As a teenager, I worked in a German deli. A German deli that took much pride in the store's cleanliness and quality of food. Unfortunately, I also worked for a Nazi of a boss. He was a ball-breaker to say the least -- not to mention a frequent and nasty drunk. There was many a day when ol' Johnny would come in to work reeking of scotch or whatever disgusting booze he'd consumed the night before or even during the wee hours of the morning before the store opened up.
Johnny never got a DWI because he lived in the huge apartment on the second floor of the building, which covered the footprint of the whole first floor. The first floor was the deli plus a small, separate room behind the deli. A psychiatrist rented that area, which she used as her office.
One Saturday morning, fresh at five AM, Johnny came in to open up. He was his usual drunken mess. He conducted his business as usual, leaving around eight to go take a nap upstairs. He came back around eleven, apparently feeling a little better.
A few hours later, the psychiatrist comes in, but not for her usual coffee. She says to me, "Is John here?"
"Yeah. He's in the back."
"Could you get him for me?"
So I get him. They talk for a few minutes. She leaves. I ask him what she wanted. Johnny says, "She says she thinks we got rats, and that one of them may have died in the walls and is stinkin' up the place. Bullshit. We never had rats."
Nothing more.
Next day, the same thing happens -- she comes in and asks for Johnny again. I overheard parts of their conversation. Something about "an unbearable stench" and "brown stains on the ceiling tiles" and "cannot conduct her business anymore."
I ask him what happened. He said, "Get Singh."
I get Singh, the fourteen-year-old Indian immigrant who worked about eighty hours a week in the kitchen. All three of us go into the office.
If anyone has ever smelled a dead body, this is exactly what it smelled like. It's a smell you can't get out of your nose for days, and one you will never forget. A dead body smells so bad partially because of natural decaying of bionic material, and partially because the sphincter lets loose the bowels; the body shits all over itself.
We're inside the office and sure enough, the ceiling tiles in the far right-hand corner of the room are stained brown and yellow, almost looking moist. Johnny has Singh remove the tainted tiles, very obviously the source of the foul odor.
I asked Johnny when we got back inside whether he thought it was a dead mouse. He pulls me in close and says, "I was out the other night drinkin' Wild Turkey 'til four in the morning... got real shitty. Went back up to the apartment cus' I had to shit real bad. I don't remember much other than I was pissin' outta my asshole. Woke up the next morning to realize I shit in the garbage instead of the toilet and must have knocked it down. Prob'ly leaked down into her place."
He told me all this as casual as you would talk about the ball game. I was hysterical with disgust, partially because of the filth this animal is capable of but mostly because he made Singh change the nasty shit-dripping tiles with bare hands.
The shrink left less than a month later. I guess she couldn't take the stink.
