The Best Possible Taste by Sam O'Reilly

Author:Sam O'Reilly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2004-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

He realized that something was wrong almost as soon as he knocked on the bathroom door and called, ‘Sorry – really sorry. But I need to use the loo.’ Asking your landlords to take a break from the joys of bathtime sex so that you can offload your poisonous shit into their lavatory is one of life’s more embarrassing requests. However, as silent seconds passed, the atmosphere on the other side of the locked door suggested, he realized, the wrong kind of embarrassment. Motionless, he stood looking down at his pale knuckles, the sixth sense that women don’t believe men possess prickling all over his skin. First there was no sound at all, then the splashing sound of a person climbing out a very deep bath. Then the noise of padded footsteps approaching, unwillingness in every tread. Finally, Marc’s head appeared. ‘Can’t you wait?’ he asked, nastily. Stephen tried not to look at his lardy white shoulders, his maternal breasts.

‘No –’ Stephen realized how urgent his situation was. ‘I’ve got the runs, or something. Stress, eaten something crap, I don’t know. I’m actually… desperate.’ Another shaft of agony as these words reminded him of his urgent children. Every morning, there was a high-pitched tussle over toilet use, with one or other of them threatening to wee on the floor. He used to listen to this little ritual from his bedroom next door, smiling slightly into his pillow.

Now, he only heard them wake up on Sundays. He was disappearing to the margins of their life. During the time it took to suffer from this memory shard, Marc’s head disappeared. This time, the quality of the silence suggested that he was in sound-free consultation with the person in the bath. Stephen was puzzled – why wouldn’t Vinnie say anything? Was there some kind of homosexual sex act so outrageous that it rendered at least one of the participants mute after the event? But his stomach’s hot twists were taking on a new and disturbing lease of life. ‘I’m sorry to put you out… I’ll only be five minutes.’ Stephen called, beginning to wonder if he was about to soil his pants for the first time in his adult life.

Marc’s head reappeared. This time, the rest of him followed, and he squirmed round the door with only a hand towel tied around his waist, if waist was the right word for his vast middle. In revealing his entire torso, he had also changed his approach. ‘Stevie…’ he said, smiling in a fake-animated way, showing his annoying little white teeth. ‘It’s a teeny, weeny bit difficult at the moment… Can’t you just nip round the corner to the pub and use theirs?’

‘No,’ said Stephen. ‘I really, really have to go now –’

With these words, he somehow surged past Marc’s bloated body, squeezed through the barely open bathroom door and ran towards the toilet bowl.

Miraculously, he had taken his trousers and boxer shorts down in some unconscious, simultaneous movement. Like a skilled football diva, he managed to twist in midair, thus landing bottom-down on the seat.

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