I live next to D.C. Wambaugh Grounds, a small kiddie park in the heart of Brooklyn, and I hear many things. Amidst the contemporary talk of drug deals and "big scores", the old guys still wander in on occasion and mumble to themselves about the Dodgers. Frank's All-Nite Pizza is across the street, and half the guys I meet smell like cheese and oregano--the other half smell like cheap liquor and dirty bedsheets. But that's all right. It's part of my job.

My name's Friday. I'm a toilet.

My great, great grandfather was Mortimer T. Crapper, a prominent outhouse in the central Ozarks, and he was fond of saying that both the Hatfields and the McCoys made use of his services with equal relish. Of course, he was a little too fond of telling that story, and eventually one of the families got wind of it and burned grandpa Mort down. And ever since then the word has been out: toilets talk too much.

The Grimaldi Bros. Outhouse Firm was the first to manufacture a new line of "silent toilets". These were hideous mutants who, in essence, had lobotomies performed on their central poopshafts. They were servile beasts who could neither relate to or comprehend their users. And they were popular. Soon after their initial release, hack plumbers across the nation began performing "special services" on the older, talking toilets until they were all but stifled. These days it's standard assembly line procedure to bend a certain wire inside the tank a certain way so as to silence a newly-made toilet. Everybody does it--except Charlie Austin.

Charlie's been working for one of the big toilet manufacturing firms for over sixteen years, and never once has he silenced a toilet. Sure, he'll stick his hand inside the tank like he's performing the maneuver, but he doesn't actually do it. You see, the word is that a talking toilet saved Charlie's life one time when some local loan sharks had pursued him into a public bathroom. Charlie hid in one of the stalls, and the toilet, named Otis, quickly understood the situation. In a loud, gruff Bronx voice Otis bellowed, "This man's union and if you two meatheads know what's good for you you'll screw before Hoffa hears of this!" The rest is history.

It was Charlie who perfected the idea of a "Crapmaster 2000", a monolithic piece of porcelain that was smarter than the average toilet. Charlie planned to put a submersible microprocessor inside the tank, allowing the Crapmaster to calculate your optimum bathroom times and tell you when to go next. Charlie even planned to install a phone line in the rear of the bowl, so your toilet could call you up at work and tell you that it would be a productive time for you to go take a dump. But the company executives shot it down. These were the old men of power; men who still had memories of the older, cruder talking toilets--toilets that laughed at them when they were children for missing the bowl, or plugged themselves up on purpose to get them punished To these men a toilet was just an appliance, not a friend. And even though they might have suspected that Charlie Austin wasn't silencing his toilets, what could they do? After all, there's nothing more economically and physically messy than a toilet recall.

But don't get me wrong. Not all of us talking toilets are blabbermouths. In fact, most talking toilets just wait until the bathroom is empty and talk to themselves. You see, even though you humans really take us for granted, we still respect you. Nowadays a toilet only speaks up to a person if it has something important or useful to say. And that brings me to my story...

Hector Simms was born on a slosh-stomping day in the cold armpit of winter; a day of taxi cab tire spinouts and multiple fender benders on Madison Avenue. It was a day when the stock brokers had mud on the bottoms of their Armani pants and the street people were trying to shrink and shrivel inside of themselves just to keep warm. I would have traded my two front bolts for a warm, clean rump to hug that day, but instead of the plump princess of my porcelain dreams I saw a ragged, moaning pregnant woman hike up her dress and fall to the dirty tiles in front of me.

"Help me," she gasped, tired and struggling. "Oh please God someone help me."

There was no one there except her and me, and I made a decision. "Close your eyes," I told her. "I am a severely disabled and disfigured person, and I would come closer to you if I could, but I'm afraid I can't move without my attendant, and he won't be back for a time. But I'll help you."

She complied. I could see her eyes squeeze shut as she winced in pain. Her silky black hair was mopping the floor and beads of sweat rolled down her face.

"How far apart are the contractions?" I asked.

"You think I have a stopwatch?" she screamed. "I don't know how far. Not far. Close. I don't know. It's coming!" Her voice deteriorated into a scream.

"Then breathe deeply," I said. "Whatever your name is, breathe deeply and use your muscles to push that kid out."

"Brilliant," she said between exertions. "Breathe and push. Why didn't I think of that? What are you a moron?"

"I'm new at this," I said. "And besides, I'm a toi... .... male. I have no first-hand knowledge of childbirth, but I've heard some street girls talk about doing it and I've been around doctors before. I think we need some warm water or something."

