The Mudslinger

There are two teams, one that scoops dirt into tubs and one that adds water and stirs it into mud. The consistency is important so they have to be careful, can’t just slop it up. Everyone gets shuffled around so they all do both jobs, they all get double the skills to put on a resume assuming they put this job on a resume. Today Cass is on the scooping team. Shovel goes into dirt and dirt goes into the big industrial bin, and when this bin’s full another one takes its place and then another and another until Cass’s shoulders are all knotted up and it’s hard to lift her hands above her head.

After all the scooping and stirring the bins go to spas nearby, a couple of them “spas.” The difference is that “spas” have more rules about what substances can come inside, and they’re better at keeping secrets. People go there to do what used to be called drying out, opposite of what happens with the dirt.

The mud is high quality, local, organic, pesticide free. Cass doesn’t know what makes it high quality. It sure isn’t what everyone gets paid to make it.

Cass scoops a bunch of earwigs into the tub. Customers go wild when they find bugs, they love it so much. That’s how they can tell it’s good. It makes them feel really connected to the earth, like it’s worth the premium they pay for it. Like it isn’t the same dirt they could get in any ‘ole suburb.

Her roommates hate the days she’s on the scooping team, or at least Emmy does. “You track dirt in everywhere,” Emmy complains. Do you know how much this dirt goes for, Cass wants to ask. You should be thanking me, she wants to say. Instead she kicks her shoes off outside and carries them in, strips off all her clothes and scrubs away all the mud made by dirt mixing with sweat. Is it worth more or less if it’s made with sweat, she wonders.

When she’s done with the shower she puts a word on a Post-It. She’s trying this writing exercise that’s supposed to get the juices flowing. Write down one word every day for a week and then see what ideas those seven words spark. Violet, she writes and sticks the Post-It on the mirrored closet door with the others.

Emmy is on the couch when Cass goes to make dinner, watching TV but mostly looking at her phone. Cass grabs bread, mustard, turkey, pickles, but tomatoes are missing. There should be two, she’s sure of it, but there are none.

“Hey, have you seen tomatoes anywhere?”

“Tom,” Emmy says. Tom is always eating their food, taking bits of whatever he wants from the fridge no matter how many times they tell him to stop. She could go tell him again, walk straight into his room and make a fuss about the tomatoes. He put a deadbolt on his door ages ago, but kept forgetting the key and always had to call a locksmith so he took the whole doorknob off and shoved a tennis ball in the hole. This way he can undo the lock from the outside. Seems like it defeats the purpose but he’s happy enough with the system. Point is, how’s Cass supposed to argue with a guy like that, how can she get him to understand about tomatoes? Better to just let it go, make a sandwich that isn’t as good.

When she sits she can see that Emmy’s looking at pictures of derailed trains. She’s been painting disasters, oil spills and bridge collapses and sinkholes all in bright colors and bold patterns. It’s a series she’s working on for a show that’s coming up. Cass knows all about it because she hears about it every day. Best she can tell Emmy doesn’t have a job, which is why she has time for all the paintings. Must be that she’s rich, Cass has decided. Must be nice.

 

The next day she’s on wetting and stirring, which is mostly stirring. Shove the paddle in deep and scoop the bottom stuff up to the top is the best way to do it. Shlop-shlop goes the mud, not so cooperative about being shoved around. Cass feels it in the muscles that run the bottom of her arms. What are those, triceps? While she stirs she sees little gray pill bugs scramble away. They were roly-polys when she was a kid, but pill bug feels more adult. Kids don’t know enough about pills to name anything after them, and anyway, seems ridiculous for a grown up to say roly-poly, neither word belongs in a full grown mouth. Whatever they’re called, the spas will be thrilled to find them. They’re for sure better than earwigs.

No one complains on the stirring days, or at least Emmy doesn’t complain. When Cass gets home she’s got a canvas laid out on the living room floor, hunched over it and outlining a torn open tanker car in electric blue. Her hand is so steady, lines so neat. Cass knows that’s what she needs to be doing, too, not the painting but the creating. Into her room she goes, straight to the pen and Post-Its. Chain, she writes and sticks it with the rest, the seventh Post-It, the final piece.

Speak, Eat, Chance, Ambulatory, Capital, Violet, Chain, the Post-Its say. She rearranges them and then rearranges them again. What could this possibly be, Cass wonders. She pulls up the website and checks that she didn’t miss any steps. This needed more instructions, she is sure. The website didn’t tell how to do this right. All the notes go in the garbage. Ambulatory, how the hell did she come up with that?

