Three

The Captain’s Log



The single consistent aspect of Burns’ life was that it mimicked a series of Twilight Zone episodes, usually the ones with William Shatner as the lead. Burns was always either stuck in a nondescript Midwestern town, the slave of a diner’s bobble-headed fortune telling machine, or trapped on a plane home after a nervous breakdown, convinced that the Grinch was trying to monkeywrench the engines. Either way, Burns was Shatner and the only way to deal with the situation was to overact.

In his extended absence, the Waffle Shop devolved from a gone-to-seed diner to a gutted abandoned hulk. The front door was bolted shut, a sad murder of Iowans in identical “Up With People” t-shirts milled outside and stared blankly at the handlettered signs that promised steaks, two eggs, toast, and coffee for five-dollars and change. Their thin lips moved as they spoke the daily specials that no one would ever taste again, then sadly moved on to find a Starbucks or Panera Artisanal Cruelty-free Toasted Asswich shop. Burns took the back alley to the service entrance. Two movers in wifebeaters loaded a vintage Frialator onto a flatbed while a third leaned against a stack of waffle irons. They paid no attention to him as he chewed his urine cigarette and slid inside like he owned the place.

The air was 8-months pregnant the with aroma of ancient dislodged grime, stale sweat, rancid fat, and about to give birth to a sanitized office cube farm. The venetian blinds would gather grease and dust no longer. The midday sun flashed prison stripes through the Waffle Shop’s bay windows, creating a check pattern of dust swirling in midair. The orange fountain drink dispenser sat motionless on the counter, a pool of orange languidly swelled within to the rythmic motion of the construction equipment like busted lava lamps. The breakfast hum of refrigerator compressors, sizzling griddles, rustling newspapers, and splashing coffee was replaced by the irritated honk of afternoon traffic. The linoleum counter where he’d spent countless hours puzzling cases was smothered in a blanket of forgetful dust. He ran his hand beneath the lip of the counter. The three-inches of chewing gum was still there, bumpy amber Braille for anyone who wanted to read it. Amid the decay, uselessness, and anachronism, Burns felt like he’d finally come home. He felt something else… down there. Doubled over, he plowed through the fetid dust in his mad dash to the crapper.

The bathroom squatted like a double-amputee vet between the busted Kelvinator and the musty pallets of Squirt sodas that propped up the waterlogged ceiling. Burns had to hunch down to enter the stall. The Kelvinator was doing a Van der Graaf generator number onto the Squirt cans, arcing yellow and purple bursts of static. It was like a chance meeting between the sulfur pits and the northern lights for a nooner in a phonebooth. Inside what barely passed for a toilet, Mr. Bowl was brimming with “tadpoles,” “lazy susans,” and a swirling whirlpool of “oil slicks.” As he dropped trou, gripped the rails, and thrust, Burns waxed nostalgic on the “pile” of enemies he’d dispached into the sewer system thanks to the Red Chinese hyperflush system.

Burns yanked the crapper chain. Somewhere far off, he heard the sound of children laughing to the accompaniment of a twinkling toy piano. As he pulled up his drawers, he stared at his reflection in the bowl that slowly morphed into a Munch scream. As many times as he’d found his head in a toilet, Burns knew when it was for real and when someone had slipped him some blotter acid as a prank. There was definitely a head in this crapper, and it wasn’t his. It started talking in a voice like the Magic Mirror from Sleeping Beauty.

“O perfect master, bringer of the cleansing waters! Thou hast freed me of my putrescent bonds! What is thy bidding?”

Burns sniffed. “Look buddy, I talk to toilets all the time. This is the first time any’s ever talked back. Make with the backstory.”

The Toilet Head rolled its vacant eyes, continued. “I am the Oracle of Delphi, banished for a time for prophecies that came to pass that were not heeded wisely.”

“Sucks for you. So some high-steppin’ tart stuck you in a fastfood crapper, huh? Just because they can’t figure grammar. Or irony.”

“And this wretched commode hasn’t been flushed in years.”

“That’s YOUR problem, jack. So do I get three wishes or what?”

The toilet head shook. “I am an oracle, master, not a genie. I know the future. I know the past. I can also read the bumps on your hind quarters. I also have a lead on the trifecta at Pimlico. This can be of some worth to those who heed my prophecies.” The toilet head started whistling Peer Gynt and staring off into space.

Burns didn’t truck with sorcery, alchemy, posterior phrenology, or augury, unless it involved reading pigs entrails that had been barbecued over oak charcoal with a good Memphis dry rub and a vinegar applejuice mop. Whenever he was drunk or stupid enough to mess with the foul arts, he always ended up naked on an altar at a black mass with his ass packed to the rim with communion wafers. But his ass was empty for now. He was feeling lucky.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” Burns quipped, rolling his cigarette between thumb and forefinger. “Read away, o moist one.”

