He brushed his teeth until they were bleeding.
"Aw, crud. Not again." He muttered to himself as he spat pink foam into the sink, "Sometimes having OCD is a bad thing."
the man reached for his perfectly folded, stark-white hand towel and added, "okay, most of the time OCD is a bad thing." the toothbrush landed in the spotless trash bin next to its wrapper. "no, no... all of the time."
not more than three feet above Henry, in typical urban fashion, Victoria stood in front of her mirror examining the effects of the previous 24 hours.
"Ugh. I am getting so old." She said into thin air while massaging the bags under her eyes. "I know! It's like when I was at the cafe' today. This girl sitting across from me said to her lunch companion that she was born in 1998. Born the year I graduated from college. Can you believe it??" Victoria turned her head slightly to reveal to the mirror the blinking blue light embedded in her right ear. "Oh, tell me about it!"
Suddenly Victoria lurched forward almost hitting her head on the mirror.
"What the--?" There was another jolt and Victoria was thrown back into the tub behind her.
Henry rushed back into the bathroom where he had just finished the morning ritual, that recently has been taking him 45 minutes instead of the usual hour, only to find that the plaster over the mirror was cracked slightly. A whimper of shock accompanied his hubcap sized eyes as he backed out of the doorway into the landing. He looked as if he had seen a viper slithering above the mirror.
Without losing eye contact with the hairline fracture in the wall, he groped for and found the hall phone.
Redial. Ringing. Ringing. "Mmm-Hullo?"
"Reggie? It's Henry. Please come quickly. It's... It's terrible!!"
Pause. Muffled sigh. "Henry. It's 5:45."
"And?"
"And, this better not be another one of your crazy 'a floorboard is shorter than it should be' complaints."
"Well, it was shorter. By three sixteenths of an inch. But that is not the point--"
"Hold on, I got another call. Just hold on!" The thick balding man reached up and pushed a button on his phone without taking it from his ear. "Super."
"Hello, Reggie? This is Victoria in B7."
"Oh, hey Vickie..." Reggie adjusted his white tank top slightly and ran his hand over the expanse of his head. "What can I, uh, do you for?"
"Yeah, hi. Look, I need you to come fix my bathroom wall." Victoria used the sink to help her up from the floor. "Something just... happened..."
"Uh... Happened?" Reggie, who, for no reason that he could see, just got a sudden burst of energy, was now waddling toward his bathroom. "Could you be, uh, more specific?" There was a pause. "Hullo?!"
"Yes. I am here."
"Henry!? Aw crud. Look, make it fast, I've got to go check out B7's bathroom."
"B7? But, that's just above me!" Henry's unblinking, wide eyes moved almost mechanically from the crack in the wall over the mirror to almost three feet above. He shuffled a few inches back from the doorway and regained his thought as if broken from a trance. "Hey, wait a minute! I called you first, you need to come down here and fix this whole mess!" Henry scowled at the receiver. "It's horrible! I don't know what I am going to do!"
"Alright, alright. I will take a look at your, er, whatever it is, when I get down there. In the mean time, why don't you juss go back to sleep."
"Sleep?! Why would I do that? I've been up for three and one half hours."
"Okay, Henry, juss relax. I will be there as soon as I can."
"Well you better be. I can't deal with this kind of mess much longer." Henry, still unblinking, lowered the receiver onto its base. He stood transfixed on the spot. Staring at the crack in the perfect plaster wall.
Well, the almost perfect plaster wall. Now, as he looked, he could see that there was a slight depression over by the lightswitch. And that corner! How could he have missed that?! The plasterer obviously hadn't been paying attention when he worked on this bathroom.
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