Mat Johnson - Drop

‘Try not to spill anything on the container, I hate that. That’s the nastiest thing about this job,’ Nurse Howard said through the door, as if she could see me. ‘So I haven’t seen you in a while. What have you been up to? You still live in the neighborhood?’ My whiz swirled around in the cup making bubbles. I squeezed myself again and aimed back down to the bowl, letting it go till I was shaking my dick and arching my back in shivers. Finished, the plastic cup felt hot like a morning lover. I put it back on the sink, shook, zipped, flushed.

Looking at my clean head in the mirror I thought, I got you, I got you on this. Smiling-face nurse even recognized me; that must be a sign. Reaching down for the cup again, I almost spilled it when I saw it sitting there. Something was very not right. Something was, in fact, very wrong.

After a few minutes, I came back out of the room. I didn’t know what else to do; there was no window or back door to climb out of. Nurse Howard was grinning, coming towards me, reaching greedy for my sample. It wasn’t too late. I tried pulling away, to drop it, but her marshmallow hands grabbed it before it hit the floor.

‘Careful,’ she said, in a voice too loud for the room. Nurse Howard put my cup on the counter and sat back down, filling a blank label out with my name. She knew it without asking. My bladder ached from its ordeal, but my legs were getting ready to run.

‘You’re a fast one. That last dude was in there for an hour, listening to the tap run.’ Nurse Howard was having a good day. She looked at my cup. ‘What the hell is that?’ Her head bounced back, seeing it. Holding my product up to the light, she swirled it around a like a glass of Merlot.

‘Green?’ she said staring at it. ‘Will you look at that?’

Please no. Nurse Howard’s head was thick with braids, red plastic yarn woven into them. The gum she was chewing was spearmint.

‘Well, look at it! I’m not going color blind here, am I?’ She wasn’t. ‘You sure this ain’t lime soda?’ Nurse Howard added, thrusting my piss over to me. It jumped in its plastic cup.

I backed up. I could still make the door from here; she was too slow to stop me, a strong arm could knock her to the ground. Or I could reach both arms around her and pick her up by her panty’s waistband, throw her sumo-style. Find the stairs, keep running till I got underground to the trolley tracks. Go hide in the darkness between stations until I figured things out.

‘Look!’ Held by long, multicolored, cubic zirconia — embedded claws, the cup of urine came so close I could see my breath on it. Nurse Howard could feel it burning in her hand, I knew that. Hung before me, my juice looked like water from a fish tank after all the fish are dead and it’s been left to rot for months.

‘What’s wrong with you boy? Is it St. Patrick’s Day.’ Nurse Howard giggled, her mouth a display of gold fronts. ‘You trying to be slick, right?’

‘Huh?’ There was something familiar in her face, the way she popped her gum. I could see her getting on the bus at Wayne Avenue, dropping her token before her body walked on. I remembered a big girl, hanging against the wall, smoking, her eyes on me till the number 26 would come. Eyes still fixed on mine amid the chaos of the public school halls, a round baby face you didn’t have to look at to know it was focused on you. This was my chance.

‘I was thinking, it’s really good to see you,’ I said. Nurse Howard’s smile elongated, its tips rising up towards her ears. I could do this. ‘Yeah, it’s so good to see you. Like back in the day, right? So just seeing you, I was thinking, why don’t we make sure we don’t leave our next meeting up to chance. Maybe we could plan on getting together real soon.’ I was nodding my head and Nurse Howard was nodding with me, her pupils going from dimes to quarters.

‘Like maybe we could go over to Walnut Street and check out a movie, stop by one of those Indian places around the corner.’

‘I could deal with a little something like that.’ She was blushing. I enjoyed making her happy. I think she even forget she held my piss in her hand. Maybe I was a mack, I had just never applied myself before.

‘So afterwards, you could come over my place, we could have a drink, relax. I could get out the oil, give you a massage or something. Because, you know, I really got to pass this test, right? I really need this, to pass this test. I’ll do anything. You know what I mean?’

Nurse Howard knew exactly what I meant. I could tell because she had simply frozen. There was still that smile on her face, but it represented nothing but muscles in flex, the leftover remains of an earlier emotion. I was not the mack, I was an asshole. For a moment, there was nothing moving in that room. She used to wear high-top basketball sneakers with big fluffy socks, I remembered now, and a long blue Georgetown jacket she would hide her body in even when it was hot out. Now there was nothing moving but our chests: we were breathing together, me and her. After a minute, our gusts could have ruffled the papers tacked to the wall, our ribs contracting and expanding like mice caught in glue traps. The part of me outside myself, the part that was a better thing than the sum of my actions, cried out for her, and for itself, that it was related to such a bastard.

‘I’m sorry, really. Forget the test, I’ll get another job. This Sunday, maybe we could go down South Street for breakfast or something.’

‘Stop! Please.’ Her words barked over my own until mine ceased. That other part of me, it was wailing in self-pity.

‘I’ll sign that you passed, just go. Just get away from me.’ Nurse Howard turned from me and threw my sample to the sink. Who knew she could move like that, like Steve Carlton when the Phillies won the pennant. Upon impact, an emerald tsunami splashed over the sink, counter, her desk, the floor, and all the things each surface contained. Eager for redemption, I darted for the paper towel dispenser to repair the damage my juices had caused. I would have wiped my conscience clean, too, but that momentary disorientation, that brief loss of vision and facial numbness, that was Nurse Howard smacking me. That’s what that was.

‘Go!’ she demanded. I heeded the directive, holding my jaw as pain and blood began pouring. Doorknob in hand, I turned back to her. Nurse Howard was facing the mess, her head aimed down and her eyes closed to everything. ‘It’s me,’ I explained. Nurse Howard gave no response to this. ‘I’m fucked in the head. Really,’ I offered, but she wouldn’t look up at me. So I went and caught the trolley.

Whatever delusions any of us had that this was a real job, a true beginning, were extinguished upon sight of the others who populated the room. Our thrift shop suits, our pleather shoes, our poorly chosen handbags, makeup, and colognes — all meant to conceal that same look of undeviating decline, of limitless promise for failure. Even among temps, we were exceptional. I felt so at peace sitting there, in my street-vendor tie, my face covered with twenty-cent-razor scars, because this was the job I always knew was waiting for me. Now I was here and the vacuum of this empty seat had been filled. All pretension of other fates was now over. I’d finally come to the place I belonged. With nothing left to fight for or against, I was a free man. This was a job you never had to worry about losing.

Our trainer, Rosalita, spoke with the hum of electric can openers. Sitting there, her gray suit shocked to be off the hanger, reading from a manual with the electric company logo. There was no syllable she judged worthy of emphasis, nothing to denote the individuality of a page, paragraph, or word. For Rosalita, the dots at the ends of the sentences were decoration. Her only pauses were when she ran out of air. The most exciting sound she made was the dry flutter of a page turning. When we heard it we all leaned forward in our chairs, trying to see how many more were left to go.