canal boat for a romantic evening dinner, see the Virgin Megastore, see the underground bone place, have sex, go to the Moulin Rouge so we can pretend we’re Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, and if I don’t get to the bathroom in the next ten seconds, my bladder is going to burst.”
I got to my feet and tried the door to the gift shop. It was locked, natch.
“What are you going to do?” Holly asked in a breathy sort of whisper.
“I could kick down the door like they do in the movies,” I said, pulling Jack from the baby backpack. I peeled off my sweatshirt and tee, then put the sweatshirt back on and wrapped the tee around Jack’s neck like it was a neckbrace. “But since it’s usually guys or Xena or someone who does that, I think I’ll go the easy route and break the glass next to the door so I can reach through and unlock it.” I turned my head so I wouldn’t get flying glass in my eyes, and swung Jack at the glass. His head was evidently hard enough, because there was a huge crash of glass. I looked back to see a big Jack’s-head-sized hole in the glass next to the door. “Brother will scream about having to pay for the glass—and I’m sure he’ll take it out of my allowance for the next fifty years—but it’s better than hiring someone to mop up the puddle of piddle on the floor.”
“I suppose so, although I still think it’s wrong. But I really do have to use the loo,” Holly said as she got to her feet.
I checked Jack over, but he didn’t look like he had suffered anything that would register as abuse, although he had a long gash on the top of his head, and one eye popped out. I pocketed the eye, figuring I’d glue it back in later. The gash was a bit more diffy, but right then was not the moment to worry over what I’d tell Horseface. I unwound the tee and used it to push off the shards of glass so I could reach through and unlock the door.
A minute later I had the door open.
Two minutes later we discovered that the gift shop didn’t have a bathroom.
Five minutes after that I found a cleaning bucket under the cash register. I held it up to show her. “Behold, the emergency Notre-Dame loo,” I said.
Emily was back to looking horrified. “I couldn’t!”
I looked at it and grimaced. I knew how she felt. “There’s nothing else, Holly. It’s that or find a dark corner, or hold it, and I’m doing the pee-pee dance, here. I have to go.”
“You go, then,” she said, turning her back. “I won’t watch.”
I looked at the bucket. I set it down. I found a couple of paper towels and set them next to the bucket. “OK. I’m going to go. It’s just a bucket, after all.”
Holly hurried out of the gift shop to stand outside the door. I got out of my jeans and stood there looking at the bucket. I stood over it. I grabbed the papertowels, telling myself there was no other choice.
“Damn!” I grabbed my jeans and pulled them on again, and stormed out of the room. “You go.”
“Did you—” she said, not meeting my eye.
“No. I couldn’t. But that doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“You go first. It will be less...ooky...for you that way.”
Ick. I didn’t even want to think about that. “I can’t. I tried. I think my mom toilet trained me too hard or something, because I can’t pee in a bucket.”
Holly sighed. “Oh, I’m glad to hear you say that, because I can’t, Emily, I just can’t. Not in a bucket.”
A half an hour of pacing back and forth (we couldn’t sit without dancing) and we changed our minds. I won’t go into the details, but trust me when I say that I’m never, ever entering a church again without peeing first.
In other words, it was ewto the fifth power.
We spent the rest of the night trying to sleep, but we didn’t. For one, it was too cold. They don’t heat those towers! And for another, it was too hard on the floor to sleep. Jack wanted to be fed in the morning, but his bottle was empty, so I poured some of the window cleaning fluid from the bottle I found in the (unused at that point) bucket in the gift shop. The cleaner was blue, and I