Mr. Slips by Monica Drake
Ben worked as a mortgage underwriter on the fourth floor of the old Standard Premiums Life Assurance building. The company he worked for took up a floor and a half. When he needed to camp out in el bańo, like most mornings about 9:35, he'd take the back stairs up to somebody else's floor, to a place where he wouldn't be immediately recognized under a stall door by his massive Rockports. He'd find one of the few bathrooms located in a hallway, not embedded deep in the bowels of a bank, a real estate office or a skin rejuvenation clinic.
If he used the toilet on his own floor it was a parade of feet outside the stall, a waterfall of piss and shop talk, a chorus of Hey, how's it going? He didn't want to mix his stink with the guy who, the rest of the day, sat on the other side of his cubicle, shared his lunch break and swapped turns at the microwave.
He carried his newspaper folded in quarters tucked in a mortgage file alongside somebody's credit history, some borrower's lifeline drawn in financial choices. Then he marched down the hall, nodded at co-workers and checked his watch like he had a meeting.
A meeting with his bowels and his newspaper.
He didn't take smoke breaks. He cruised through a week's worth of files before Wednesday. He helped other underwriters with the mess they made out of VA loans. He deserved time out of his cube.
He found a bathroom with two urinals, one stall and nobody in it.
He settled in, pants around his ankles and a cup of coffee on the flat square space afforded by the metal box of a toilet paper holder, then dropped the ruse mortgage file to the tile floor. Somewhere overhead, an automated room deodorizer gave off a comforting hiss and released the scent of sweet oranges. Ben unfolded his paper to the front page. He turned to the page behind that—world news and politics—and there she was: his ex wife, his friggin' college girlfriend. Hannah. His stomach lurched and gurgled, instantly sour. He recognized her, her gorgeous smiling face, even before he saw the headlines, before he saw that she'd just been elected state senator. Sure, he knew she was in the running. Mostly, he didn't let himself think about it. This was why he quit watching TV. In the black and white AP photo, Hannah ducked her head to board a plane. She stood at the top of a short flight of metal stairs. She twisted back, to wave. Whom was she waving to? She wasn't waving into the camera. Maybe she waved to her not-so-new-anymore husband, her fans, the world. Somebody outside the picture. She wasn't waving to Ben, where he warmed his throne. Ben was out of that picture for good.
When he leaned forward in a slouch of despair, the automatic sensor on the toilet sent a silent message; the toilet flushed, swirled and sprayed atomized toilet water on Ben's bare flanks.
He ignored the cold splash, and folded his paper back to leave Hannah's photo on top. He pulled the paper closer, looked for lines in her face. If she'd aged, the details were lost in cheap ink. Ben ran a hand over his own forehead, shiny and red, then through his thinning-but-still-thick (as the 15-y-ar old at Kuts-R-Us assured him) head of hair.
Hannah had one of those lady politician cuts now—between short and long, girlish and womanly, conservative and liberal—but it didn't look bad. Her skirt was square and plain. Her jacket matched. She was pretending to be a Kennedy. But her calf, above a dull shoe, raised up in a sculpted muscle and in the line of that muscle Ben read that she was still there, the girl he'd screwed, hidden under the costume.
He ran a finger over a shadow that hinted at the curve of her ass.
She didn't look as fun as she used to be. In the old days her hair was long. She'd cut it herself. Sometimes she'd sit cross-legged on her mattress in her dorm room and cut her pubic hair too with these big, cheap black-handled school teacher scissors. She'd cut, and make a face, and say, Yikes! Then she'd laugh and throw a clump of pubes in the general direction of the wastebasket.
Her roommate hated her.
Ben knew a few things. If there was one person who could shake up a sex scandal as she climbed her way into office, it was him. Maybe. Maybe he had something on her.
That thought lasted one second. What did he have? He had old news about straight, white, single college kids getting it on. And one of the kids was him, back when he was skinny and fed with big ideas.
What was the worst thing they'd done, and the best—the hottest, sketchiest sex they'd had? She had these sheets, these stupid Holly Hobbie sheets from the Goodwill, and he remembered the way she'd wake up warm and naked next to him on a bed of pink and blue Holly Hobby, and right away he hated himself for being a sap. Hot sex, hot sex, hot sex, he drilled the words in his head and tried to remember.
Outside the stall door a faucet turned on. Ben listened, scanned the floor. There were no feet. Nobody had come in. It was an automated thing triggered by a ghost, a fly, a blip in the mechanism.
She'd been on the swim team. She had the X of a Speedo tanned into her back. Her ass was pale and plump. She wore earrings only when she wanted to impress somebody. Ben pulled the paper closer. She had on earrings on the page. He'd whispered into those ears.
His cock lifted between his legs. He shifted the paper to his left hand, so he could reach down with his right and tug at the side of his balls. Yes, it was totally unmanly, getting hard while he sat on the shitter like woman, but it felt good, that heat and rise. His scrotum contracted under his fingers.
One time he was walking with Hannah, and it was night. They'd been off campus to see a band she wanted to see—a mess of noise. Some kind of thrash metal theatrics, all fake blood and pus. It was a band with guys named things like Flattus Maximus and Beefcake the Mighty. Jesus. He followed Hannah anywhere. The show had been in a warehouse district. They had to walk a ways that seemed farther after the show than on the way in, down empty side streets.
He ran a hand over his willy, his big Mr. Slippery.
Hannah had been wearing these white high heels.
