i need a black light in here, stat

I dropped a taco on the table at my downscale cigar bar. "Well, that's done," I said as I scooped it off to the side.

"Oh, she just wiped the table down a few minutes ago," said Risa. "It's fine."

No, it most certainly isn't fine. This shithole is home, but I'm not eating food off its table. I might as well lap water out of the toilet bowl.

"Eat it! It's fine!" she implored. I glanced over at the woman wiping down the tables with a revolting, tattered brown rag that used to be white, and I tossed the taco into the garbage. Risa was disgusted with me. "Okay, princess. Jesus Christ," she snarled.

Allie says I'm a germophobe. Her evidence:

  1. I wash my hands before eating, and
  2. I get a little woozy when her daughter wipes her butt, glances at the sink in passing, and then puts her hands all over my face.
If that's a germophobe, then I suppose I'm guilty, but to me this is just basic hygiene. Perhaps having poopy-kid-fingers in your mouth all day dulls a person's sense of remedial cleanilness. I am not so dulled.

When the dogs and I arrived at my sister's house, we were greeted by my sister and her four Labrador retrievers. Dex immediately christened the back yard, and when I asked for a shovel, I was told to just let it ride. This caused me to survey the backyard, the surface area of which was about a 60:40 grass-to-excrement ratio. The dogs ran around as dogs do, rooster tails of crap in their wakes. Then we went inside, and I was shown to my room. My sister's dogs gleefully leaped on to my bed and walked all over the pillows upon which my face would soon rest. I threw up in my mouth a little.

That night in the dark, as I combated psychosomatic pinkeye symptoms, I imagined Risa and Allie mocking me. "It's just a little dog shit in your face. Jesus Christ, princess."