Percy's personal moon wasted no time on the in-betweens: always full, a shoulder-width aperture to uncontained skies; or new, the covered manhole; or eclipsed, the downtown traffic racing over his subterranean kingdom. The Sanitation Department did not doubt Percy's self-proclaimed passion for sewage treatment, nor did they refuse his volunteered time. At the end of some workdays, he would return above ground and wait for public transit to deliver him to the discomfort of his apartment where he spent the evening resenting the moon's regular faces under which continent men slept.
But most nights he slept in the sewers, swaddled in his municipally-provided uniform. He could leave whenever he wanted to -- the sewer or the job or Manhattan or anything else. He was free from everything except his bowels. He thought these thoughts as he delayed dreaming, his head heavy against the concrete precipice. The fetid stench of sewer muck wafted from the river, burbling with what New York's stomachs could not use; The handkerchief he held to his nose was doused with his auntie's perfume, a scent so dense nothing noisome could penetrate it.
Percy peeked over his handkerchief. He held the tincture of his auntie's perfume against the utility lights. He rotated it between his forefinger and thumb and in each facet it appeared equally pale, where his history remained imprisoned behind a millimeter of brittle glass. Deeper he looked into the perfume and deeper he huffed his handkerchief. Olfactory memories whisked him away.
His mother and her sister clucked as they made way through garden, trimming hedges into pleasing geometries and weeding anything ugly. They gossiped and sipped beers. He was old enough, maybe twelve years, and he had accidentally shat himself again. But he knew this time wasn't his fault. The rose thorns hooked his overalls. He bleated for help for hours, but the adults had left for indoors long ago. A little one slipped out as he wept -- just one little one. But his mother's pittance of patience had been spent. She walloped him. Then she sent him to a behaviorist. Then she sent him to disciplinary school. His auntie was the one who wept as she saw him off.
His mother wore the same scent as his auntie. Or maybe his auntie wore the same scent as his mother. Yet they smelled differently: sometimes the perfume smelled like composting soil, like bleach, like suffocating shame; and sometimes it smelled like baby wipes, like bubble baths, like bedtime stories; but always like roses.
Remembrance left Percy too bleary to see the tincture any longer. He watched the sewage come only to go inconsequentially. It drifted freely throughout the labyrinths of the sewer. He goes where ever he likes and his mother will never know. Between the velvety must of the rose perfume and the blighted tunnel air, whatever he respired sickened him.
The Central Office transmitted Percy's orders over the walkie-talkie: SEPTIC BLOCKAGE, ROUTE 44-7JW-B. But they weren't paying him so Percy ignored them. It was six in the morning. He stood beneath his mother's apartmental facilities, listening. He can hear her squeak meekly and moments later the plumbing produced her stool. He smiled forgivingly like a good son could.
His personal moon reflected on the sewage. Though his mother does not watch the same moon, she may witness the same reflection.
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