My new roommate enjoys clamming in the middle of the night. He hasn't told me this, but I suspect it because I found an overturned bucket and clumps of dirt in the bathtub this morning. Scattered on the floor, this dirt resisted the shower's stream of rushing water and remained stuck to the floor. The dirt's willful ways forced me, completely naked in preparation for my bath, onto my hands and knees. I found it possessed the appearance of everyday dirt but the texture of caramel, and remained rooted to the floor like the sticky residue from a Snickers bar does to one's teeth. My task took about half an hour with a wooden toothpick, but I finally got the shower clean.

Now, my roommate sleeps easy, oblivious of my gargantuan efforts against the caramelized monstrosity, his doing.

It really annoys me when I want to take a shower and am forced to clean up the fallout of another's late night clamming adventures. Since that initial encounter, the dirt has appeared several more times, never on a consistent schedule, but always turning up sometime in the middle of the night, when I am supposed to be sleeping.

I have tried to ask Zachary about this, several times. I am always clever about it and mention it in passing. The first time I mentioned it, I stood at our apartment's window, watching the elderly man across the street sweep his front porch.

At 1:37 everyday, this man would walk out his front door and sweep his porch. When he reached the park bench beside his front door'I'm certain he must have stolen it from Kylie Park downtown; it bears the distinctive curvature on the handles of Kylie Park'he tilted it back just enough in order to sweep under it. Everyday, like clockwork, I could rely on the old man to sweep his porch, regardless of said porch's condition (which was always quite clean, thanks to his regular efforts). How sad, I used to think, that this old man's primary motivation in life was the unnecessary cleaning of a spotless surface. How wretched an existence this was!

I reached a monumental decision one afternoon as I watched him. I could lend some meaning to his hollow existence by dirtying his porch for him. With a dirty front porch, he'd have a true calling and a real reason to clean it! What a spontaneous and unexpected change in fortune he was to have, and all because of me, his selfless benefactor!

I began setting my alarm for seven o'clock every morning and, after my coffee and toast, would walk across the street and dump the coffee filter out on his porch. I did my best to scatter the grinds across as wide an area as possible. Damned if I didn't notice, those first few afternoons, an extra zip in his step, a little spring of contentment, as he swept his front porch! It makes me glad inside to think that people like me exist in the world, people who are willing to wake up early every morning just to lend meaning to some stranger's dull life.

Anyway, on the morning of our first confrontation, as I watched my old man cleaning his beloved porch, I heard Zachary cleaning the dishes from his morning's breakfast. Never would I again have such an opportune time to segue into the chosen topic, I thought.

'Zachary, have you ever been clamming?'� I asked him.

'Clamming?'� he asked back, cleverly parrying my maneuver with feigned ignorance, but I was onto his game.

'Yes, clamming,'� I continued in a casual everyday tone. 'Like fishing for clams.'�

'No I've never been clamming,'� he replied, and scrunched his eyebrows down in confusion. I had the duplicitous devil in my sights now, though, and escape was impossible.

'When would you say is the best time to go clamming?'� I pressed, rolling right through his denial like I was steamrolling a school playground, with my steamroller.

'I told you already that I don't know anything about clamming,'� he said, his voice rising in aggravation, a clear sign of his guilt. 'Don't you have something better to do than stare out that window? Don't you have a job anymore?'�

'I think it's obvious that I don't,'� I replied, a witty comeback if ever I heard one.

'Anyway,'� I continued, narrowing my eyes in suspicion as I peered across the street. 'Do you think night is the best time to go clamming?'�

'I don't know, Alex. I don't know anything about it.'�
Although I faced the opposite direction, my ears picked up on an increased volume from the sink, as he brushed the brillo pad angrily back and forth across dirty pans.

'Granted, but do you think night is probably the best time for it?'�

'Sure, Alex,'� he replied and sighed, in concession of his guilt. 'Night is the best time for clamming.'�

From that point on, I was certain he sabotaged our bathtub at night with his clamming filth. I counted two undeniable pieces of evidence: an admitted preference for clamming at night, and a displayed tendency to lie, as he initially claimed a lack of knowledge about clamming, and later contradicted that claim in the very same conversation by admitting his preference for night clamming!

