I am reading A Moveable Feast and I can't stop writing like Hemingway. It's humiliating, but I can't help myself. Yesterday I woke up and my bathroom floor was covered with water and it was clear and cool and dark until I turned on the light. I examined my toilet bowl, a clean, rich porcelain that had served its purpose for seven years and I could see now it was beaten, worn down, leaking softly, embarrassed at its own dissolution.
I took my sad pee and retreated to the living room with its tan walls covered in abstract paintings that I had done in Austria during the war when I lived with Lilith and her chain smoking. I thought of calling Mitchell, my friend, but I remembered he was in Nigeria covering the relocation situation. I doubt he knew anything about leaking toilets anyway. I poured myself a drink and went back to the bathroom where the water was getting deeper. I tossed a bath towel on it and it quickly became soaked, but the sunlight streaming in gave it a sacrificial aura. I loved that towel. It was a soft towel, soft in a good way.
The plumber came at two. He was a stocky man with a small dark mustache who spoke in broken English and gave me an estimate and it was a good honest estimate, so we sat down and had a drink to celebrate his honesty as the water spread into the hallway. Within minutes I had written a check in that jaded manner I have when paying people. I handed him two tens and they were crisp tens for his trouble and he seemed to appreciate it. He took away my bleeding, beaten toilet and I stood watching him drive off and it seemed everything had changed.
I gave the new toilet a flush and it was a strong one, full of confidence, a no nonsense flush and I felt quietly satisfied the way one feels when shooting a buck. Then I went into the living room and poured myself another drink and sat in my favorite chair and thought about all the good peeing I'd be doing throughout the long, merciless night.
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