Agency

In Which Berenice Hides Behind the Janitor Who Was a Doctor in His Own Country

also Monday, but in a different part of town

The sociology building was empty but for the janitorial staff, who traditionally took advantage of the low foot traffic in April to wax and buff the hall floors.

The winter semester was officially complete. Final lectures had been delivered. Students would be preparing for exams -- at least, the diligent ones would. The less diligent among them would be letting off steam at an endless junket of keg parties or one of those new "body-positive parties" that were popping up everywhere.

Simon -- who had, of course, been to one himself -- described them as a chance to see your peers in the nude without the awkward obligations of sex. Berenice found the concept of standing around in one's underwear and making small talk completely mystifying. Would there be wine? Did people dance? Was it like a rave but without the fun fur and whistles? She couldn't picture it at all.

Fortunately, she reminded herself, it was highly unlikely that she'd ever need to endure such a thing. Married women in their 40s do not get invited to body-positive parties -- as much because young people don't think of women in their 40s as even having bodies, much less bodies they'd want to be publically positive about. Which, when she considered it that way, was an annoying double standard. After all, Simon had been invited to one, and he was her age. She bet the whole party was crawling with middle-aged men, paunches hanging over under-elasticated Y-front briefs, socks pulled up over balding shins, holding bottles of Coors, and ogling the parade of young women who were only trying to celebrate their nubility in their tiny lace bralettes and matching thongs.

Then again, she highly doubted Simon would be the type to wear saggy old briefs. And he definitely didn't have a paunch. In fact, if there was any man in the world who needed to be at a body-positive party less, she couldn't think who.

Anyway, these were the thoughts that were distracting her as she made her way down the lonely hallway toward the staff kitchen, where she was planning to get a cup of tea to bring back to her office (where she was (still) hiding). Her mind was dialling up the resolution on a particularly interesting mental picture of exactly what kind of underpants a man like Simon actually *would* wear when the subject of her thoughts himself rounded the corner at the other end of the hall.

Instinctively, she jumped behind a janitor who was wielding his huge buffer around the floor. Surely, Simon couldn't have seen her, she thought. She tried to conform her shape to the janitor's, crouching a little so her head wouldn't be visible behind his bald one.

She kept pace with him for a few arcs of the buffer. If she could stick close to him until he approached an open door or the next turn in the hallway, she'd be home free.

"Hello Sam," she heard Simon say in his smooth person-of-the-people voice. "It would appear that you have a woman attached to your back."

Sam, the janitor -- whose actual name was Samir; who had come from Syria and intended to return one day if they ever stopped the war; who was, in fact, a trained oncologist in his own country but had been forced to take any job he could find, which turned out to be one that involved sweeping up candy wrappers; who endured a 45-minute commute each way on heaving public transit just to keep what was left of his family sheltered in the tiny apartment with a bug problem and rent he could barely afford on his wage -- Sam didn't have time for North American jocularity. He shook his head as if to dismiss Simon and just kept buffing.

Berenice had no choice but to unfurl from behind her human shield. Her face was red with embarrassment -- on two counts of humiliation now: first, for throwing herself at Simon that night; second, for hiding behind janitors.