"Where is that plumber?" Susan complained to herself. Her hot water had been off for two days now. It felt like two years. Without a hot shower, Susan was like one of her many former houseplants; parched, wilted, and a few steps from death.
She ran her fingers through her waist long hair, as red as the setting sun. Freckles covered her body like stars cover the night sky. Her eyes were green as Colombian emeralds, and as high quality — she had 20/10 vision. Her nose had a tiny upturn, causing her natural resting face to look "judgy," according to her mother.
Susan was slender as a rebar pipe and as strong as two rebar pipes. That's where her comparison to steel mesh ended. She was warm and kind, traits more often shared by copper. People often wished they could steal her away, again like copper pipe.
Or she normally was, on days when she'd had a hot shower. She stamped her bare foot in frustration, a slap echoing through the half empty house.
It was half empty because Susan's good-for-nothing ex husband, Catfish, had taken half the belongings. He was very thorough and had a wide array of tools. Half the sectional was missing. He'd taken the freezer. One of the doors on their two car garage. He'd excavated the back deck, leaving her with only the front porch. She couldn't entertain at the front of the house; everyone knows the backyard was where parties thrived.
He'd also taken the hot water. Susan couldn't prove it, but she was positive he'd managed it, either through sabotage, a hex of some sort, or maybe just bad vibes. Susan needed good vibes only.
A knock came at the front door.
Finally
, Susan thought, and she scampered to answer it.
Todd, the plumber, stood in the door frame. He was as tall as a telephone pole, with shoulders as broad as a continental plate. He wore a backwards baseball cap that said, "Ocean View Seamen" on it. The Seamen were Ocean View's minor league baseball team. He was a fan.
He wore a clean shirt, which was more than Susan could say for herself. It was emblazoned with the logo "Manatee Plumbing." There were no manatees in Ocean View. There were no manatees in California. Their closest relatives went extinct two hundred years ago. But there's no law requiring your company name to make sense. Besides, manatees were cute.
"Susan?" Todd asked, pretty sure he had the right house.
"Yes, please come in," said Susan. She held the thick wooden door open for him.
Normally, this would be an intricate dance, as the visitor to her home had to open a storm door which swung the opposite direction. The storm door spring was as tight as Susan's body, and closed with dangerous speed. Susan's bubble butt would prop open the storm door while she fiddled with the lock on her front door. Her small stature against the strong spring ensured there was always an ass print on the storm door. Add in complexities like groceries, and the whole dance was more complicated than a Fouetté turn.
However, her husband had taken the storm door, so it was much simpler this time.
Todd ducked to get through the door frame. He had always been self conscious of his height. "How's the weather up there?" he had heard thousands of times growing up. 9,563 to be precise. Todd couldn't have known that detail though. He wasn't keeping track.
"Jeez, you're tall," is another one he'd heard a lot. He knew he was tall, the person wasn't conveying any new information to him. They said it with the same astonished voice they used when a seagull snatched a sandwich out of their hands. "I was eating that!"
Because of this, he slouched. He'd also taken to shaving his head, losing the extra two inches his hair normally added. He grew a beard, which folks commented on more than his height these days. But it was often a two-for-one. "Nice beard. Jeez, you're tall."
Jeez, he's tall
, thought Susan. "Mind your head," she said as he stepped through the doorway. That was a more polite way of saying "Jeez you're tall."
Todd passed in front of the entry light, his shadow blanketing the foyer in darkness. Susan felt his shadow looming over her and gulped.
By comparison, she was tiny. She had to stand on her tiptoes to ride roller coasters. She was a minnow to his bluefin tuna. Tinker Bell to his Goliath.
"What seems to be the problem?" Todd asked. What a loaded question that was for Susan.
"Where to begin?" said Susan. "My ex-husband took half of everything I own. I haven't showered in two days because my hot water isn't working. Plus, everything going on in the Middle East, climate change, social media, and the increasing threat of domestic extremism masquerading as grievance politics. That covers most of it."
"Uh-huh," said Todd. He didn't read the news much. Manatee Plumbing kept him too busy. He didn't vote because he'd get yelled at for looking over the top of the booth at other voters. The advent of the mail-in ballot was a godsend to Todd.
"I can't do much about some of those," he said very plainly. He was a plain guy, aside from his freakish height and one other major deviation that will be touched on later. His rugged truck was white. His sandwich bread was white. His ice cream was white. 1% of his blood cells were white (the average number).
"You can help with the hot water though, right?" said Susan. She'd meant it as a joke, but the desperation in her voice made her sound serious, like she doubted his ability.
"Of course," said Todd.
Maybe this backwards baseball hat makes me look unprofessional.
He turned his hat forward. The most polite thing would be to remove it, but Todd was a man who only removed his hat for the national anthem.
Susan's face lit up like Times Square. "Wonderful!" she cried.
Todd smiled back. Lighting up a customer's face like that was why he did the job. And the money. Todd didn't work for free. That was communism in Todd's mind.
"Can you show me where your hot water heater is?" Todd asked.
"Follow me," said Susan, and she set off to the basement.
