He’d ducked into the second-floor restroom of the McKinley Building to escape a budget meeting. The lights hummed a tired fluorescent hymn. The air smelled of lemon-scented bleach and regret. Three porcelain urinals stood against the tiled wall: one chained off with a yellow “Out of Order” sign, one occupied by a man in a pinstripe suit who was clearly weeping into his phone, and the last one—the last one gleamed under the lights like a pristine arctic basin.
For Greg, a mid-level accountant with a fondness for thrift-store ties and over-brewed coffee, his moment arrived on a Tuesday. Not a dramatic, stormy Tuesday, but a beige, forgettable Tuesday in March. The kind of Tuesday that tricks you into letting your guard down.
He took his position, sighed the sigh of a man who has just subtracted $4,000 from a column that needed to add $12,000, and began to relieve himself. The stream was steady, unremarkable. For ten blissful seconds, all was right with the world.
Panic set in. He zipped up with the speed of a gunslinger. But what now? If he walked away, the next poor soul would walk into a geyser. If he stayed, someone would find him standing guard over a urinal on the brink of Armageddon.
There are two kinds of men in this world: those who have faced the urinal clog, and those who will.
Greg tried the flush. Nothing. A gurgle, then a belch, then a thick, syrupy stillness. The water level didn't drop. It smiled at him.