 

She’s back on scooping and while she scoops she thinks about what she’s going to write. Need to focus on characters, she decides. That’s the problem, not enough character stuff. She makes up a character who goes full tilt at everything, always has to be the best, could never even think about quitting. This character would want to be the best at scooping dirt. Cass can only really write what she knows so she scoops faster and tells herself things like “we’re going to beat the record” and “this is a new personal best.”

At the end of the shift the supervisor pulls her aside.

“You know there’s no awards or anything, right?” he tells her. “All that happens is you end up getting on peoples’ nerves, and you can’t get away with that in this business.”

What business will let her get away with it, she wants to ask. Can she put him down as a reference if she finds it?

“All I’m saying is it’s going to be a long season so pace yourself,” he says.

Mud season is spring and summer, and since spring and summer keep getting longer mud season keeps getting longer. She was supposed to only work one season, just while she was finding herself, but she keeps coming back so maybe it turns out there wasn’t anything to find. Maybe not every iceberg has so much going on underwater.

 

When Cass gets out of the shower Emmy is in the kitchen in heels that must add six inches. She’s already tall so the shoes make some kind of cryptid out of her, what human could be shaped like that. Her face is in the fridge, she has to practically fold in half to get that low.

“I had oranges,” Emmy says.

“Tom?”

Emmy sighs and shuts the fridge.

“You going somewhere?” Cass asks.

“Just to work.”

Cass isn’t sure if this is a joke.

“Do you work?”

“Yeah, how do you think I pay rent?”

Cass is still not sure if this is a bit, but Emmy motions for her to follow so she does. In Emmy’s room the curtains are shut and the lights are soft and there’s a small white backdrop that only goes knee high. Emmy puts her foot in front of it, right in the light and Cass gets the message.

“I was going to step on those oranges. People lose their minds over stepping on stuff.”

“Your job is taking photos of your feet?”

“Video.”

“Your job is taking videos of your feet?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that but basically, yeah.”

“It pays good?”

“Good enough.”

“Think I could do feet pics?”

“Videos. Nah, feet like yours are a dime a dozen.” Emmy puts her foot next to Cass’s and it’s huge, almost two of Cass’s feet.

“What if I covered them in mud and dirt?”

“That question just shows you don’t know anything about the market.”

“What if I was missing a couple toes?”

“Trust me, that’s not a scene you want to break into,” Emmy says, solemn. “Listen, if this is the first time you’ve thought about foot stuff, it’s probably not for you.”

 

The supervisor calls her over during lunch, which might not be on the up and up according to labor laws but who is Cass going to tell?

“Hardly anyone does this job more than one season, but here you are.”

“Here I am.”

He wants to know if she wants more than this, wants out of making mud and into selling mud. Drive around to spas and see if they’re in the market for a premium mud vendor. Talk up the mud, the process, the properties.

“Tell ‘em you use it yourself and it makes you feel, you know, rejuvenated.”

“But I don’t use it.”

“You can just make it up,” he says. “Tell a story, it’s not hard.”

She says she’ll think about it.

She’s thinking about it when she gets home, when she’s cutting up what vegetables she has left and turning them into a salad that’s not as good as it would have been if the bell peppers hadn’t disappeared.

Sales, she thinks. Hello, I would like to sell you some mud. Some very nice mud. The very nicest mud, she thinks in an escalating series of what are probably lies. How do people get good at this, she wonders. Probably by talking real loud. What’s more confident than someone practically yelling, who doesn’t need to hear anything but their own voice. What a way to be.

“Hello,” she tries yelling but it comes out all strangled, like she’s in a desert calling for water because she doesn’t want to be loud enough to bother her roommates. Maybe sales is not for her.

Meanwhile Emmy’s blown up on the internet. That’s the way she says it to Cass.

“I’ve blown up on the internet,” she says as she throws the front door open, coat whipping around behind her, all drama.

“Is this about the disaster paintings?”

“Please.” She rolls her eyes, more drama. “Paintings are old hat. It’s all video now.”

“So it’s about the feet?” Cass says feet real quiet, like it’s a dirty word.

Not about the feet, though that’s going like gangbusters says Emmy. Purely coincidence that it’s taking off now. Emmy shows the videos she’s talking about. A picture of a famous painting floats over her head, edges all fuzzy and jumpy. Emmy points over her head at the painting. She must have filmed herself pointing at nothing. Music plays. She shows Cass another and another.

“This has blown up?”

“People can’t get enough. Look at this engagement.”

