Read Online Since You Left Me by Allen Zadoff - Free Book Online Page B

a bathroom with two women at home, you look for it wherever you can get it.
    Sit down . The mantra beckons me.
    I’m about to let rip when I hear the men’s room door open.
    I’m hoping this person is going to pee and get out of the bathroom fast so I can enjoy some quality time. But that’s not what happens. I hear the sound of fabric moving, and then whoever it is joins the sat nam chorus with his own sat nam s.
    I clear my throat a couple times to make my presence known, but the chanting doesn’t stop. The guy actually starts to harmonize with the CD. The sound is beautiful and eerie, filling the bathroom with a spiritual chorus.
    The stall next to me opens. Fabric rustles, and a man groans and sits down next to me.
    Blue fabric spills under the wall of the stall, a robe or something that’s coming into my stall. I try to discreetly shuffle the fabric away with my foot, but there’s too much of it.
    With another groan, the person lets go a fusillade, so loud and uncensored that I let out a little shout.
    I kick the blue fabric over, and I stand up and fight to get my pants up.
    There’s another burst of body noise followed by more groans.
    It’s too much for me.
    I flush my toilet fast and push out of my stall. I’m washing my hands when a voice says, “Excuse me.” I ignore it, turn the water up.
    “Have you any tissue?” the voice says in lightly accented English.
    I don’t want to talk to a stranger in a men’s room stall. I turn off the water and head for the bathroom door.
    “Excuse me,” the voice says more urgently.
    “What?” I say. Now I’m annoyed.
    “Tissue. To clean oneself.”
    “You mean toilet paper?”
    “Please.”
    I look around for a roll of toilet paper, but there’s nothing. Damn it.
    I go into my stall and figure out how to remove the toilet paper from the holder. It’s that scratchy recycled stuff that Mom buys for the Center and the house. You wipe yourself, and it feels like your butt survived the Six-Day War. I yank on it until I free the roll from the holder.
    “I’ll throw it over the top of the stall,” I say.
    “Don’t throw it,” the man says.
    The stall door swings open.
    A strange man with a giant beard sits on the toilet, fabric spilling around him in every direction. I scream and drop the toilet paper. I race out of the bathroom.
    “Mom!” I shout as I run through the Center. I throw open the door to the yoga studio and it smashes against the wall with a loud bang.
    The pregnant ladies scream.
    “Mom!”
    “What is it?”
    “There’s a strange man in the bathroom. He might be homeless. I think he broke in there or something.”
    “He may have wandered in,” Mom says calmly. “The homeless are not bad people, Sanskrit. They’re suffering. We’ve had this conversation.”
    “He opened the stall door, Mom. While he was on the toilet. That’s not right.”
    I’m emphasizing words so she’ll understand this is a crisis, not another opportunity to practice kindness and compassion with the less fortunate, particularly the less fortunate she’s not related to, which is her forté.
    “I’ll take care of it,” Mom says.
    I’m a little surprised. This is a Mom I don’t know, the strong and in-charge one who only appears at work.
    “Don’t go in there alone,” one of the ladies says.
    “We’ll go with you, Rebekah,” another one says.
    A group of about ten of us edge our way down the hall. More ladies come out of the other yoga studio and join us.
    “He was in here?” Mom says. She points towards the men’s room.
    “Right in there.”
    “How did he get past reception? Where’s Crystal?”
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    “Do we need a weapon?” one of the women says. She’s a young Asian woman, I think her name is Sally. She grabs a rolled-up yoga mat from the rack and grips it like a baseball bat. It seems an ineffective choice given the situation, but I’m thinking the homeless man can’t overpower me and two dozen pregnant women.