cancer, and needed the comfort of cigarettes to get them through it. Whatever the explanation, there was no doubting the pile of cigarette butts scattered on the sidewalk near the entrance. Could that be what he was meant to do, get rid of the cigarette butts from the sidewalk at the York Avenue entrance? It didn’t look like anyone from the previous shift had done it, but it didn’t look so urgent, either.

There was a storeroom not far away. Lamont was aware of it. He could get a broom and pan and be sweeping up the sidewalk when the supervisor arrived. Maybe the supervisor had been delayed. Wouldn’t that look good – Lamont sweeping up the cigarette butts off the sidewalk when the supervisor arrived? Lamont was turning to go back inside to the storeroom for the broom and pan when a man entering from the street stopped him. ‘Do you know Yale Bronfman? He’s in Regulatory.’

‘Sorry, sir, I’m in Building Services.’

‘You don’t know Yale Bronfman?’

‘No, sir, I’m –’

‘Is this the right entrance for Regulatory Affairs?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I’m in Building Services.’

‘But … You don’t know the building?’

‘Maybe you want to ask the man at the information desk there, sir … ? I’m sure he can help you.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ the man said, heading inside towards the information desk.

Was Lamont meant to know everybody who worked there? Was he meant to know where Regulatory Affairs was or even
what
Regulatory Affairs was? Had he been told? Had he already forgotten? He went to the storeroom as quickly as he could. It would be best if the supervisor arrived at the York Avenue entrance and saw Lamont working while he waited for further instructions. At the end of every twelve months of employment, the supervisor awarded you a score between zero and five. That score represented your pay increase, and it was a percentage of your salary. No one in the history of the hospital had ever got a score of five. You could get three, or three-point-seven, or four-point-two, but no one had ever got five because a score of five represents perfection, and, as everybody knows, nobody’s perfect. The supervisor had a lot of power. He determined how close you got to perfection.

Lamont was sweeping outside the York Avenue entrance, and still there was no sign of his supervisor. Clouds of smoke blew across his face and through his hair. He sneezed. It was probably hay fever. The trees across the street at Rockefeller University could traumatise a sensitive nose. Lamont had already been told to blame a sneeze on the trees at Rockefeller University, or else on the smokers’ cigarettes at the entrances, because you were not permitted to come to work sick. You were permitted a certain number of hours off sick a year, but only a fool would take them because the supervisor would see it on your record and hold it against you. If you sneezed, you’d better blame it on the trees at Rockefeller. If you were really sick, it was best to come in anyway, and then after a little while you could report that you felt sick. They would send you home immediately, but it wouldn’t show up on your record. It would look good. You made the effort to come in. Remember the trees at Rockefeller. They can help you. Lamont knew this already. He had been told this unofficially by the man who had shown him around on his first
day. No one had said anything about Regulatory Affairs. If they had, he didn’t remember it. It’s funny what you remember. It’s not up to you.

It felt good to be sweeping up. At least for a moment, he knew he was doing the right thing, and was doing it well. It wouldn’t take long, and he had decided that if the supervisor hadn’t appeared by the time he was finished sweeping, he would go back to where he had signed in on the First Avenue side of the building.

‘Excuse me.’ Lamont heard a voice, but assumed it asked for someone else’s attention. But when it persisted, he turned around. ‘Excuse me,’ an elderly patient in a wheelchair asked. ‘I was brought down from my room for some air, but there’s too much … It’s too smoky, so I should go inside. Can you take me back to my room?’ The old man – he spoke with some kind of accent – was attached to an IV drip.

‘You wanna go inside, sir?’

‘Yes, it’s too smoky here. I can’t believe they all smoke.’

Lamont looked around. Another thing he remembered being told was that the customer was always right. This sick old white man with a foreign accent was a patient, so he was a customer. ‘Well, see, sir, I’m in Building Services …’

‘What are you?’

‘Building Services.’

‘Yes, in the building … on the ninth floor.’

Lamont looked around. ‘Wasn’t there someone who brought you down?’

‘Yes, from the ninth floor but it’s too smoky.’

There were rules about the transportation of patients. Only certain members of staff were permitted to move patients from one place to another. Special warnings needed to be given about steps and elevators. Training was essential for this. The hospital’s insurance policies made it all very clear.

‘Sir, wasn’t there someone from Patient Escort Services who brought you down?’

‘Yes, of course. Someone brought me down. He said he’d be back and now … Now he’s not back. Can you take me back up … on the ninth floor?’

‘I’m not supposed to.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not allowed to …’

‘It’s too smoky … with all of them.’

‘Let me see if I can get you someone from PES. I’ll be right back.’ Lamont clutched his broom and pan in one hand and went inside to the concierge. ‘I got a patient out here who wants to go back to his room. Isn’t there supposed to be someone from PES with him?’ The concierge rolled his eyes. ‘Fucking Jamal! He left the patient on the street! And his probation ends next week. I hope he’s cramming for his test. He’s got the HIPAA test.’

‘Well, he left the patient out on the street. What’s the HIPAA test? Will I have to –’

‘Shit! Okay, you go back and stay with the patient. I’ll try to get hold of someone from PES. Fucking Jamal!’

Lamont went back to the old man in the wheelchair. He was sitting there, holding his robe closed with one hand, among the smokers on York Avenue. A breeze blew through his wisps of hair. He looked alone. ‘I’m sorry. The man, the
other
man, he shouldn’t have left you.’