He hated himself for pulling his pud in a public toilet, it wasn't right, but also—big deal! There was nobody else there. He was alone in the bathroom. He was alone everywhere he went. Why stop? He gave another tug. He paid his mortgage, he had a strong credit history. If he applied for a new loan, he'd be the easiest credit file in town. He spit on his hand, cupped it, and rubbed his damp palm over the head of his cock.
He'd never jacked off in a bathroom. Not at all. But it's not like he was soliciting sex. He was taking care of his needs. That's what bathrooms are for, right? Managing private needs.
Walking back from that show, Hannah's shoes cut into her feet. She complained. She was drunk. She leaned on his shoulder. He was stumbling, but not so wasted he didn't think he could drive.
He pushed her up against a loading dock. No, wait, she pulled him over. It was her move first. When they made out their mouths were sweet with beer and mashed together, and they fell or folded themselves down onto the cement stairs.
Her legs were so long in those white shoes she was taller than he was. He'd climbed on top of her, hitched up her skirt. No—that's not it. She'd pushed her way on top of him. She'd been the one, jerking on his fly. His black jeans. His effort to be some downtown kinda cool. His head was against a cement piling, something to keep trucks from running into that part of the loading dock. It cut into his neck where his hair was short. He said, “Somebody might see—” his voice broke, and Hannah laughed.
She pulled open her button-down shirt, showed him her bra, then her tits underneath. Her bra opened in front that easily, with one twist of her fingers like she was turning a key in a lock. He didn't want to do it. He was scared. She said, “Come on, there's nobody here. It's dark.”
It was still downtown. Public. He said, “Let's get back.” To the dorms, he meant, that warm cradle.
She grabbed him through his black jeans, gave a squeeze that made him yipe.
But that was years ago. He'd been drunk. Maybe he had it wrong. Memory is as faulty as anything. Could be, he'd climbed on her. Maybe he'd undone his pants, lifted her skirt. He could call it any way he wanted to now, in his mind. He remembered the weight and curve of her boobs, the taste of her skin. Maybe she was the one who said no, who said wait and didn't mean it. He ran his damp hand faster over Mr. Slips, that tight rod, and then again, and he didn't want to stop but he knew he should but why should he? He remembered how soft she'd been, and how sure of herself, and when he saw her now, in the paper, it was like she was there for him, like he hadn't blown it so long ago, and he remembered her saying, “Come to my room,” the way she did once when they first met and he closed his eyes and heard it again in his head and he couldn't help it he shot his wad and pressed his cock down, sent spewy to lace its way through the toilet bowl and he hated himself even as he groaned, as he breathed, as he crunched the newspaper in one hand.
When he opened his eyes, he'd gone blind—all those warnings he heard as a kid, here it was, he was blind! The bathroom was uniformly black. He couldn't see the stall door in front of him. He couldn't see his own massive shoes.
No. He'd been in one place too long. The motion sensor.
He waved the folded newspaper over his head, a gesture that fell between a command and an SOS. The lights stayed off. The toilet, that overeager red-eyed bastard, saw the wave of the paper in the dark and flushed again beneath him. He waved the paper once more. No luck. He fumbled, a hand out in front of himself, until he jammed his fingers against the stall door. He found the lock—he could reach it from where he sat—unlatched it, and pushed the door open. But the door didn't trigger the motion sensor either. Who designed this space? He sat in the dark for minutes, or maybe seconds. Either way, too long. What if the whole building had gone out? Or the whole city. Maybe it was a power shortage, or a terrorist attack, and he was on the toilet with his pants down?
It was the kind of darkness so entirely without light, Ben started to see shapes in it. He saw something yellow flicker always just to the side of his vision. He lost sense of the space, thought the walls were closer than they were, then farther away, and when he reached, he never had it right. The room was so pitch black it seemed full of motion, full of space, he could practically see molecules in the air, a grainy, dark film. He knocked his coffee over, heard the clatter, felt the cup hit his bare leg. Lukewarm liquid seeped into his sock. And there was that little hiss overhead again, as the air freshener gave a wheeze and crowded the dark with its cloying oranges.
Nobody should be in the john long enough to hear a timed air freshener twice. One shoe was soggy with coffee. He had to risk everything, to get out. He stood up and shuffled forward in the dark. He shuffled and he waved the paper. His pants fell to his ankles. He bent to grab them, to pull them up, and smack—fuck!—there it was, the crack of his face against porcelain, the sink, who moved the goddamn sink?
The automated faucet turned on, triggered by the swing of Ben's head as he fell to his knees. That sink mocked him—the whole bathroom could go on with or without Ben. He was nothing. The door opened. Finally the lights came on. Some big fuck stood in the doorway. Blood ran rich from Ben's nose, and he moved his nose with his hand. It clicked sideways, bone against bone, and he was sick and faint all over again. There was that taste of metal in the back of his throat and his eyes swelled shut even as he tried to use them, tried to sort out two sinks or one sink, two or one, every line doubled and blurry. He blinked and squinted, felt his head swim.
The guy who'd tripped the light, who opened the door, he held the door open for fuck's sake, didn't back out or come in, like he was waiting for a prom date that wouldn't show. Ben had the folded newspaper in one hand, and there she was, the love of his life smiling—two of her. No, one. Then two again, the lines wobbling—about to fly off in a private plane. She'd been voted into office! People loved her! He loved her. Ben loved her. He loved only her. He'd voted for her too. He'd filled in the little red circle with such sweet, sweet care. His cock was out, limp and exposed. Humiliation, pain, love and Hannah—it was all familiar. Before he passed out, before he fell against the tile floor and before the paramedics came, for a moment he felt so young, it was alright. It was like he was in college, and in love, out on the town, half drunk, all over again.
