by Jeffrey Ford

I was pushing the trash cart from department to department, collecting boxes and emptying wastepaper baskets when the lady in Furs called, “Hey, Rich is on the line looking for you.” I entered into the cold dark of that shrine. Behind a curving glass wall, the racks of expensive furs were lit from within by pinpoint lights, like chips of ice. She handed me the phone with a long cord from the shadows behind the counter.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Emergency on floor two,” said Rich.

“Where?”

“Ladies’ bathroom.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Just hurry,” he said.

I booked it up there on the freight elevator and took the trash cart with me in case it was needed. Rich had the OUT OF ORDER sign up outside the ladies’ room and the door propped open. He leaned against the frame, smoking a cigarette.

“Wait’ll you see this,” he said and shook his head, ushering me inside. There were four bathroom stalls and he led me to the second one closest to the sinks. He took the cigarette out of his mouth between his index and middle fingers and pointed at the stall door.

“Go in there,” he said. “Go in there and turn left.”

I pushed open the stall door, let it swing closed behind me, and turned to the left. There it was. I called out, “What, like somebody shit on the wall?”

He laughed, “Yeah.”

It wasn’t a mere turd, though, it was a large mound of shit that clung to the metal wall – brown in aspect, smooth in texture, the diameter of a generous dinner plate. Almost like a classic hubcap in its form.

“How would you even do that?” I asked.

Rich stuck his head in the stall. “I have no idea what you’d have to eat, but I’m thinking whoever it was stood up on the rim of the bowl and stuck their ass against the wall. You can see it sits chest-high.”

I nodded, took his cigarette and puffed a few. “It smells like shit,” I said.

“There’s a reason for that,” he said. “I’m wondering what happened to gravity. Look at how it just sits there.”

“OK, get out of my way, I’m gonna pass out if I stay in here,” I said.

Out of the stall, standing by the sinks, I asked Rich, who was a sophomore at Villanova and a pitcher on their baseball team, “Is this a miracle?”

“It’s a fucked-up mess.” Listen, go down to the storage room and get me a mallet and a putty knife with as wide a blade as you can find. Also, bring one of those black waste baskets they have in each department. I’m gonna slice that thing off the wall, clean as a whistle, like it never existed.”

I took off to get the stuff Rich requested but not back in the freight elevator. It was faster to slide down the banister of the curving stairway from the second floor to the rotunda, a large circular layout with a marble floor where sunlight streamed in on display cases of jewelry. We kept the banister good and polished in case we had to respond to emergencies of a janitorial nature. I’d have never thought of it. Rich was the first to slide down. The journey lasted seconds, and as long as you got off before one of the bosses saw you, no sweat.

Passing through receiving to get to the storeroom, where the tools were kept, I ran into Fred, the receiving clerk. He was an ancient Italian guy, always wore a rumpled white shirt, baggy pants, suspenders. His mustache and hairdo were like Jonah Jameson’s, Spiderman’s boss. His wife would send him to work every day with an egg and pepper sandwich for each of us – me, her husband, and Rich. Each was on a sub roll, and each was entombed in silver foil, so when you opened it, the steam seeped out and rose up in your face. Those long green garden peppers were fried with onions, and the eggs were over hard with salt and pepper.

Fred asked me to help him count incoming dresses, but I had to tell him, “Sorry, emergency.” He asked what happened. I told him about the shit on the wall. He laughed so hard it was the first time I ever saw him take the cigar out of his mouth. When I told him the list of tools I had to find, he laughed harder and had to sit down at his desk. As soon as he could breathe, he said, “I’m comin’ with ya. Go get the mallet and stuff.”

He followed me up to the second-floor ladies’ bathroom. When we stepped in, Rich waved Fred forward, “Right this way,” he said. “The tenth wonder of the world.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Fred, pushing open the stall door.

Rich said, “Turn to your left.”

I expected Fred to laugh when he saw it, but he didn’t. There was an unsettling silence. Two minutes later, he exited the stall. “Can you believe this shit? This is some sick business.”

“Do you really think one of Pellam’s fine customers, a lady no less, would do this?” asked Rich.

“I don’t want to meet her if she did,” I said.

