Wrong Number

It was such a clean, well-lit restroom that St. Mark's Hospital had to offer to those who found themselves unable to hold their bodily juices until they arrived at home. Clean, well-lit, and with a certain smell of watermelon, owing to the urinal-freshening agent used in those great porcelain contraptions known to the free world as “urinals.”

It was into this fresh and sanitized world that David stepped on a fine Tuesday morning. Uncertain exactly why he found himself in St. Mark's Hospital, David was certain about his bodily juice levels – they were creeping toward the “F” mark, and he needed to address that before he could do anything else. “Men,” David said to himself, reading from the small black and white plaque on the laminated door.

While he expected a quiet inner sanctum of porcelain, cool water and near silence, he received only the first two. It was as if he was being rudely awakened when he heard the voice.

“Only two more to go. I gotta' get to the clinic before noon, and then pick up sandwiches. Lots of blood-thinner riding on a pile of subs.” There was someone in a toilet stall. This particular someone was either talking to himself, praying aloud, or on his cell phone.

“Hang on a sec. I got a call coming in.”

David figured that it was most likely option #3. Some pharmaceuticals rep was carrying on a conversation while relieving himself of yesterday's fried chicken dinner complete with the Twinkie he used to wash it down. Pharmaceuticals reps sometimes live on the edge, you know.

The fellow continued with his conversation while David attended to his own business. David made the point of coughing and clearing his throat rather loudly several times, as if to give the fellow in the stall due warning that he was not alone in this tiled haven. He then flushed the urinal several times, figuring that it might be amusing to tip off the person on the other end of the line as to the place where the call originated.

“Naah...I ain't gonna'. I'm just gonna' go grab a ham croissant down in the cafeteria. They've got the best ham croissants at this place,” opined Mr. Talk-while-you-squat. David made a mental note, however, as to the possible high quality of croissant sandwiches in the St. Mark's cafeteria.

Before he left the men's room, David walked into each individual stall and flushed the toilet. Four successive flushes echoed through the restroom, and hopefully into the ear of the person talking to Mr. Loaf-pincher. Several more loud coughs and he was ready to go. He thought about holding the back of his hand to his lips and blowing for all he was worth, but decided that would only be cheap theatrics.

After his visit in the Human Relations office, David decided to grab a quick bite downstairs in the hospital cafeteria. He made his way through the line and decided upon a bowl of pepper-pot soup and a brioche. He headed to the cashier, and fell into line behind a young man in a sharp blue suit with a crisp white pocket square. “Good to see some young guys wearing pocket squares,” he thought to himself.

As he began to draw his debit card out of his wallet, the young fellow in the blue suit moved ahead to deal with returning his own wallet to his pocket. As he fumbled with it, he dropped his Blackberry, which went skittering across the floor towards David. David reached down and picked up the phone and handed to the young man.

“Thanks a lot...I guess I was trying to hold on to too many things,” said the young man, taking back his Blackberry.

“No worries,” said David, smiling. He noticed the ham croissant on the young man's tray just as his own errant thumb landed in his bowl of pepper-pot soup.

Schaghticoke

There were a thousand reasons for Steve not to head back to that dreadful, dreadful wasteland of a place that they called Madison, Wisconsin. The lack of decent restaurants could have headed the list, in his opinion, but there were not a lot of people who agreed with him on that. Madison's restaurants were fine if you liked the same thing packaged differently in each venue, he thought, but you can call a pierogi a ravioli or you can call it a wonton or a lousy stinking enchilada. So much for multiculturalism.

Steve thought about hollering “garcon” for the waiter, just like from the scene in “Pulp Fiction,” (he had always wanted to do that in a diner), but thought better of it and just flagged down the skinny, pimply kid with a wave of his hand – his damp, pale hand that seemed a lot older than when he had last looked at it – the last time, in fact, being in that dreadful, dreadful wasteland called Madison. He had been in a bookstore, skimming the yellowed, dog-eared pages of a volume on Freemasonry, and as he reached his hand over to turn a page or swat a fly or scratch an itch he looked at a pale, damp hand that seemed to belong to someone else – it seemed to no longer be part of Steve Custis – Steve Custis, that thirty-two year-old pharmaceuticals salesman who drank too much, ate too much fat in his diet and probably took in far too much high-fructose corn syrup. At least he took care of his bodily functions in a large, clean bathroom – a bathroom that would be the envy of much of the rest of the world...a bathroom with clean white porcelain and gleaming stainless steel. A bathroom with a large tub enclosure and a shower head that looked to be the size of a manhole cover. A bathroom sporting a toilet with all comfort features added – a regal place where the journey could be completed for that fatty diet and high-fructose corn syrup washed down with too much alcohol.

And Steve looked hard at that hand...he looked real hard at it, as though he were looking through it. He fantasized about becoming very small, very small indeed, shrinking down to the size of the little people on his “N” scale railroad. He would walk around on the surface of that damp, cold hand like a miniature astronaut, complete with a helmet and miniature air supply. He would traverse its surface, prodding the skin with his miniature scientific instruments and that little pokey prodding stick that he imagined a miniature astronaut might carry when exploring the skin of a gigantic, damp, pale hand.

“The Monte Cristo basket and a Coke, please,” he said to the skinny, pimply waiter who stared at him out of watery, glassy eyes. The hell if he was ever going to return to Madison. The hell if he was.