“Starting late today, huh, GI?” Jung murmured, checking his fat gold diver’s watch, his eyes squinting against the stream of the smoke.

“Want to know why?”

“What, you have big date last night?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“She fat lady?”

“He.”

“No fucking way,” Jung guffawed, the cigarette tilted down loosely in his mouth. “Don’t tell me this, GI!”

“Relax. He wasn’t there to be nice to me.”

“Oh shit,” Jung said, sitting up in the couch. “You okay? You look okay.”

“I’m all right. But do me a favor. Don’t mess around with this any longer. Pay what you owe. For my sake as well as yours. I might not be around when the next guy comes, and even if I were…”

“Okay,” Jung said, smoking slowly now. “Okay.”

“You don’t have the money, do you?”

“I’ll get it.”

“I hope you win big this weekend, chief.”

“Me too, GI.”

Jung had been calling him GI since learning that Hector had been in the Korean War, or else called him Joe, or Rambo, something else Hector would have never suffered from anyone else but didn’t mind from Jung. In fact he took a small pleasure in the idea that more than thirty years of tumultuous world history should presently lead to a moment like this, for him to be dressed in cheap coveralls, mop in hand, preparing to clean the toilets of a grubby Korean mall in New Jersey for this most slothful of their kind, a man who was, literally, born in a roadside ditch during the war but didn’t remotely know or care a thing about it now.

“But hey, Rambo, you got hot sex last night, too, huh?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Otherwise you’d be real mad at me.”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“See, I’m right,” Jung said, leaning back on the couch. He had already forgotten about his betting debts. “I’m glad. I’m afraid you some homo.”

“Dream on.”

“Maybe, brother. You never know. Maybe I’m sick of women. Sick of all their bullshit. You not?”

“Not near as much as they’re probably sick of mine.”

“See what I mean? Listen to you! We getting trained, like this! Fucking bullshit. My wife make me jump up and down whenever she want. Go to work early, go back home early, don’t see my friends, feed baby, fix shower door, fix car. Don’t touch, no sex now. Or, wake up, wake up, sex right now. Now she kick me out and I get same kind bullshit, but from God damn waitress!”

“You should leave Sang-Mee alone.”

“Tell me about it! Whole night she was crying, her face a fucking mess, saying where I been? Why golf take so long? Why poker take all night? How come no more present, no more ring and necklace? How come I don’t love her anymore? I want to say, ‘When did I ever love you, fucking bitch?’ ”

“But you didn’t.”

“Hey, I was tired. Then she got very mad, when I fell asleep. Then she cry some more. She was here for a while but I guess she’s gone.” He immediately checked his wallet, expecting it to be emptied, but there was still a decent slab of bills inside. Being skilled at golf and cards, Jung made his pocket money off his friends; but, after the custom, he spent most of the winnings on their eating and drinking afterward, and whatever was left on his mistresses.

“I’m hungry. Hey, you want to eat? I pay.”

“I got work to do.”

“No problem. I give you morning off.”

“You know I’ll just have to work twice as long tomorrow. Besides, the head’s probably a mess. Mrs. Kim will just complain.” Mrs. Kim owned the Korean restaurant on the mezzanine, and because her customers had to use the mall bathrooms she was often harping on Hector, though more to get him to speak to Jung than anything else. She despised Jung because he never did anything he promised in the way of improvements, but she let him eat gratis anyway (even if he ordered extravagantly), for he convinced his uncle, the mall owner, who lived in Long Island, to keep extending her lease every six months, at a very reasonable rent. She had the cook make the food too salty or sweet whenever he came in with his buddies, so they would think twice about eating there when he next suggested it in the hope of saving himself the tab.

“Okay, you work, and when I wake up again we can eat.”

“Sang-Mee’s working today,” Hector told him.

“You think I give a damn? I’m not afraid of her.”

