‘Would it eat holes in your hands?’ Howard asked, hoping he sounded properly horrified.
The clerk shrugged again. ‘I guess it ain’t as powerful as the stuff we used to sell — the stuff with lye in it — but that stuff ain’t legal anymore. At least I don’t think it is. But you see that, don’tcha?’ He tapped the skull-and-crossbones POISON logo with one short, stubby finger.
Howard got a good look at that finger. He had found himself noticing a lot of fingers on his walk down to the Happy Handyman.
‘Yes,’ Howard said. ‘I see it.’
‘Well, they don’t put that on just because it looks, you know, sporty. If you got kids, keep it out of their reach. And don’t gargle with it.’ He burst out laughing, the toothpick riding up and down on his lower lip.
‘I won’t,’ Howard said. He turned the bottle and read the fine print. Contains sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide. Causes severe burns on contact. Well, that was pretty good. He didn’t know if it was good enough, but there was a way to find out, wasn’t there?
The voice in his head spoke up dubiously. What if you only make it mad, Howard? What then?
Well . . . so what? It was in the drain, wasn’t it?
Yes . . . but it appears to be growing.
Still — what choice did he have? On this subject the little voice was silent.
‘I hate to hurry you over such an important purchase,’ the clerk said, ‘but I’m by myself this morning and I have some invoices to go over, so — ‘
‘I’ll take it,’ Howard said, reaching for his wallet. As he did so, his eye caught something else
— a display below a sign, which read FALL CLEARANCE SALE. ‘What are those?’ he asked. ‘Over there?’
‘Those?’ the clerk asked. ‘Electric hedge-clippers. We got two dozen of em last June, but they didn’t move worth a damn.’
‘I’ll take a pair,’ said Howard Mitla. He began to smile, and the clerk later told police he didn’t like that smile. Not one little bit.
Howard put his new purchases on the kitchen counter when he got home, pushing the box containing the electric hedge-clippers over to one side, hoping it would not come to those. Surely it wouldn’t. Then he carefully read the instructions on the bottle of Drain-Eze.
Slowly pour 1/4 bottle into drain . . . let stand fifteen minutes. Repeat application if necessary.
But surely it wouldn’t come to that, either . . . would it?
To make sure it wouldn’t, Howard decided he would pour half •the bottle into the drain.
Maybe a little bit more. I He struggled with the safety cap and finally managed to get it f>ff. He then walked through the living room and into the hall with the white plastic bottle held out in front of him and a grim Expression — the expression of a soldier who knows he will be ordered over the top of the trench at any moment — on his usually mild face.
Wait a minute! the voice in his head cried out as he reached for the doorknob, and his hand faltered. This is crazy! You KNOW it’s crazy! You don’t need drain-cleaner, you need a psychiatrist! You need to lie down on a couch somewhere and tell someone you imagine — that’s right, that’s the word, IMAGINE — there’s a finger stuck in the bathroom sink, a finger that’s growing!
‘Oh no,’ Howard said, shaking his head firmly back and forth. ‘No way.’
He could not — absolutely could not — visualize himself telling this story to a psychiatrist . . .
to anyone, in fact. Suppose Mr. Lathrop got wind of it? He might, too, through Vi’s father. Bill DeHorne had been a CPA in the firm of Dean, Green, and Lathrop for thirty years. He had gotten Howard his initial interview with Mr. Lathrop, had written him a glowing recommendation . . .
had, in fact, done everything but give him the job himself. Mr. DeHorne was retired now, but he and John Lathrop still saw a lot of each other. If Vi found out her Howie was going to see a shrink (and how could he keep it from her, a thing like that?), she would tell her mother — Vi told her mother everything. Mrs. DeHorne would tell her husband, of course. And Mr. DeHorne
—
Howard found himself imagining the two men, his father-in-law and his boss, sitting in leather wingback chairs in some mythic club or other, the kind of wingback chairs that were studded with little gold nailheads. He saw them sipping sherry in this vision; the cut-glass decanter stood on the little table by Mr. Lathrop’s right hand. (Howard had never seen either man actually drink sherry, but this morbid fantasy seemed to demand it.) He saw Mr. DeHorne — who was now doddering into his late seventies and had all the discretion of a housefly — lean confidentially forward and say, You’ll never believe what my son-in-law Howard’s up to, John. He’s going to see a psychiatrist! He thinks there’s a finger in his bathroom sink, you see. Do you suppose he might be taking drugs of some son?
And maybe Howard didn’t really think all that would happen. He thought there was a possibility it might — if not in just that way then in some other — but suppose it didn’t? He still couldn’t see himself going to a psychiatrist. Something in him — a close neighbor of that something that would not allow him to urinate in a public bathroom if there was a line of men behind him, no doubt — simply refused the idea. He would not get on one of those couches and supply the answer — There’s a finger sticking out of the bathroom sink — so that some goatee-wearing head-shrinker could pelt him with questions. It would be like Jeopardy in hell.
He reached for the knob again.
Call a plumber, then! the voice yelled desperately. At least do that much! You don’t have to tell him what you see! Just tell him the pipe’s clogged! Or tell him your wife lost her wedding ring down the drain! Tell him ANYTHING!
But that idea was, in a way, even more useless than the idea of calling a shrink. This was New York, not Des Moines. You could lose the Hope Diamond down your bathroom sink and still wait a week for a plumber to make a housecall. He did not intend to spend the next seven days slinking around Queens, looking for gas stations where an attendant would accept five dollars for the privilege of allowing Howard Mitla to move his bowels in a dirty men’s room underneath this year’s Bardahl calendar.
Then do it fast, the voice said, giving up. At least do it fast.
On this Howard’s two minds were united. He was, in truth, afraid that if he didn’t act fast —
and keep on acting — he would not act at all.
And surprise it, if you can. Take off your shoes.
Howard thought this was an extremely useful idea. He acted upon it at once, easing off first one loafer and then the other. He found himself wishing he had thought to put on some rubber gloves in case of backsplatter, and wondered if Vi still kept a pair under the kitchen sink. Never mind, though. He was screwed up to the sticking point. If he paused to go back for the rubber gloves now, he might lose his courage . . . maybe temporarily, maybe for good.
He eased open the bathroom door and slipped inside.
The Mitla bathroom was never what one would call a cheery place, but at this time of day, almost noon, it was at least fairly bright. Visibility wouldn’t be a problem . . . and there was no sign of the finger. At least, not yet. Howard tiptoed across the room with the bottle of drain-cleaner clutched tightly in his right hand. He bent over the sink and looked into the round black hole in the center of the faded pink porcelain.
Except it wasn’t dark. Something was rushing up through that blackness, hurrying up that small-bore, oozy pipe to greet him, to greet its good friend Howard Mitla.
‘Take this!’ Howard screamed, and tilted the bottle of Drain-Eze over the sink. Greenish-blue sludge spilled out and struck the drain just as the finger emerged.
The result was immediate and terrifying. The glop coated the nail and the tip of the finger. It went into a frenzy, whirling like a dervish around and around the limited circumference of the drain, spraying off small blue-green fans of Drain-Eze. Several droplets struck the light-blue cotton shirt Howard was wearing and immediately ate holes in it. These holes fizzed brown lace at the edges, but the shirt was rather too large for him, and none of the stuff got through to his chest or belly. Other drops stippled the skin of his right wrist and palm, but he did not feel these until later. His adrenaline was not just flowing; it was at flood tide.