Derek Sikkema
A plumber finds his illusions about himself under attack as he tries to sell his left-over sink traps on a street corner in Manhattan. Contains alcohol and drug use. Approximately 1,150 words.
“Sink traps! Get your sink traps here! I got four inches wide, three inches, you name it! Come now, folks, let’s give these sink traps a nice new home!”
Joe was standing on a street outside his apartment in uptown Manhattan. He’d been a plumber all his life. Now he wasn’t. Now he had five crates of cast iron sink traps taking up space in his organized, fourth-floor
apartment, which smelt like limes. He needed the sink traps gone. He could no longer take the mess. Thus he had arrayed the five crates in a semi-circle around his stairs on the street.
But they also had to go to the right people. Proper people. People who would shine them every weekend. People who would keep them sorted by size. People with a plumber’s sense of cleanliness and order.
“Miss!” Joe hailed a passing lady. Her bees-nest hair towered over Joe like a skyscraper. “You need sink traps?” She kept walking. “Come on, now!” Joe called after her. “I’ve got green, yellow, white, all kinds of sink traps, all very special and in need of a proper home! How many would you like, miss?” The lady turned the corner at the next intersection.
Joe was unfazed. He wheeled around to face his next potential customer.
Joe cried out and reeled backwards, almost tripping over the concrete steps. A hunched man with dirt etched in his bearded face was picking through Joe’s shining sink trap collection. The filthy man was smiling. His teeth were snaggletoothed and yellow. Joe collected himself, shivered, and pinched his nose.
“You the fella selling sink traps?” the man asked.
“Not to the likes of you!” Joe said. “Plumbing is a lucrative profession, and I will not have these gorgeous, cast iron sink traps soiled by your filthy paws. Now keep moving.” Joe eyed a passing man in a pressed black suit, briefcase in hand. “You are blocking potential buyers! Go!”
The filthy man frowned and walked away. “Sir!” Joe called to the suited man. “Do you need any special sink traps? Only the finest sink traps up for sale!” The man was not yet out of sight. Joe raised a hand to hail him. “Sir!”
Joe saw the grime on his hand. His eyes fixed on it. There were brown lines of mud etched in his knuckles. Dirt caked his fingernails. He looked up at the building across the street as his mind swept him away from the present. He saw a fireplace lined with empty vodka bottles. A woman with piercing blue eyes was calling him a drunk. A man in a tailored suit was calling him into an office and saying something about fire.
Joe dropped his hand. He blinked and lowered his eyes to the passing pedestrians. He started to wonder if the images had anything to do with his life. The image of his apartment’s gleaming hardwood floors started to fade. His ornate chandelier started to disappear. A sign was overwhelming it all. He looked down at his crates of sink traps.
Joe saw a small girl with a glittery pink bow-tie in her hair. She wore a white blouse. There was a pink fleece draped over her shoulders. She was rifling through the sink traps. Joe smiled his entrepreneur’s smile once more, forgetting all about his grimy hand.
“Hello little girl!” he said.
“Hi,” she greeted.
“Where are your parents? Do they need any sink traps?”
“What are these?” she asked.
“Sink traps, dear! Used in the very finest career, plumbing!”
“We have a plumber,” she said.
Joe grinned wider. He rubbed his hands together just below the edge of his sight. “I’m sure he’s a very fine man,” he said, “this plumber of yours!”
“He smells funny, and his pants are too big.”
Joe pulled his pants up higher and smiled even wider. He glanced around at his crates of sink traps and wondered whether he had any pink ones to show the girl. Was it presumptive to assume that she liked pink? As from the end of the distant tunnel, he heard the girl sniffing.
“You smell like him,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. She stood on her tiptoes to look closer at Joe’s face. Joe was beaming a wide grin at his crates of sink traps. “Your teeth are really dirty.”
“BELLA!”
A shrill voice split Joe’s eardrums. He stumbled backwards as if he were drunk and nearly fell off the steps he was standing on. “Get away from there!” the voice cried. A clean hand with red-painted fingernails swept into Joe’s vision and snatched the girl away.
“What have I told you?”
The girl sighed. “Don’t talk to hobos.”
“Right. Honey, he’s just disgusting. Look at him!”
“Miss!” Joe shouted after the mother, the woman with the pale, clean hands. “Lovely miss!” Joe lifted his hand to hail the woman.
The dark grime caked in his knuckles appeared once more in his vision. Joe’s smile evaporated. His eyes focused on the dirt. He realized that the filth crept further up his arm. Tendrils of brown dirt arced up his venous hand. His eyes followed the dirt as it snuck under his shirt sleeve, continuing up his arm. Joe’s brows furrowed. He blinked and shook his head. Images in his mind. Greasy pizza boxes in the corner. Shrill voices and clean hands screaming at him. A sign clapping down in front of it all. In the present moment, he reached out his other hand to cradle the one caked in dirt. It was filthy too. He looked down at his hands. The dirt lathering his arms, stretching across his chest and up his neck, and finally clotting out his face became apparent to his skin. He sighed.
Horror stabbed through his eardrums. It flooded into his mind. The dirt was suffocating him. He was drowning in it. He watched his hands tremble. His own breath rasped in his ears. Let that breath be anyone
else’s. Don’t let it be his. That wheeze can’t be his. What happened? How did this happen? Why won’t they look at me? They’re just stepping around the sink traps. Like they’re not even there. Like I’m not even here.
Foreclosed. That’s what the sign says.
Joe reached with a trembling hand to the flask at his belt. The mud surged over his skin. It crept up his spine like a snake about to strike at his brain. He unclasped the flask. Lifting it, Joe pressed the flask to his lips. He tipped his head back.
Fire surged into his belly, and once more he was on his feet. His mouth opened up in an entrepreneur’s grin. He brushed his greasy hair out of his eyes. He took his place atop the stairs once more, careful to keep his grimy hands invisible to his eyes.
“Sink traps!” he cried. “Only the finest sink traps for the very finest customers from the very finest man!”
