A Fistful of Suds

It was pretty neat at first, being able to tell his coworkers that Clint Eastwood was living in his bathroom.
But it got old.
It got real old.
Fast.
Of course nobody believed him. They all thought he had finally cracked and started fantasizing about the Hang ‘Em High posters plastered on his bedroom walls. Chase didn’t even believe it himself when he woke up that first morning and found the silver-haired seventy-seven year-old screen legend whizzing in his toilet.
“Morning, fatso,” Clint scowled out the side of his mouth.
Chase clutched his love handles defensively, trying to tuck them away under his wife-beater. Normally, he would also have been offended by the sound of someone else’s urine playing “Soothing Ocean Sounds, Vol. 7” in his own toilet, but it was his idol, Clint Eastwood, so he let this slide and stammered nervously instead.
“Uh, g-g-good morning.”
It was pretty awkward considering that this famous movie star was still relieving himself not two feet away from him.
“Um, mind telling me what you’re doing here in my place, Mr. Eastwood? This is private property you know...”
“Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
“Uh, no, I don’t. You’re doing your Dirty Harry thing? That’s cool... I guess. Listen, why don’t you just finish up what you’re doing there and we can talk in the den...”
“Well, for the past three quarters of an hour I’ve been sitting on my ass in your outer office waiting on you!”
Chase stood in the doorway, blinking. He looked around the tiny bathroom.
“This is my inner office. Oh, right. You’re still doing your Dirty Harry quotes.” Chase was a bit torn about his present situation. It might have been cool if Clint had been sitting down to a breakfast of Corn Pops and blueberry Pop Tarts and carrying on a normal conversation with him, but here they were, standing uncomfortably close in the john, neither wearing pants, and Clint was speaking entirely in lines from his first Dirty Harry movie.
“Well, I’m honored you thought to stop in my place of all places to take care of your business, Mr. Eastwood, but I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to break into someone’s home and just take your pants off.”
“Well, then the law is crazy.”
He still wasn’t talking to Clint. He was talking to a seventy year-old home invader reliving the glory days of his youth.
“What’s that smell?” Chase balked suddenly.
“Exhaust fumes coming from the tailpipe,” Clint explained, still scowling in his Dirty Harry voice.
“Oh, that is gross, man. Okay, you know what? I’m gonna be late for work. You can let yourself out the front door if you like or you can chill around my place till I get back. That’s cool, I guess. We can whip up some Spaghetti-O’s later and pop in one of your movies. Lemme just grab my toothbrush and...”
“Get out of the way, hammerhead.”

It was three days later, and Clint Eastwood still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. There was plenty of water in there, but Chase was starting to wonder how the man was getting his food. There was a bar of soap in the shower and some Drain-O under the sink, but a man couldn’t get any nutrients from those things. Could he?
Maybe Dirty Harry could...
It was a scary thought.
The other thing which bothered Chase was that Clint was still speaking in movie lines––and nothing but them. Having a celebrity living in his bathroom constantly was starting to become a burden. Showers, for instance, had been pretty awkward lately.
Coming home from work the third day, Chase tossed his keys on the front table and exhaustedly slammed the door shut. The bathroom light was still on.
“Okay, dude, do you really have nowhere else to be? Shouldn’t you be working on a new picture or something? You spend enough time in my bathroom, they’ll be missing you at the Oscars next year.”
No response.
Chase checked his messages. Eighteen calls. From that stalkerish new girlfriend of his. Just like that chick from that movie Clint shot in Carmel.
“You know if you’re just gonna lounge around all day, it would be nice if you’d at least take down my messages instead of letting it run to the machine.”
“Where does it say that I gotta drop what I’m doing and answer the phone every time it rings?”
This one sounded familiar, but Chase couldn’t place the movie right away. He stepped into the bathroom doorway and found the man sitting on the john and clipping his toenails. And he wasn’t doing it over the waste basket.
“Okay, Clint. Really. All these quotes from your movies, it’s driving me insane. Are you really like this all the time outside of film or are you just doing this to bug me? Can you just talk normal for once? For once?”
“You’re all heart.”
“I mean it. It’s not funny anymore.”
“Kind of funny...” he growled like DJ Dave Garver.
“No Clint, stop doing that! It’s not funny at all!”
“Al, you ever find yourself getting completely smothered by someone?”
“What? My name is not Al... Oh, I get it. You’re doing Play Misty For Me now? Okay. Enough. I’m going to bed. It’s six o’clock and I’m going to bed cuz I can’t stand hearing your movie jive anymore. Please, please don’t be here when I wake up. I’m tired of peeing in the goddamned kitchen sink already.”
“You haven’t got the faintest idea of what love is, we don’t even know each other,” Clint scowled perfectly as DJ Dave as Chase stepped out the door.
“You’re damn right. We don’t.”

The days slipped by and June turned to August. Chase couldn’t sleep at night anymore. He lay awake, shivering under his sheets. He couldn’t escape the man. Clint was watching him all the time from the walls of his apartment. He finally tore down the posters and stuffed them in the garbage disposal.
He couldn’t take it anymore.
He had do to something about this psycho-space cowboy.
There suddenly came a loud ruckus from the bathroom. He took up his baseball bat and stormed the john.
“What the hell is going on in here?”
Clint glared at him sideways from under a sombrero that had come out of nowhere.
“That might be cannon fire.”
He gave the toilet a courtesy flush.
“Good God! So we’re going through the spaghetti westerns again?”
“God is not on our side because he hates idiots also.”
“Okay, one more word, Blondie, and I bash your face in. I want you outta my house. Now.”
Clint took the smoldering cigar from between his lips and put it out decisively on the tile countertop. He stood, pulled up his pants and buckled them, then strode to the door.
“The way I figure, there’s really not too much of a future with a sawed-off runt like you,” he scowled. And then, for the first time in two months, he spoke a purely original line of his own: “So now you know what it’s like having somebody eyeballing you day in and day out, gawking at your face and never letting you alone. Well, there’s more to the world than me, Chase. Get off your ass every once in awhile and give the DVD player a rest. Besides, that wasn’t your girlfriend calling all day. You don’t have a girlfriend. It was your mother wondering why you’re too busy playing grimace-faced cop with yourself in the mirror to drop her a visit.”
He walked through the den and stepped out onto the front balcony, tossing his sombrero into the night.
“Hey,” Chase called after him. “What project are you working on next?”
“I don’t know yet,” Clint scowled as he squinted at the horizon. “But it’s gonna be depressing as hell.”

Movies referenced: Dirty Harry (1971) written by Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink & Dean Riesner, Play Misty For Me (1971) wirtten by Jo Heims & Dean Riesner, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) written by Age, Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone