He opened the deadbolt with his shoulder leaning into the door the way you have to, stepped out of the non-slip shoes without untying them, and left them on the mat where the laces had gone the color of sidewalk. Twelve hours of the kitchen came in with him: diesel from the loading dock, fryer oil, the sweet chemical smell of the degreaser they used on the flat-top. The linen closet was mostly empty. A fitted sheet that never fit, a pillowcase, and on the top shelf the towel, folded in thirds the way it came off the rack at the Bed Bath and Beyond going-out-of-business sale. White. Kept white on purpose. He lifted it down with both hands.
The shower had one handle and he turned it as far left as it would go, which wasn't far. The pipes knocked once, the way they always did, and the water came through rust-colored and then clear. He stood in the steam with his work shirt still on, the cotton going dark at the shoulders first, and waited until the mirror over the sink had fogged completely white. Then he undressed slowly, the shirt peeling away and landing on the tub floor with a sound like a hand slapped flat on a table, and he pressed both palms against the tile above the faucet, fingers spread, eyes shut, while the grease smell lifted off him in the heat, circled once, and went wherever it goes.
The hot water lasted eleven minutes on a good night. When it went cold he stepped forward into the spray, chin down, and let the last thin heat run off his collarbone. On the shelf by the sink his phone lit up through the fog. A notification from the scheduling app. Where tomorrow's shift total had been a number starting with a one and a nine, there was now a zero with a dash beside it and nothing after. He stood with the cold water ticking against the back of his neck, not moving, the way you hold still after something falls in another room and you're waiting to hear where it landed. Then he reached past the curtain, lifted the white towel off the toilet tank, and pressed his face into it with both hands until the cotton went warm from the inside out.
He dried himself the way his mother had taught him to handle the good dish towels, folding once along the long edge, white against white. Left arm first, then the right, pressing the cloth flat into the crook of the elbow where the skin was softest. The bare bulb over the mirror had burned out two weeks ago and he hadn't replaced it, so the only light came sideways from the hallway, and in that half-dark the towel was nearly a light of its own. He stood on the bathmat with it folded across both forearms like something being carried in a procession, his breathing the only sound in the apartment, and let the minute finish before he moved.
The hook was his. Chrome faceplate, toggle bolt, driven into the hollow door with a butter knife because he didn't own a screwdriver, set three inches higher than the old hook, a height he had measured in hand-spans before he drilled. He hung the towel and smoothed it once from the top edge down with his open palm until it hung without a wrinkle. He left the bathroom light on. Left, that is. He hadn't forgotten it. He walked down the dark hall to the bed, pulled the fitted sheet that never fit up to his chin, and lay there looking at the bright white rectangle of the bathroom doorway at the end of the room, glowing like something he had installed on purpose. Which he had.
In the morning he took his jacket from the chair back and carried it to the window, turning it slowly along the seam in the gray light, checking for grease the way you check bread for mold. There was a small dark comma of it near the second button, the size of a thumbnail. He wet the corner of a paper towel at the kitchen sink and worked the spot in circles until the wool pilled slightly and the comma was gone, or close enough that only he would ever know where it had been. Then he hung the jacket on the shower rod and ran the hot water for three minutes without stepping in, just letting the steam climb around it, the charcoal wool going a shade darker in the damp, the lining swaying once. When he came back from his coffee it had dried without a wrinkle. He pressed two fingers to the lapel the way you press a stamp, and left to catch the bus and find out what a zero-hour week was going to mean.
The bar soap had cracked that morning, a split down the center where it had dried too fast, and he had pressed the halves back together with his thumb until the edges held. On his lunch break, eleven minutes of it, he stood in the soap aisle of the dollar store turning a wrapped bar of Ivory over in his hands, reading nothing, just feeling the paper corners. He bought two. He carried them home in his jacket pockets, one on each side so the weight rode even, and that night he unwrapped the first over the sink, folded the wrapper into quarters before dropping it in the trash, and set the bar on the dish smooth side up.
Under the sink he found the box of baking soda, the orange kind, its flap folded and refolded until the cardboard had gone soft at the crease. He shook some into his palm and worked it around the inside of the tub with a folded washcloth, knuckles whitening with the pressure, until the ring that had been there since the day he moved in wasn't there anymore. He rinsed it twice with the detachable showerhead he had bought at the hardware store and installed himself, the chrome fitting wrapped three times in plumber's tape before it stopped weeping at the joint. The water sheeted off the porcelain and ran down the drain making a sound like nothing at all, just water. He dried the tub walls with the edge of the washcloth and draped it over the faucet.
Then he stepped back into the doorway and leaned his shoulder against the frame. The white tub. The white towel on its chrome hook, hung to the height of his own hand. The new soap on the dish. Nobody was coming to inspect any of it, and nobody at the restaurant would ever know that the man whose hours they had cut to zero owned one perfect room. He looked at it a while longer anyway, the way you look at something you have made before anyone else is allowed to see it, and turned off the light himself this time, because tonight he could choose to.
