Fiction: Commode

By Leah Mosier-Farquharson

A club speaker fell on me in Miami Beach and I haven’t been able to read since. Micro-patterns are so loud I need hotel lobby tea to waive the vertigo. Now I’m only as well-read as anyone on Ocean Drive, where Finnegan was synonymous with the local spot for Budweiser and not the Pulitzer winner. Conflict journalism didn’t interest the crowd; their conflicts lay with their tabs.

A fleeting affair with the hotel manager whose teeth shone like Chiclets still didn’t warrant me 1 a.m. room service. I thought it rather humiliating, more-than-half-tipsy and indignant, still concussion-dizzy with the landline’s cord tangled around my hand like an exotic leech. Yelling into the receiver earned only a, “Ma’am,” to which I promptly hung up. I imagined a late night yolk to break over porcelain plating, imagined tipping a server my least-creased ten and feeling fantastic.

I try to Facetime my sister but screens still hurt my eyes. She thinks that I think she’s a bore and to some degree she’s right, but I don’t let it show. Head trauma is a miracle excuse. I wondered how long I could leech it, even though its vague possibilities bored me too. Lying in front of Fontainebleau in Hawaiian Tropic until the air was stiff and my nipples felt like dinner plates would lead to either skin cancer or malaise. My commonplace notebook was dog-eared chicken scratch. Sand fell from it like an hourglass, steadily pooling in my purse.

I grabbed a thong from an antique commode with my duffel and found a maggot in the crotch panel. Slouching in sullied grey over black. I dumped the pair in the lobby’s trash, wondering the next day if the congregation of summer flies overhead the entrance were my doing. Kissing a girl with black veneered nails at an overstated cabana off 41st, I thought of that underwear. Of slouching as she danced awkwardly under the blacklights.

In the line of a gourmet espresso bar, an overly-comfortable cinephile recounted to me how Floridian screenwriter George Abbott had said, “Pace is a matter of taste,” noting the passing runners on uppers, the overworked staff, and the culture that seemed so conjoined to its locale that the notion of separating the two took an impossible effort. He seemed prideful, watching it over as if its director. Talking to a stranger without stumbling. I hummed politely, not quite sold, but acting like an interested stakeholder. It amused me then that Florida was shaped like a limp dick, and I thought of its image, smiling and nodding, as I watched the coffee orders pile up.

Leah Mosier-Farquharson graduated with a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University's Film and English programs. Mosier-Farquharson has been interested in film, art and aesthetics from childhood and in writing for as long as she's been able to capture their characteristics evocatively. Residing in Montréal, Mosier-Farquharson hones her editing, producing and writing skills. She loves jazz, geography, and highly stylized photography. (Links: @leahmosierfarquharson on Substack, @leah__mosier (two underscores) on Instagram)