It wasn’t me who plugged up the toilet. That would be Dad. But Dad had to go to work and Mom had to take Charlene for her swimming lesson, and that left me home to wait for the plumber. I dreaded it, mostly because it was going to be so embarrassing. I had half a mind to run away.

But I didn’t run away. I’m too timid to do something like that. Maybe if I were older, or had a car of my own ... but then I wouldn’t be in this fix. So I waited. Supposedly the plumber would arrive in forty-five minutes. It had already been forty. I thought about wearing an old Halloween costume, the clown outfit with the mask, but that would have fit me when I was in sixth grade, and I was a high school senior now, or would be when the fall term started.

I thought, maybe I could just leave the door unlocked, and a note saying do what you have to do, and I could hide out in my bedroom. Yeah, that might work. Or it might be totally irresponsible. I was thinking over this option when there was a hearty knock at the back door. Nothing to be done about it now.

The plumber was a brawny sort of guy with Popeye forearms and thinning red hair and a reddish face. “So what’s up, Doc?” he said. There was sort of a twang to his voice, and I wasn’t sure if he was doing some sort of imitation or if that was his natural way of talking.

“The, uh, toilet is stuck.”

“Lead the way, Captain.”

I opened the bathroom door. Having it closed hadn’t helped anything, even with the fan going. A can of air freshener hadn’t really helped, either.

The plumber eyed me, smiled, and flipped up the lid.

“Oh my—oooooooh my,” he said, drawing out the words and finishing with a shrill whistle. “Okay, Boss Man, I’ll go get my tools. Be right back.”

I figured the worst was over. It wasn’t.

“Pardner,” the plumber said when he returned. “Want you to meet my assistant. My apprentice as it were. Some jobs are too big for just one mere moral man.”

Maybe he meant mortal. I don’t know. The assistant, in any case, wasn’t a mere mortal man. His assistant was a girl. A beautiful girl with curly red hair and a faint splash of freckles and a smile that made me melt. She was in my class at school. I’d had a complete crush on Mickey from the first time I’d seen her, but I’d always been way too shy to say a word. She was wearing fluffy flip-flops and a short terry cloth robe, open enough so I could see where the freckles on her chest ended and the soft creaminess of her breasts began, and short enough that I could see the tender space where slender thighs kissed the creased nadir of her swimsuit bottoms. I didn’t know where to look.

“Honey, you gotta see this,” the plumber told her. “Better hold your nose, though. And shut your eyes while you’re at it.”

Mickey smiled at me. “Hey, Josh,” she said.