“It seems like the work of a guy,” said Rich.

“Why?”

“It’s ugly, it’s weird, and it stinks,” he said.

“Case closed,” said Fred. He told us that he had to notify the store management, since what hung in there on the wall was more than a mishap, it was, in his words, “an outright crime, at least a misdemeanor for vandalism or loitering.” Don’t do anything until I get Mr. D in here to take a look at it and make a decision.

“The big boss, Mr. D?” said Rich.

Fred nodded.

“What’s the D stand for?” I asked.

“Dumb fuck,” he said, and we laughed.

Fred left to notify the boss, and we had nothing to do but stand there and smoke and wait for them to show up. In the meantime, Rich said, “You know, Carol, down in Furs?”

“Yeah, she’s the one that gave me your call today,” I said.

“I’ve been seeing her after work. We go to that bar across from the train station. She drinks straight vodka, no shit. It looks like a glass of water. Not even an ice cube.”

“How old is she? She’s gotta be 40 something.”

“She’s 50, and she’s a lush and a half, but she likes to fuck in her car. My girlfriend split up with me after the baseball season ‘cause I had a losing record.”

“Really? That’s harsh,” I said.

“I know. I’m drowning my sorrows with Carol. Anyway, she gets a lot of visits from Pearly. You know, the guy in the tux?”

“I’ve seen him wandering around downstairs through the lingerie department.”

“That’s Pearly, basically as pale as you can get without being albino. White blonde hair and skin made of milk. He’s Mr. Cannon’s son.”

“Who’s Cannon?” I asked.

“Mr. D is our boss and Cannon is his boss. His old man made D come up with a job for Pearly. So, D said, ‘We’ll dress him in a tuxedo and have him wander the store, greeting customers and handing out a few discounts every day or so. He can be the Spirit of Lord Pellam.’”

“Are you making this shit up?” I asked, and Rich swore that’s what was going on.

“What kind of name is Pearly?”

“I have no idea,” said Rich, “but that’s his name.”

“The Spirit of Lord Pellam,” I said and shook my head. “Seems like a cushy job.”

“I guess Pearly’s a fuckup, so they had to daydream something for him to be. Anyway,” said Rich, “he’s always stopping by down in the dim cold to corner Carol and talk bullshit at her for hours on end. She told me last night that he came by the other day and was noticeably shivering, looking over his shoulder, his white hair all uncombed. He told her he was afraid for his life. She said she could smell his desperation and panic in the air. Stunk like bad meat. He told her that he was being stalked by a figure in a tuxedo and top hat. The guy stands outside his window at night, tapping a cane on the sidewalk and smoking a long, long cigarette while Pearly’s trying to sleep. He’s sure it’s the real Spirit of Lord Pellam, seeking revenge for his impersonation. He gets calls from the phantom on his home number, threatening to fluff his cheeks.”

I didn’t have a reply. What could you say? It didn’t matter, though, because Fred returned with word that the boss was on his way with the store detective. He lit his cigar and then jumped up backward to land his ass in one of the sinks. Before long he got onto telling us about his nephew, Micky. It turned out Micky was the actor Robert Blake. I mean, decades later, now, every time I see Lost Highway, I think of Blake’s creepy demon, which always brings up a memory of Fred, telling me to go around the corner to the deli and get him a half pound of “gabagool.”

Mr. D and Mindy, the store detective entered the bathroom. Fred jumped out of the sink just as they came into view. D was a typical suit with a look that told you he thought he was smarter than he was. Glasses, a bald head, you know what I mean. Whereas D was a lumbering Golem with his instructions on a piece of paper under his tongue, Mindy did everything fast. All her movements were speeded up and she even breathed rapidly like a dog in summer. D had passed the point of no return, but Mindy was only a few years older than Rich, knew how to laugh, and was pretty.

Fred pointed to the stall in question. Mr. D entered it, was in there for a few seconds and came out. He wore a sour look, pointed over his shoulder with his thumb and said, “That’s disgusting.” Mindy stepped forward and entered. She was out in a second. “Yeah,” she said.

“I thought you’d want to take a look at it with a magnifying glass,” Fred said to her and laughed.

“Fuck you, Fred.”

