May 28th, 2007— THE
EMPORER, REVERSED
--
Saturday, May 26th --
I need a third hand.
Faye storms from the bathroom
and out into the living room, exasperated.
Nipper
gives a wide berth to the thunderhead, then slips past my ankles to hide as
I
drift into the bathroom doorway. “I
don’t get it, baby,” I say, glancing at the sink
basin. “It’s just a drain.”
“It’s BROKEN, Ace!” she yells at me. “AGAIN!”
I rub my index finger back and forth across my upper
lip, reflectively. The
drain
is in the shut position, a few millimeters of unclean-looking water lying
uneasily
on
top of it. I have no business with the
sink that ever requires a full basin of water,
and
so can only vaguely fathom why she seems to need to open and close the drain
every
ten minutes.
Having it broken in the down
position, though, sealing the sink—
that’s
annoying. “So?”
I venture. “It’s been broken
before. How is this different?”
She thrusts her head into the
doorway, startling me. “Because I DON’T
HAVE
TIME TO FIX IT!” she snarls. She
glances up and down the length of me
contemptuously. “And YOU’RE sure as hell not going to fix
it,” she adds, turning
her
back on me. “The only thing YOU’LL do is call a plumber and throw MONEY
at
it, then bitch about how you never have any.”
The explosion rattles the
Command Center, sending debris raining down
from
the walls and ceiling. The guy lounging
at the console in my head spit-takes
his
coffee and lurches forward in the seat, staring wide-eyed at the amber damage
lights
blossoming across his board. “Jesus
Christ!” he cries, starting to throw
switches,
recalibrate the heads-up displays.
“We’re under ATTACK!”
I’ve been up an unusually
long time for a Saturday on Memorial Day weekend,
but
then, I’ve had quite a few things to do.
Or rather, was under the impression that I
did. The Internal Revenue Service, for instance,
would like to know why I think I can
claim
Jack as a dependent on my tax return, despite the fact that he does not live with
me,
and
that necessitates that I send them a copy of my divorce settlement, explaining
that I
am
allowed to do that. So the original
plan for the day went something like this:
walk to
the
Library, photocopy the settlement, pick up a few books on plumbing and house
repair
(paying
my overdue book fine for good measure), walk to the Post Office, mail the
documents
to the IRS, walk back, read. And maybe
balance my checkbook.
Unfortunately, however, it is Memorial Day
weekend, and everything is
closed,
despite the fact that the holiday itself is on Monday. The actual morning’s
activity
therefore, has consisted of the following:
walk to the Library, discover
Library
is closed, walk back. Scan and print
out documents on computer. Decide
to
drive to Post Office instead of walk, because it is 90 degrees out, and head to
car. Discover that rear-view mirror of car has
fallen off windshield and is dangling
by
map light wires. Analyze mirror to try
to determine what failed. Examine other
cars
to determine how their rear-view mirrors are held on. Search car for missing
parts
whose existence has been deduced by comparative analysis. Find parts and
put
in glove compartment. Realize car is
not optimally drivable without functioning
rear-view
mirror, and with non-functioning rear-view mirror swinging around
pendulum-like
in front seat. Attempt to disengage
rear-view mirror from wires. Fail.
Close
car and walk to Post Office. Discover
Post Office is closed, walk back. Sit.
At least the video store had the
second Pirates movie in. Now I am
lying on
my
back, on a towel, with my feet and calves splayed out along the floor tiles,
and
my
head and shoulders thrust inside the bathroom sink cabinet. It is not a particularly
comfortable
position, but while I haven’t had breakfast or lunch, I have had most of
a
bottle
of my homemade hard cider, so I don’t particularly mind.
What was it Emrys called
me? I think, shining the flashlight
up along the
underside
of the concrete basin. “Pedantic.” That was it. I crane my neck a
little
to
one side, squinting. Of course, I
had to look up what it meant. Which I
guess
proves
he was right. The side of my mouth quirks into a humorless
smile. I am Reed
goddamn
fuckin’ Richards. I could read when I
was 2. By junior high school I was
ready
for college. Politics, philosophy,
history, sociology, mythology.
Biology,
economics. Physics.
I can do math in my head, take the world apart into pieces and
show
you how they connect, or build you a brand new one and draw pictures of what
it
would look like. But it doesn’t matter
in the end, does it? It never
does. The only
thing
that ever matters is whether or not you can fix the fuckin’ sink.
The flashlight picks up
metal, the thin shaft of the push rod. With so little
room
to maneuver, it is difficult to both hold myself in the position I need to be
in
and
hold the light on target so I can see.
Thus my observation about the third hand.
So what would Reed Richards
do? I ask myself.
