Light comes late the next morning. After hours of rodent-induced anxiety, Artie falls into a deep slumber. It is nearly nine o’clock when he awakes, then another half-hour until he has the courage to leave the warmth of the sleeping bag. He drives to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts and orders the #1 with a large coffee with two glazed donuts. He wonders if Liam made these donuts. When prompted by the clerk, Artie confirms that he wanted his coffee “regular” (pronounced “regg-a- lah”) only to find that “regular” means equal parts coffee, cream, and sugar. He normally drinks it black. Oh hell, when in Rome … By that time he returns to the Mound and finishes his breakfast, the fried seafood platter that he enjoyed so much at Anna’s has worked its way through his stomach and currently resides impatiently in his lower intestine.
Artie has to take a dump. Wicked bad.
He reviews the options. He can walk over to Tropiano’s, re-introduce himself to the Mrs., and then say, “I know we haven’t seen each other in thirty-five years, but I gotta take a dump, wicked bad.” (The story about the hand-job is true, but Artie doesn’t think Officer Tropiano knows that.)
He can drive up to Cuzzin’s, but he guesses that the chance of him being up this early is 50/50. Or he can drive back to Dunkin’ Donuts or one of the fast food joints on the Southern Artery, but his growling gut tells him that might be risky.
He can go out to the back yard and squat, but with the houses on the Mound packed so tightly together, there is no place that affords complete privacy, and his novelty status insures that there would be prying eyes upon him. The way his luck is running these days, someone would have a cell phone handy and he’d find a shot of himself backyard pooping on the cover of the National Enquirer.
If only the water department would show up.
Water! Artie has his answer. A toilet works by gravity. He doesn’t need the water to be running … he just needs enough for a single flush. All he needs is to get a bucket of water from a neighbor’s garden hose and pour it in the toilet tank. The day is saved.
Congratulating himself on his ingenuity, Artie finds a large pot that is used for boiling lobsters and quickly locates a garden hose on the house of the woman next door. He briefly considers knocking, but knowing that he is unkempt, unshaven, and already off to a bad start, he decides to risk it. Anyway, doesn’t she work in downtown Boston? She’s probably staring out her office window. Artie sleuthed across to her porch and turned on the hose. He was a man with a plan. The peristaltic waves were coming more frequently now. “Hurry up, please, it’s time,” he said. Next time at Anna’s, he vows, he’ll have his seafood platter broiled.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
He jumps at the sound of her voice.
She is on her deck. He is on the ground about three feet below. He looks up into a face that registers midway between disgust and alarm, as if she has just found something slimy and alive underneath her garbage can. This, Artie decides, calls for boyish innocence:
“Oh, hi! I’m Artie. That’s my cottage. I didn’t think you were home, so I didn’t bother to knock. My water isn’t turned on yet, so I thought it would be ok for me to borrow some from you.” “Borrow?” Did I really say “borrow?” As if I’m going to come back tonight with a lobster pot of water, and say “Here’s your water I’m returning.”
“I’m not working these days, and it’s not ok, ever, to come onto my property and to touch anything without my permission.”
“Guilty as charged. You’re absolutely right!” Artie tries to give his grin an infectious quality. He can hear himself describing the look to one of his actors. He is great at coaxing out the best from his actors. But his actors usually aren’t holding heavy pots of water while trying to stem the urgency of peristalsis that currently has him in full urgency. “I’m sorry. I really am. But I really need this water. And I really need it now.” His gut is cramping unmercifully.
“Let’s set some clear boundaries right now,” she says, “and we can start by you pouring out the water.” The boyish part of his act must have worked, because she was treating him like a naughty boy.
“And I’m glad to have this discussion,” says Artie, clenching his teeth, “but not at this exact moment.”
“Conflicts are always best resolved when issues are addressed immediately.”
“Not when one of the parties is in extreme gastric distress.”
“Come again?”
“I’ve got to take a dump, wicked bad,” said Artie, turning with his pot and waddle-running towards the cottage. Behind him he can hear the roaring crackle of a bridge burning.
Ah, relief.
As he prepares to start his day, Artie catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Whoa! Scary! He has never seen himself look so disheveled. His entire head is bleary, gray, and random. “No wonder what’s-her-name looked so alarmed.” He spends part of the morning obsessing about her name, finally convincing himself that it is “Shawna.” He’ll charm her the next time he sees her. No need for bad blood between neighbors. He’ll show her the real Arthur Gordon.
The water department arrives on schedule. The city worker is curious to see that there is still a summer cottage left in Quincy. Artie shows him around. Artie is already taking pride in the slight progress he has made, but the water department person is more amazed than impressed. He appears unable to grasp the concept of a summer cottage, finally reducing it to “kinda like a tent.”
“That’s it,” says Artie, “A big wooden tent.”
“I gotta run. Do you want to try the water before I go.”
Artie goes inside and opens a faucet. Nothing. He reports his findings.
“Did you open the main valve?”
Artie answers with a look of helpless stupidity. “There should be a main valve somewhere just inside the house. You gotta open that before anything else will work. Lemme look for you.”
The two men go inside and trace the exposed plumbing back to a place where it goes through the floor. There is a small trap door which Artie remembers, but has never understood its purpose. The city worker opens the door, and sure enough, there is a pipe heading toward the street and a valve handle.
“There it is. Just open it up and you should be in business.”