“This isn’t funny,” said D. And then it got a lot less funny because somehow Cannon had gotten wind of the shit on the wall and unbeknownst to us was standing in the entrance to the bathroom. Rich was the first to notice him and said, “Hi.”

Cannon barrelled into our midst and everyone cleared a path to the stall door. He was a blur of after shave and malice. I noticed he had a limp and a face like a hatchet. When he exited the stall, he was fuming. “Someone had to stand on the bowl to do that,” he said.

“That’s what I said,” said Rich. Cannon glared at him.

“D, get in here,” he said to our boss. Mr. D’s ham head went into blush mode and he was visibly trembling. He moved forward like a sleepwalker. “Get up on the rim of the bowl,” Cannon ordered. We stood outside craning our necks to get a view as D. lifted his leg and hoisted himself up.

I really couldn’t see in, but I heard Cannon say, “OK, turn and face the other wall. Now bend over slightly.” There was quiet and then came the words, “It’s a perfect fit.” The door swung closed and there was scuffling and slapping. “What are you doing?” D cried out. We were all thrown back a few steps when the door blew open. Cannon had D by the collar. He said to Mindy, “Cuff him. We have the culprit. And you’ll pay dearly for this.” I never knew she carried cuffs and wondered if she had a gun. She cuffed D right in front of us and led him away.

Cannon turned on Fred, and announced, “You’re fired for laughing.” Fred’s eyes went wide. He said, “Figlio di puttana.” And gave him the finger. It was everything I could do not to laugh. Cannon stormed out. The instant he was gone, we all laughed, even Fred. He said, “Well, time to retire.”

“Shit,” said Rich, “we’re gonna miss the egg sandwiches.”

“You boys be good,” Fred said. We shook his hand and thanked him for everything, even when he made us run laps around the parking lot perimeter when we’d come in with hangovers. He left to pack up his belongings.

Then we got down to work. I positioned the wastepaper basket under the mound of shit, and Rich took up the mallet and the putty scraper with a wide blade. I watched, holding the door open. He stepped up on the toilet rim to get a good angle. He reared back and really gave it a swift powerful shot. The putty blade bounced off, Rich almost fell, and the shit stayed right where it was.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“It’s really on there,” said Rich. He took more whacks at it, and from the banging, you could tell how much force there was behind the mallet. After a half hour, he handed the mallet and scraper over to me. “Give it a shot,” he said. I did as he told me and got up on the bowl. When I brought the mallet down, I missed the back of the scraper and hit my wrist. Still, I was gripping the tool, and some force was applied to it just through my arm. That stubborn shit mound cleaved off the wall with my meager swipe and slid down into the black basket, landing with a thud.

“Jeez, how’d you do it?” said Rich.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s like the sword in the stone.”

“You must have loosened it up,” I said.

That’s when I noticed that there was a crack, more like a wound where the mound had been. I pointed it out. Rich said, “We’ll putty that up and repaint it. It’ll be like new.” Before he even finished speaking, though, blood began dripping from the metal wall. Neither of us could believe it and neither of us spoke. In seconds, the blood oozed more swiftly and dripped into the black basket.

“It’s like you had a mole on your face and shaved it off with a razor,” said Rich.

“You mean it turned from being a shit to being a mole? The bathroom grew a mole?”

“No,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

I went to the bar with Rich and Carol after work, and funny thing, we never once mentioned the blood.

By the next morning, the glassed-in fur vault was immersed in thousands of gallons of blood that had seeped through the floor. The tiny lights still glowed and made the sopping furs in deep red vaguely visible. Carol got moved to girdles without explanation. We learned that the fur department would be closed down for a while. No one seemed excited about what had happened. That afternoon, we learned that Mr. D., although not charged with a crime, was fired, and his replacement was Pearly.

In the following weeks, I watched as they had privately contracted, specialty laborers, not to clean out the fur vault, but merely brick it over as if it never existed. When Pearly was given his promotion, he thought it only right to fill the position he’d vacated. The new Spirit of Lord Pellam was a jangly geezer, paler than Pearly, himself, with a top hat and tux, a cane and a long, long cigarette. After that, it started to get weird, and I quit.