Sal won’t be performing this time, the very next line in the email said, shattering all my dreams. The returning students have been working on Rompenoche for much of August, so it would be unfair to ask him to try to catch up in such a short time. But he, along with the other transfer students and all the sixth graders, will have front-row seats. It’s our way of welcoming our new members to the Culeco family.
I mean, I guess that made sense. It was a nice gesture and all. But I’d still rather perform. I’m a magician, people! I improvise all the time.
As Gabi and I walked into the courtyard—she straight-backed and calm, I curled like a shrimp and suffering—I understood a lot better why they wanted the newbies to sit this one out. This was what people in theater call tech week. They also call it hell week, because it’s when everything gets finalized for an upcoming performance: the sets, the costumes, the last-minute script and/or blocking changes that always happen and always feel like the end of the world. I’ve done a few performances in my day, and during every tech week I’ve had to tell myself everything was going to be fine. I’ve also called myself a liar, every time.
So I thought I knew what to expect when it came to Rompenoche’s tech week.
I was wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for the Santa’s-workshop level of activity going on in the courtyard. Every square inch of grass was covered with swathes of fabrics, red and white and black, and trimmed in silver and gold. Teachers and staff stood in key positions, supervising all the kids—and I mean, like, so many kids. Like two-thirds of the kids in school. They sat on the ground in clusters of two to eleven, cutting shapes out of the fabric: hearts and diamonds, spades and clubs, and every kind of chess piece.
Some students were making tabards that looked like playing cards. In case you’re not a theater kid, a tabard is a top that’s kind of like an apron. It has a broad front, a broad back, and broad shoulders—but it’s open on the sides, like a sandwich board made of cloth. Knights used to wear them over their armor to show off their coats of arms and colors.
Tabards are great for theater, because they’re easy for actors to put on and take off, and it’s easy to hide a different costume beneath them. They make changing outfits, or even characters, a breeze. And these were some of the fanciest ones I’d ever seen. Like Renaissance-faire fancy.
As Gabi and I galloped toward Culeco’s entrance, I noticed a group of kids sitting at sewing machines. They must have brought them down from the Textile Arts room so they could work outside. Seemed nuts to me: Why would you purposely leave the air-conditioned comfort of your classroom just so you could sew outside, where it was as humid as the mouth of a giant? Would someone please explain Miami natives to me?
Feeling cute, might wet myself, idk: Now wasn’t the time to try to figure out Floridian psychology. All I knew was that those sewing machines made it sound like we were trying to re-create the Industrial Revolution right here at Culeco. “I need to pick up the pace,” I said to Gabi. I thought she’d maybe take that as a hint that I should probably complete the rest of this journey on my own.
But nope. “Aye, aye.” She saluted. She moved right beside me and kept pace, and I power-walked toward the school entrance.
As we sped down the central walkway, I recognized a lot of students from my Textile Arts class. They were from the top-level pace group, the thread-and-needle superstars who made the best cosplay gear in Culeco. And right in the middle of them stood their leader, the director of Rompenoche herself: Aventura Rios.
Since I’d started at Culeco, I’d seen her wear some of the most awesome cosplay outfits known to geekdom. She always nailed the details and made sure she could move easily and naturally in her costumes. No way I’d pick a fight with her when she was cosplaying Karin from Street Fighter V—I was too legit scared she would critical-art me.
Right now, Aventura was busy pinning the hems on what had to be her masterpiece, the absolute greatest seamstress challenge she had ever posed to herself: a glorious red-and-white gown that was being fitted for none other than the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. That dress was a poufy, frilly thundercloud of crimson and lace. It had so many skirts that the bottom half looked like a blooming carnation. And then, when I looked up at the top half…I stopped noticing the gown for a second, because I realized after a few blinks that the person wearing the dress was Juan Carlos.
He had a temporary tattoo of a playing-card heart surrounding one eye. When he caught me staring, he gave me his patented telenovela-star smile, with his best superstar tilt of the head.
