Larry arrived for work at the diner the next evening feeling rested and refreshed . . . but also a bit anxious. He had spent his day off from stooping at OTB getting a haircut, buying some groceries, and having two pairs of worn-out shoes resoled. Larry strolled along the pedestrian greenway hugging the shore of the Hudson River to WagnerPark at the southern tip of Manhattan. He sat in the bleacher-like seats and watched the low-slung tug boats pushing barges fight the powerful harbor currents. His attention quickly moved to the girls strutting along the promenade wearing short skirts over skinny slacks. Then, without warning, a nasty cold front clipped in across New York Harbor, chopping up white caps and clearing out the majority of the park's visitors.
Back at his dismal apartment before departing for work Larry removed the stack of 700 lottery tickets from the paper bag and formed a thick, squared-up stack which he riffled like a cartoon flip-book. He admired them lovingly before experiencing a pang of remorse for his inchoate decision. What if this bunch of stubs isn't worth the paper they're printed on? Larry returned the tickets to the bag and slid it between his lumpy mattress and sagging box spring, and headed out the door for the bus stop. On his way to work, straddling the line between wild optimism and crushing pessimism, he tried to calculate the odds of winning back at least his initial $700 investment, but quickly gave up. The task was too complex, the combinatorics too vast, the lottery payout scheme too dependent on numbers chosen by other wagerers. He tried to cheer up. Hell, 700 tickets is a lot of tickets – I've gotta hit at least one of them.
Larry was in the kitchen draining the sink when Pablo came through the swinging doors with a container full of dishes and announced with a snicker that a toilet in the men's room had overflowed. "Listen up, old man. Some ruco took a shit in the baño and threw too much paper in the bowl. It's all plugged up," he reported, struggling mightily not to burst out laughing.
"What the fuck do you want me to do about it? Do I look like a plumber?"
"No, but you look like a dude who's good at mopping up shit."
"Fuck you. Tell Arturo to get his lame ass in there and clean it up."
Abandoning any effort to restrain himself, Pablo guffawed, "Arturo is off tonight. Haw, haw! It's your job now, pendejo."
As low man on the totem pole Larry was the go-to guy for such systemic calamities. Displaying no sign of disgruntlement – what's the point? – he filled up a yellow, four-wheeled pail with hot, soapy water, and clamped on a squeegee. He removed a string mop from the rack and using the worn wooden handle Larry push-rolled the pail to the men's room. As soon as Larry walked in he was brushed back by an olfactory assault. As if stumbling upon an open mass grave he clasped his hand across his nose and mouth and looked on in wide-eyed horror at the volume of feces dribbled down the toilet, smeared on the walls of the stall and blasted across the floor. Larry quickly blocked the entrance to the men's room with one of those folding, yellow signs emblazoned with the words "danger" and "peligro" and illustrated with a stick figure man slipping and falling on his pointy ass. Then Larry staggered back to the kitchen like a mortally wounded soldier.
"Done already?" inquired Pablo with mock surprise.
As he sprayed Lysol onto a towel, Larry demanded, "Why didn't you tell me a rhino escaped from the zoo and stopped in to take a dump before skipping town? Jesus H. Christ." He wrapped the towel around his face to contravene the stench of gangrenous bowels. Pablo laughed his ass off at the sight of Larry the ashen-faced Bedouin, Lawrence of Diarrhabia.
Like Hercules in the Augean stables Larry labored for an hour to vanquish the mess, gagging repeatedly over the gruesome crime scene. With each squeeze of the mop the water grew browner until it looked like coffee. Larry stepped out into the dining area every few minutes to catch his breath and steady his stomach. And while he took repose, he scanned the floor for the vile culprit who had so thoroughly defiled the men's room. He narrowed his eyes at a geezer enjoying a hot fudge sundae. Has to be that alter kaker in the corner – the one who looks like Abe Vigoda's grandfather. A few puzzled patrons stared at Larry's shrouded face and the mop he held like a scepter. The only thing missing from the scene was Omar Sharif's camel.
Larry dumped the slop down the toilet and wrung out the mop for the last time. He stashed it and the towel in the pail and plodded morosely back to the kitchen. Before he could duck back behind the swinging doors, he heard a familiar voice bellow loudly behind him. "Izzat you, Ajax?" Larry froze. Instinctively, he knew he should have continued walking but the instinct to turn and acknowledge the inquisitor was too great. He obliged the way people invariably do when a stranger calls out, "Hey asshole."