Oh, how he betrayed my trust on that occasion!

Having verified his guilt, I clammed up and watched my old man in silence.

Did you read my pun? 'Clammed up?'� Sometimes, I am so funny.

*

I pondered my situation for several days. The cold truth was that, every couple mornings, I awoke to a bathtub full of grime and was subsequently robbed of thirty minutes of my own personal, valuable free time as I cleaned the muck. The lack of options discouraged me; I needed to maintain my personal hygiene, so discontinuing my morning bath was out of the question.

The answer struck me in a downtown grocery store, like manna from heaven. After purchasing my monthly supply of strawberry preserves, I was leisurely strolling through the store, searching for anything else I might need, when my eyes came across it: a child's wading pool.

The display pool, devoid of water but full of inflatable toys in primary colors, sat on the department store's floor. It was a navy blue wading pool, perfectly sized for a child-sized afternoon of playing or to occupy my apartment balcony. I realized the answer to my dilemma: as it was summertime, I would begin bathing in the wading pool, on the fourth floor balcony of my apartment and leave the uncivilized barbarian to his own filth. I reasoned that eventually, Zachary would tire of wallowing in his own obscenity and either clean the bathtub or cease his clamming escapades. Either option would be fine with me, and I prematurely declared myself the winner of our epic struggle for bathtub dominion.

Upon returning home, I immediately set up my outside bath. I went to bed that night like a child on Christmas Eve, with dizzied butterflies crashing into my stomach walls. I found myself shaking in anticipation of the coming night, and I prayed that the mysterious black ichors'just days earlier, the bane of my morning existence'would appear again in the night. And, praise the gods, my bathtub was full of dirt on the next morning.

Even the smartest people can err in judgment.

The first day, Zachary entered the shower room for his morning routine, and I sat in my pool, basking in the summer sun, waiting for him to exit the shower. As he exited the shower, I rushed from my position in the pool to the shower room, overcome by the urge to view'finally!'my clean shower. Even before I got to the shower, I could envision sweet victory in the shining reflected tiles of a clean shower.

I am not sure how he circumvented my trap, but the grime still covered the bathtub floor. Determined not to waver in my resolve, I returned to my wading pool and finished my daily ritual.

*

The days that followed brought more of the same. I bathed in my wading pool, the old man swept his porch, and Zachary showered in a filthy bathtub, ignorant of the problem. I don't know how he did it, but he continued to use our bathroom, entering with his towel draped over his bare shoulder and exiting with it around his waist, beads of water glistening upon his muscled, hairless chest.

Every morning, after the dispersion of my coffee grinds, I monitored the grime's status. The bathtub accumulated more dirt as the days progressed, and a thick layer covered the entire floor after only nine days of careful watching. As the days turned into weeks, layers of filth covered our bathtub, causing me to gag upon entering the room. Yet Zachary continued to use the room, never mentioning the subject and never going near the room with a brillo pad, toothpick or other cleaning utensil.

After about a month of this wading game (did you see my pun? 'sometimes, I can be so funny!), I realized that more drastic measures would be needed to resolve our situation. As a grown man, I found it beneath me to bathe everyday in a child's wading pool, and the effectiveness of such a personal hygiene solution was questionable, for I had noticed a peculiar rash developing over my skin. It was a dry, scaly red rash and it amused me to no small extent, because my skin took on a reptilian quality. I fancied myself a sort of comic book superhero, a glorious predator who avenged the injustices perpetrated by discourteous roommates and acted hospitably towards the bored old men of the world. I found myself asking the question:

'What would Alex the Lizardman do in order to right these wrongs?'�

I asked myself this question often in my daily comings-and-goings, often attracting the disgusted glances of misunderstanding bystanders. They judged me, as I muttered to myself, covered in my subtle odor and a scaly red rash, maybe buying my monthly supply of strawberry preserves or just a cup of hot cocoa at the corner donut shop, but they didn't know the truth, the vicious twist of fate that had delivered me into my condition. I asked this question often, but never heard the reply escaping from my lips, until about five weeks after I had implemented my ingenious wading pool plan.

