by Barry Rachin
“My toilet’s leaking.”
“Oh, dear,” the desk clerk seemed flustered. “Finding a plumber at this late hour could be a problem.”
“I am a plumber.”
The woman’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking?”
“If you can scare up an adjustable wrench, I’ll fix it myself.”
The desk clerk fished a toolbox from under the counter. Bart rummaged through the offerings, finally settling on a small pair of pliers. “This should do the trick.”
Back in the room, he loosened the fitting and separated the flared section of tubing from its narrower counterpart. The metal was mildly corroded but structurally undamaged. After washing the crud from the mating surfaces with hand soap, Bart dried the metal.
The trick was to secure the fitting, which looked to be about ten or fifteen years old, tight enough to seal the joint and no more. Even the slightest excess pressure might stress the metal and fracture the delicate, copper tubing. Sliding the pipes together, Bart screwed the compression fitting in place, hand tight with a little play, then opened the water supple. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Grabbing the fitting with the pliers, he twisted the nut clockwise a quarter-turn. Drip. Pause. Drip. Pause. Drip.
Another eighth of an inch. One final drip then nothing. He wiped the pipes dry and a slick film of moisture quickly reappeared but it was condensation, nothing more. The leak was fixed. He sat down on the edge of the tub. Five minutes later the floor beneath the toilet intake line was still bone dry.
*****
Booth Bay Harbor, Maine. Four decades earlier.
Bartholomew Schroeder and his new bride were settling into their honeymoon suite. A six-foot tall, soft bellied woman of Norwegian descent, Penelope ran the bath water but the tub wouldn’t fill. Using a silver quarter as an impromptu screwdriver, Bart loosened the bolts and pulled the chrome lever and face plate away from the tub. The rod that connected the drain and overflow assembly had slipped off its mounting bracket. He crimped the wire and tightened the two bolts holding the mechanism in place but, when he raised the lever and turned the water back on, the gurgling continued unabated.
Coming up behind him, Penelope wrapping her arms around his chest. “What’s the matter?”
“Minor adjustment,” he murmured, brushing her cheek with a flurry of kisses. “No need to panic.”
Bart removed the bolts a second time, pulling the entire bucket assembly out through the hole in the tub wall. He adjusted the heavy brass plunger three, full revolutions and put everything back together. Yes, that did it! Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder enjoyed their first bath together as a married couple.
“I’m getting out now,” Penelope said and leaned forward, but her husband held her by the shoulder.
“Open the drain.” Penelope reached up with her right toe and nudged the chrome lever upright. The soapy water rimmed with lavender scented bubble bath made a loud gurgling sound before beginning its slow descent.
“Now close it again,” Bart instructed. Curling her toe like a prehensile tail around the lever, she yanked the metal straight down.
Glob! There was an abrupt noise as the brass plunger slammed downward like a guillotine shutting off the rush of water. Silence. Bart released his grip. His bride of ten hours rose from the warm bath water but, instead of climbing from the tub, turned to face him. Penelope Schroeder raised her elbows high in the air, crisscrossing the forearms directly overhead then nonchalantly squatted, her glistening buttocks coming to rest on his stomach. “Now, if you have no objections, I’d like to go in the next room and make babies.”
*****
Holly Heatherton wore a print dress, her hair tied back in a French braid when she joined him in the lobby. Bart led the way back up the main drag toward the Steamship Authority landing where they watched as an endless stream of cars, motorcycles and produce trucks crept out of the belly of a docked ship. When the last vehicle left the hold, the ferry began loading passengers heading back to the mainland.
Bart turned away from the pier and, in no great hurry, retraced his route toward the town center. He ducked into a building where a crowd of parents and young children were queuing up to ride the musical carousel. The hardwood floor was littered with pop corn, the nonstop calliope music deafening. Riders leaned far forward gripping the horses’ reins with one hand as they lunged for brass rings dangling from a wooden chute positioned at a steep angle. Each time a rider managed to snare a ring, another slid down to take its place.
Bart bought bags of popcorn. They went out in the street where the sun was almost down. A trawler that might have been the same ship he had noticed on the morning that Holly joined him for breakfast was lurching in to shore. “There’s something I want to show you.”
He led the way back to the hotel and brought the girl up to his room. “Sit there.” He indicated a Windsor chair with curved armrests and spindly legs splayed at a generous angle. Next to the chair was a bedside table that Mr. Schroeder had dragged to the center of the room.
“Where did you get all this weird stuff?” Holly indicated a collection of plumbing supplies—tubing cutters, copper fittings, emery cloth, lead-free solder and rosin flux.
“Hardware store.” Mr. Schroeder reached for a propane torch. “I’m going to teach you what little I’ve learned about this beautiful and sordid world we live in. Are you ready?”
Holly Heatherton, folded her hands in her lap. “Yes, I’m ready.”
Half an hour later he shoved the night table back where it belonged. “That’s all I have to say,” Mr. Schroeder muttered. “Did you understand what I told you?”
“Yes, emphatically.”
Shrouded in a twilight haze, objects in the room were beginning to lose definition, blend and blur. The nautical pictures hanging over the brass bed had shed their vivid colors in favor of more somber, elegiac tones, while the reading lamp was dissolving into the night table. “So what did you learn,” Bart pressed, “about the human condition?”
“Copper tubing must be properly cleaned, bone dry and heated to the proper temperature,” she said, “before solder can flow into a fitting sealing the joint.”
“Patience is a virtue. What else?”
A muggy breeze from the open window carried with it an acrid potpourri of decomposing fish, slimy seaweed, salt spray roses and fresh-mown grass. “Some plumbers dress the joints by cleaning away excess flux and solder but the final step is more a matter of professional pride and not necessary.”
“You’ll be alright, then?”
“Can’t imagine why not.”
“Here, take this,” he handed her a small piece of emery cloth stained with flux, “to remember me by.”
“A talisman of sorts.”
In the morning for his last meal on the island, Mr. Schroeder ordered the salmon omelette with Monterey jack cheese, chive and diced scallions. The ferry departed promptly at eight o’clock. For the first time in over a year, he felt free and unencumbered, as though a slab of stone as thick and weighty as a marble cemetery monument had miraculously lifted from his heart.
