Bathroom Break

So, I'm in the bathroom at the mall, doin', well, what you do in a bathroom stall. I'm not thinking about much of anything, when my thoughts were interrupted by another guy coming in.

The bathroom had been empty when I entered, I was happy to see. Now, it was not. That bummed me out. Worse, there were three stalls, and I'd taken the one farthest from the door. This guy takes the middle one, right beside mine! What kind of etiquette is that?

Anyway, I notice this guy is walking pretty heavily. A glance under the edge of the stall showed me a pair of green pant cuffs the size of flour sacks! Huge! Massive! They bunch up around his ankles when he drops his trousers, but they don't hide his size thirty-two loafers. I'd hate to see his tailoring bill.

Then he sits down, and I hear something like the clink of metal on glass. It was like a butter knife against cheap china, but more muffled.

I'd already decided I was finished by this point, but the next thing that happened made me do up my pants a darn sight faster. Accompanied by the usual noise you wish you didn't hear in public bathrooms was a smell like I'd never had the terror of smelling before.

This was not your average bathroom smell, or even something from a long evening of mexican food and cheap beer. Oh no. Throw in stale pretzels, cabbage rolls, and deep fried lard balls, and you still wouldn't be close.

This was more like the stench from a chemical factory, the kind that takes by-products from the petroleum industry and turns them into commercial goods you can only sell in third world countries. Except, it also had that raw sewage smell, plus a solid punch like freshly mixed concrete. Even holding my breath, with my shirt collar pulled up over my nose, and my hand clamped onto the bottom half of my face, I was still getting a powerful whiff -- strong enough to feel like I was permanently etching my lungs.

I did my belt up with one hand, flushed the toilet with a kick to the handle, and got out of there before my eyeballs started to melt. I definitely was not going to wait around for a second courtesy flush.

Outside, in the long, plain hallway every mall on the planet has between the bathrooms and the mall proper, I paused to catch my breath. It was a good thing this bathroom had been designed with a double set of doors, instead of just a twisty entrance that blocked line of sight. Two doors made a kind of air lock, keeping the bathroom air where it belonged -- otherwise, they might have had to evacuate the whole building.

Finally, the bland walls stopped spinning, and I realized I knew how to count to ten again. I was considering finding some paper and posting a hazmat warning on the door to the men's room, when that door opened. I was still slumped against the wall beside it, so I looked over, and then way up, to see a metallic face the size of an SUV's hubcap.

This guy was as tall as his shoe size suggested, and just as wide. His skin was a dull steel, like chrome that's half rubbed off, and he winked at me when he saw me, still panting outside the bathroom door. The look on his face was a smirk that showed half like he wanted to apologize, and half like he wanted to laugh his head off. Still, he was taller than the doorframe, and looked like he might've had to turn sideways to fit through it, so I wasn't really feeling like taking exception.

He turned to me then, and very carefully patted me on the shoulder with a hand the size of my chest. "Sorry about that, buddy. Didn't know anyone was in there. Whew, I knew I shoulda laid off the rubber tires when I ate that truck."

Then he walked away down the long hall, whistling to himself with a harsh edge like a roof rack in a high wind. In his wake, he left behind only the faintest hint of the smell from the bathroom, but it was enough to make me dizzy again, just from the memory of it.

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