Invent a transference portal
to another dimension where there are
automated
plumbing robots to do it for him, I think..
I smile again, and this time
it’s
actually from amusement. Or install
a nanobot-regulated water evaporator. No
need
for drains at all. My elbow bumps gently against
the particle-board. At the very
least, he’d hold the flashlight in a loop of
his arm, so that he had both hands free.
Longstreet and Hawkeye both know about sinks in
general terms, but I have
already
called them, and as it turns out, you can’t really phone it in when it comes to
plumbing; too many intricacies. But then, Reed could just stretch his
eyes around the
stuff
in the way to look, if he had to. Heh.
I balance the flashlight on
my forehead. There really isn’t all
that much to
look
at. A small plastic collar emerges from
the drainpipe, in which rests a metal
ball,
attached to which is a long bar. Above
it is hanging the smooth shaft of the
push
rod. The two are connected by a cheap
looking strip of metal. On one end, the
strip
has regularly-spaced holes in it, like the strips on the sides of computer
paper
back
in the dot-matrix era; on the other, it has a bracket with a battered screw,
all torn
up
around the edges, as if someone had used a wrench on it. The bar passes through
one
of the holes in the strip; the shaft is sticking through the bracket.
Hnh. The flashlight falls
off
my head with a clatter, but I stand
it
back up in the corner, and now that
my
eyes are adjusting to the light, it’s
almost
as good. So let’s see— the first
time
it broke, I pulled the drain out
entirely,
so at least the sink was
useable,
and the result was that the
entire
exterior assembly pulled free
of
the drainpipe, leaving a big ol’
hole. Don’t want a repeat of that.
The scene shifts inside my head.
Hampstead
is kneeling on a dirty board
in
the basement of his house in Maidland,
eyeing
up the valve in a six-inch water
main
encrusted with black tar and sand.
He
wraps his meaty fists around an
orange
monkey wrench that is clamped
to
the valve nut, and strains against it
with
his considerable might, but to no
avail; the angle of the wrench will not
allow
him sufficient leverage. “Maybe
you
should take it off,” I tell him, from
where
I am sitting at the bottom of the
cellar
steps. “Turn it the other way.”
“Doesn’t come off,” he says, wiping the sweat from
his brow with his forearm.
“No?” I say. “How’d you get it
on there then?”
“I didn’t,” he replies. “It was here when I bought the house. As was this,” he
adds,
tapping the board under his knees. “And
this,” he says, gesturing to a grimy old
towel
that hangs over the pipe next to him.
I take a swig of my Coke. He eases back onto his haunches, one hand still
on
the wrench, and looks over his shoulder at me. “Now,” he says, cocking his
head,
“I
can’t help but wonder— if the guy that
was here before me had a dedicated
wrench,
and a dedicated board, and a dedicated towel—“
He glances up at the valve.
“—then
just exactly how much a’ my time am I gonna be dedicatin’ to sittin’
here in front
of
this pipe?”
I tap on the plastic collar with the tip of my index
finger. It seems firmly seated.
The
plumber reattached the mechanism to the drain pipe the first time he was
here. And
from
the look of it, he replaced the entire thing while he was at it. So it’s likely not a
problem
with that. I hook my thumb and
forefinger around the metal bar and pull down
on
it gently, but it doesn’t move.
I hope. I reach farther up, to the
push rod, looking for anything that might not be
obvious
at first glance. There’s nothing
else here! That strip thing just
attaches the rod to
the
bar— and what a piss-poor arrangement
THAT is. Why get a third part involved?
Why
not just make the rod long enough to reach the bar in the first place? I scowl at the
joining
point, peering up into the bracket. The
shiny smooth surface of the push rod
gleams
faintly in the beam from the flashlight, like some kind of weird, artificial
stalactite.
How
the hell does that bracket screw get any purchase on that rod anyway? There’s no
socket
or indentation on the rod for it to grab into, and the outside’s as smooth as
glass.
You’d
think the damn thing would sl—
I raise both my eyebrows. No.
It can’t be that easy.
The hatchmarks of torn-up
metal around the outside of the screw look like gashes
in
the light. Can it?
I unfurl my arm from within
the sink cabinet, hook it up over the basin, and
manage
to stretch far enough to place my hand atop the push rod: a respectable distance
for
someone without elasticity powers. Drain is down, so therefore bar should
be— up.
Which means push rod should
be up. Push rod is— down.
I
grip the knob at the top
of
the rod. Pull up on push rod, and—
It
protests against the effort, but sure enough, the push rod raises, and I watch
from
inside the cabinet as it slides neatly through the
bracket without moving the metal strip in any
way. Sonuva
bitch.