‘I agree with you,’ the old man said.

‘Someone should be here soon.’

‘’Cause it’s not a
smoking
jacket, you know.’

‘What?’

‘It’s not a
smoking
jacket,’ the old man said with a smile, pointing to the bathrobe.

‘No, no, it’s not.’

When the man asked again for Lamont to take him back to his room on the ninth floor, Lamont explained again that he was not permitted to do it. He explained that it was against the rules. He repeated what he had been told about the hospital’s insurance. The supervisor was never coming. Or maybe he had been and gone while Lamont was with the concierge. Jamal had almost made it to the end of his six months’ probation. ‘It’s the rules.’

‘You know something? I bet you would be very careful.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘But if you
could
, you would watch out for the steps.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I can’t.’

‘Because of the rules?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Otherwise you would?’

‘I would if I could.’

‘I’m an old man …’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘You know why I’m here?’

‘Cancer?’

‘You could take me up in the service elevator. The only people who would see us would
also
be in Building Services, so you wouldn’t get into trouble.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Then you could just drop me off in my room and I could ring the buzzer for a nurse.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘You’d be gone, and then the nurse would be the one to help me back into bed.’

‘I know what you’re sayin’, sir, but I really can’t do it.’

‘Because of the rules, right?’

‘That’s right.’

The old man beckoned Lamont with his finger to lean close to him. Closer, closer, the finger kept beckoning, moving with surprising vigour until Lamont was kneeling beside the old man, enabling the patient to whisper into Lamont’s ear above the noise of the traffic on York Avenue. ‘To hell with the rules.’ Lamont had to smile.

The service elevator was empty, and they made it to the ninth floor without anyone looking twice. On the way up, neither of them spoke. Lamont kept looking at the floor, watching out for all the steps. He would go looking for the supervisor when this was over. What were the chances anyone would ever know about this? What were the chances he’d make it to the end of probation and have to learn the HIPAA rules like Jamal? Where was Numbers when you needed him? He was still
inside, if he was anywhere. What were the HIPAA rules, anyway? Did you actually have to know them by heart?

The old man directed Lamont to his room on the ninth floor, overlooking York Avenue. How long was it going to take him before he got that Seneca song out of his head? He had no control over it. There were worse things to remember. Now he had to worry about memorising the HIPAA rules. He had six months to worry about that, if he could survive that long. He worried about surviving all the time. When they got to the window of the room, the old man put one hand up to ask him to stop. The old man looked out the window. ‘Is that the East River?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘So that’s … New Jersey?’

‘No, New Jersey’s on the west side, over the Hudson. That’s Queens.’

‘And that … that land there?’

‘That’s Roosevelt Island.’ ‘Roosevelt?’

‘Uh-huh. I’m gonna have to go, sir.’

‘What are
they?’

‘What … the chimneys?’

‘Yes … three chimneys … Where are they, Roosevelt?’

‘I don’t think so … probably Queens. You’re not from here, are you? I should go.’

The trick is not to hate yourself. No matter what you remember.

‘I need to go now. You okay to call the nurse? I have to go. You happy by the window? They’ll help you to get back to … Sir? Sir?’ The old man was staring out the window.

‘There were six death camps.’

‘What?’

‘There were six death camps.’

‘Six what?’

‘Death camps.’

‘What do you mean, “death camp”?’

‘There were exactly six death camps but you could die more than once in any of them.’

S
HORTLY BEFORE
4.30 am one Monday morning, Adam Zignelik, almost forty, was to awake momentarily uncertain of where he was and experience a shortness of breath sometimes associated with a heart attack or at least with the tart panic of a nightmare. Though the blinds were drawn, the bedroom of the Morningside Heights apartment he rented from Columbia University where he worked was bathed with a faint grey-bluish glow familiar to anyone who had ever been awake at that hour in the nearby cross streets. In other parts of Manhattan the light was variously somehow different, something no one ever seemed to talk about. When he awoke shortly before 4.30 am that Monday morning the character of the light would only add to the surreal quality his unconscious was spraying in a fine mist over his perception of the new and already fugitive day.

In the minutes before he woke a montage of images in his mind, mostly in monochrome, had induced a series of increasingly violent bodily tremors ultimately almost indistinguishable from a convulsion. The images, mainly of black people, were from another time, his father’s time. There was Emmett Till, seated, forever fourteen, his mother’s hand resting on his shoulder. In August 1955, Emmett left his home on the south side of Chicago to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi. Armed only with a speech impediment bequeathed to him by a bout of polio contracted when he was three, the fourteen-year-old
black boy went into Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market to buy some gum. As he was leaving he said, perhaps shyly, perhaps not, ‘Bye, Baby’ to the older white town beauty, Carolyn Bryant. When Emmett’s body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, he was recognisable to his southern relative only by his initialled ring. Barbed wire had been used to hold a cotton-gin fan around his neck, one eye had been gouged out, a bullet had been lodged in his skull and one side of his forehead had been crushed. Adam Zignelik’s sleep took in the image of Emmett Till with his mother’s hand resting on Emmett’s shoulder as well as the later one, the last one, of Emmett’s bashed, bloated, river-soaked head, the one that his mother, Mamie Till Bradley Mobley, allowed to be published in
Jet
magazine so it could be seen as widely as possible. Adam saw these images flicker by and falter before him and then for a moment he saw his own father, also in black and white. Then his father too disappeared.