Jerri was no good at household repair. Her skills were people skills, not manual ones. Now she needed some skilled hands. For some mysterious reason, her toilet had overflowed when she used it last night. Why? She'd only peed, for heavens sake.
The plunger didn't move anything. She had a rusty plumber's snake that seemed always to have been in the house—it was an old house, she had grown up in it—but when she awkwardly forced the snake partway down, it hit some kind of hard blockage. She had no idea what it could be.
Alfonso was her go-to guy for these things. He didn't answer, so she left a message. This was the only toilet in the house. It wasn't just her, but Jenni, her five-year-old, would also need it. Please, Alfonso, call me back right away.
It was two hours before she heard from him. And the news wasn't good.
"Gerri, sorry, but I'm already on my way to LA. My brother, he's in some kinda trouble, he needs me there." Gerri had asked if he knew anybody else. A regular plumber would probably cost her a week's wages, with tips.
Alfonso thought for a moment. "Look, I got this friend, Richard. He don't do this as a business. But he's help me a few times, he know shit like this. You could give him a call, see if he can come over."
Worth a try. Richard had a deep voice and spoke slowly. He asked Gerri to describe the problem, twice, as if it seemed rather exotic to him. Then he said he owed Alfonso a favor, he'd come over.
* * * * *
Jerri had suspected from Richard's voice that he was a big man, and he was. Kind of on the shapeless side, but not soft-looking. His hands were huge. Gerri, who had some experience of the streets, thought he looked like a man you wouldn't want to crowd too much.
With her, Richard acted a bit shy. Jerri could talk easily to all kinds of people. But one of the things a good waitress knows is who not to chatter at. Respect people's silence. So she gave Richard a couple of warm smiles and showed him the bathroom. Richard went back his car, came back with a toolbox, and tinkered around for a long time. Jerri was wondering how bad it was. She was going to offer him twice whatever she would have paid Alfonso—glad to do it, but she still hoped it wouldn't be
too
bad.
At length Richard came into the kitchen. He was holding a small purple plastic cup in his hand, part of a play tea set Jenni had.
"There's your blockage. It was just the perfect size to block the horn."
"Horn?" said Jerri.
"Toilet horn. It's... like, the inside of the toilet goes like this... " He moved his hand in curves. "Called the horn."
"Oh, gee," said Jerri. "Thanks so much for solving it."
"How old is this house?" Richard asked abruptly.
"Built in 1955," she said. "My grandparents bought it when it was new."
"I like these old houses," he said.
"I grew up in this house. My parents got it from Grandpa and Grandma. Then it was part of my mother's estate a few years ago."
"At least you don't have a mortgage to pay off."
"Actually, I do, sort of. I have a brother and a sister. I had to buy out their shares. Still paying them off."
"Well, houses hold their value nowadays."
"If you have the money to hold them. . . Say, Richard, I just made some tea. Care to join me for a cup? Or I'll make coffee, if you like that better."
Richard looked slightly scared, as if he didn't know what he should say. Then he gestured vaguely, as if to indicate these things really weren't up to him, then sat down where Jerri indicated, at the kitchen table.
* * * * * * * * *
Jerri was a little smaller than average. Compactly shaped. She looked good in pants. Her face was not especially beautiful, but it was balanced and friendly and alert as if she noticed details, which she did. Her memory for faces, names and personalities was prodigious. Nobody could beat her at TV or movie trivia. She could beat many men at pro sports trivia, too.
She had never married Jenni's father. That was fine, since things had not worked out. Things had not worked out, either, with the couple of guys she had been involved with since. Jerri had had enough of roughness, enough of turbulence. She wanted her life to have an even, predictable tenor. There was Jenni to think of. Money was always a worry. She was grateful as long as she could pay the bills. She loved living in this old family house, and God knows she didn't want to be paying rent, but the place threatened to become a money sinkhole.
His toilet-repair skills aside (he had refused to take any payment whatsoever), she had liked Richard right away. He was quiet, and she knew, in the way she knew these things about people, that he was a gentle man, though she still had the sense it wouldn't be wise to provoke him. His shyness with her pushed exactly the right womanly buttons: she found herself thinking she would like nothing better than to convince a man like that to come to bed with her.
How to do it?
The answer to that question was provided a few days later. By the toilet.
* * * * *
Again, Jerri got up in the middle of the night to pee. She flushed and started back to bed. An odd sound stopped her. It was coming from the water tank of the toilet. Then, to her horror, she saw water, quite a bit of water, dripping from under the tank lid onto the floor. Unwisely, she lifted it. Water sprayed everywhere.
Oh God God God! What was wrong? How could she stop it? She didn't have the faintest idea. She hesitated—but what the fuck else was she going to do? Richard was the only one she knew who could tell her how to stop it. She dialed his number.
Richard answered right away, sleepy. "Yeah."
"Richard, oh God, I'm so sorry for this but I've got water running from my toilet all over the place. Can you tell me what to do?" She was so flustered she hadn't even told him who was calling.
"Ummm, where is it coming from?"
"From the back, you know, the tank, where the water comes from."
"All right, just look under the toilet, near the floor. See that little faucet? All you do is turn it to the right."