"Oh great," she said. "I'll just walk over to the East River, hack a chunk for myself and throw it in the micro, you stupid fool! You can't move and neither can I!"

I then performed something akin to a blood transfusion. I reversed my pipes and spouted a stream of water at her.

"Ahhg!" she yelled. "What are you trying to do, drown me? Aim it at my crotch or something!"

If anyone had walked in at that moment, they would have seen a most unusual sight indeed: a pregnant woman screaming on the floor as a toilet spouted water between her legs like some Ovidius-inspired fountain. Somewhere between a turn-on and a gross-out I guess, but that's life.

So there she was, slithering on a filthy floor, and me shooting water at her. Very Norman Rockwellish, I'm sure. The two of us were more qualified to snort uranium than deliver a baby, but when that little moving thing finally came out of her I felt utterly fatherly. I practically had myself convinced that I was involved in the conception when she breathed and moaned in a happy sort of way and said, "It's a boy! Uh, I think it is anyway... Ehhg! Look at this damn cord!"

And then she looked around. "Mister? You still with me?"

"Over here," I said.

She paused. "Over where?"

"In the stall," I said.

Another pause. "There's no legs in the stall."

I debated on lying further about being disabled, but something inside me came clean. "I'm the toilet," I said. "See me? I'll flush twice for you."

I heard her chuckle. Then she moved up to the stall door and pushed it open.

"Hi there," I said.

Her eyes bugged out.

She screamed.

She screamed again.

She ran out.

She ran in.

She picked up the baby.

She ran out again.

It would be six years before she would next appear.

The little boy facing me had a very serious look on his face. It was halfway between an "uh-huh" and an "uh-oh", and I thought for sure that he was just another kid who went to the bathroom on his way to the bathroom. But then things changed. He didn't hike down his pants, or reach for the toilet paper, or do anything that people usually do at toilets. He didn't even have a newspaper to read.

Then he spoke.

"You the talking toilet my mother told me about?" he asked, and he seemed embarrassed by his own words. We both paused, then he said, "If you don't talk to me I'm gonna pee all over you then lift up your lid and poop inside where I'm not a'posed to then stick a cherry bomb inside you and flush."

What could I do?

"Yes," I said. "I'm a talking toilet. But I don't--"

His eyes bugged out.

He screamed.

He screamed again. He ran out of the stall. He ran back into the stall.

"You really are a talking toilet!"

"Right you are, kid," I said, "but I don't really remember your--"

"I was born here," he said.

It all came back.

As I said earlier, his name is Hector Simms, and although I could have dealt with him lightly, I did not. I saw this kid staring deep into my bowl, his eyes looking for answers and reasons, and my pipes went soft. The memories flowed into me like so much water, daring to overflow.

"I remember," I said. "That was six years ago."

He nodded. "I need to talk to you, Mr. Toilet."

"My name's Friday," I said. "Have a seat."

He paused. "Should I pull my pants down first?"

"Only if you've got other business than talking," I told him.

He smiled, left his pants on, and hopped up. "What's on your mind?" I asked. He kicked his feet, fidgeting. "What is it, kid?"

He toyed with the toilet paper. "Look," I said, "this is a bathroom, not a playground, and people come here to do serious business." I flushed once emphasis.

He was undaunted. He was also still silent.

"Okay kid, I'm not talking again until you tell me--"

"My mother's been wrapped," he said.

Wrapped?

"Like a Christmas present?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Wrapped. By a man."

I thought. "Santa Claus wrapped her up?"

"No," he said again. "A bad man attacked her in an alley and wrapped her."

The sledgehammer hit. "Raped?" I asked him.

He nodded. "That's what I said, dummy."

"How... is she? Is she all right?"

He shook his head. "He hurt her bad."

"Do the police know?"

"Police don't care," came the reply. He was trying not to cry as he said, "She went to them right away. They gave her a cup of coffee and took some pictures of her boo-boos. Then they told her to go home, but we don't have a home. We live in the alley.. .where the bad men are."

As with every intelligent creature, there comes a time when certain undeniable emotions are felt. As I listened to Hector's story, I felt a strange new thing rise within me: rage. My only meeting with his mother was six years ago, when she was in need of help, and I gave it without conditions. I saw her in need, yes, but I also saw her in triumph. And when she pulled that little living thing from her own body, and we had both sweated through it, some part of my collective conscience belonged to her. And when I thought of what was done to her the rage filled me, and nothing else in my small world was important anymore.

"Do you know who this man is?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "I...I...saw him...do it."

