“I shouldn’t be long,” and I open the ladies’ room door slowly. It’s not filthy at all. Floor mopped, no wall cracks or remarks, mirror, commode, sink and pipes shiny and clean, vase of fresh flowers over the toilet’s water tank and above that an oil painting of beach grass or machine reproduction of one down to the smudged signature and raised brushstrokes in an oak or imitation oak frame. Seat seems to be clean, and I pull down my pants and sit. This is going to be a long one; should’ve brought a book. I look around: nothing much else to see. Alarm tape bordering the small barred window, so it also can be that kind of place. I try to smell the flowers from where I’m sitting. But I can’t smell, if they do smell, anything but what I’ve so far in bulk, liquid and gas expelled and don’t remember smelling anything but cleanser and disinfectant when I came in here. “Please for poor ole Petie’s sake don’t take posies from WC or vase to your home or to throw away on the street,” notice on opposite sides of the vase says. My mother, far back as I can remember, always had flowers on our water tank, fresh or dried. Except Christmastime when she put a holly branch in and middle autumn when it was twigs with different colored leaves from the park. Not in a vase but an old cough-medicine bottle that can now only be bought at a flea market or antique shop. The bottle was still on top of her tank last time I was there. I don’t know how we never broke it. I guess the bathroom was the one place in the apartment my sister and I never fought or played, since we couldn’t roll around on top of one another without clunking our heads on the sink pedestal or one of the tub legs. Or maybe we did break it and she had a supply of these bottles we never knew about, though there wasn’t much room in the two-bedroom apartment where she could have kept them hidden too long without our finding out. I should call her and ask, or go see her. Just call her to see how she is, or go see for yourself. Why am I always putting it off, not being a good son, because how long would it take? Hour out, drinks, dinner and talk, which could be illuminating and fun, hour-plus back, ladened with enough of her breads and overcooked food in plastic containers to fill two large shopping bags and feed me for a week. Not tonight go, though I don’t think it’s too late to call and haven’t for two weeks.
There’s no toilet paper. No tissues, hand-towel paper, cloth towel or even the paper holder on the wooden spool in the wall the toilet paper comes on. My handkerchief is in my raincoat as is the napkin with the pâté. I could use my fingers, but there’s no soap. My briefs have several small holes and frayed places in them and the elastic’s about to go. I start taking my trousers off. But as long as I’m going to dispose of the briefs I tear them off my legs by pulling at one of the unfabricated holes and chewing through the band, blow my nose in it which I have to do, rip the briefs in two and wipe my behind with the smaller part and drop it into the bowl and flush, hoping it all goes down. It does. I throw the other part into the can under the sink, then think I should have looked in or behind the can before I tore up the briefs for little pieces of soap or what could have been clean to semi-clean paper of any sort and also saved the clean part of the briefs for a possible emergency later on.
I splash water on my face, dry it on my sleeve and hands on my pants, check the toilet to see that none of what I flushed came up, look in the mirror at my face and say ‘“Now as Hasenai says in his humorous poem “Optics in Inner Space” would be a well-chosen moment to reflect on myself and place in the luminous race,’” want to pull a hair out of my nostril but because of the impending pain which has stopped me about one time in four, push it back in till it stays and go to the bar.
“That was an excellent selection that beautiful piano music you played before,” man at the end of the bar says as I pass him.
“You mean my concerto came on?”
“No, a solo, soft and sweet — delicious, unless they have concertos for just one instrument and no accompanist or orchestra. You know what it was?”
“The Brahms intermezzo? Much as I love it it wasn’t my choice. I put on that screechy violin piece before, though paid for and chose a slow Mozart piano concerto movement.”
“Must be mine then,” the barmaid yells over. “Just threw in money and with my eyes closed, pressed.”
“Your own money? Doesn’t seem practical with so few customers and such lousy tippers like myself.”
“Not real money. Sure, real, but with red nailpolish on it, which means it’s the bar’s and the gorilla who collects for his company gives it to us back. You have to have music in here, but why classical? Neither of you answer me that. It’s a classical music bar, so people expect it. But I don’t like it and aren’t afraid to say so.”
