“Bitch,” Janet said. But without much enthusiasm. Dark and Stormy winked, put on the respirator, and disappeared into the building.
Janet sighed. She felt bad.
And also, suddenly, really, really horny.
But it was guilt and not lust that made Janet go back to Lowe’s after their last job was finished, hoping that the employee with the kissable lips—Freddie—would still be there.
And she was.
Not helping another customer.
“Um.” Janet heard her say. “Can you say that again?” And she saw the customer react more or less the way she had earlier in the day. And she saw tears well up in Freddie’s eyes, as the customer, a bearded lumbersexual whose clean jeans and pressed shirt proclaimed him a DYI hobbyist and not a professional, raised his voice.
“My drain line is leaking. This is an emergency. And you...”
“Sink traps,” Janet interrupted him. “They’re just over here. Don’t forget a new gasket.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Good to run into someone here who knows what they’re talking about.” He threw Freddie a nasty glance.
“Listen,” Janet said, moving between him and Freddie—then taking a few steps back. Six feet apart. This sucked. How was this normal? How could one really apologize from six feet away? “I wanted…”
“To come back and humiliate me again?” Freddie said. “Ask me about some other parts I don’t know? Today’s my first day. My first day. Did you know everything about all this shit on your first day of—whatever it is that you do?”
“No,” Janet said. “Listen, I just wanted to…”
“I am not a plumber!” Freddie’s voice was high. And cracked. And hot. “I was, until a couple of weeks ago, a bartender. A very good bartender, by the way. But, surprise, I can’t work anymore, and there are thousands, millions of unemployed people everywhere, and this is the job I got. And it’s my first day. Thank you, very much, for helping to ensure that it was a really shitty day.”
She turned around, and stormed off, leaving Janet feeling utterly awful.
And also, wet. Ridiculously, outrageously, lustfully wet.
Soaked.
The bathroom floor was soaked, and Freddie was in tears.
“Gio! Help me!”
By the time Gio bounded up the stairs from the basement to which Freddie had banished him from their bedroom after they had broken up—three days before the lockdown orders made looking for a place of his own challenging—their toilet was doing a laudable impression of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful, and there was a good inch of water on the bathroom floor.
“Fuck,” Gio said. “Fred. I’m late for work. I gotta run. Call a plumber.”
“You’re late for work, you’ve got to run, call a plumber?” Freddie repeated. “Seriously?” But he was already gone—and she was reminded, again, of why breaking up with him had been the right thing to do. Totally, so totally in character, and here she was, ankle-deep in shit—well, at least it wasn’t shit. Still. Seriously? I’m late for work, I gotta run, call a plumber? What kind of partner said that?
Gio. That’s who.
Apparently, everyone was having plumbing problems, nobody was going to help her today, and by the time Freddie got through to Plumbers in Overall’s, she was in tears.
But not so much in tears that she didn’t notice the apostrophe fault and winced at it.
“Plumbers in Overalls, we always wear overalls, so you never see a butt crack, guaranteed,” a sing-song voice answered the phone.
“This is an emergency!” Freddie screamed into the phone. Hating the sing-song voice—yet feeling strangely soothed by it.
“It always is, babelicious,” the voice responded. “What can I do for you?”
“My toilet is exploding,” Freddie started to explain, then cry, and then, the sing-song voice took charge, and Freddie found herself in the basement, turning off the main water line—she didn’t even know that was a thing. The flow of the water slowed, then stopped.
“My partner will be there in five minutes,” the sing-song voice promised. “In the meantime, see if you can control the water damage.”
Water damage. Right.
Freddie gathered up all the towels, dish cloths, and blankets she could find, and started mopping up the water.
Well, damming the water within the bathroom and hallway.
And adding to it a little, because she was still crying. Because life was horrible, and how was she going to pay for this? Her budget was already strained. The Lowe’s job paid over minimum wage, but unlike her bartending job, no tips. And Gio had been an ass about money since they broke up. He’d pay half the bill, no more. And it was hard to blame him, because working in the kitchen of a long-term care facility was no fat cat job either.
Life was horrible, she was ankle-deep in water, she was soaked—and not in a good way.
“Fuck you, universe, what else are you going to throw at me today?” she muttered to herself as she opened the door.
“Fuck me,” she said. “You?”
It was not, Janet knew, an invitation. But the temptation to fantasize about it as one came to her immediately. What was wrong with her?
“Karma,” she said weakly. “I mean, I wanted to—I was wishing I could figure out how to apologize to you. For being a bitch yesterday. And here…”
“Fuck you,” Freddie, eyes red and face wet with tears, said. “I don’t need an apology. I need a plumber.”
“That would be me,” Janet said. Lifted up her toolbox.
Freddie stood in the damp hallway and watched the plumber’s bent back. The woman worked quickly and quietly, with an efficiency of movement that both the bartender and the one-time martial artist in Freddie admired.
“Done,” she said after about fifteen minutes.
“Done?” Freddie echoed stupidly.
“Done, just a new flush kit. And a new valve,” the plumber explained. “Go turn on the main valve and let’s flush this motherfucker. Er. Toilet.”
“Very professional,” Freddie said. “If I spoke to you like that at Lowe’s, I’d get fired.”
“Yeah. About that.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Freddie turned her back on the plumber and ran downstairs to the basement. “Flush!” she yelled.
“All good!” She heard the woman call back. “Like I said. Done.”
When Freddie came back upstairs, the woman was kneeling by the bathtub, wringing out towels and mopping up more water.
“I’ll do that,” Freddie said. “Just give me the bill and go.”
“Look,” the plumber said.
“Seriously. There is no karma. There is nothing. There is you doing your job, getting paid for it, and leaving. OK?”
The woman nodded.
“OK,” she said. “Sorry,” she added.
And Freddie felt—something that she did not want to feel, so she squished it down hard.
“Oh, by the way, Miss Knows Everything About Plumbing,” she said viciously. “Your stupid company name? It’s spelled wrong. Everywhere.”