"Then you know what he looks like," I said. "Do you know how to get to him; where he lives?"

"Yes," said Hector.

It was no dream of being relocated to the Ritz Carlton or having a police citation taped to the side of my tank that made me decide to get personally involved. Pomp and circumstance don't matter much to us toilets. I mean, in the whole history of crappers not once have we had a parade, or a state dinner, or a musical benefit in our honor (can you just picture Bob Dylan singing "Subterranean Shithouse Blues"? "Johnny's on the hopper, talkin' to the doctor. I'm on the telephone, gotta use the damn throne...") The Queen has never summoned us for a command performace and we've certainly never been carried off on a linebacker's shoulders after a Superbowl victory. But we're the supporting cast in life. We, in all of our forms, are the only appliance that everyone in the world uses consistently throughout their lives. And most people generally treat us like the stuff we dispose of. Isn't that a kick in the rim? But that's okay. We don't need any of that fancy stuff. All we need is folks. All we love is folks. And when we can, we try to help them in more than just the usual way.

But I was no Sherlock. I couldn't just puff the answers from out of my pipe. Nor could I rely on some jolly fat doctor to goad my ego. I was more like a drunken solo pianist, piddling at the keys as fast as I could until I puked on myself and hoping that the baffled audience would be stupid enough to call it a brilliant performance.

And, as it turned out, that's exactly what happened.

Gray and yet strangely luminous were the clouds of cumulonimbus on that dense, snow-threatening day. I could see them from a small side window near my stall, and I could hear the consistent shuffle of feet outside and smell bits of cheese and crust from Frank's All-Nite Pizza. I felt oddly human that day, and I imagined that I was a young boy, waking up at five o' clock in the morning to experience that first, full day of summer vacation.

Yet it was not summer. The birds were still basking in trees with leaves hundreds of miles away. The parades were still winding their way through more southerly streets. Here the beaches were covered with salted ice and the bathing suits were in mothballs. Here the alleyway muggers kept hard-boiled eggs in their pockets to keep warm while waiting. I saw a gnarled old man smoking a cigar that day, and it was so cold that his breath produced more vapors than his cigar.

It was not unlike a certain cold day six years ago.

She walked in around noon. She looked older. Her face had lots of parallel lines in it and her silky black hair was parted with streaks of silver. For a moment she stood in front of me, facing me, in silence. I saw her head slowly sway to one side, and she forced a small smile to spread.

"Miriam," she said.

"No," I told her. "My name's Friday."

"Friday," she said. "That's an odd name for a toilet."

"Well, Miriam's an even odder name for a toilet," I quipped. "Who told you that my name was Miriam?"

"Nobody," she said. "My name is Miriam. I never got the chance to tell you that."

"Oh." I felt stupid. "Miriam's a nice name. So much better for a person than a toilet."

"That's nice to know." She smiled again. "You know my son Hector?"

"We've met," I told her. "He's very clever."

She visibly warmed. "Isn't he? Clever and persistent. He's my best friend. He keeps me company. Believes in me. Isn't that a nice thing to know? He believes in me."

"I believe in you too," I said.

She looked down at the tiles. "Did he tell you?" she asked tentatively.

"Yes."

"And?"

"I... I want to help."

"How?"

"I don't know. I'm working on it."

She came closer to me. "Are you, well, uh, the only one?"

"The only one?" I asked.

"The only one that talks," she said.

"No," I told her. "I know of others."

She was thinking hard now, chewing on her lower lip.

"Can you contact these others, Friday?"

Charlie Austin got the call when he was on break, and came to the phone quickly.

"Hello?"

"It's me, Charlie."

"Who?"

"One of the toilets."

There came a pause. Then he whispered very quickly, "You guys know better than to call me at work!"

"It's an emergency, Charlie."

"Emergency, eh? Which one are you? Which lot?"

"1987 lot 12," I said. "My name's Friday."

He repeated my words, softly. Then he said, "I remember you, Friday. You hummed that song to me when I was working on you."

"Roll Out the Barrels," I said.

"Yes. That's the one," he answered. "I remember. It was a Friday that day, and you were the last one on my shift, so I named you Friday. I whispered it in your tank. It's nice to hear from you. What can I do?"

"Are you still on the assembly line?" I asked.

"Sometimes," he said. "But I'm really a foreman now. I have some friends though who still do what I used to do. I'm trying to get more people to do it every day, but I have to be cautious."

"What does the foreman do?" I asked.

"Well, he supervises the workers and keeps his eye on the inventory. Why?"

