It especially rankled Florence that foreign websites made such a big deal over the dryouts. If anything, the city was sending out more water trucks than ever, and post-Renunciation dryouts were no more frequent than before.
Yet they were more distasteful. With ten residents and two bathrooms, the oil drums didn’t hold enough rainwater to purge the toilet bowls in a timely fashion for more than a couple of days. Thereafter, since modesty proved as dispensable as fresh parsley, they all peed out back; more substantial business required a trowel. But it was winter, when the air smacked your bare ass like the slap of a hand, and the ground was hard. Avery had confided that she and Savannah both opted for self-storage for as long as mind-over-matter remained feasible.
When the pipes were flowing—which, in defiance of the snide foreign coverage, was most of the time—Willing had adopted an inflammatory habit of standing sentry outside the Stackhouses’ bathroom downstairs when the kids took showers. The family wasn’t accustomed to water conservation, and considered showers of indefinite duration a Human Right. Since their arrival, the water bill had tripled. So preparing dinner, Florence would typically hear a variation of the following exchange from below:
“Get away from the door, you pervert!” Goog would shout.
“That’s four minutes,” Willing would announce in a monotone.
“You’re keeping an ear to the crack, hoping you can hear me jerk off.”
“You may masturbate as long as you like if you turn off the water. Soap is a more effective lubricant when the suds don’t wash down the drain.”
“You let Savannah shower for ten minutes, I timed it! You were just trying to get a peek at her tits—”
“Five minutes,” Willing would say stoically. “I gave you fair warning.”
At which point the spigot filling a pot with water for pasta in the kitchen would slow to a drizzle.
“Wilber, you asshole! I’ve got shampoo in my hair!”
Willing had learned to operate the main shut-off valve to great punitive effect. His purpose was honorable, but his interventions as water policeman were not improving his relationships with his cousins. He may have enjoyed his offices a bit too much.
Then there was the emotionally charged issue of toilet paper. In most major cities, stockpiling of family packs was rife, leading to chronic shortages and gouging. At the shelter, it had become impossible to keep the restrooms supplied, because residents swiped the rolls; the Department of Homeless Services had issued a memorandum withdrawing funding for paper goods altogether, to Adelphi’s decided olfactory detriment. Public facilities in the likes of department stores and museums also ceased to provide the means of tidying up after one’s ablutions, presumably having suffered the same pilfering from a higher class of clientele.
Florence initially taped a TWO SQUARES PER WIPE notice above both holders, a polite request that, given the continued depletion of this precious resource downstairs, was roundly ignored. She tried discreetly taking her sister aside to suggest that maybe she “peed too often”; if she was capable of disciplining her digestive tract during dryouts, perhaps she could direct a degree of similar grit to her bladder. Big surprise, Avery was offended. Florence had also to take Savannah to task for leaving wads in the trash with red and beige traces: the paper had been squandered on removing makeup. Monitoring her guests on such a tawdry level was embarrassing, but when both expense and sheer availability were at issue, she had no choice. Substitutes like cotton balls, paper towels, and napkins were bad for the plumbing, and soon as hard to come by as the real thing.
Eventually, the inevitable occurred, what Florence had been dreading: repeated shopping trips netted no replenishment, and they were down to their last two rolls. Enraged internet postings established that New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut were experiencing the same scarcity. She was aware of neighbors quietly trading their stash one roll at a time for red meat and chicken, which was nothing short of extortion. So she assigned Willing a research project, and called a house meeting.
“I realize this is mortifying for everyone,” Florence said. “But until the situation improves, we’re going to have to do without in the ass-wipe department. Willing?”
“Before indoor plumbing,” Willing said. “Americans used newspaper, or pages of a Sears catalog. But there are no more magazines and newspapers.”
“Dad would be so proud,” Avery said. “Finally one good reason to rue the downfall of the New York Times.”
“The Romans used a sponge soaked in vinegar on a stick,” Willing said. “Also, that tradition of only eating with your right hand in India? It’s not just a ritual, but a biological imperative. Because I knew they wipe with their left hands. I didn’t know they do it with no paper.”
“Oh, grossss!” Bing wailed.
“Nix that,” Lowell said. “I’d sooner use the bedspread.”
“That’s sort of what we’re coming around to,” Florence said. “I have a bag of clean rags, and I could stand to cull my closets. Anything you also don’t wear we can cut into small pieces. With vinegar by the toilet, too, you might find the sanitation a step up.”
“But you can’t flush cloth,” Willing said.
“In megacities like Rio and Beijing,” Nollie said, “people haven’t put paper down the toilet for years. The sewers are too delicate. They put it in a bin, beside the john.”
“We could get used to it,” Willing said. “You can get used to anything.”
“Well, I can’t get used to that,” Avery said, standing up. “I’m opting for the American solution: I’m going shopping.”
“I’m with Mom,” Savannah said. “You people are barbarians.”
Avery and her daughter flounced out to the Jaunt, and were gone for hours.
They returned chastened, however. After scouring Long Island and New Jersey while exhausting nearly all the gas in the car—also exorbitant and hard to come by—they scored one package of paper towels (reserved for roll-your-own tampons), along with two bottles of white vinegar, an admission of defeat. Meantime, the rest of the crew had spent a riotous afternoon snipping “ass napkins” from torn sheets, old towels, worn-out socks, lengths of fabric left over from hemming curtains, and Florence’s iffier thrift-store purchases. Harlequin squares piled in sprightly towers like vertical quilts. If and when Florence was once again able to reach for a squishy nine-pack from a grocery shelf, she was bound to feel a curious loss.
Willing might have quit going to school altogether because they taught the wrong things: algebra and state capitals. If he held sway, they’d be learning how to purify water and how to forage for edible plants. How to build a fire when your matches were wet. How to pitch a tent, or make one from a rain poncho. How to tie knots, how to grow potatoes. How to catch and skin a squirrel. How to load a gun.
Students at Obama High studied biology, but teachers did not apply the lessons to the right environment. The urban ecosystem was unusually fragile. It was terrifyingly interdependent. Too many things had to work in order for a city to work at all. You could not count on many things working. You did not count on anything working.
When the Renunciation first began to bite, people shared on social media the best Dumpsters to dive and which supermarkets had breakfast sausage. But city dwellers soon kept such tips to themselves. If Pathmark had thrown out some only-slightly-moldy pre-sliced Swiss, the last thing you did was tell someone else.