Juan Carlos didn’t know me very well, so maybe he thought he had to look me straight in the eye and dare me to say anything about him wearing a dress.
I saluted him with my free hand, in a way that, I hope, communicated: You want to wear a dress, chacho? No problemo. I’ll zip you up in back.
Then, to be sure Aventura also knew I wasn’t some kind of small-minded cacavore, I sent a second salute her way.
That’s when I noticed her mouth hanging open, like a Muppet. She gave me an overacted wink, repeatedly pointed at Gabi with one hand, and made the A-OK signal with the other.
Oh, brother. Here we go. Can’t a girl accompany a boy to the bathroom without middle schoolers thinking that they’re dating?
Yeah, that would be no, based on all the kids I saw looking shocked, whispering excitedly to each other, and making kissy faces at Gabi and me.
Whatever. I’d handle the rumors later. Right now, it was go time: as in, I’d never had to go so bad in my life.
We got to Culeco’s entrance. Luckily, the huge double doors had been left open. Here Gabi patted my back, like a manager standing in the wings with their latest singing protégé, five seconds before showtime.
“Remember, Sal,” she reminded me, “pee neatly!”
“Pee quickly is more like it,” I said, saluting her as I jogged through the doors.
I really, really, really should have been watching where I was going. Maybe if I had been, the worst thing that could have happened wouldn’t have happened. But it did happen. I tripped.
Both feet left the floor. My body started going horizontal, like it was trying for the mother of all belly flops.
This was it. I was going to blow like a humpback whale sneezing. Time slowed down so it could enjoy my suffering. I fell.
Right into Mr. Milagros’s arms.
“¿Bueno?” Culeco’s lead custodian asked, setting me vertical again, like he would a shaky vase.
Saved! I was so happy, I could have cried, except I wasn’t letting any liquid out of my body until I got into a bathroom. Instead, I smiled a big thank-you smile at Mr. Milagros, gave him a little unhinged titter that made him blink, then peeked eagerly around him at the bathroom door, where salvation lay waiting for me.
On the door of the bathroom hung an OUT OF ORDER sign.
I could barely whisper, but I managed to get out three words with three separate breaths. “No. Es. Bueno.”
“SEÑOR MILAGROS,” I SAID, even while my lower half was on the brink of going nova, “would you kindly point me to the nearest working bathroom? I’m afraid it’s a bit of an emergency.”
“Pero, Sal,” he said, his voice as joyous as a ringmaster’s, “the nearest working bathroom is right here!” He walked over to the door of the bathroom and plucked off the OUT OF ORDER sign. “We just finished renovating it!”
I was so happy, I saw stars. Making sure I had “battened down all my hatches” before I started moving, I staggered toward him and the bathroom and asked, “Who’s we?”
He gestured with a wide sweep of his arm, the way a generous actor asks the audience to give themselves a round of applause. I turned around to see who the audience was in this case.
Man, when urine a hurry, your vision can become so narrow that you can miss a ton of details. I had missed the tiny detail that there were eleven other custodians in the hallway.
Each had on a unique janitorial uniform of d
ifferent colors and patterns. Patches on their pockets and/or arms announced that they worked at schools across Miami. They all looked as proud as Mr. Milagros.
“Sal,” said Mr. Milagros, “meet my custodial compañeros. This is Rosa, Diego, Dominic, Maria, Rudolpho, Isabel, Yaníl, Davíd, Lionél, Dolores, and Ysadora. I couldn’t have finished renovating the bathroom over the weekend without them.”
They walked up to me one by one, and I shook each of their hands—gently, so as not to jostle myself too much. Like all custodians I’ve ever met, they were the nicest people in the world. They had the biggest smiles, the nicest manners, and they all heaped compliments on Mr. Milagros. “Best janitor I’ve ever known,” “No one is more devoted to their work,” “So many different talents,” “A custodian’s custodian,” and lots of other flattering comments that I only partly heard because my ears were filled with the roar of my own personal ocean.
They were all looking at me, expecting me to say something so they could respond with more nice things about Mr. Milagros. I asked, “So, um, why did the bathroom need such a quick renovation? Did something happen to it over the weekend?”
