Taking Back Sunday II

"What the hell does it look like?" Gordy barked.


Blank stares.


Without looking at the natives, Bill turned and casually swung the door shut . "You okay, man?" he asked, motioning to the gash on Gordy's arm.


"Shit. Yeah, I'm fine, though it'll probably get infected with all this muck all over." Gordy went to wipe the filth off but pulled back mid-motion, realizing that his hands were at least as filthy as his shirt. "Grab me that towel, will you?" he asked, motioning to a hand towel by the sink.


"Sure, here it is," Bill said, tossing it over. As Gordy started to wipe himself off, Bill chuckled, asking, "You sure you want to wipe yourself off with that? You know those people," he nodded his head at the door, "probably don't wash and just use it to wipe off the piss they get on their hands."


"Ugh," Gordy responded. "Well, I suppose dried, invisible piss is better than explicit filth." He kept wiping, looking around.


Bill squirmed by and started cleaning up the pieces of the bowl. "You need to go shower, man. You go home, bathe in clorox or something, and, if you don't die from a staph infection by tomorrow morning, let's meet here before work and install a new toilet. I'll clean this up, explain to them that they can't piss in the hole, buy a new toilet first thing tomorrow morning, and the come over. I think Home Depot opens at 7:00, so let's meet here at 7:15. I have a bunch of stuff to do at work tomorrow, so let's try to make it fast."


Gordy looked at his watch, flicking off a speck of much. "7:15? Gosh, man, I don't know if I can stand to be away from here for a whole seven hours."


Bill laughed. "Well, I guess you could sleep over. I doubt you'd get much dirtier, crawling up in one of their beds."


Gordy shivered involuntarily at the thought. "Okay, thanks for finishing this up. I'll see you tomorrow." He turned to go. As he opened the doorway, he paused. "How'd the hell we get here, man?" he asked.


Bill looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

Gordy motioned around the room, then down at his feet. "Here, fixing some disgusting toilet in the middle of the night in some shit-hole apartment, worried about making it to our real jobs tomorrow morning."

Bill didn't respond. He looked away, then continued to pick up the pieces of toilet.

Gordy continued, "What I mean is . . . "

Bill cut him off. "I know what you mean. We got here by buying a bunch of apartment units and hoping they'd somehow make us rich enough to quit our day jobs. Five years later, they still make almost no money, barely covering the mortgage so long as we do all the repair and maintenance ourselves. That's how we got here."

"Yeah, I guess," Gordy said, turning once again to go. "Well, it sure does suck." Then he was gone.

Bill stopped for a moment, silently. Then he got up to go get a mop and garbage bag from his truck.