Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction (5 page)

On the left hand, he was wearing a ring—not a standard wedding-type ring. It was an onyx, in fact, and very loose-fitting, like it wasn’t really his. He had a worker’s hands, which is all right if they’re clean, and his were. Nails clipped.

“I love Popeye’s spinach,” I said, feeling I owed him a quid pro quo.

“Popeye’s?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s too expensive, so I don’t buy it often, but, taste-wise, it’s the best canned spinach there is.”

“Buy two, get one free, this week,” the cashier interjected.

“Really?” I exclaimed.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to butt in, but thought you’d want to know,” she added. At that point, she was ringing up the lima beans. I thought she’d take a shortcut and ring up one 89-cent can nine times, but no, she held each separate can over the sensor. I guess grocery cashiers are trained to do it that way, for some reason.

“Not a problem,” I assured her. “I’m always looking for helpful suggestions. I get so tired of eating the same old thing week after week.”

“I buy Libby’s,” the cashier said. “They’re seasoned. I like already seasoned.”

“Ah, seasoned spinach from Libby,” I said.

Then the cashier tried to ring up my vanilla ice cream and maraschino cherries along with the nine cans of lima beans, but the geezer wasn’t having any of that.

“Not mine,” he said promptly, as she picked up the jar of cherries.

“Sorry.”

“I’m the ice cream and cherries,” I told her. “Just those two items.”

“Got to watch the salt,” the guy said, back to the matter of seasoning. He was signing his credit card slip. I couldn’t read the name. Hairy arms; no tattoos.

“Got that right!” I said.

“I always read the labels,” he threw back, as he started for the door, clutching a sack in each hand.

“Smart thing to do!” I yelled to his back. I was beginning to wonder what he might be driving. That’s sometimes a pertinent clue as to whether a reasonably attractive gentleman might be the outright owner of a cabin on the lake. Any lake, as long as it’s not too far from the city. I followed him out.

He walked toward a big shiny truck—black, new-looking. Well! I thought. I might just go tell him what a pretty truck it is. Gotta love those truck drivers! I was advancing in that direction when I saw him walk around the truck to the passenger side. Oh well, I told myself, the wife or girlfriend is driving. If he has a cabin on the lake, I’ll never see it. Then a few steps further on toward my own ten-year-old Corolla, I saw he didn’t belong to the new truck at all. Those old bones were riding a motorcycle. I couldn’t believe it. His two-wheeled machine was almost lost on the far side of that shiny new truck. I watched him tuck the cans into something akin to saddlebags over the back wheels.

Back in the Pig, I had thought this guy looked to be about seventy, seventy-five. Who would ever guess he rode a motorcycle? I was standing behind the vehicle, getting ready to
engage him in conversation about the relative merits of driving a motorcycle versus a good-gas-mileage automobile when that rascal caught my eye in one of his mirrors, did a broad walk, revved the engine, and roared off the lot.

Well, easy come, easy go, I always say. Motorcycle drivers are probably not the type to enjoy a peaceful cabin on the lake. And that old geezer probably didn’t have a pot to pee in anyhow.

Christina Delia

W
hen it happened, the headlines were always some variation of this: “CHIMP CHANGE: ORGAN GRINDER SELLS MONKEY TO APE-LOVING ACTRESS.” The story that followed would tell the tale of an organ grinder named Liborio (no last name) who was on set for the new film
Passion People 2: More People, More Passion
. His purpose was providing old-world charm for the movie’s big Italian love scene.

When lead actress Spring Star (formerly of the television series
Bug Bites
) saw the monkey Liborio carried around on his back, she fell in love before the director could yell “Action!” Spring Star begged Liborio to sell his pet to her. At which point the old man’s eyes misted over and he said, “There’s something in my eye.”

Liborio knew something that the paparazzi did not. The monkey was radioactive.

Spring Star knew this, too. She was seated in her trailer when Liborio told her. Spring Star did not blink or rip up the check she was writing. Instead, she told Liborio that she felt the radioactivity made her new monkey quite exotic. The monkey was shiny, like her television awards that sat at home in her mansion on hundred-dollar shelves. Liborio just smiled and took the check that Spring Star handed to him. There were glittery dolphins embossed on the check. “I wish that all animals sparkled, don’t you?” Spring Star asked Liborio.

“The outer sparkle of an animal is merely an indication of a creature’s inner fire,” Liborio said.

Spring Star stared at the old organ grinder. “You should write
fortune cookies,” she told him.

“Just never force the monkey to do anything he doesn’t want to do. With a pet like this, you are as much owned as you are an owner. Remember that in his own way, every creature is a king.”

“He’s too little to be a king,” cooed Spring Star. “Maybe he could be a Prince?”

On the ride home to Beverly Hills, Spring Star named her monkey: Prince Charming.

“You’re my Prince, yes you are!” she repeated. Prince Charming did not seem to mind this attention.

In fact, he grew a bit larger. Spring Star took no notice of this. She was too busy giggling while her limo driver eyed the monkey nervously from his rear-view mirror.

“Look, Rex, now we don’t need a lamp to read scripts” Spring Star sang out when she presented Prince Charming to her live-in boyfriend. Rex Riley was a Method actor, currently preparing for his upcoming role as a germ-phobic Elvis impersonator at a Las Vegas wedding chapel for the romantic comedy
Wash Your Hand in Marriage
. When Spring Star leaned in to kiss him hello, Rex took two steps back and gagged.

“Oh, I forgot. You’re in character,” Spring Star said. “I’ll just give your kiss to Prince Charming.” Spring Star puckered up and kissed her Prince with her surgically enhanced lips.

