“All blood, no guts.” That was the description Jerry gave me the first time he called. A woman, getting out of her tub, had fallen. Head to Formica countertop. Game over. Not normally the type of cleanup that would require my services—a mop and a bucket of Pine Sol would usually suffice. But she’d gone undiscovered for almost a month—what they call an “unattended” death. Undiscovered for a month means maggots, and maggots mean OPIM, or Other Potentially Infectious Materials. Once you’ve got OPIM, once the body turns to jelly and bones, then the state requires forensic cleanup from a licensed cleaner. That’s me.

I made $1500 on that job. Not bad for six-hours work. I was going through a tough time back then. I’d moved out on a guy I was sleeping with when he stopped fucking me and started punching me. I was living in a rented trailer in Perth Amboy. Jerry’s call was a lifesaver.

I always show my appreciation when people send work my way, so I mailed Jerry a finder’s fee. You can’t do this with jobs that come through insurance companies, funeral directors, or the government—and definitely not when the family hires you—but for someone doing me a solid like a friend, a first responder, or someone like Jerry, who works for the NYPD, a little grease keeps the wheels turning. So, I slipped three fifties into an envelope with a note: “Thanks for the referral.” Jerry’s been feeding me jobs ever since.

                                  *

A week ago, Jerry calls me up and says he’s got something big. It pays well but, according to him, I’ll be working for every cent of it. It’s a husband-and-wife thing up near Franklin Lakes; some fancy neighborhood in north Jersey. Middle of a divorce. Neither one willing to move out of the house until the other one agrees to a settlement. So, they set up some crazy-ass schedule; she gets the place every other day, he gets it when she’s not there. Normal shit.

The details get fuzzy from that point on. They either got mixed up on who’s day it was, or the husband showed up intentionally when it wasn’t his day, who knows, but he walks in and finds the wife on the kitchen island, getting rawboned by some young guy. Young guy gets the dull side of a meat cleaver to the temple, wife gets the business end of the same cleaver to the neck. Her head goes rolling. Mr. Husband freaks out, goes into another room, and uses some fancy antique rifle to splatter his brains all over his bookcases. Still pretty normal circumstances, in my world.

Problem is, Mr. Husband forgets about the couple’s two labradors. Dead bodies, plus two dogs, plus a week and a half without food or water or daily walks, means I stand to make $15,000 for five days’ work, maybe six. Best of all, there will be brains.

                                  *

I call my cousin Marylou, who sometimes helps me out. Crime scene cleanup is not her favorite; she prefers suicides or hoarders. You always find a few treasures when you’re cleaning up a hoarder. But Marylou is game as long as I don’t make her handle the really messy things. We agree I’ll pay her $2,000 and I tell her I’ll pick her up at ten the next morning.

I’m up early, have some toast and black coffee, jump in my van and head to my storage unit. Anytime there’s an unattended death, anytime anything’s been left decomposing for a period of time, I need to scrub the air, so I grab my ozone machine. I also take a box of biohazard bags, a few packs of sponges, a bottle of enzyme solvent, a crowbar, and a sledge. There’s no telling whether I’ll need to rip out the bookshelves to get all the brains. Best to come prepared.

I load up and run through my remediation checklist to be sure I’ve got what I need: hazmat suits, respirators, gloves, goggles, face shields, chem-spill boots, mops, buckets, spray bottles, scrub brushes, paint brushes, a wet vac, putty knives, hammers, shovels, disinfectants, deodorizers, spackle, two ladders, and my camera. Check. I drive to Jersey City and pick up Marylou and as we head north, I fill her in on the details. She warns, flat out, “I ain’t doin’ brains. Brains make me gag.” I promise to handle the brains myself. On our way north, we pass the strip mall on Route 17 near Paramus where I used to rent a small storefront. Huge waste of money, I can see that now. In the three months I was there, not a single customer walked in. Then again, who’s gonna walk into a place called “Out Damn Spot: Trauma Cleaning and Biohazard Removal Specialists.”

Rookie mistake, I guess. I abandoned the lease, shortened the name to ODS Trauma and Biohazard Services, and rented a medium-sized room in a mini-storage in Weehawken. It’s perfect for my equipment and supplies and it costs about a hundred bucks a month. I got a friends-and-family price from Marylou’s boyfriend to make me a webpage—nothing special but it does the job. I also placed an ad in The Memorial Business Journal, a weekly magazine for funeral directors. All in all, a big savings.

Marylou asks if we can stop at Sonic for a burger and fries— she skipped breakfast—and I say, “You sure about that, Marylou?” She considers for a moment, “Yeah, you’re right. I better not.” I offer her some black coffee from my thermos, but she passes.