What part are people going nuts for, Cass can’t figure out. Is it the painting or the pointing or the music? All of them together? Has to be something to it she can’t see. Some subtext or context or text-text she knows nothing about.

 

The problem is plot, Cass decides while she stirs mud. That’s the thing to focus on. She stirs and stirs and stirs and can’t think of a single plot. What even is a plot? Someone is born and then what? What business is it of hers what comes after?

 

It’s impossible not to run into Emmy all over the apartment now, she’s always filming somewhere. The audience loves variety. They go mad for it, Emmy says. She’s filming in the bathroom when Cass goes to take a shower. Someone did a painting of Emmy pointing, so she’s in the bathroom filming herself pointing at nothing so she can add the painting afterwards. In the painting she’s pointing at a painting of herself pointing at a painting of herself pointing at a painting of herself smaller and smaller all the way down to subatomic size.

“They’re going to love this,” she says and she’s right, of course. They all say it’s her best video yet. Emmy really understands them, really knows what they want.

 

A story about a girl who wakes up in the past, she writes on a Post-It. A story about a girl going through the first bad thing in her life, she writes on another. A story about a girl who can tell what people want, she writes on another.

 

Emmy is everywhere these days, people sharing and sharing the videos. The foot business has exploded at the same time so she’s making some real money, enough to buy a place. Not a house, there’s only so much money in feet, but an okay condo in an okay part of town. Soon she’ll move out and then she’ll be everywhere but here.

“You can’t leave me alone with Tom,” Cass says.

“He’ll find another roommate in no time. You’ll barely notice I left.”

“How does Tom even pay rent? He never goes outside.”

“Are you serious? He owns the whole building.”

On one hand Cass is pretty sure she hates him for owning the whole building but on the other she feels sorry for him and on a third hand she cannot believe she didn’t know until now and on a hypothetical fourth hand if he owns the building why can’t he get his shit together with the lock, what does that mean for everyone who lives here. It’s too complicated to feel all those things at the same time so she ends up pretty much feeling nothing.

“Do you think Tom would give me free rent if I slept with him?”

“If this is the first time you’ve thought about that, it’s not for you.”

 

Stirring is harder than scooping, Cass decides one day. Scooping is harder than stirring, she decides the next. Whatever she’s doing is always the hardest thing.

Girl who spends all day stirring, she writes on a Post-It. Girl who spends all day scooping, she writes on another.

 

The housewarming party is right after work which means Cass has to shove clothes into a bag and be ready to change in the car. She hopes for stirring but gets scooping, though the hose sprung a leak which made extra mud all up the stirring side so maybe it turned out better that way. End of the shift hits and she’s half running to her car, but the supervisor calls her name as she speedwalks by.

“Have you thought about what we talked about?” he asks. She figured that if she never brought it up he’d forget, but no such luck.

“Yes, but I have to go. I have somewhere to be, it’s important.”

“Let me know what you decide on Monday, okay?”

Yes, she says, thank you. So now she has a party to go to and decisions to make and all this dirt to get off her arms and legs before she shimmies into nice pants. Hard to manage all that in the backseat of a car but she does all right, any dirt left behind is mostly hidden by clothes so good enough, anyway.

The condo is already loud and full when she lets herself in. Everyone who doesn’t work mud hours beat her there, and by the looks of it no one else works mud hours. Emmy is somewhere in all this but who knows where. Someone hands her a drink and she accepts, nice for her hands to have something to do. Someone asks what she does, has to yell over the music so Cass can hear.

“This and that,” Cass says.

In the line for the bathroom there’s gossip being passed around. They hear Emmy’s losing viewers, now everyone’s all about this guy who pouts instead of points. She’s going to need some more material, they say. Figure it out quick. And have they heard the latest about feet? Everyone’s predicting that small feet are the next thing, teeny tiny feet with round little toes. Poor Emmy they say and shake their heads.

Cass still hasn’t found Emmy but she’s had enough of the music and questions yelled into her ear and the white carpet, white walls, white curtains closing in all around. Out the door she goes and straight to her car. Fun party! she texts Emmy.

When she gets home Emmy’s in the kitchen, pointing at nothing over her head.

“I was just at your party,” Cass says.

“I’m going back soon, it’s just hilarious to do one more video in the old place.”

Maybe the gossip was right, maybe she is losing touch. Cass doesn’t say so, who is she to tell Emmy about what anyone wants? She leaves Emmy pointing in the kitchen and closes herself in her room, takes out the Post-Its.

Girl who has it all and loses it, she writes. Girl who never had it in the first place, she writes.