The impact of her lips on his face seemed to make Prince Charming grow a little bigger. Again, Spring Star seemed oblivious, but Rex screamed.

“Did you just see that, Spring? That glowing monkey grew!”

“He’s only getting bigger because I love him so. And there’s nothing wrong with a monkey that glows. I wish I radiated like that first thing in the morning. Even after three hours of makeup—”

“Spring, really,” Rex whined. “We can’t keep a monkey in the
mansion! I don’t even know what to feed it!”

“He’ll eat what the movie stars eat. Bananas and caviar,” Spring Star smiled. “You have so many bananas around, with this new role of yours.”

Rex struck a pose in his karate suit. “Hello, I’m a Method actor! Elvis ate fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches on a regular basis!”

“Nothing is too good for my Prince Charming,” Spring Star said, planting another kiss on top of the monkey’s shiny head.

That night after a veritable peanut-butter-and-banana feast, Spring Star, Prince Charming, and a reluctant Rex retired to Spring’s suite. Rex found it daunting to make love to Spring with her radioactive monkey watching them from the foot of the bed. Rex sighed and rolled off of Spring.

“Rex, what is it?”

“Look, Spring, I’ve been involved in a few bizarre Hollywood scenes, but I have to tell you, making love by the light of a monkey really tops them all.”

“Rex, baby! Soon you’ll grow to love Prince Charming as much as I do—“

“The only thing that’s growing is that monkey. Do you see this? He’s as tall as me!”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Rex,” said Spring. “It’s not like you’re very tall.”

“That monkey is freaking me out and I am putting him outside,” Rex yelled as he grabbed Prince Charming around his waist. Prince Charming wouldn’t budge, so Rex tried pushing him.

“Rex, no! Liborio said not to force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do—“

“Who the hell is Liborio?”

These were the last words that Rex Riley ever spoke. The newspaper obituary featured a photo of him in his Elvis-inspired karate suit. Strangely enough, his live-in girlfriend Spring Star was
not present at his paparazzi-plagued funeral.

After it happened, the headlines were always some variation of this: “SPRING HAS SPRUNG: WHATEVER BECAME OF ACTRESS SPRING STAR?” One of the tabloids ran a story about Spring Star being spotted on an island off the coast of the Pacific. Miss Star insisted on no photographs. The reporter said that she maintained a healthy glow, although perhaps it was coming from the large monkey that she wore, quite literally, on her back.

Katherine Tomlinson

T
he minute Joanna saw Clea Maxwell drive up in her jaunty little Prius she knew she was perfect for the house.

Clea was in her late forties, compact and nicely dressed. The suit—probably from Ann Taylor—told Joanna that Clea worked somewhere that looking corporate was important.

Her hair was colored a rich auburn but starting to thin at the temples, a sure sign Clea was in perimenopause. It had happened to Joanna, too. She’d had to wash her hair every day and blow it out for maximum fluffiness.

It had eventually gotten thicker again, thanks to hormones and hair vitamins, but Joanna had been quite vain in her younger years and the physical transformations that accompanied “the Change” had unnerved her.

At least she’d never developed the wide part so many women did when they were past a certain age.

Clea loved the kitchen, as Joanna had known she would. Joanna thought the kitchen was one of the house’s best features. It was full of light, with a window over the sink and another in the door that led to the back yard. Clea tried to play it cool, but when she first saw the built-in bookcase—perfect for displaying cookbooks and knick-knacks—her face lit up.

It was a cook’s kitchen, with a gas stove, plenty of storage space, and a built-in pantry. There was a decorative tile backsplash behind the sink, the colors complementing the rich peach paint on the walls.

One of the women who’d looked at the house had complained about the narrow space the refrigerator occupied. “It’s not wide
enough for my Sub-Zero,” she had whined.

As if anyone who wasn’t running a catering business needed a Sub-Zero fridge, Joanna had thought at the time.

Clea wasn’t married. She was buying the house on her own to make a nest for herself. Joanna approved of her gumption. So many women wasted their lives waiting for Prince Charming, or put off living until they’d already missed the best parts.

The house was just the right size for one person. It had two bedrooms upstairs and a small, sun-filled space off the kitchen that looked into a garden run riot with roses. That room would make a wonderful home office if Clea needed it.

Joanna hung back as Clea explored downstairs. She’d learned to let the prospective buyers feel like they were discovering the place for themselves.

She never followed too closely as they opened cupboards and closets and ran faucets and flushed the toilets and in general peeked and poked around.

The place was furnished just enough to give it a “lived-in” look. Joanna had chosen everything herself and was gratified when Clea ran her hands over the top of a Birdseye maple sideboard in appreciation.

The woman with Clea—her name was Alison—seemed bored and looked like her feet hurt. No wonder, she was wearing three-inch heels that pitched her bulky torso forward at an awkward angle. Someone had no doubt told her that adding height would make her look slimmer.

Someone had lied.

Alison wasn’t even impressed when she and Clea walked into the master bathroom. She looked like she’d seen it before, way too many times.

That annoyed Joanna. The bathroom was a showpiece with a skylight over the sunken tub, gorgeous tile accents and a steam/shower cabinet.

Clea’s reaction to the room—despite Alison’s blasé attitude—
was all Joanna could have hoped for.

That was the minute she was sold on the house, Joanna knew. Everything else she saw just sealed the deal—the little window in the master bedroom closet with the built-in jewelry drawers and shoe cubbies; the Art Deco chandelier in the dining room, which was a genuine dining room and not just a space off the living area.