                                   *

We arrive and the place is an honest-to-God mansion. We park and get prepped: suits, boots, gloves, and face shields. When Marylou reaches for a respirator, I tell her she doesn’t need it until it’s time to disinfect. She lets it fall back in place behind the seat. “Too heavy anyway; happy not to have to schlep it around.” We check each other’s suits to make sure we’re sealed in and then I motion to the overweight rent-a-cop who’s parked out front in his Gran Torino. He unlocks the front door and shows us in. He doesn’t go past the foyer. “That way’s the kitchen,” he motions with his hand,” and around on the right, down the hall, that’s the library. But,” he adds, “you’re gonna end up cleaning the whole place, ‘cause there’s dog shit and vomit and pieces of I-don’t-know-what in every damn corner. When’s the rest of your crew showing up?”

“It’s just us,” I tell him. “We’re all we need.”

“If you say so,” he mutters, as he backs out.

Marylou heads to the kitchen and calls back to me, “It ain’t bad. Coroner must have cleaned up most of it. Hard surfaces, not a lot of cracks or crannies. No carpet. There’s tile and grout lines but nothing we can’t handle. Holy shit!”

“What? What is it?” I ask from the foyer.

“They got an espresso maker like at Starbucks. Damn thing’s the size of my TV.”

She comes back down the hall and passes me on her way to the van. “I’ll bring in what I need and get started.”

“Grab the camera and document everything before you start cleaning,” I remind her.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She shushes me with a backhanded wave as if to say, I’m not an idiot. Once Marylou’s out of the house, I take in a slow, deep breath. Every crime scene has its own smell and this one is better than most.

                                     *

I haven’t been completely honest with you. See, I have this condition, it’s a thing, but not a sickness. It’s not creepy or anything. A doctor explained it to me. She had a name for it that sounded like “sin and sneezes,” though that’s not it. It’s a long name I can never remember. I just know it started with “sin.” She said it’s rare but not weird. It’s something to do with certain people’s brains; they mix up signals. For some people, their brain connects their ears to their eyes, so they see colors or shapes whenever they hear words. For other people, their brains connect their fingers to their tongue, and they taste things that they touch.

In my case, it’s my nose that’s connected to my ears. When I smell something, my brain sort of hears it at the same time. Oatmeal, for example, sounds like a lullaby—gentle and low. It’s the most soothing sounding smell I know. The aroma of pears and creamed corn are pretty nice, too—easy-listing, if you will. My old boyfriend, the one who punched me, he smelled like a Pat Benatar song—thump-thumpy and rhythmic without sounding clangy. It was nice. I mean, I’ve dated guys who smelled more like Thrasher and White Snake, which was fun, but the last guy was totally Pat Benatar. I think that’s why I stayed as long as I did.

But blood, blood smells like, I don’t know…sexy…but not gross- sexy. Like something you’d listen to when you’re getting ready to go out, or while you’re waiting at home for someone to come over. Blood smells like Barry White mixed with Norah Jones.

I mostly don’t tell people about this. People freak out. Marylou knows most of it, and I told my mom before she died, though my mom thought I was just trying to get attention. Whenever I brought it up, she’d tsk at me and wrinkle her nose and say, “Not that malarkey again.” Mostly I keep it to myself. But in my line of work, it’s turned out to be a bonus. My own private mayhem playlist. It keeps the work interesting.

Marylou comes back into the house carrying a mop, a bucket with two bottles of cleaner, and my camera hanging from a strap around her neck. “You gonna just stand there or are you planning on doing some work?” she asks as she passes. “Chop, chop, Buttercup. Less sniffing, more working.” I see her smile before she disappears around the corner of the hallway.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as bizarre as I’m making it out to be. It’s a physical thing, not a mental thing. My doctor said it’s just another way to see the world. Like how blind people have a heightened sense of touch. I’m not afraid of it. It’s kinda cool. A secret. And you’ve gotta remember, not every smell has a distinct tune attached to it. Most odors in the world emit an indistinct, hum, like Muzak or light jazz. Totally boring. Spicy food, on the other hand, is all cymbals and percussion. Body odors are mostly little phrases, like jingles you hear on a TV commercial; some are memorable, but most are not. But blood, blood is lovely.

Brains are on a whole nother level. Brains hardly have any odor at all, sort of like raw chicken after you rinse it with water. But when I hear brains, it’s a damn symphony; it’s like watching Fantasia. You know that movie? Mickey Mouse and the brooms and all those horns and strings and those big drums? Or like Star Wars whenever Darth Vader comes on screen? That’s brain-smell.

                                      *

                                  *