Lavatory

There had been the guest’s lavatory visit—to summarize. She did so want to be comfortable then and for the rest of her life. She had been hiking her skirt and pulling down her undergarment, just trying not to fall apart.

Once back in the foyer, she brought out a gift for her host. “I tried to find something old for you to put on your mantel, but I just couldn’t. I tried to find something similar to what you already have, to be on the safe side, but I couldn’t.”

It was difficult for the guest to comprehend easily what the other invitees were saying, because she wasn’t listening carefully. One man happened to have a son who knew her son. He had learned something of importance about her son—about his prospects. Something.

But the guest interrupted him, “I don’t agree that there is a comfortable space for each of us out there and we have to find it. I think this is so wrong. It assumes there is a little environment that you can slip into and be perfectly happy. My notion is you try to do all the things you’re comfortable with and eventually you will find your comfortable environment.”

A man they called Mike smoked a maduro and he had a urine stain on his trouser fly. He was very attentive to the host and to his wife Melissa.

“Stop!” his wife cried, but he’d done it already—tipped the ashtray he’d used—the dimpled copper bowl—into the grate behind the fire screen. The ashes fell down nicely, sparsely. There was still some dark, sticky stuff leftover in the bowl.

The host called, “Kids! Mike! Dad and Mom!” He called these copulators to come in to dinner. In fact, this group represented a predictable array of vocations—including hard workers, worriers, travelers, and liars—defecators, of course, urinators and music makers.