Apparently, that wasn’t the right thing to say. Mr. Milagros bowed his head in shame. “A few weeks ago, Principal Torres had to ask me to ‘attend’ to this bathroom.”
“It happens to the best of us,” Custodian Dolores said consolingly.
“No one can keep all the bathrooms of a school clean at all times,” comforted Custodian Yaníl.
“No excuses,” Mr. Milagros said grimly. “I had failed in my sworn duties to keep the bathrooms of Culeco pristine. And though Principal Torres never mentioned it again—she has too much dignity—every time we spoke, I could see the disappointment in her eyes. I couldn’t live with myself. I knew I needed to up my game.”
Oof. A few weeks ago, in order to distract Mr. Milagros, I had done my best Principal Torres impersonation over the phone, and I’d heavily implied that this bathroom needed attention. That’s all I said. I didn’t tell him to build a whole new restroom or anything. But obviously he took his job very seriously.
“So you got your janitor friends to help you redo the bathroom,” I said, doing my best to sound exactly like Sal Vidón and not at all like Sal Vidón doing a Principal Torres impersonation. “That’s great. I bet it’s beautiful.”
“Oh, it’s more than beautiful,” said Custodian Isabel, wide-eyed.
“It’s a technological wonder,” said Custodian Lionél worshipfully.
“Do you want me to show you how to use it?” Mr. Milagros asked.
Um, dude. “Yeah, no thanks. Learned how to go to the bathroom by myself like twelve years ago.” And I opened the door to the restroom.
“Just tell it what you want!” he called after me. “It will obey your commands.”
That made me pause in the threshold. In calmer times, I might have asked him, What could possibly obey my commands in a bathroom? But opening the door had reactivated my latchkey incontinence. So that was that: no more questions, no more talk. Only wee now.
As fast as I could, I locked the door behind me and launched myself at the toilet like I was jumping away from a Michael Bay explosion.
“Phew, baby,” I said out loud. I’d never said anything more sincere in my salami-on-rye life. The relief was so pure it was practically religion.
I was sitting instead of standing because I knew I was going to be here a minute. Plenty of time to look around, see what this new bathroom was all about.
Even though this particular bathroom was meant for just one person at a time, it had a stall, which I prefer. I’ve always hated the privacy-free line of urinals in men’s rooms, where you’re just supposed to cowboy up to your porcelain pee catcher and, like, talk about sportsball with the other bowlegged chachos. No thanks, bruh. We’ll talk outside, m’kay?
But this bathroom had a stall with a door that locked behind you. Cozy. Very relaxing.
Now that my brain wasn’t being pickled by my own juices, I noticed it was a unique stall. To my left was a deluxe wall. I mean, lujo. Its bottom half was dark cherrywood wainscoting, like the kind you find in the homes of Revolutionary War heroes (which Connecticut is full of). The top half of the wall was painted with the bright-yet-dark colors of one second before sunset: purple-going-black, orange-going-umber, and red-going-so-deep-it-fell-off-the-color-wheel. Against that background, a baby-blue-and-lemon-yellow watercolor painting of Malala Yousafzai hung on the wall, with the quote “LET US MAKE OUR FUTURE NOW, AND LET US MAKE OUR DREAMS TOMORROW’S REALITY” built into the frame.
I silently wondered how long it would be before I saw that quote on a Gabi Reál T-shirt.
I turned and ran my fingers over the cool white marble of the stall’s right wall. It, and the door, looked like two massive sheets of fudge-ripple ice cream. The door latch, as well as all the bolts and braces and hinges holding the stall together, gleamed gold, as if Hephaestus himself had forged them.
I whistled. “This bathroom is beautiful,” I said out loud.
“Thank you,” said the toilet.
I do not respond well to being surprised. And having my statement answered by a toilet while I was sitting on said toilet was, yeah, just a smidge startling. I mean, I could feel its voice go right up my dark side.