The bowl spiraled counterclockwise and scenes from Burns’ past flushed before him like a porno tape on fast forward: long-shuttered diners, juke joint shootouts, back alley abortions, vinyl-clad nurses administering barium enemas, prison rape, monkey butlers with guns blazing, scrimshaw dildos, the Sonny Bono assassination cleanup. The oracle spoke like the Guardian from that Star Trek episode where Kirk watches Joan Collins get run over by a truck. “You seek a hidden truth, one of loss and redemption. Your thoughtless rush forward sends you deeper into your past. The truth lies in front of you when your back is turned. Beware! Beware the monkey on the pier!”

“Wow. Just…wow.” Burns tossed his pee-soaked cigarette in his mouth, struck a match on the crapper rim. It still wouldn’t draw. He threw the butt into the toilet. “You have got to be the shittiest oracle I’ve ever had to deal with. And I’ve done the Carnival Cruise Greek sex tour of Crete.”

“But…but… I am a condemned toilet! One cannot expect Nostradamus!”

“I ain’t no plumber, and I don’t expect much from a busted crapper. But I sure as hell don’t expect it to throw shit back at me. Fuck was that about? I’m thinking maybe I can get a lead or two as to why my shit got fucked up in New Orleans. Hell, if you’re a stoolie, maybe you’d give me some bullshit leads to throw me off the trail. Bitch, you ain’t even trying! I’ve had better fortunes told by googley-eyed sock puppets in carnivals for four bits.”

The head was losing its audience. “Have pity on a poor soul, doomed to inhabit such a wretched abode!”

“I’ll help you out.” Burns grabbed his dick. He was riding this for a lark. Now his game dick was telling him the toilet was setting him up for a frame. “Fucking smartass crapper. Tell your friends upstairs that Dick Burns is fucking coming. TELL THEM I’M FUCKING COMING!” Burns yanked his wang out, peed on the rim, lit an M80, and flushed. He ducked outside, slammed the swinging door behind him, and braced himself for the backwash from the blast. The resulting eruption released a hail of swamp water that drizzled down the door like stinky tears from a brown-eyed Cyclops. Burns tossed his calling card over the stall door: a lime wedge.

Burns brushed the chunks of poo off his lapels, spotted the manager taking inventory of five-gallon drums of Lachoy Chop Suey and Admiration Brand Mayonnaise.

“Pol Atreidies! My main man!” Finally, a friendly face that wasn’t telling his fortune, spewing feces, or playing a banjo. Burns threw a thumb back at the so-called toilet. “What gives with the pay crapper? If you’re gonna go coin op, at least put a condom machine in there.”

Pol screwed up his face. “Dick Burns? What are you doing here? I thought you were in hell?”

“Now here’s the man I need to talk to. If I’m sposta be in hell, what am I doing talking to the Waffle Shop toilet? Spitting out riddles like Frank Fuckin Gorshin in a pea green faggot-ass jumpsuit. ‘Spect that nigga to be bouncing offa the walls sayin’ ‘Riddle me this, Batman!’ Shee-it.”

Pol shook his head, went back to his inventory clipboard. “Yeah, somebody screwed up alright. You don’t belong here, Burns. You need to talk to Sherrill. She’ll set you straight.”

“Finally, I’m getting some service. Sherrill’s it is. She still peddling those Bavarian Crème Belly Bombs?”

Pol turned his back to Burns, continued logging his stockpile of canned goods that no one would ever order. “Sherrill’s Diner is gone, Burns. But she still haunts the place. Nothing better to do in her retirement, I guess. Could be worse. Look at me. I guess she didn’t have anything else to do with herself either. But she’ll set you straight. Now, git outta here. I gotta get this logged before closing time.”

Burns was used to getting the cold shoulder from Pol Atreidies ever since he tried to lay pipe on the man’s common law wife. Burns waddled back through what was left of the Waffle Shop. He had a hard time leaving. Soon the walls would be divided into office cubicles, their owners lingering outside over cigarettes, shrink-wrapped foccaccia sandwiches, frappuccinos, complaining about how they wished there was a decent place to get breakfast in the neighborhood. Then they’d shrug and buy a nine-dollar breakfast croissandwich from the Korean convenience store clerk. And when they got back to their desks with their meal, if they listened carefully, they could hear the faint weeping of a lonely, bitter detective. And if they looked closely, they’d see the ghostly image of a diner whispering a little prayer over his toast, grits, and eggs over easy.

“Mother, forgive them. God, forgive them!”