“What for?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“The apology?” Asked with unblinking eyes.
“Oh, oh. Oh, for not introducing myself earlier. For not showing my appreciation for the wonderful food you’ve brought us. I should’ve come down and said thank you. I would have. I don’t want to make excuses, it’s just…” Dabney trailed off and considered his next words with care. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, ’cause I mean no disrespect, but, uh, how come those things don’t attack you like everyone else?”
“I guess they don’t like me.” Dabney looked at her, waiting for the rest, but that’s all there was. No further embellishment. The statement lay there like roadkill. “I need sunglasses,” she said, then got up and walked back into the stairwell.
Dabney stared into the half empty can of orange slices.
Or was it half full?
“We need to send Mona out for more supplies,” Alan said. “Specifically toilet paper. I don’t mean to be disgusting or anything, but just as with great power comes great responsibility, so too does food come with an unfortunate byproduct. Not that responsibility is unfortunate but… All I’m saying is…” Alan moaned from behind the closed door, tossing the crap-smeared wad of newsprint out the bedroom window-there was no window in the bathroom. Only a couple of broadsheets remained of his last copy of the New York Press. “Who’d ever think you could be sentimental about something like toilet paper? Or those moist butt wipes? Oh, those were heavenly.”
“Agreed,” Ellen replied. She knew just how he felt. Unlike the rabbit pellets she was used to producing, all those victuals had gotten her innards producing waste again, and it wasn’t pretty.
“I mean, it’s bad enough hanging your ass out the window to relieve yourself, but to then sandpaper yourself is the icing on the cake,” Alan continued with an audible wince. “So to speak. It’s all so medieval.”
“Enough already,” Ellen said, marching away from the closed portal. “We need to have a building meeting and compile a list of necessities, provided of course that Mona’s zombie repelling wasn’t some fluke and that she’s even willing to go out there and do it again. So I’ll get some paper, and top of the list will be moistened butt wipes.”
“Huzzah,” Alan shouted. “Thank you!”
Alan vacated the window and looked around for anything else to tidy with. Maybe Mona would come through with the goods, but until then he needed to do something. As bad as the Press was to read, it was twice as bad to wipe with.
A year or two ago Alan had undergone a minor surgical procedure and had been given an overnight basket by the staff, mostly dull items like a cheapo toothbrush, no-name toothpaste, a packet of generic facial tissues. But the highlight was a pump-spray bottle of Personal Cleanser. Friends would come by and he’d amuse them with its label, which bluntly proclaimed it to be “No-rinse, one-step cleansing for the perineum or body” containing “Gentle surfactants [to] aid in the removal of urine and feces.” He’d brought it home for a goof, but it had made his life far more bearable over the last several weeks. When he’d moved in with Ellen, he gallantly shared the last few spritzes with her, and now he wished he hadn’t.
Oh, for those gentle surfactants.
Alan’s butt stung from the newspaper and felt distinctly unclean. He felt like some tormented Bible character, which was already easy to do given the state of the world. But this was more personal. A civilized adult man should not have to walk around with a poo-crusted tush. He rummaged through a nearby drawer and filched a pinkish baby-T and finished his hygiene ritual. The soft cotton-poly blend did a better job and was much kinder to his hinder. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? Satisfied he’d done the best he could, he lobbed it out the window to join the Press in the alley below. Hopefully Ellen wouldn’t mind or even notice that he’d used a garment of hers. Then it hit him.
Oh fuck me.
Oh double fuck me twice.
Not hers. This wasn’t some hipster baby-T, it was an actual T-shirt that had belonged to her baby, no doubt imbued with all manner of sentimental value. Perspiration began to pour off his forehead.
Oh Jesus.
As a child, Alan and his mother had been invited by a coworker of hers to spend a weekend at the workmate’s summer cabin in Upstate New York. The work chum was a charming man, but Alan disliked him because he figured the guy wanted to put the make on his divorcee mother. Little had unsophisticated seven-year-old Alan realized the guy was gay. After dinner Alan excused himself, then raced into the guest bathroom and spent a fitful several minutes vomiting through his ass, only to be confronted with an absence of toilet paper. Panicked, sweaty, ass raw from the torrential outburst and too humiliated to cry out for toilet paper, he searched the tiny rustic chamber in vain for anything to wipe with. He ended up using a flowery lavender hand towel, which he balled up and tossed out the window. In a private after-dinner moment Alan scooted outside and buried it in the adjacent woods. Weeks later the coworker asked his mother if she had accidentally packed the towel with her things.
Hopefully Ellen wouldn’t notice.
“I want batteries,” Karl said, clutching his exanimate boombox. “Lots of batteries.”
“Maybe some of those emergency lights, like for when there’s a blackout. It would be awesome to have light after dark again. To read without eyestrain? That would be amazing,” Alan chimed in, Ellen playing secretary and jotting down all the suggestions. All but Mona had gathered in Ellen’s apartment and were seated in the sweltering living room, made all the hotter by the group’s body heat.
“Hey, what about one of those camping generators?” Dave said.
“Good one,” Eddie said, slapping Dave’s back.
“I’d like some fresh razors. Oh, since we’re talking batteries, how’s about a couple of those electric razors?” Abe suggested, earning him appreciative oohs and ahhs from the hairy-faced men in the room.
“And a fuckin’ hair clipper,” Dave said, ruffling his scraggy hair. “ ’Scuse the language,” he added, looking at Ruth’s reproachful expression.
“Eventually, and I know it’s not a necessity, but maybe some art supplies,” Alan said.
“Yeah, like you said, ‘not a necessity,’ ” Eddie sneered. “So chill on that shit, Picasso.” Since Alan stopped furnishing him with custom whacking matter, Eddie had ceased to be an art lover.
“Slow down,” Ellen said, her pen skating across the sheet of notepaper. The list was pretty long. The basic necessities were more nonperishable foodstuffs, fresh water, Alan’s precious-although she must admit they were superior, especially in the absence of bathing-moist butt wipes as well as traditional toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, dental floss and dental rinses, more candles and flashlights, and deodorant. “I don’t know how many trips Mona is going to want to make.”
“Hey, if she’s immune to those things, what else has she got on her schedule?” Eddie snapped. “We makin’ her miss her soaps? Pfff.”
“Yes, the exercise will do her good,” agreed Ruth, earning her a rare smirk of approbation from Eddie.
“And who’s to say she wants to be our little errand girl?” Ellen countered. “Who’s to say she won’t look at this, go ‘the hell with these a-holes’ and hightail it out of here, list in hand, gone, gone, gone?”