I
bring my arm back in and grab the screw between my fingers. I realize
when I feel the torn up metal beneath my fingertips
that the effort will be futile, before I even
twist, but I try it anyway. Screw’s already tight. Just not tight enough. Wrench?
I have a
hundred of them;
the small ones never fit anything, and the big ones are too bulky for a
small
space. I
look at the slot in the screw. It seems
intact, although it’s hard to tell in the light.
Screwdriver.
Nipper wanders in from the living room to see
what I’m doing, and lies down
on the bathmat with a yawn. I slip out from underneath the cabinet and
scoot over next to
her to rummage through my “tool chest”: a black plastic ArtBin that now holds
household
repair items instead of art supplies. It served me well in Art School, and I’m
glad that it
continues to serve me in this fashion, but I’m the
only one who is: Weaver was
exceptionally
vocal in her hatred of it, and Faye would
undoubtedly prefer something better organized.
I paw through carpet tacks, dig under hangers and
hammers, examining my options. The
short-
hafted screwdrivers have tiny blades, insufficient
for the size of the slot. I need a
tight fit,
and torque.
I select the full-sized one instead and crawl back underneath the sink.
There
isn’t quite enough room to bring the screwdriver to bear against the screw
without knocking it against the water pipes. The push rod and bracket arrangement is
pliable, though, and has some give to it, so I seat
the screwdriver in the slot of the screw
first, and then let the leverage of the screwdriver
against the pipes bow it out to where I
need it. My
first twist gets nothing but resistance;
I lay on the pressure and the screw
turns achingly a sixteenth of an inch, an eighth of
an inch, almost a quarter. I move my
free hand up behind the rod to try to support it against
the pressure driving it sideways,
but I can’t do that and twist at the same time, so
I let go all at once, deciding it’ll suffice.
If that doesn’t do it—
Nipper is staring up at me as I stand in
front of the sink for the moment of truth.
“Ready?” I say, glancing at her.
She
tilts her head to one side.
I
place one finger on the top of the rod and push down. The drain in the bottom
of the sink pushes open, with a quiet “shoonk”.
I
push and pull it up and down a few more times just to make sure it’s not a
fluke.
It generates a little more resistance in the middle
of the action than at the ends, and also
tries to twist in my grip somewhat; it takes me a few moments to translate this
data into
an image. Bent the rod, I think.
Eh, what the hell. Still works. I
reach under the sink
and pull on it a little, then twist it around a few
times until it finds an orientation it seems
to like.
When I am satisfied with it, I run cold water into the basin, leaving
the drain open,
and splash it into my face and over my neck.
“Not
bad, huh?” I say to Nipper, shaking the drops from my beard and nose.
Nipper
says nothing. She gets up silently and
leaves the bathroom, looking for
any leftovers on the carpet she might have
missed. I push down on the tap to shut
off
the water.
“Yeah,”
I say, taking a towel from the nearby rack.
“Not bad.”
I
wipe my face and hands off, then throw my tools back in the tool chest and
exit the bathroom to go get a drink of water. I still have to balance my checkbook.
--Monday, May 28th--
“Thank you for fixing the sink,” Faye calls
from the bathroom.
I
look up from the gaming book I’m reading.
A number of replies flit briefly
through my head, non of them salutary, but I shoo
them all away. “You’re welcome,”
I reply.
“How
did you fix it?” she asks.
I
stand up from the computer chair, still reading the book, and wander into the
bathroom doorway so I don’t have to yell. She is standing in front of the sink,
tending
to her hair.
“With a screwdriver,” I tell her.
“That’s
not what I mean!” she laughs, glancing at me over her shoulder. “What
was wrong with it?”
I
lean against the doorframe. “The rod
you use to push the drain up and down
is attached with a screw. The screw was loose, so it was sliding back and forth without
tripping the mechanism. I tightened it.”
“How
did you tighten it?” she asks.
“With
a screwdriver,” I repeat.
“How
did you get the screwdriver in there?”
she says, brushing her hair. “I
tried the same thing, but I couldn’t fit the screwdriver
in there well enough to turn it.”
When? I think,
confused, looking up from my book again.
The pause lengthens. “I don’t know,” I tell her, shrugging. “I just—
did it.”
“Hmm,” she says, very neutrally. “Cool.”
The
passage on the particulars of how to cure lycanthropy is still eluding me.
“It was just a loose screw,” I say.
She
laughs at the phrase, then leers at me from the sink, shimmying her shoulders
suggestively.
“Looking for a loose screw?” she asks.
“Sure,”
I reply dryly, turning the page.
“Why? You know someone who
actually wants to give me one?”
There is a brief moment
of stunned silence, and I realize only belatedly just how
much trouble I’m in again.
Jesus Christ, I think,
wincing inside. I will never, EVER learn.