Happy New Year

I’ll always remember the New Year’s Eve I spent in my apartment, watching the ball drop on my TV; a plate of home baked cookies, my only companions for the evening.

The day began like any other. I woke up, had my coffee – two sugars one cream – and read the morning paper. It was pushing ten when I finally made my way into the shower. All was well until I stepped out of the tub onto a flooded bathroom floor, slipped, and fell on my back. I was not hurt by the fall, but I was surprised by the smell of the room – the putrid scent of human byproducts left to stew in the cavernous bowels of the city’s sewer lines. Splashing to my feet, I couldn’t help but wonder what unholy creature had filled my washroom with such an aroma. Tiptoeing through the murky water that coated the floor I caught a glimpse of the toilet overflowing, all things spilling from the brim.

Narrowly avoiding a fit of nausea, I splished and splashed out of the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

“Hi, is the super in?” I hyperventilated into the phone.

“No, he’s not,” replied the landlord’s son.

“Well I have a major disaster up here, and I need some help! Where’s your father?”

“He left town for the weekend.”

I explained the situation, and the sixteen year-old listened, laughed and coughed.

“I’ll call a plumber,” he offered.

I dried myself off with a towel, discarded it in the garbage chute and changed into an old pair of sweats – the kind you don’t care if they get covered in shit.

Aside from childhood hours spent playing Super Mario, I’d had no personal interaction with plumbers before. In my prejudiced mind they seemed a big burly group of men with more hair on their bottoms than their heads who liked to show off more skin than a stripper. I felt comfortable with the thought of having one of their kin poke his hands and head in my toilet. But I was mortified when the plumber who came to my aid was named Mandy.

“Hi,” she said as I opened the door. “I’m here to have a look at your toilet.

Suddenly, I felt as if my clothes and dignity had been stripped from my frame.

“Oh God.” I was hyperventilating again. “Where’s Mario? Or Luigi?”

“Who?”

“The other guys, the burly guys who do this sort of stuff.”

“Relax Chief, I’m fully qualified. Now where’s the situation.”

She walked beside me as we made our way down the hall toward the situation room. Her blonde hair bounced with every step she took. Her denim pants, steal toed work-boots, and blue coloured shirt did little to mask her Swedish good looks.

I pointed to the bathroom.

“It’s in there.”

She put down her toolbox and moved toward the door.

“Be careful,” I whispered.

She shot me an I know what I’m doing look – the kind Clint Eastwood does so well – then opened the door and examined the scene.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “This could take a while.”

She grabbed her toolbox and stepped inside.

I offered to get her a glass of water and made for the kitchen.

I’d known a Mandy once in high school. She was blonde and perky, but I couldn’t remember much else about her.

Returning to the washroom, water in hand, all I could see through the open door was Mandy’s backside as she knelt over the bowl. Somehow, her derriere didn’t fit the stereotype. Showing no skin, her shirt tucked neatly into her form fit jeans, she looked less like a Mario and more like a Princess trapped in tradesman clothes as she rattled around with the pipes. My pipes. I could hear the buttons of her shirt as they tapped against the porcelain. Tap, tap, tip. Frozen stiff in all the wrong places, I stood in the doorway. She leaned back from the bowl, her jeans a mess, her shirt stained, her gloved hands covered in waste.

“Here’s your water,” I said sheepishly.

She took off the gloves and reached for the glass.

“You’ve got a suction malfunction in the drainage pipe which has caused a backlog in the refilling mechanism,” she said, her stone-faced stare highlighting her to-the-point manner.

“I’ve stopped the suction problem, but it’ll take a while to fix the backlog,” she continued.

“I have to be at a party by six,” I said, having understood little to nothing of what she’d just told me.

“Same here, I’ll try to get it together by then.”

I went into my office, more out of embarrassment than for something to do. That she didn’t mind being covered in unspeakable filth didn’t bother me. But that I was the source of that filth made me feel exposed for the disgusting creature I truly was.

Just then the phone rang.

“Hello? Hi Justine. Of course I’m coming tonight. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. What noise? Oh the banging. Just the plumber. Yeah, I think the neighbour’s having trouble with his sink or something.”

Justine Harper, the woman of my dreams. I’d known her since grade school. We’d held hands on the way to the bus stop when we were kids. She’d blossomed as a teenager and had no time for me as we grew older. I’d not seen her in years, until three weeks earlier when we ran into each other while Christmas shopping. We caught up, exchanged numbers and promised to call each other. Never having gotten over my childhood crush, I called her three hours later.

“Really? From high school? Great, I haven’t seen any of them in ages. I’m really looking forward to it. Ok. I’ll see you then. Bye.”

I hung up the phone and went back to the bathroom door.

“I just gotta make some food for this party I’m going to. A potluck sort of thing. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything,” I said to Mandy.

She didn’t bother poking her head up from behind the toilet bowl.

I’d decided to do some baking for the party. Baking was a skill I’d mastered in my early twenties under the misconception that all women love a man who makes a mean cookie.

An hour later as the timer dinged on the oven, marking the rise of the oatmeal and raisins, I went back to see how Mandy was making out.

“I think I’m just about done,” she said, pulling a hose shaped tool from the bowl and coiling it up in her gloved hands.

“You had a lot down there blocking the pipes. You don’t flush any weird objects do you?”

“Weird objects?” I cringed at the thought. How much could she have found down there? Condoms and bank statements had gone down a few more times than they probably should have. Then I remembered the golden delicious apple, the one I was holding with my teeth while I stood over the toilet – the one that slipped from my mouth that I couldn’t bring myself to fish out with my hands.

“Only Jerry,” I said.

“Jerry?”

“My fish. He died a few weeks back.”

“No I don’t think that would have done it.”

She started packing up her tools.

“You mind if I change my clothes? Don’t really want to walk outside wearing these ones.”

For a moment I thought I’d wandered into a late-night Bravo television show. Then I realized she expected me to leave the room.

“Of course. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Minutes later she emerged, in a short black t-shirt and a fresh pair of jeans.

“Well that’s it for me.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Just be careful what you flush down that thing, I found some stuff down there that should never get flushed.”

I stood on edge, petrified, completely petrified at the thought of her discoveries.

Her cell phone rang as she headed for the door.

“Hello? Oh hi! Yeah, I’m just finishing up. Some guy had an emergency with his toilet. Yeah, big mess, really funny actually, I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Yup, six o’clock, right? I’m just going home to shower. Yeah, no I’m looking forward to it too. Haven’t seen any of those guys since high school. Ooh, he’s going to be there? I wonder if I’ll recognize him. Probably not, what did you say his name was again? Weird, that’s this guy’s last name. Yup, bye Justine.”

She hung up and turned back to me.

“Happy New Year,” she said and closed the door behind her.

I ran to my office and tore the room inside down and upside up looking for my old year books. Flipping through pages and pages of long-forgotten hairdos and suppressed memories I found the picture I was looking for. Mandy Wilson, the blonde bombshell from my past, one of Justine’s closest friends. I fell back in my chair and threw the book across the room. My head hit the desk with a thud.

Six o’clock came and passed. Ten and eleven were close behind. Midnight struck as it always does. I never made it to the party.