The Ballad of the Singing Loo # 5

There's now a suit from the FBI who stands in the bathroom all day long till the library closes. He never sits, not even to shit, not even to eat. I couldn't figure it out until I realized that there were actually two of them and some unseen changing of the guards.

I recognized them both, of course, from their earlier assignment, checking various patron records. This was even before the RNC was officially set here. On rainy days or spring thaws, scraggly hooded boys from the Urban Explorer's Action Squad used to come in and pore over the old sewer maps down in the subbasement where I worked ("when it's rainin', don't go drainin'"). The two suits would drop into the shadows and emerge the next day to examine the same maps.

Kevin, before he was laid off, had fun turning the tables, pulling the records of the two Feds to see what they were reading. He tried to chat them up, offer some reading recommendations, and he claimed that one of them was really into Daniel Clowes, that he'd actually caught the guy walking out of a bathroom stall with our copy of Like a Velvet Fist Cast in Iron. But of course you couldn't believe half of what Kevin said, even when it was true.

Anyhow, the two suits were older and must've resented this crap assignment, guns holstered and standing in the john all day being mistaken for queers. You could just imagine their younger bosses with their promising carreers and their blonde wives. These two were, in short, dangerous. I took to shitting at home.

____________________
Previously on Laws of Silence:
* The Ballad of the Singing Loo