The house was like a co-op. They took turns doing different chores. Dishes. Cooking, Taking care of the plants. Cleaning the main spaces. Cleaning the shared bathrooms.
That week the people who cleaned the bathrooms complained the most. Their names were Alex and Jess. Alex was a girl and Jess was a guy. Very confusing actually when you said their names to other people. But Alex was a college dropout who had decided that she wanted to smoke weed and be an activist more than study old white people at the political science department. Jess was a guy from a working class family who studied at the community college. He was desperately studying and working at the same time, trying to transfer into the university that Alex had droped out of.
Apparently most of the men in his family were mechanics and none of them like their jobs. Each one looked forward to the weekend and got slammed hard. Beer and liquor both at the same time.
"Sounds like us then," Bill laughed while raising a glass. Bill was a funny guy. He was the only one at the co-op who could get away with never cleaning. Anytime it was his turn to start taking one of the cleaning roles he'd get out of it by trading. It wasn't too big a deal for most the folks in the house because he had a large van. So he would most often be on shopping duty. Driving himself and one or two other housemates to the grocery store for large hauls.
"Damn I'm going to kill Calvin! I can't stand this smell." Alex said plugging her nose.
"Oh it's not that bad. It just smells like." Jess thought for a bit. "Like asaparagus."
"It smells like shit."
"Oh come on. It does not. It literally smells like
asparagus
. And you like asparagus so what's the big deal?"
"I don't like it when it comes from people's pee. I don't want. to smell people's pee!"
Jess took a whiff. Thought it was true. He didn't like smelling other people's piss. And the asparagus just made the piss easier to smell.
"I need to take a break," he said. Alex scoffed.
Jess stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. He saw Calvin hunched over sitting on the deck. He was surprised to see that Calvin wasn't on his phone. Was just sitting there hunched over. Thinking or something.