Saved by the Shower Curtain
![Delectable You cover](https://simonataylor.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DELECTABLE-COVER-FOR-WEB-650x1024.png)
Killian
The bird is perched on one ledge. The cat is balanced on the other. And there I am, soaking wet and dripping suds, straddling the bathtub, buck naked. What a great way to start my new life here in Abyssinia.
I’d driven for most of the day, coming down from Jersey, taking it easy on the road rather than giving in to my notoriously leaden foot. Reminding myself I wasn’t about that life anymore: speeding along as if I was being chased, daring Highway Patrol to pull me over. Partly because I’m determined that this time I’m turning over a new leaf for real, adamant that this time my resolutions are going to stick—and partly because the last thing I can afford is a speeding ticket. I have just enough of my savings and my Army disability payments left to keep me in peanut butter and sliced bread until I get a job in town. No point handing my last few bucks over to the state.
I’d arrived at my grandmother’s house—sorry, my late grandmother’s house—in the early evening, and by the time I was done collecting the keys from her elderly neighbor, Mr. French, bringing in my duffel full of clothes and a couple of boxes crammed with my other crap, I was tired and hungry and so filthy that my own stink was burning my nostrils.
Hence the shower.
What I haven’t counted on, though, is the fact that Nana Oonagh’s African gray parrot, which the guy next door was more than happy to hand over along with the keys, is the Harry Houdini of birds. Because twenty minutes ago, before heading up to the showers, I’d made sure the creature was fed and watered and locked in one of those big, old-fashioned bird cages you see in cartoons. You know, the kind Tweety Bird sits in while he’s taunting Sylvester the cat, daring him to try.
How the hell he got out of the cage is anybody’s guess, but now, here he is, head swiveling from side to side as he shifts his attention back and forth between me and the big hulking predator that’s got him locked in his sights.
A cat which, might I add, I don’t know from Adam’s cat. I have no idea how it got in. It’s a hefty, bad-tempered-looking bugger, a seal-point Siamese with greedy blue eyes. I can literally hear its thoughts as it pins the parrot down with those daggers: Mmm. Dinner.
And as I said before, there I am, naked in the shower, wondering what to do. I’m lathered up from head to foot, shampoo dripping down my forehead from hair that I haven’t cut since I got out of the military. I hadn’t remembered to bring my own so I used some of Nana’s that I found on the shelf, hoping that shampoo didn’t expire, ‘cause it looks like it’s been there awhile. Technically, it’s designed for graying hair and mine is flame red—curse of the Irish, long story. But deep down I’ve always suspected that shampoo was shampoo was shampoo, and all this differentiation is just another sneaky way in which marketers try to get us. So I figure it would be okay.
I hadn’t expected it to be this strong though, and as it oozes sudsily down my face it stings like carbolic soap. The kind you shove into a kid’s mouth to punish him for cussing. It’s a whole lot foamier than I expected, because in moments the tub I’m standing in looks like one of those commercials where a woman reclines up to her neck in bubbles, stretches out a leg and begins to shave.
I swipe foam out of my eyes and try to refocus … and in those short moments, the cat and the bird decide to level up on their game of catch me if you can. Through the soapy blur I watch the Siamese ease forward, sure-footed as all hell on that narrow ledge, hunkering down with its butt in the air, tail quivering. A clear signal to the parrot that he’d better get his affairs in order.
The parrot begins inching in the other direction, never taking his eyes off the cat, step by sideways step like a guy on the ledge of a high rise who wants nothing more than to crawl back into the nearest window.
“Why don’t you just fly away?” I ask. The bird cocks his head, looking down at me with beady eyes as if he’d only just realized I can talk. When he returns his attention to the cat, we both notice it has gotten several inches closer.
“Back off!” I yell. The Siamese hits me the stink-eye and proceeds to ignore me.
Oh, yeah? I reach for the soap dish, my fingers closing around a dried-up bar that’s been sitting there since whenever, and hike it at the cat. I don’t intend to hit it, mind; I make sure the point of impact is several inches wide. It gets the message and doesn’t like it, turning toward me to bare its fangs and hiss.
It’s three feet away now, maybe four, and that’s when I really start to worry for the bird.
I realize that for the past several minutes I’ve been so engaged in the drama playing out above my head that I’ve forgotten I’m standing under a stream of water. If I was going to play hero I should at least turn the shower off. The taps are antiques—just like everything else in this creaky old house—made of brass and shaped like knobby Xs. One of the Xs is labeled Hot; obviously, the other says Cold.
I reach out and twist the Hot tap to ‘off’, but before I can head for the one that says Cold the shower blasts me with water so searing I almost have a flashback to a past life as a lobster. I scream in pain, scramble for the other tap, frantically trying to shut it off too. Clearly the taps are mislabeled, or the piping screwed up, or something. Hot is cold, down is up, that sort of thing.
