Sunday Morning

At first light I had been dreaming of the comfortable, pensive sound of rain and was slowly beginning to wake, albeit alone. I thought, how bizarre, it is raining inside my head. Lyrics “Together with me and my baby, break the chains of love” had just been mixed with the pings and splashes of falling rain. Erasure’s new dance hit, bouncing bass, and anthem-like chants must have carried over from the nightclubs the night before. And with sounds of the rainstorm in my apartment, it was beginning to occur to me that my second long term relationship had just ended abruptly.

With my chin down, eyes still shut, I swung my legs off the bed, stood and tripped over strewn clothes. I headed through the short hallway to the bathroom. After a few steps I began to feel as if I was walking into a gymnasium-sized shower. At more frequent intervals, water dripped onto my head, rolled down my back and legs to collect in puddles at my feet. Barely awake, I tried to shake myself out of this surreal dream and open my eyes to focus on my nightmare.

The hallway, entryway, and bathroom merged to form an upside-down, glass-like lake floating on the ceiling. My mind jump started itself with an electric jolt. Dripping wet I tried not to picture the mess, the cause, or victims above me. I lived on the second floor of a four story apartment building mostly rented by corporations for their traveling employees but one also liked by individual renters who enjoyed its scale and amenities. My apartment #2404 was a small one bedroom studio apartment — second floor, building four, apartment four. I was young and spent most of my time outdoors, so a small apartment represented a lighter load and less to maintain.

I could only imagine how bad it was up on the third — or worse, the fourth floor — given the situation on my floor. I was quick out the door, down three doors to the right, up the stairwell. I took three stairs at a time and counted as I ran down the hall — one, two, three, four doors — and knocked loudly. A young lady who I did not recognize and who was roughly my age answered the door. She was wearing a bathrobe shifting on the balls of her feet back and forth between forward and reverse. She wore a pair of rain boots and looked tired and stressed like she just drove cross country without sleeping, stopping only for gas and food for the road. She held a mop in her hands clad in baby blue rubber gloves which came up to her elbows.

Barely held together and obviously broken, she answered the door and sighed at the same time, “Hi”.

“Hi. I live downstairs. We have some major problems up here!”

“I know. I know.”

I heard pure panic in each of her “I knows”, so I knew she was twice affirming my latter statement.

I asked, “What do you mean ‘You know’?” Our conversation was approaching lightening speed.

“It has been overflowing all night!” Her gloves flapped in the wind as she spoke.

“What has been overflowing all night?”

Our conversation hit a cement wall like an eighteen wheeler running at it at seventy miles per hour.

“The toilet!”

With my eyes as big as toilet seat lids, I asked “What’s wrong with the shutoff valve?”

She winced and asked softly, “What shutoff valve?”

She and I hit cement wall number two — not just our conversation — but by our body language, our bodies too.

“Well? … You see? … Behind? …”

“Would you mind if I took a look?”

“Okay. But it’s a little gross in here.” Tears were beginning to well in her eyes, so I figured I needed to act quickly to keep the situation from getting wetter.

Her apartment was an “04” as well. Because apartment types and layouts were vertically stacked, it looked exactly like my apartment — only upside down. I made my way through one inch of water at the door, through two inches in the hallway, and almost three inches of water in the bathroom. She was right — it wasn’t pretty. I tried to ignore the small round brown turd floating behind the bathroom door. With a few turns of the valve under the waterline on the wall, I heard the whine of the pipes stop, leaving only the faint sound of water spilling down the sides of the bowl.

I wanted to leave as quickly as I arrived. But I first wanted to try to make her feel as comfortable as possible and leave a few suggestions for whom to call for help. I was glad I did. I learned she recently was left alone to cope with her husband’s suicide. I also learned she was a mother to a two year old boy who slept quietly through our ordeal that morning. After these passings, she thanked me, and we hugged and said goodbye. I felt oddly satisfied and calmly went down to my apartment, cleaned, and disinfected, and battled more Erasure. “We used to talk about the weather, making plans together, days would last for ever”.

And I dreamt I could carry a heavy load and be responsible for my comfort and life, and most of all, I was not alone and knew who to call.