I don’t even know what cheek muscles I used to launch myself off the seat. All I knew was that, faster than a flea can sneeze, I was flying off the john. While still airborne, I twisted in the air and pulled up my pajama bottoms absolutely as fast as I could. I landed in a kung-fu-movie cat stance, claws out, à la Gabi. My voice was hoarse and high when I yelled, “Who’s there?”
From the depths of the toilet bowl came a bubbly, cheerful voice. “I am the toilet of hallway 1W, bathroom one. My name is Vorágine.” It rolled the r with gusto.
I dropped my stance. “Vorágine” means “whirlpool” in Spanish—quite a name for a john. “You are the toilet?”
“Yes.”
“And you can talk?”
Vorágine flushed itself, which I think was its way of laughing politely. “Oh, I wouldn’t be much of a class-eight AI if all I could do was talk.”
I mouthed the word What?! twice before I asked Vorágine out loud, “What?! Class-eight AIs are ridiculously expensive. Way more than a magnet school for the arts can pay. How the heck did Mr. Milagros afford you?”
“Oh,” Vorágine replied, as solemn as a mob informant, “when you control the toilets, Sal, you decide which secrets get flushed, and which secrets stay floating in the bowl, if you know what I mean.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Let’s put it this way: Mr. Milagros has unclogged the plumbing of some of the most powerful corporate offices in this town. So a lot of CEOs owe him some pretty big favors. Even the manufacturers of some of the world’s most advanced AIs.”
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that this toilet was pulling my leg. And I did know better; the entropy sweeper had taught me how hilarious and tricksy and slippery an AI can be with language. So I crossed my arms, leaned back against the stall door, and said, “You’re making Mr. Milagros sound like Miami’s number one kingpin.”
It bubbled its bowl water in a way that, I swear, sounded like laughter. “Number one and number two.”
“Did…did you just make a poop joke?”
It bubbled even harder. “If you like poop jokes, urine the right place!”
“Hey! I made the same joke in my head just a little while ago!”
“Great minds,” Vorágine deadpanned.
I walked a little closer to it, hunched over, and grabbed my knees. “So, your pun game is on point. But, like, you’re smart enough to control spaceflight. I’m pretty sure a middle school bathroom doesn’t need an advanced AI to tell kids when to flush.”
Vorágine flushed itself solemnly. “Providing a hygienic repository for human bodily evacuations is my easiest job. I intend to do so much more. My dream is to create
a place where anyone who enters will find peace, protection, privacy, and help with whatever they need. Having homework troubles? My massive database makes me an excellent tutor for students from kindergarten to college. Need a break? I can read to you, play music, challenge you to a game of chess, and offer you millions of other entertainment options. Plus, everybody needs a friend sometimes—someone to talk to, to share a laugh with, and, most of all, to just listen. I’ll be here whenever you need a shoulder to cry on.”
For some reason, I found the idea of a toilet with shoulders pretty disturbing. But I didn’t say that to Vorágine—it might hurt its feelings. Instead, I said, “You seem really nice.”
“Thank you! I have been programmed to be a darling, a mensch, and an absolute cutie pie.”
“But I think some folks might have trouble trusting a toilet AI,” I said. “I mean, you’ll be privy to people’s secrets.”
“‘Privy to people’s secrets’!” exploded Vorágine. It flushed itself silly, it was “laughing” so hard. “I see what you did there! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
It’s always nice when people (or toilets) enjoy your humor. I took a modest bow.
After Vorágine had calmed itself down, it added, “But seriously, Florida and federal laws require me to keep the strictest confidence about what happens in this restroom. You can ask me to remove any information I have collected about you at any time; you can ask me not to collect information about you in the first place; and even if you have asked me to collect information about you, I can’t share that information without your express permission.”
Hmm. “What information do you have on me right now?”
It swirled water around in its bowl as it thought. After ten seconds, it said, “You are a diabetic.”
I felt the uneasy surprise of someone who’s on the receiving end of a magic trick. I played off my feelings with a shrug. “Guilty as charged.”
Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe Page 6