The steam is turning my nads into poached eggs. I try to back out of the tub but the suds are too much and I go skating, flailing wildly around and catching hold of the floral plastic shower curtain hanging from the rail. It’s the only thing standing between me and cracking my skull open on the edge of the tub.
Above my head the cat yowls in surprise and the parrot begins to cuss—in Gaelic. If I wasn’t being held prisoner by the shower curtain I’d have been amused by the fact that my Irish-born grandmother had taught her parrot words I’d last heard as a kid.
The Siamese pounces, clearing the space above my head, and then it and the bird are on the same ledge. The bird’s freaking out, flapping his wings, trying to bat away the cat. Finally he takes flight and I almost cheer. “Why didn’t you do that all along?” I ask him. After all, it’s his fault I’m finding my footing again, hauling myself onto the edge of the tub, still not managing to hit the Cold knob to end this steamy hell.
The bird perches on the toilet tank, one of those ancient contraptions that loom over the toilet with a pull chain dangling beside it. My grandmother probably hadn’t had her plumbing updated since she was a bonnie young lass arriving from Kilkenny.
The cat is still on the other side of the bathroom, but since the room is the size of a closet, that’s not very far. I curse at it, not in Gaelic, but in good old American. It seems to understand but doesn’t care. It wants its dinner.
A crouch and a pounce and over my head it leaps, a blur of beige. The bird is in its claws, pinned down on the toilet tank. The parrot is cussing and shrieking and I think, I can’t let Nana’s bird die.
I leap from the bath, balancing with my bare, wet feet on the open toilet seat, reaching up, grabbing the cat by its scruff. Its blue eyes bug at me as if it can’t believe anyone would challenge it for its meal, and in that moment of shock it lets go.
The parrot swoops down and out the bathroom door until he’s out of sight. “Should have led with that—” I begin, completely forgetting that I’m still clinging to an indignant cat.
It lets loose a yowl that would wake the dead, and launches itself at my face. Fangs bared, claws out, it connects, and begins to slide downward, scoring a path along my chest. The first thing I see is stars. The second thing is the horrifying image of what would happen if it made its way any lower. A vision of this furious animal dangling from my tackle threatens to make me faint.
I tear it off me and lob it toward the rug, feeling my skin shred, but knowing it’s the better of two evils. I straighten up, relieved—but not for long. My soapy left foot skids off the toilet seat and plunges into the bowl. After the punishing heat of the shower, the cold water is a shock.
I try to remove my foot—and discover I’m stuck. I look down, incredulous. How the hell does anyone get their foot stuck in a toilet?
The old-fashioned bowl, heavily decorated with rambling painted flowers, isn’t standard. It’s weird and narrow and seems to sink into the floor, and the harder I try to loosen myself, the deeper I go.
The bird is gone. The cat is gone. I’m all alone, and at least there’s nobody around to bear witness. But that also means there’s nobody around to help. I consider yelling, but the house is big and old and there’s no way Mr. French next door will hear me. My only way out is to get someone over here. But how?
My jeans are in a heap on the floor, with my phone poking out of the pocket. Well out of my reach, but I’m Army strong, dammit. Army resourceful. Working fast, I put my full weight on the curtain rod, yanking until it gives. I tear it from the wall and use it as a lance to reach and drag my jeans to me. So far so good.
Gingerly, I get my phone out of the pocket, praying that the shitty luck I’ve had all day doesn’t make me drop it into the toilet. I consider calling the EMTs, but I’m not injured. What I need is for someone to come with a sledgehammer and smash this thing and set me free.
Fire department? Nah.
Thumbs flying, I Google the nearest plumbers. The first one doesn’t answer, and I’m not surprised, considering how late it is. But on my second try, I hear a deep voice say, “Moser’s Plumbing,” and I’m so relieved I want to weep.
The guy on the other end has the rusty, gravelly voice of an older man, and he listens quietly to me trying to explain that my foot is calf-deep in a toilet, and I’d really like someone to come over and set me free. I wait for him to start laughing, but instead he goes, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oonagh Doyle’s old place, yeah? Out on Brookshire? Don’t you worry, sir, we’ll be right over.”
I thank him and hang up, belatedly wondering how the plumber was going to get inside. I did lock the front door, didn’t I? Maybe when arrives I’ll yell down to him that it’s okay to break the lock. Anything to get me out of here.
I look down at myself, almost surprised to remember that I’m naked, but by now, I don’t even care. In the Army, I showered in the presence of a roomful of men for four years. Modesty isn’t one of my hangups.
Twenty minutes after my call, I hear creaking on the stairs and I’m confused because the guy’s got here way faster than I expected. “In here!” I yell, and the bathroom door, still ajar after the cat’s exit, is thrown open.
Only, it’s not the plumber. It’s a girl in a pretty yellow dress, and she’s goggling at me like her eyes are about to fall out of her head.
![separator](https://simonataylor.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/heart-separator-transparent.png)
Click here to buy a copy on your favorite online bookstore.