Spring has been touchy this year — easily offended, like a cat who leaps from your lap at the slightest twitch of a thigh muscle and stalks off to stare at you balefully from beneath the coffee table.
She’s come several times (spring, that is, not the cat). She’s made dramatic entrances with showy, cumulous clouds and birdsong and sunshine. But then somebody says the wrong thing, and off she flounces, over Lake Erie, leaving a trail of drizzle and wind gusts in her wake.
She peaked in on Friday when the sky was, if not exactly blue, at least not an ominous swirl of purple, black and, gray. By Saturday, though, the bruise was back. It was cold and threatening rain.
“I’ll show you, spring!” I thought. “Think I need *you* around to do spring cleaning? Think again!”
Don was off somewhere and wouldn’t be back till late afternoon. I folded laundry and steamed the wrinkles out of shirts. I vacuumed everything. I scrubbed the sinks and wiped down every cabinet we owned. I stuffed a washable rug in the washing machine then thought I’d tackle the one in my office. I suspected Pete of peeing on it. There was an odor.
I felt mighty. I was mightier than odors. I wrestled the carpet shampooer out of the laundry room and fired it up.
There may actually have been a small fire. The machine roared. It clanked. It rattled and shook as though beset by seizures. I smelled something akin to burning rubber and looked down to see actual burning rubber flying from the brush roll like a plume of exhaust. Unlike a plume of exhaust, it did not dissipate but rather cemented itself into the white fibers of the carpet. My rug looked like the Indy 500 track on lap 186.
I yanked the cord from the wall and stared (balefully, like a displaced cat) at the machine. Then, despite the fact that Don had carefully repaired it at least five times, I picked it up, carried it outside, and deposited it by the trash cans in a spitting rain.
I drove to Meijer. I walked purposefully through the aisles until I came to an array of cleaning power tools. They were Turbo Charged and had Cyclone Technology. They promised to pummel my flooring within an inch of its life, banish odors, blast dirt, and blot out blemishes like the hand of God might blot out the sun. At random, I chose one. It had an extra large water tank and an auxiliary hose. I paid for it and drove back home.
As I pulled into our driveway, I noted that an extra from The Sopranos was driving up and down the street. Our street is very short and very narrow. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was an alley. So a low-riding white sedan, circa 2008, driven at a crawl by a man in a track suit gets one’s attention. He was on his fourth pass as I was easing the carpet cleaner out of the trunk.
“Excuse me,” he said, rolling the window down. I wondered vaguely if I was about to be ‘offed.’
“Yes?”
“I’m, ah, Peter Vermicelli” Or Tetrazzini or Mostaccioli. I didn’t quite catch it. “There’s supposed to be a sale at that house down there, but it looks abandoned.”
That house down there was, indeed, abandoned. Its drunken tenant had fallen asleep with a cigarette last summer and no one’s been back since the fire department came to nail plywood over the windows and put a padlock on the door. I told Peter Pennepasta as much.
“Ah,” he said. “I think I’ve been scammed. I sent that lady fifty bucks!” The skinny black man in the passenger seat next to him turned away to stare silently out the window.
I told him I was sorry for his loss. But before I could ask what revenge the Luna Pier wiseguys might exact on a scam artist, he had rolled away.
A few seconds later an SUV with Kentucky plates slowed in front of the house, backed up, drove by it, backed up, and drove by again. I imagined its passengers — innocents from away down yonder in Montgomery County, pulled against their will into the machinations of the rural Michigan mob. I thought about jogging down the street to warn them, but they too drove off, and I was left alone with my TurboTornado Carpet Cleanser.
I cleansed the carpet. Oh man, did I cleanse it! I even hooked up the auxiliary hose and went at the furniture. By the time I was done, everything, from armchairs to decorative cushions smelled like OxyExtraHydraUltra Carpet Solution.
By Monday morning, though, the odor had returned.
“I’m going to put that rug outside for a bit,” I said. “I want it to air out.” I rolled it up and hauled it to the deck, where I promptly forgot about it.
That night, we went for a drive. We watched the red sun in the blackening sky like fire on distant mountains. Lightning, first in flashes and then in bolts, lit up the fields around us. By the time we got home, I could barely see the outline of my carpet through the sheets of rain.
This morning, maybe I’ll put it by the cursed carpet cleaner. Put a “free” sign on it. Who knows? Peter may be back, and if the movies have taught me anything, it’s that mobsters can find plenty of uses for a rolled up rug.
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