That Sinking Feeling

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Here’s the sink that once drained so well. 

Like the toilet beside and the tile below, this sink, you might call it celery green. Its faucet’s silvery domed knobs are polished to mirror your fun house reflection. Two tubes of hydrocortisone (for the master’s ever-itchy ass) are tucked behind the cold water knob. (That’s the one closest to the toilet). One of the tubes is nearly squeezed flat. 

When the house was built, way back in the era of the curly telephone cord, back before Beatlemania, back when color TV was a luxury, they probably called this first floor “half bath” the “powder room.” It’s a smidge bigger than a porta-potty. Beyond it, and throughout this humble abode (humble by today’s standards), the color greed prevails. (Tee-hee.) The wallpaper and the carpet upstairs and downstairs and over the stairs are all the color of money. But then, before he retired, the master was an accountant by trade. 

At present, black-gray bubbles fill the celery green sink’s basin. This is not without rhyme or reason. No, this is compliments of the half-bottle of Plum-Drānr you poured down the drain, minutes ago. Its stench smells deadly, like making-you-cough deadly, like maybe a couch potato after a marathon sprint around Chernobyl deadly. Whatever it is, it makes your eyes feel heavy, like the morning after a night of one too many margaritas heavy. 

But to hell with it, you proceed to dump the entirety of the Plum-Drānr “Pro-Force Serpentine Pipe Foamer” down the sink. For the stench, you empty a can of Banish! “Zephyr Fresh” air sanitizer. You shut the door. And you wait the thirty minutes, as directed. 

If the stench and the lava-rock-like formation (still filling the sink) do not disappear before the master descends for breakfast, you’ll have to call in a professional. And just to step through the front door, said professional will charge one hundred smackeroos. Sure, the master can afford it. Though, if you’re to blame—for the need of outside services—the master will very likely grumble. After all, you’re only here because you come cheap. 

25 May 2005 

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