I needed to stop the filth at its source. I needed to kill Zachary.

*

I'd love to tell you that I'd planned out his demise in some intricate, Poe-like fashion, but life is never that simple.

It was of the utmost importance to me that he recognized that I was his killer, that he would realize that he had ultimately brought about his own end through the grave injustices he'd enacted upon me. It immediately made me rule out the relatively safe, innocuous methods of poison or murdering him in his repose. If he was to recognize I was his destructor, he would require a violent and sudden end. More importantly, he would require being awake and fully conscious. I debated the options in my head, for several days. I could shoot Zachary, after a lengthy explanation at gunpoint. I could tie him to a chair and beat his brains in with a hammer. I could slit his throat with a knife, or suffocate him with a plastic bag while punching him in the testicles repeatedly. I could sew his rectum shut and keep feeding him and feeding him'�

The eventual reality proved much different than I'd envisioned, but, in the moment's passion and impulse, proved much more satisfactory. I was bathing in my wading pool on my apartment's balcony, wearing very demure red trunks, more than considerate to my roommate and my neighbors. (I am always thinking of the feelings of others.)

'Alex, are you taking your bath?'� Zachary called out, demonstrating his ignorance. I took my bath at the same time every day.

'Yeah, I'm out here.'�

He walked onto our balcony and screwed up his face; he wrinkled his brow, squinted his eyes, and drew his mouth into a thin serious line. This look, one I knew so well as an expression of condescension, was directed at me.
'Alex, is that your underwear in the refrigerator?'� he asked as he walked towards the balcony edge, turning his gaze outward.

'Who else's underwear would it be, you stupid piece of vulture excrement, you worthless pile of pig vomit, you lizard?'� I asked. 'Only two of us live here. Whose could it possibly be?'�

I didn't really say that, but you can bet that I thought it.

'Yes, it is,'� I said instead, because I always try to be nice.

'And why is your underwear in a bowl in our refrigerator?'� he asked, as if he couldn't possibly imagine why someone would keep underwear in the refrigerator. He placed his hand on the balcony rails, leaning his body forward, and gazed out over the horizon, perhaps at the mountains outside the city's limits or maybe just across the street.

Seeing him there, so content as he basked in my sun and enjoyed my view and judged me with his accusations, initiated a radical change in my mood. Taking advantage of his distracted gaze, I emerged from the wading pool like a crocodile, like some vicious predator, Alex the Lizardman. I clubbed him across the back of his head with my forearm. He turned, eyes widened and hands raised. I swept his legs out with one arm and pushed his chest over the balcony edge with the other in a deadly scissors motion. Zachary toppled over the edge, four stories to a grisly end.

Reality differed from my fantasy in that Zachary didn't say or yell anything in his final moments. The only sound emerging from the brief scene, other than a shuffling of feet, was a sharp crack as the body landed on the ground.

I immediately regretted all the time I'd wasted pondering Zachary's demise. A few seconds of impulse had rectified my situation.

I looked over the balcony edge, down to that crumbled, motionless corpse. I found it difficult to imagine that the now hollow vessel once housed a soul that caused me so much agony. I waited for several minutes, peering this way and that way, looking across the street into the dark alleyway's shadows, trying to determine if anyone had seen the incident. From all indications, no one had, and I needed to ensure that no one would.

I exited our apartment, dressed still in only my bathing suit, bright red with sailboat outlines patterned across it. I ran down three flights of stairs in my bare feet, reveling in the pattering sound they made against the hard concrete. I exited into the summer morning's newborn sunshine, and felt rebirth in the ray's warmth. I grabbed the corpse by both arms and dragged it, face down, across the street. I struggled for a moment with his dead weight, and then trudged up two wooden steps onto the old man's porch. There I left the body, turning and running back to the safety of my apartment. I felt a surge of pride swell my chest. Today, instead of cleaning my morning coffee remains, my old man could delight in cleaning his porch of human remains.

Sometimes, I am so funny.

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