Profuse thanks. More than fifty years in this place. You’d think I’d know how to turn on the damn water.
Artie kneels down. Mutters “here goes nothing” and opens the valve. There is the sound of moving water. Progress, civilization, clanking noises, moving water. Suddenly, the interior of the cottage is transformed into a fountain, with water spurting in a dozen directions. Artie stands dumbfounded, unable to make sense of the random streams of water going where water isn’t intended to be. He becomes aware that the city worker is shouting at him. “TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!” Moving in slow motion, Artie turns off the valve to the water main.
The worker asks if he knows a plumber to call. Oh yeah, says Artie, trying to sound nonchalant. When the waterworks truck is safely out of earshot. Artie says:
Sonofabitch! SONOFABITCH! Sonofa-fucking-bitch!
For fifteen minutes he says “sonofabitch.” He uses the full range of human vocalizations. Different volumes, different tones, different pitches, different accents. Same phrase. No swear words known to man sufficiently express how Artie feels at this moment. As he watches water dripping from every horizontal surface in the cottage, he has the feeling that maybe things can go downhill from here.
“So I say ‘I gotta take a dump, wicked bad,’ and turn around and walk into the house.”
Cuzzin is standing on a stool, holding a propane torch on a section of pipe. He’s clearly amused by Artie’s account of his morning encounter, and chuckles intermittently between punctuations to request specific tools, materials, and/or beer.
Artie plays the surgical assistant, handing tools and or beverages as requested:
“I take one of the most satisfying dumps of my life, but then I catch sight of myself in the mirror. Holy Jesus, no wonder she had a funny look on her face! I look like the wild man of Indian Mound. My hair is sticking up all over the place. I have all this lint from the sleeping bag clinging to my beard. I scared myself.”
Vroom-vroom-vroom-vroom. “Beer.”
“I proceed to have the morning from hell, but then after lunch I see her out working in her garden. Here’s an opportunity to make nice and to show her my cultured side. After all, I’m one of Indian Mound’s proudest sons.”
“Fuckin’ right. Torch.”
“I go over to the fence and say ‘Hi Shawna’,” because that’s what I’m remembering her name to be, “I’m Artie. Are you putting in tomatoes? And she says, “It’s May 2 and you can’t plant tomatoes when there’s still a chance of frost.’ She doesn’t say ‘Moron,’ but I can tell that’s what she’s thinking. Her tone is dripping with condescension. ‘And my name is not Shawna.’ But, of course, she doesn’t tell me what her name is.”
“Well, excuse me, Not-Shawna, but I only mention tomatoes, because the guy who used to live here took great pride in his tomatoes.’ She gets this scrunched up, constipated look on her face, and says ‘I guarantee he didn’t plant them on May 2.’”
“Constipated.” Vroom. “Solder.” Vroom. “Beer.”
“So I say, ‘We’re not doing so well here, maybe we can start at the beginning. Hi, my name is Artie, and I’m going to be your neighbor for the summer.’ She doesn’t say a word but burns holes through me with her eyes. After about thirty seconds of silence I finally say “Do you have a problem with that? She says ‘Yes I have a problem with that and a problem with you. My house means a lot to me. It’s my island of sanctity in a busy world. There’s only one problem with this house, and that’s that it is next door to a shack, but at least until yesterday the shack kept to itself. Now, I look out onto a yard full of clutter. Some vagrant is helping himself to my water in the morning, and I have to endure some lunatic shouting obscenities all morning. This does NOT make me happy?’”
“Jeez, Artie,” turning from his pipe work. You gotta understand the new people who live here are nuts when it comes to their houses. And for the prices they pay, they should be. Hand me the Saws-All.” The conversation halts for as long as it takes for Cuzzin to saw through a length of pipe.
“I understand that. It doesn’t give them the right to treat other people like dirt. Do you think she is acting this way because she knows about my movie?”
Cuzzin bulls his way through another piece of pipe, then hands the saw to Artie with a mutter of “Beer” and an open hand into which Artie places the can. “I don’t want to disappoint you, but you’re not a household word around here. People don’t really know or care about your movie. My guess is that she just thinks you’re a creep.”
“I dunno. Among the feminists of America, I’m The Guy to hate these days.”
“You’re flattering yourself. So what did you say back?”
“I told her that my family had owned this place for a hundred years. That the cottage was completely adorable until my Mother died four years ago, and that I’m trying to bring it back to life.”
“That sounds reasonable,” says Cuzzin.
“Actually I was losing it, because then I followed that by saying if she didn’t like it, she could shove her entire garden up her ass, and if she didn’t like being called Shawna, she should tell me her name. She’s pretty hot under the collar, too, and says ‘Don’t call me anything, just don’t call me.’ So I called her a fucking bitch and walk away. Pretty mature, huh? And you know what happened later this afternoon–I heard every word of this–my agent sent me a UPS package. The UPS guy goes to her house and asks where he might find Arthur Gordon and she tells him ‘He must be the old guy who lives in the shack out back.’”
“Ouch!
“’The old guy!’ Who does she think she is?”
“The bitch.”
“Yeah, the garden bitch.”
“Yeah, the garden bitch of Indian Mound.”
Cuzzin turns off his propane torch, takes a swig of beer, squeezes the can, and announces “Unless I’ve lost my touch, you now have real live running water. It also sounds like the battle of Indian Mound has begun.”