Glengarry Glen Ross Marie let me borrow. I got pretty deep into it when I heard Roy crying inside.
“Jesus Christ, Roy. What happened? ” He was sitting upright, covered in diarrhea. It looked like he’d been sprayed with A1 sauce. The smell had a toxic chemical component to it not found in your everyday shit. He was freaked out because his hands were messy. He held them up for me. It was a damn good thing he couldn’t see the rest of him. He was probably thinking, How the fuck did this shit get all over my hands while I was sleeping? Please clean them at once.
“Sorry, kid, but that’s horrible.” I couldn’t hide my expression. Roy stopped crying on a dime and smiled, proud of himself. He clapped his hands, liberating a poisonous mist into the room. Then he raised one hand toward his runny nose.
“No, no, no. Don’t do that.” I grabbed his slippery wrist just in time. I scooped him up, then carried him—at arm’s length—into the bathroom. “Dear God in heaven.” He loved it.
I set him down on the floor and turned on the shower. There was no graceful way to free him from his soiled clothes so I just went for it. His head was further beshit ted as it passed laboriously through the opening of his shirt. I started taking off all of my own clothes. Roy was curious. He reached up for my crotch. It shocked me.
“Get out of there,” I laughed. “Jesus, kid. Didn’t your old man teach you anything? ”
He giggled, naked except for the shit.
I sat him in the middle of the tub. The water going down the drain turned Psycho brown. I sat like a bobsled der behind him and soaped us both up.
“Breathe in that good steam. It’ll fix you right up.” I demonstrated. He followed. He exploded with a series of yellow, ropy sneezes. I plucked the phlegm from his nose after each one and flung it at the drain. “Huh, kid? What I tell you? Better, right? ”
I looked through the mommy bag for a change of clothes. There was a pair of green socks. That was it. “What the fuck, James? ” Even though it hadn’t happened yet on my watch, one had to think the possibility of a toddler shitting not just his pants but his entire outfit was not altogether far-fetched.
I’d been a little weirded out when Marie gave me that stack of Sidney’s old clothes. But it was a good thing she did. I dressed Roy in a pair of black sweatpants, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a Velvet Underground and Nico T-shirt over that. He looked pale and exhausted, like a roadie for Soundgarden. I threw our dirty clothes and my makeshift bed into the washing machine. There was no detergent, so I ran it all through twice.
“Where’d he get those clothes? ” James asked.
I told him everything.
“You just called Roy Sidney, you know.”
“I did? ”
“Yes. You said, ‘Sidney had an accident.’ ”
“That’s strange.”
“Yes, it is. Do me a favor. Don’t do that again. I’m superstitious. It’s bad enough you got him in a dead kid’s clothes.”
THE NEXT TIME I worked for Marie I told her the whole story. I laid it on thick, making it sound like Roy’s diarrhea was more explosive than it actually was. She liked the story, especially the parts about Sidney’s clothes and me getting shat on.
“Babies and men and poop,” she said. “Guys who don’t have kids fear diaper changing almost as much as anything. That’s the easy part.”
“Really? Because it was not exactly a good time.”
“That’s because he was sick. He probably had the flu.”
“Great. That means I’m going to get it. I’m fucked.”
“Oh, don’t be such a pussy.”
I liked that Marie didn’t have a problem using pussy as a playful put-down. She’d also drop a C-bomb in conversation now and then. “Well, anyway,” I said, “it’s a good thing you gave him those clothes.”
Marie thought about it. “I think I’d like to see them on Roy. I don’t know how it would make me feel, but I’m curious.”
“Hang on,” I said. “Don’t you think the camera should be rolling when you say stuff like that? ”
“Hmm.”
“Would it be too fake if we let it roll and had that whole talk over? ”
“I don’t know. We can try.”
“ THAT’S A horrible expression,” Jocelyn said. “I find it upsetting.” She had her hands cupped around a full rocks glass. She was waiting for the ice