Free The Fuck Up by Arthur Nersesian

wrapped a filled-out bank deposit slip around it together with a rubber band, shoved the bundle into the green deposit bag, zipped it up, and locked it.Together, we walked to the nearby bank, and he put the money into a night drop. Then we went back to the theater. Rosa, the listless box office lady, went home, and we went into the office. After Miguel filled out a variety of forms, which created the illusion that an authority was checking us, the projectionist buzzed down to warn that the film had come to an end. Miguel turned up all the lights in the theater and turned out all the outdoor lights. Together we inspected both the theater and the dungeon downstairs to clear out all malingerers. The place was empty. While checking the toilet, I asked Miguel if plunging the toilet was among our many duties.
    “The last time the toilet got plugged up was sometime last October—anyway, I had to unplug it.”
    “I used to do that all the time at the Saint Mark’s. Awful business, unplugging a toilet.”
    “Oh,” he responded. A memory was apparently set in motion. “Last October when I started plunging, first blood started coming up, and then black feathers.”
    “Christ.”
    “Finally a small bird came up.”
    “I once unplugged a piece of red meat at the Saint Mark’s, I think it was Kielbasy.”
    “Well, I didn’t finish my story. The toilet still wouldn’t flush so I kept plunging and plunging and finally a filthy black pelt came out.”
    “A what?”
    “The pelt of a small animal. It looked like a gerbil. And I flushed again, but the toilet still flooded.”
    “Still? I’d be on the phone to Roto-Rooter by then.”
    “Well, I wish I did that,” Miguel replied, “’cause I finally sucked out what looked like a fingerless hand.”
    “Christ!”
    “It was just about this size”—he distanced two fingers a couple of inches apart—“like a child’s hand. But it wasn’t as awful as it sounds.”
    “You found a baby’s hand and you weren’t worried?”
    “Well, I had a pretty good idea whose hand it was.”
    “Whose?”
    “This nut that used to come by a lot. He got pissed once because I found him trying to stuff a … well he got mad at me, and later I heard that he worked with cadavers.”
    “You should’ve called the police.”
    “Let me warn you right now. Never, but never, call the police. They’ve been trying to close us down since the beginning. I just tossed the hand off the back of the roof. No one’ll ever find it.”
    “But what do I do if something happens to me?”
    “I’ll tell you exactly what Ox told me when I first started working here. If you can take them, beat them; if you can’t, run. There’s a bayonet and a baseball bat in the office. If you kill anyone, drag them into the office and Ox will get rid of the body for you.”
    “That’s reassuring.”
    “I think he was kidding, but listen, nothing serious ever happens. We’re open every day of the year here for twelve hours a day and since we’re in a low-income non-residential district, we’re subject to a lot of crazies. You can’t let them get to you.”
    The evening was over, everybody had left, and the lights were out. But Miguel said he still had some tedious business requiring his attention.
    “I’m wide awake. I might as well take it all in.” So he told me how much money the theater had made that day.
    “Now the way we check this is …” And he showed me a little glass-encloseddial above the desk, cemented into the wall. “Each time the turnstile spins, this number increases by one. We subtract the amount that the dial displayed at the beginning of the day from this figure, and the amount we’re left with is how many patrons came in today. We multiply that by four, which is the price of admission, and that’s how much money we should have. Understand?”
    “In theory,” I replied, and began to ask a question, but interrupted myself with a yawn.
    He smiled and said that we could do it again the