Last week Sang-Mee spilled a pitcher of water onto Jung’s back, saying it was an accident. Jung had jumped up and might have struck her but Hector had held him back. Sang-Mee mused aloud how fortunate it was that it wasn’t hot soup. This made Jung angrier and he berated her viciously in Korean but she just smiled and went into the kitchen. Jung deserved it; he had been seeing her off and on for the past couple of years, but had dumped her right after his wife booted him, presumably because he had no more excuses about having to stay in his marriage. Hector liked Sang-Mee, for she was always quick with a kind word and had a spark in her eyes that made her prettier than she was otherwise, but then he pitied her, too, for her sticking by Jung for so long.

“I’ll eat with you if we eat somewhere else.”

Jung cried, “What? Now you on her side?”

“I just think you ought to leave her alone.”

“Me? She better leave me alone! She harass me. Last week she spit in my tea! I get her fired real easy, you know.”

“No you won’t.”

“Okay, Rambo, okay!” he said, holding up his hands. “See, you on her side.”

“You want to eat or not?”

“Okay. But I want to eat here. I leave her alone. Been too long, and Mrs. Kim getting off easy. Plus, I need cash. My wife taking all my money, say it’s for kids but I know she lying.”

“She’s using it for booze and gambling and boys?”

“You hilarious guy, Joe. Maybe I’m not so hungry anymore.”

“Suit yourself. I still have the bathrooms to do.”

“Okay, okay, let’s go up.”

“I filled the pail already. I’ll meet you in an hour.”

“I’m starving, Joe!”

“Go by yourself, then,” Hector answered, turning to leave.

“You better work first,” Jung grumbled, tapping out another cigarette. He lit it and flitted his hand at Hector. “Go, go. I can wait, God damn.”

Hector wheeled the full rolling pail of hot water and ammonia to the elevator and keyed it to STOP while he swabbed the floor and then wiped down the walls and button panel with a dampened rag. Like everything else in the mall, the elevator car was in a sorry condition, the wooden floorboards buckled and the metal walls dented and scratched and scrawled over with permanent marker in several languages. As he rode it up to the second level, the car lurched and seemed to slip off its catches as if due to a worn clutch and he imagined the cable above him finally fraying and sending him hurtling to the bottom. And it would be fine, if his end should happen here; there was no better place, if certain dark gods should be served. But the fall might not be quite far enough (there was just one underground parking level) and he knew his fate would likely be that he’d emerge as usual from a heap of sure mayhem with nothing deeper than the usual transitory wound.

The bathrooms he saved for last, for if he started there he’d have to change again before vacuuming the carpets amid customers. It always smelled like a stable, but then worse for the carelessness of people. People could only wish that they lived like animals. Hector could clean them up well enough, but the general condition of the facilities was past maintaining, the stall doors long missing, the walls covered in graffiti, the sinks cracked, most of the panels of the drop ceiling water-stained and ajar. When some of the panels finally rotted through enough to fall down, he mentioned it to Jung, but nothing was ever fixed or replaced and Hector felt no need to mention it again.

As usual the bathrooms were a disaster, the toilets plugged, the basins and floors rankly fouled as they always were on weekend mornings, but especially so ever since the karaoke bar opened, several months ago. The women’s room required extra attention, as someone had vomited in the sink but mostly missed the mark. Hector swabbed it first with the mop before spraying it with ammonia and then took a sponge in his hands to wipe down the worn porcelain and rusting faucet and handles. He didn’t use gloves. His hands were perennially red from the cleansers but no longer felt the sting of the caustic solvents, being scalded into numbness; as such they were also oddly smooth to the touch, as Dora had once noted in the bar. The mirror above the sink had long been smashed and instead of glass Jung had screwed a thin panel of stainless steel to the wall. Hector took a plunger to the toilets and worked each steadily until all manner of detritus welled up and after flushing each several times he mopped the floor and then had to mop it again with a freshly filled pail from downstairs in the janitor’s closet.