Susan's house was small for Ocean View, and her ex-husband's looting made it feel smaller. There were shadows on the walls where pictures of his favorite Hooters girls used to hang. He'd taken the TV but left the sound system. Wires hung askew like an abandoned bird's nest. The sofa cushions were missing. The cheap laminate flooring was warped from water damage (her ex had unplugged the sump pump to use the outlet for his Xbox and never plugged it back in).
The dated wallpaper was peeling like a sunburnt tourist. The drop ceiling was missing half its panels (he'd taken them out of spite), along with half the fluorescent bulbs. It was an unholy, unpleasant basement.
"Nice place you got here," said Todd, being polite. What he really thought was,
Am I going to get murdered down here?
"My ex took everything he could get his grubby hands on," said Susan. "He left me high and dry with almost nothing to my name. Four years we were together, and in those four years my life was as sorry as this basement.
"It was your usual story. We were college sweethearts, myself at Harvard and him at Ocean View Discount Academy. He texted me every day, usually complaining about the rigor of his toilet cleaning classes or that the raccoon that lived in the hallway stole his lunch money again. He seemed so pitiful, I thought I could change him. Alack, to change a man like that... it would be easier to make the sun rise in the West."
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Todd. What else can you say to a stranger who bubbles out their life story with such poetic flare? Plumbers and bartenders had one thing in common, people wanted to tell them their life stories.
"You know how it is. He goes out for drinks with his co-workers one night, meets an older woman, and before I can say 'Who's that tramp?' she's stolen him away," Susan said bitterly. Again, she wasn't normally bitter, but the past couple days had pushed her to the edge.
And it was a precarious precipice. Susan had grown up in a loving family with considerable wealth. They took vacations every year to places common folk weren't allowed. Places you haven't heard of. Guilfoyle's Island. The Isthmus of Wyoming. Martha Washington's Vineyard.
Susan had never known war, serious disease, poverty. She'd never lost a loved one (although she had a great-uncle die in a sword-fighting duel over who's socks were more drab). She had all her limbs and digits. She'd never been camping, nor even glamping. Her largest scar was from appendicitis as a child, and was a centimeter long on her left side. It was as noticeable as her bikini-line hair, which she had lasered off. And yes, Susan preferred the metric system.
All this to say, Susan was not used to the trials of two days without hot water. So she should be given a little leeway on the bitterness, all things considered.
"You must be having a hard time," said Todd. He was thankful some of the drop ceiling tiles were missing, since he could stand up straight in those spots. As Susan led him to the back of the basement, he bobbed and weaved through the holes like a prize fighter.
"I am," sighed Susan. "Why do men always go for older women?"
"One of life's great mysteries," said Todd, suddenly feeling poetic, inspired, mayhaps, by Susan's use of 'alack.'
"I'm only 27. That's plenty old enough," she said.
"Absolutely," said Todd, sensing the right thing to do was agree.
"What's wrong with me?" said Susan. "I'm fun, I'm perky, I'm hip." She paused for a moment. People who were hip didn't use the term "hip." Saying "hip" was as un-hip as saying, "Wazzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuup?"
"You seem plenty perky and fun to me," said Todd.
Perky is right
, his animal side thought. His animal brain was drooling over her body.
Susan waved away her thoughts, but wasn't distracted enough to miss the compliment. She smiled to herself. "Anyway. Here it is." She pushed open the door at the other side of the basement. Her husband had taken the handle, so never fully closed.
Inside was the laundry room. Todd noticed a dryer and a dirty, empty space. The hot water heater was in a minuscule closet across from the dryer.
Todd gulped. He wasn't sure he'd fit. The closet was no bigger than a confessional. He stopped fitting in those by sixth grade. That was part of the reason he gave up on his Catholicism. The other part of the reason was he never cared about it in the first place.
Todd preferred fringe theories about the universe, his second deviation from the norm. Todd thought perhaps we're all trapped in an alien child's terrarium, and when the sun goes down that's the alien turning out the light. Or the idea that we're all one person, and each of us is a figment of their imagination, babbling with ourselves to no end. He was waaaaaaay past "Life is just a simulation, man." He kept these to himself so he wouldn't look like a crackpot.
Susan looked up at Todd, then back at the closet. "It'll be a little cramped," she said. "Sorry."
"I can manage," said Todd, choking down his claustrophobia. He stuck his head inside the closet and felt the walls closing in. He forced the panic back down into his chest, where it couldn't affect his brain. Todd bottled all of his problems this way. It was extremely effective, until the dam burst and he broke down in hysterics. Then he'd pull himself back together, and start the cycle over again. Again, he was similar to most other people.
"I think I see the issue," said Todd after a few minutes of poking and prodding, Susan anxiously looking under him the whole time. "There's a problem with your pipes."
"There's nothing wrong with my pipes," said Susan. "The doctors said so. I'm just on birth control."
"No, I mean your water pipes," replied Todd.
"Of course," said Susan, shaking her head. The lack of hot water was getting to her.
Todd removed himself from the closet, taking deep breaths to calm his frightened nerves. He squelched the fear back into his guts, where he could store it until his therapy session next week. It worked.
He's breathing so deeply. He must be into yoga,
thought Susan.
From the look of his shirt, he works out his core. It's a washboard. I could grate cheese on those abs. I want to fill them up with maple syrup like a waffle.
