The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

Po Sin crunched over.

– OK?

The legs of one of the roaches tickled the exposed rim of skin running between my filter mask and the edge of the Tyvek hood. I flicked it to the floor and stomped on it. And, incidentally, about a dozen more.

– Yeah, I'm fine. You're a dick, but I'm fine.

He nodded and pointed toward the back of the apartment.

– Then head back there. Gabe is bagging the shit. Start hauling it down to the service elevator.

I started down the hall, the smell of rancid crap already seeping through the mask.

– You suck, Po Sin!

Appearing in front of me, Gabe shook his head.

– Here's the thing. You don't want to yell like that. It will break the seal of your mask around your chin and jaw. They'll get in. You take off the mask to get them off and they'll be all over your face. Be in your nostrils.

Roaches in your nostrils. Pretty bad. But still, like I say, there are worse things.

So I got to work.

I hauled shitbags. A lot of them. The shut-in who lived in the place, he must have shit like a dozen times a day. He must have eaten nothing but beans and broccoli and topped it off with Mueslix.

Hauling the big black garbage bags filled with little bags filled with shit between the teetering masses of putrefying garbage, the smell of fermenting waste in my nose hairs, I tried to do some math. I tried to figure out how many years the guy must have been shitting in bags to create this kind of poundage.

I took another load of the bags down in the service elevator and out the back to the bin Po Sin had rented for the job and had parked in the alley. My face itched under the mask and I wanted to take it off, but I knew the reek coming off the bags would kill me without some kind of protection. I started taking bags from the dolly I had piled them on and began flinging them over the side of the bin.

I tried to remember how much Chev said a new cellphone was gonna cost. Almost two hundred. At least twenty hours of shit-flinging to pay that off.

Crap.

One of the bags snagged a flange of steel at the top of the bin and tore open and little ziplocks of shit spilled down onto the asphalt.

– Crap!

I bent and started picking them up.

Three hours in, and my back and knees and arms and shoulders were killing me. I remembered my dad and his cronies sitting out on the porch behind the Laurel Canyon house, sipping bourbon and water and playing Worst Job Ever. All trying to one-up the others.

Gas-pump jockey.

Bellhop.

Stable boy.

Cabby.

Janitor.

Cow inseminator.

Night watchman.

High school teacher.

That last one from my dad. The trump that beat everyone and ended the game in laughter. Nearly all of them having been public school teachers at some time or other before they got involved with the movie business.

Wish I could get a round of that game going. Put some money on it. I'd clean up.

Shitbag flinger.

– Ho, who's that on shitbag duty?

I looked up at the guy coming down the alley tying himself into a Tyvek.

– Who's the man behind the mask?

He came close, tugging at the shoulder seams of the Tyvek, trying to get the garment to give some breathing room to the thick muscle wadded around his neck and arms and torso.

He stopped.

– Hey. Who? Who the fuck are you?

I tossed a bag of shit into the bin.

– Who the fuck are youi

He ducked his head back.

– What?

I pointed at my face.

– Sorry, I got this mask on, it must have garbled my use of the spoken word. Allow me to employ sign language.

I crooked my index finger into a question mark.

– Who.

I held up my middle finger.

– The fuck.

I pointed at him.

– Are you?

He pushed his head forward.

– The fuck you think you are?

I shook my head.

– No, see, we're still having communication problems here. It must be because I'm speaking English and you're speaking Dickanese.

He grabbed the finger I had aimed at him and pulled up on it.

– What?

Pain shot up my arm and my knees started to fold. I quickly calculated how much harder it would be to fling shit with one of my index fingers snapped off, and how much longer it would take to pay off Chev's new cellphone, and made a strategic decision about how to handle the situation.

– Whoa, whoa, man! Whoa, my bad! Just foolin’ around! That hurts, man. Easy big guy, my bad. Uncle. Uncle!

He gave my finger a twist and let go.

– That's right you call uncle. Fuck with me, smart ass.

I flexed the finger, making sure it would still fling shit.

– Yeah, that's me, smart ass. It's a habit.

He tilted his head as far as his neck would allow.

– You still trying to be funny?

I shook my head.

– No, man, I'm not. Seriously. I mean, I wasn't trying to be funny in the first place, I was just trying to communicate on your level. Sincerely.

He grabbed my finger again and I went to my knees in the little bags of shit, many of them popping open under me. From the corner of my eye I saw several roaches that had been clinging to me bailing off, abandoning the ship that was clearly going down.

He added torque to the back pressure on the finger and I fell to my side in the shitbags.

He stood over me, straddling my body and the crap piled beneath me.

– Man, you are funny. You are so fucking funny, you know what I did, you're so funny?

I writhed, trying to take some of the tension off my finger.

He gave it a jerk.

– I said, You know what I did, you're so funny?

– No, no, man, I don't. Please, please tell me.

He leaned down, putting his pocked face in mine, his breath fogging the lenses of my goggles.

– I forgot to laugh, that's how funny you are.

– Knock that shit off.