"What the fuck are you doin' here?" demanded Vic once he confirmed Larry's identity. Larry said nothing. He just stood there, apron soiled, hair mussed up. "Don't fuckin' tell me you work here, ya fuckin' dirtbag." Vic was seated in a booth accompanied by a young, Asian tart who looked to be no older than 20. Larry presumed correctly she was one of those exotic girls rented out by dating services advertising in the back pages of the tabloids. Dougie was there too with his date, a mannish-looking woman with pink-blond hair swept up in an anachronistic bouffant. She looked vaguely like Myra Hindley, the sexually sadistic psychopath famous for the Moor murders in England in the 1960s. Before Larry could muster a reaction Vic clambered noisily out of the booth and approached him. The diner patrons stopped eating and the waitresses froze in their tracks; they all trained their attention on the developing fracas. The owner of the diner looked over from his perch by the cash register and then rushed in to intercept Vic and defuse the looming altercation. "What seems to be the trouble, sir?" asked the owner with more deference than Larry thought appropriate. After all it was Vic who was barking insults and making a scene.
"Trouble? I'll tell you my trouble, Jack. This jagoff workin' anywhere near a place that serves food. That's my trouble."
The owner furrowed his brow in confusion. Larry shifted his weight back and forth, debating whether to beat a retreat to the relative security of the kitchen where, if necessary, he could lay his hands on a cleaver, or to stay put and mount a defense. Vic turned toward the rapt audience of diners and brazenly announced, pointing with an outstretched, accusative arm at Larry, "This piece of shit crawls on the floor at OTB for a living. He's like a fuckin' rat, pickin' up tickets and cigarette butts and wads of gum." Larry shook his head frantically. "Who knows what filth is under his fingernails. This fucker has no business workin' in a restaurant . . ." Vic then directly addressed the owner, ". . . even in a shit hole diner like this one." Mortified, Larry gulped hard. The owner nervously scanned the floor and watched as several patrons exchanged glances and simultaneously put down their silverware. A moment later people at two tables rose and headed for the cash register even though they had just started their meals. Panicked, the owner announced to the entire room, "Please everybody. Don't leave. Listen to me." Larry expected the owner to denounce Vic and his outrageous claim but instead he groveled. "This is all news to me. It comes as a complete shock." The owner looked quickly at Vic, assessing his demeanor, and then faced Larry and exclaimed in an assertive, executive-sounding voice for all to hear, "Larry, please get your things and go. You're fired." Vic nodded in approval and returned to his booth. Dougie yelled out "hoo-ah!" The owner looked out across the room again for signs that his command decision had mollified the clientele. Larry felt the heat of obloquy upon his face and skulked into the kitchen. He exchanged the shit-stained apron for his new Wal-Mart coat and held out his hand to Pablo. "Nice knowin' ya, Pedro. Tell that maricón Arturo he should replace the mop head."
Having no interest in making unprotected contact with Larry's hand, Pablo folded his arms and said, "Bad beat, man. Buena suerte."
Larry exited into the alley behind the diner. With $18 in singles and some loose change in his pocket, Larry trudged off to a brightly-lit liquor store and bought a pint of Mr. Boston rye. After quickly dispatching the libation, he decamped bleary-eyed for a squalid shots-and-beers bar on the Bowery. By 4 a.m. Larry was the sole patron of the bar, a dingy space that had been a drinking establishment since the late 1880s except for the dark years of Prohibition when a merchant operated a storefront dealing in vacuum cleaners and electric wash tubs. Anxious to close, the bartender had pulled the plug on the jukebox, achieving a desired effect: creepy silence that rendered the bar doubly dismal.
Larry's droopy ass hung on the edge of his barstool, a half-glass of beer and a shot of cheap booze sat before him. Larry lifted the shot glass to his lips and took a tiny sip.
Larry continued, "So I . . . I picks up the ticket, y'know from the floor, cause like I said, I'm a fuckin' stooper. You know, right? I tol' you that, right?"
"Yeah, yeah," replied the glaring bartender who busied himself wiping up spills from the bar with a rag.
"An' the fuckin' ticket's got like this slime or somethin' on it. Smeared on it. It gets on my fingers, y'know? Now I shoulda know'd better but I sniffed my fingers. I took the fuckin' bait 'cause I'm a goddamned loser! I took the bait an' sniffed my fingers and got a nice fuckin' whiff of dogshit. Then I look over an' see Vic the Prick laughin' his ass off." Larry took another sip. "That ain't right. Is that right?"
Checking his watch, the bartender said, "Depends."
"So then I . . ."
Interrupting, the bartender announced, "Listen, man. I'm closing. Finish up."
Larry hung his head and muttered, "Oh, sorry." He downed the rest of the booze and chased it with the beer, then asked hopefully, "Can I have one more?"
"Go home, man. Get some sleep."
"C'mon."
Irritated, the Bartender grabbed a glass and wrung out the bar rag's contents into it. He slid the glass toward Larry. "On the house."
Larry guzzled the putrid bar-topeffluence in one gulp, fell off his stool onto the damp, gritty floor, and crawledaround for a moment, laughing. "Gotta be a winner around here somewhere."