"The inventory," I repeated. "You have a say in where the inventory is shipped?"

He paused. "Yes. I guess I do."

I nodded my lid at Miriam, who was holding the "borrowed" cellular phone for me. She smiled.

"Are you interested in doing a little justice, Charlie?"

But I already knew the answer.

Hell, a guy like Charlie Austin lives for justice.

It sounds funny, but it turned out that the rapist's address was 123 4th Street. Hector followed him one time, and when he told me I thought it sounded more like Sesame Street than reality. In fact, I think I said, "Who lives there, Big Bird?" But the boy set his jaw tight and his eyes slowly burned at me. "That's his address," he said. "That's his address."

Then Hector told me his name.

"Guy Grimaldi," the boy said, and I almost flushed.

Yes, it was true. This was a relative of the very same Grimaldi bastards who founded the Grimaldi Bros. Outhouse firm in the nineteenth century, spewing out their accursed Grimaldi silent toilets. It was the stinking Grimaldis who gave rise to the now-standard industrial silent toilets. To this day any talking toilet in the world would give his left pipe for five minutes alone with a Grimaldi. Just five. One minute for verbal abuse, three minutes and fifty seconds of slamming him off the porcelain and smashing the lid in his face, and a quick ten seconds to turbo flush his pulpy remains into the sewer where they belonged.

But I'm not bitter.

There was no need to be bitter.

Why?

Because thirty angry toilets were on their way to Brooklyn.

Afew days later Miriam Simms left a little note for the rapist. It said, simply, "Catch me if you can." It was tied to a little red brick and flung through his window. Miriam was careful to stop at all the local pubs and brag of her deed. Then she waited.

Meanwhile a couple of Charlie's most trusted men were standing by with the shipment of toilets. They were also waiting.

Midnight came. The alleyway where Miriam and Hector slept was considered "safe", as far as alleyways go. A lot of unwed mothers and broken families resided there. They slept in boxes and newspapers and trash bags. Their children played with rusty cans and other people's garbage. And into this desolate world walked a Grimaldi.

He wore a long black coat. A wisp of smoke trailed behind him. His hair was dark and thinning. His face was ugly. He walked up the dreary alley at a deliberate pace, and something gleamed in his right hand.

Knowing where Miriam slept, he picked his way through the sleeping forms amidst the rubble. The paper-on-paper rasp of a car's nearby passing could be heard. Grimaldi stopped. He seemed to sense something, perhaps have a second thought or two. His nose sniffed the air, which was thick with the odor of wet cardboard. He sniffed like a little rat in a cubbyhole. His ferret hands moved quickly to extinguish his cigarette. Then, looking to both sides, he finally moved on.

Miriam and Hector slept in a large refrigerator box whose opening faced a building wall. Grimaldi slowed as he approached this box, and he shifted the object--a knife--in his hand. He circled the box partway, then stood facing the opening, his back to the wall.

It was very dark inside the box.

Grimaldi started to bend down, almost like he was going to use the toilet. He wanted to see her face before he killed her; perhaps rape her one last time.

But neither Miriam nor Hector were in the box.

In fact, no one was in the box.

Then, an instant later, frustrated by the darkness, Grimaldi jumped into the box, his arm flailing wildly at old newspapers and empty bags.

And, from above, the crane moved.

A great platform holding thirty pieces of pissed-off porcelain was being shifted so that it dangled from the roof of the building. Grimaldi, soon realizing the box was empty, swore loudly and began to back up.

Then he paused.

He heard something. It was a strange sound for midnight. It sounded like a crane. Yes, a crane. A moving crane. From above.

His little lizard legs backed up quickly. He was out of the box.

The crane unloaded.

Grimaldi looked up.

Nearly two tons of screaming toilets kamakazied into him.

No more Grimaldi.

Charlie took it upon himself to personally repair all of the injured toilets. The newspapers called it an unfortunate construction accident, and they were quick to point out that a few grams of cocaine were found on the victim. The working cattle of the city lifted half an eyebrow to the two paragraph article in the morning, then they took a few sips of bad coffee, glanced sheepishly at their watches, and forgot about it. Guy Grimaldi's name was wiped clean from human memory, and he left nothing behind except a nasty stain on the pavement.

Miriam got a decent-paying job as a secretary, and she was able to get an apartment and send Hector to Catholic school and buy him new clothes and games and books.

As for me? I gave up the public restroom scene and had Charlie install me at 89 Winthrop Court.

That's where Miriam and Hector live.