The Washroom

Entering the washroom, warm and moist and claustrophobic as an old British pub, we smell the man in the stall. He thickens the already thick air. Hard question now: breathe through nose or mouth? Each chooses silently, fearful either of embarrassing the man at the centre of our predicament or of admitting the violation of our space. We do not realize that we've been made brothers in this experience. 

I find myself thankful for the smell of my own piss wafting up from the urinal. At least its mine. I can live with myself. Myself and the day's coffee.

Upstairs, she's telling her friends, at a buck ten tops, that you don't need muscle. And, shortly after those words, a large man walks without resistance through a crowded doorway. I hear the truth in the first moment and see it in the second.