The throw-up story

It was Tuesday night. I'd completed my second day back at school. I was on the phone. Sam came home at 10:33, after getting off work at 8PM. There is a benefit of working in a brewery, and that is nearly unlimited (as in unlimited until your boss thinks you are too much of a drunk to work with caustic soda) beer.

He was on the phone as he turned the key on the door. I could hear him before the door even cracked. He was loud. He was drunk. He was making plans to go over to see Nick and Anna, recently returned from the left coast and the far east. He'd be over there in forty-five minutes, just after he took a shower. He was covered in sweat.

I got off the phone, I needed to go to bed. I greeted Sam in the hall. He wrapped his arms around me as he continued to tell Anna he'd be there in forty-five minutes; just after his shower. Again. He nearly pushed me over. He hung up, he began to tell me about his day. About how he'd had a couple (duh Sam). I brushed my teeth. He kept talking. I headed toward my bed. He stood in my door. He started to take his sweaty clothes off. First the shoes... he threw them down the hall. Then his socks, those went in the bathroom. Then the shirt. Then the shorts.

"You're going to stop now, right?"

"Yeah." He kept talking. Loud. I wanted to sleep. It was now 11:11. The wishing hour. He should have already left. He was still talking, half naked with out a shower. I reminded him he needed to leave. He kept talking.

"Oh, you want to go to bed?" I was under the covers, curled up in a ball staring at him.

"Yeah."

"Ok." He retreated into the bathroom, I shut my door and turned off my light. The episode was over. Or so I thought.

The next morning I woke up. Early. I had groups to arrange, and a meeting that may or may not take up my entire off period. I stepped into the kitchen to attempt to make coffee without my glasses. As I reached to flick on the light I stepped in something wet on the carpet between Sam's room and the kitchen. It was wet. It was pale orange. It had one of those obvious splatter patterns. "Oh my Gawd, he threw up and he didn't clean it up. Ewww..." then I jumped. I hadn't had my cawfee, I was slow to react.

Now it isn't that something like this hasn't happened before. Last spring break we awakened to find a weird cream-of-wheat splatter pattern outside our front door. Five people had slept in our apartment that night. Our staircase isn't very often used therefore we had six suspects:
1) myself
2) Sam
3) Bethany visiting from Boston
4) Travis visiting from Austin
5) Allen who we think slept here but he was gone before the rest of us woke up
6) Stephanie the neighbor whose Financial Times stack up outside her door

The investigation ensued. I was sure it wasn't me. Bethany was sure it wasn't her. I was sure it wasn't Bethany and Bethany was sure it wasn't me. Sam was pretty sure it wasn't him, and Travis was pretty sure it wasn't him. We investigated further. It certainly was someone related to our apartment, it was too close to our door and out of Stephanie path. Unless she went out of her way to throw up on our doorstep. We think she likes us. It didn't make sense.

The oddest thing was that it was clear someone had tried to clean it up. Clean it up badly mind you, but it had been cleaned. There were wipe marks that someone had used a towel to try to clean up the concrete. We never found the towels.

We concluded it must be Allen, or at least that Allen had cleaned it up when he left. That seemed out of character, put possible. Allen later claimed it was not him and that he hadn't even seen it when he left.

The case of the splatter patterns remains a mystery. Our best hypothesis is currently that Stephanie trash bag broke as she was taking it down the stairs. She was in a hurry and concrete is hard to clean without a hose so she did her best and went on her way. If you have any further information please call 1-800-222-TIPS.

Back to Wednesday morning. I concluded that Sam could clean up his own vomit, whatever stains were going to be there were already there. I stepped around it and went on with my day.

I came home Wednesday afternoon and the vomit was still there. Now I was miffed. Not only did he not clean it up when he was drunk, he didn't clean it up before he went to work at noon. What the hell?

I called him at work.

"Hi."

"Hi. How are ya?"

"Good. I've got two things. You're remembering you're picking Mom and Dad up right?"

"Yeah."

"And what's with the carpet?"

"Oh, um that's Vodka Sauce. I tried to get it up, but I felt like I was just rubbing it into the carpet."

"It looks like vomit."

"I know, I thought about that. I thought I'd leave you a note, but I forgot. I was making pasta and I recapped the sauce to shake it. I forgot it wasn't closed all the way, so..."

"You know we're going to clean it up right?"

"Yeah."

"And you know by we, we mean you."

"Yeah I know that we. I'll get it."

"If it doesn't work we can cash in on our free steam cleaning or something, we've already lost our security deposit."

Since then he has commissioned an intern to clean it up. The intern has outsourcing the work and e-mailed me to a) clean up the vodka sauce, b) do his laundry, and c) pick up some glutten free beer. Funny three days later, his laundry isn't done, the vodka sauce is still there and it still looks like florecent vomit. We don't have any glutten free beer. Not sure what all that was about.