Literary Agent Orson: The Rest Stop

The car screeched up to the curb, and Clarence watched the funny white dude as he scurried in a wide circle around him to the restroom. His gold tooth sparkled in the sun as he laughed. The round domed metal top to the trash can hung open like a shucked oyster while he took a smoke break. “White folks sho is silly,” he thought as he shook his head.

Orson made it into the stall with out a second to spare. His bowel squawked and chirped like a tropical bird as he stretched one hand to pull a sanitary seat cover from it’s dispenser on the wall. “Damned IBS,” Orson moaned. There was another insistent, loud gurgle combined with a flutter, and then a pushing feeling. And it’s getting worse. I hate rest stops, he thought as he positioned the cover on the seat and looked around the cubicle; “they’re swarming with germs and perverts,” he said. He was careful not to touch anything. “Hold it, Orson,” he reminded himself. At least I have the place to myself, he thought. He’d observed no feet in the other stall.

His hazel eyes fell on the lone passage of graffiti upon the stall wall. It began: “here I sit all broken harted…” Hmmm, that won’t do, he thought as he straightened and looked at it. “The ignorant masses strike again,” he said aloud, hands toward the heavens. “Idiots. They do this just to torture me,” he mumbled. He thought for a second and resolved: I can make it. I can’t relax with that there. He jerkily strode back to his car like a wooden marionette to fetch a marker.

"What he dooin now?" Clarence wondered as he watched Orson suspiciously and replaced another trash bag. ‘Dat dude look like he need to shit.’ Then Clarence saw the Sharpie Orson had retrieved from the car, “oh, he one a dem bafroom poets.” He laughed again. “White folks.”

Ferris, a deputy of the lowest rank with the New Jersey State Parks and Recreation department, made it his job to catch graffiti criminals. He was squatting in the next stall and had been sure he’d had a live one when Orson walked in talking to himself. But then he’d walked out. Ferris stood, disappointed, to peek over the stall wall and nearly gave his position away. Orson was back in a flash. Orson was preoccupied and hadn’t seen him. But Ferris had seen Orson, and more importantly, the black Sharpie Orson clutched in his right fist. That guy sure walks funny, Ferris thought with relish. He’s a real pervert. This was going to be a good day after all. Ferris loved to flash his badge and terrify the pervs. He’d berate them about New Jersey laws governing graffiti and lurking in restrooms, and then let them go with a warning. He had no authority to do otherwise, but the perverts didn’t know that.

“Squeeze, Orson, squeeze, hold it,” he repeated as he closed the stall door behind him. “This’ll only take a second,” he said. The breeze from the activity sent his sanitary seat cover fluttering to the floor. “Dammit, gotta do that again,” he said. “Squeeze, Orson, squeeze,” he repeated again as he removed the cap from the Sharpie. I’ll remedy this glaring travesty and then I can relax.

Ferris heard ‘squeeze, hold it, it’ll only take a minute, gotta do it again’ and saw the paper fall to the floor beneath him. This guy’s a real sicko, I might need back-up, Ferris thought. No, there’s no time for that, I need to take him down myself. Now his finely tuned sense of smell, honed over countless days and nights in men’s rooms, detected the evil scent of Sharpie. The wheels turned in deputy Ferris’s mind and it was not a pretty sum. I gotta make my move.

“Squeeze, Orson. If I can just get this ‘e’ in right here,” he mumbled, and positioned his hand. “Don’t shake. I can squeeze this in right here. C’mon Orson, you can do it. Squeeze,” he reminded himself, loudly as he put his hand to the wall.

Deputy Ferris trembled with excitement. Finally he’d get that commendation he desired. This was big.

“Squeeze, squeeze it in, don't shake,” Orson said aloud. To make sure the ‘e’ was perfect and that he maintained continence. “SQUEEZE!” he blurted once again.

“FREEZE right there you sick pervert. Of all the filthy, despicable…,” said Deputy Ferris as he stood and peered down on Orson. “Don’t move!” Deputy Ferris was surprised and dismayed by the innocent look of things. He blinked and stared again. ‘Oh God, it’s worse than I thought, this one’s really up to no good,’ he thought as he nervously stepped down from his perch and fumbled for his badge. “Stay right there!”

Orson had received the fright of his life. I knew it! Perverts are everywhere! He’d thought he was alone, and now the strange grey eyes of a lurking rest stop pervert looked down on him from the next stall. In a flash he unlocked his stall door and bolted in a funny, crab-like walk back to his car. His back hunched, face in anguish. I’m in trouble now, Orson thought as he considered his options in a panic. This stretch of turnpike didn't have many exits. "I'll never make it."

Meanwhile, deputy Ferris was screaming, “Stop pervert, stop.” His hands trembled so much he couldn’t open his stall at first. Then his windbreaker caught on the latch as he tried to chase Orson. “Stop, pervert!”

A mother with daughters had exited the other side and saw Orson limping with his awful gait, frightful look on his face and heard Deputy Ferris’s commotion. She realized the two concrete paths converged at a single point near the cars. “Run, girls, run,” she said shoving them into the grass toward their van. They screamed and ran. She screamed and ran. “Lock the door,” the mother called frantically as her heel got caught in a crack. They screamed and cried inside their van as they watched her extricate her foot from the trapped shoe.

Clarence, hearing the ruckus, came running with his large trash bag in tow from around back of the building, and watched as the scene unfolded. Soon as he heard Ferris’s voice, he knew.

Mother then bobbed up and down moving toward the van waving her arms and screaming, “honk the horn, honk the horn.”

Orson, looked to his right, and saw the women in flight. Oh, God, there’s a second pervert in the women’s room. We’re under siege. “Oh, my God,” he blurted as he scrabbled faster. “Where’s an officer when you need one?” he yelled as he opened the car door.

“Stop pervert,” Deputy Ferris yelled as the girls laid into the horn.

Orson put it in reverse and screeched his tires as the mother reached her van looking around for any semblance of the law.

“Stop pervert,” the deputy yelled one last time. “You let him get away,” he said to Clarence who now lay in the grass, in paroxysms of laughter.

“White folks is sooo siiiilly,” he said and clutched his stomach anew.

“But he’s a pervert!” Ferris pointed.

“You…” was all Clarence could get out, before he doubled up again.

The mother had got safely into her van and they all dabbed their eyes with Kleenex as mother put the van in reverse. Clarence leaned up on one elbow, saw one high heeled shoe stuck at an awkward angle in the sidewalk, looked at the women and fell back laughing again.

“White folks…” he couldn’t go on.

“What?” Deputy Ferris demanded.

Orson and the mother screeched out of the parking lot. Clarence’s gold tooth sparkled in the sun as he laughed. “Ya’ll is all perverts…”

Dejected, Deputy Ferris slumped and returned to his restroom. Maybe tomorrow, he thought, maybe tomorrow.