Jeremiah came anyway because that was the job. He wiped a dry floor while the champion of the world jumped rope 4 feet away and counted out loud. Then somebody taped a yellow wet floor sign to the back of his coveralls. He walked halfway across the gym before he felt the tape pull. 11 phones came up.
Not one of them came down. Presley Kilgore posted it that night as a series. She called it Janet Watch. Episode 1 did 2.1 million views in a day. She was not a monster.
That is the boring truth about most of them. She was 26 and white and the numbers had never once been that good. Every time she felt bad, she looked at the numbers again. And the bad feeling went somewhere else. In the comments, people were calling him mop daddy.
In the comments, people were writing that he should be grateful for the exposure. Then the gym made it a game. They called it the janitor challenge. You waited until he had the bucket in both hands. And you shot a takedown.
And you filmed whether he moved. He never went down. He also never touched anybody. He would shift or step or turn his shoulder. The fighter ended up somewhere else and everybody howled.
Jarvis Hollingsworth would not do it. Jarvis was 23 in black and three fights into a record he was proud of. The second time somebody asked him, he said no out loud. He did not get a training partner for two weeks after that. Norman Hargus tried once.
Exactly once. He caught Cade in the equipment room on the Friday and shut the door behind him. Leave the custodian alone. Why? Norman opened his mouth.
He thought about his salary. He thought about the 12 years he had left before he could retire. He thought about the name on the contract that paid for all of it. That name was not his because it is beneath you," he said. Cade laughed and clapped him on the arm and walked out.
Norman stood in the equipment room by himself for a while. He had said the wrong true thing instead of the right true thing, and he knew it, and he did not fix it. On a Thursday morning, a regular at the bakery turned her phone around on the counter and said, "Verell, honey, is this your husband? " Verdell Starns watched 41 seconds of video. It was the man she had loved for 19 years, walking across a gym with a plastic sign taped to his back. A room full of grown men was laughing at him.
She did not cry in front of the customer. She waited until the woman left. Then she went into the walk-in cooler and stayed there long enough that the assistant manager came looking. That night, Leander Seismore called. He called on the house phone because he always did.
You want me to come sit in that gym? Leander said. I will come sit in that gym. With what your cane? I will bring two.