Free Delivery

I get back to the Lincoln and Hank Crow’s there talking to a huge man in overalls, the guy must be six-seven and well over three hundred pounds. It worries me, maybe he’s been sent to talk to me about some of our business. I doubt I could get my arms around him, let alone hurt him in any way. As I reach the desk. Hank tells me he’s a plumber. I’m still leery, but if it’s a disguise, it’s a good one, he’s got grease and plumbing slime all over him and his fingers look like he works for a living. I turn to the plumber, who has the name CLARENCE sewn above his right pocket. He shakes my hand and tells me his name is Mo.

I point to the name above his shirt.

“It’s someone else’s,” he says. “Guy I work with.”

They have two guys this big? I’m wondering where it is they find these enormous plumbers.

Hank Crow says, “Sewage problem.”

“Bad?” I say.

Mo the Plumber says, “Plumbers have a saying. There’s no such thing as a good sewage problem.”

“You say that?”

“We do,” he says, entirely humorless.

Hank Crow says, “Shit was backing up into the toilet and onto the floor. It’s a sad mess upstairs. I called Mrs. Carlisle and she said the city’s at fault.”

What Hank Crow’s telling me, and I’m not sure that Mo the Plumber’s in on this, is that Mrs. Carlisle isn’t paying for this, but he called the plumber, anyway. She doesn’t care much for her people, she’s a slumlord, and Hank Crow would love to give her a headache that would last. The city’s claimed the Lincoln under eminent domain, so she’s pretty much let it rot into the ground since she knew she’d be losing the building.

Hank points to the plumber. “Our friend here has it fixed.”

“For now,” Mo the Plumber says.

“For now?” I say.

“This is just the beginning of your sewage problem. You’ve got some real trouble under your building and it’s doubtful the city’s going to take responsibility.”

“What about the water-main break?” I say. “Could that have affected this?”

Mo shakes his head. “Sewage and the water main have nothing to do with each other.”

Hank Crow says, “Thank goodness for small favors.”

“Why won’t the city take responsibility?” I say.

“Sewage is a gray area,” Mo says. “They own it when it enters beneath the city streets. Under the building, the owner owns the sewage. Between—under the sidewalk? It gets dicey.”

“No one owns the shit between the building and the street?”

Mo nods. “The waste under the sidewalk is in a kind of limbo.” He pauses. “It causes us a fair amount of trouble.”

“I could see that,” I say.

“But not forever,” Mo says. “Everything’s being privatized—fresh water, prisons, police forces, schools—I don’t expect waste will remain public for long.”

“Who would own sewage?” I say.

Mo shrugs. “Someone—there’s big money in sewage—someone will see that.”

“No doubt,” Hank Crow says.

“My shower’s been stinking up,” I say. “Are you telling me I’ve been showering in sewage?”

Mo the Plumber shakes his head. “You’re talking different pipes.”

“The showers really stink,” I say.

Mo the Plumber says, “When was the last time you flushed the water heaters?”

I look at Hank, who looks back at me with what I imagine is the same blank look on his face that I have on mine.

“Of course,” Mo the Plumber says, full of self-righteous satisfaction. “You never have, have you?”

Hank Crow says, “I’ve lived eighty years and I’ve never heard of flushing a water heater.”

Mo the Plumber tells us that the crap I’m smelling is a buildup of what he calls calcites and they grow like a fungus, like an evil film, and they infect the hot water with what he calls a “sewagelike smell to the untrained nose.”

“Really?” I say.

“You know who should flush their water heaters?” He pauses. “Everyone. You know who does?”

“No one?” Hank Crow says.

“Plumbers,” Mo the Plumber says. “You shower at a plumber’s house—you’ll never smell those calcites—you’ll never see that nasty white film on their shower door.”

“Great,” I say. “You know any plumbers whose house I could shower at?”

“You think it’s funny now, and that’s fine—but you’ve got a serious sewage problem under this building. Not a funny thing down there.”

Mo the Plumber has Hank Crow sign some papers on a clipboard, pulls a pink copy away from the yellow and white copies, and hands it to Hank. He tips his cap and heads out the door and down the stairs.

Hank looks at his watch. “‘Bout time you take over.”

I tell Hank I’m not taking over, that I’m going to bed.

“Who’ll watch the desk?”

“Who cares?” I say. “This place is getting the wrecking ball.”

Hank nods. “True enough.” He doesn’t move. “I’ll stay up, though.”

“Don’t make me feel guilty,” I say. “Why don’t you go to bed?”

“I’ll stay here,” he says, and waves an arm. “You go on—don’t worry—not being a martyr here.” He turns on his nine-inch TV. “Nothing in my room I’m missing out here.”

I go upstairs and outside of my door are five mason jars with fetal pigs floating in them. There’s only a forty-watt bulb dangling in the hallway, but I can see that they have little anguished faces and they look brown as pottery clay with black spots. There’s a note on them that reads “Free Delivery” from Tony Vic.

I open my door and carry them inside in two trips before closing my door and realizing that I’ve yet to clean the bed after the robbery. The window’s still broken and the room’s freezing. The toilet was backed up and the floor around it is speckled with semidried sewage. I leave the room and decide to go back down to the desk.

When I get there, Hank Crow says, “You don’t need to feel bad—I’ll stay up.”

I tell him about my room. I sit next to him in the lower chair and I feel like a guest on a talk show, with Hank Crow in the high chair looking down on me in a friendly way.

Hank starts talking to me, but the words start merging and blurring around like amoebas, like those psychedelic color film backdrops behind the Velvet Underground on the back photo of the first album with Nico, until they become words that are just sounds and then I fall asleep with my head on the desk.