nights spent planning this.
“Of course, a person can’t plan for everything. There are always wild cards in the
deck. Deuces and jacks, man with the axe, natural sevens take all. That kind of thing.
And chances of anyone coming out here and finding you? While you’re still alive,
that is? Low, I’d say. Very low. And what have I got to lose?” He laughed, sounding
delighted with himself. “Are you lying in the shit, Johnson? I hope so.”
Curtis looked at the coil of excrement he had shoved off his pants, but said nothing.
There was a low buzzing. Flies. Only a few, but even a few was too many, in his
opinion. They were escaping from the gaping toilet seat. They must have been trapped
in the collection tank that should have been below him instead of lying at his feet.
“I’m going now, neighbor, but consider this: you are suffering a true, you know,
witchly fate. And like the man said: in the shithouse, no one can hear you scream.”
Grunwald started away. Curtis could track him by the diminishing sound of his
coughing laughter.
“Grunwald! Grunwald, come back!”
Grunwald called: “Now you’re the one in a tight place. A very tight place indeed.”
Then—he should have expected it, did expect it, but it was still unbelievable—he
heard the company car with the palm tree on the side starting up.
“Come back, you Motherfucker!”
But now it was the sound of the car that was diminishing, as Grunwald drove first up
the unpaved street (Curtis could hear the wheels splashing through the puddles), then
up the hill, past where a very different Curtis Johnson had parked his Vespa. The
Motherfucker gave a single blip of his horn—cruel and cheery—and then the sound of
the engine merged with the sound of the day, which was nothing but the buzz of the
insects in the grass and the hum of the flies that had escaped from the waste tank and the drone of a far-off plane where the people in first class might be eating Brie on
crackers.
A fly lit on Curtis’s arm. He brushed it away. It landed on the coil of turd and
commenced its lunch. Suddenly the stench of the disturbed waste tank seemed like a
living thing, like a brown-black hand crawling down Curtis’s throat. But the smell of
old decaying crap wasn’t the worst; the worst was the smell of the disinfectant. It was the blue stuff. He knew it was the blue stuff.
He did a sit-up—there was just room—and vomited between his spread knees, into
the puddled water and floating strands of toilet paper. After his earlier adventures in regurgitation there wasn’t much left but bile. He sat bent over and panting, hands
behind him and braced against the door he was now sitting on, the shaving cut by his
jawline throbbing and stinging. Then he heaved again, this time producing only a
belch that sounded like the buzz of a cicada.
And, oddly enough, he felt better. Somehow honest. That had been earned vomiting.
No fingers down the throat needed. As far as his dandruff went, who knew? Perhaps
he could gift the world with a new treatment: the Aged Urine Rinse. He would be sure
to check his scalp for improvement when he got out of here. If he got out of here.
Sitting up, at least, was no problem. It was fearsomely hot, and the stench was terrible (he didn’t want to think what might have been stirred up in the holding tank, and at
the same time couldn’t push such thoughts away), but at least there was headroom.
“Must count blessings,” he muttered. “Must count those sons of bitches carefully.”
Yes, and take stock. That would be good, too. The water he was sitting in wasn’t
getting any deeper, and that was probably another blessing. He wasn’t going to drown.
Not, that was, unless the afternoon showers turned into downpours. He had seen it
happen. And it was no good telling himself he’d be out of here by afternoon, of
course he would, because that kind of magical thinking would be playing right into The Motherfucker’s hands. He couldn’t just sit here, thanking God he at least had