I had planned to be home three hours and twenty-seven minutes ago. I had not planned to wait on the tarmac for an hour and eight minutes and counting. I am regretting eating breakfast now. The hotel the interviewer put me up in was shitty, and the dining room was filthy. I’m sure a rotten egg was what was causing me distress, but I can’t go to the bathroom on the airplane. I think of E. coli and SARS and swine flu. I’m sorry, H1N1. I think of the obese man, two rows back in the aisle seat, and imagine his sweat dripping over the toilet rim and onto the rest of the metal box surrounding the hole. I think of the crying kid, a couple rows ahead of me, who I saw run to vomit a few minutes ago because he was nervous. I can’t go to the bathroom on an airplane. But I can’t just sit here. The situation is getting desperate. My bowels are aching and the muscles in my legs and ass are squeezed as hard as they can be. I can’t wait another couple hours until I am home to my bleached clean bathroom.

I unbuckle my seatbelt because the sign says that’s okay. I get up. I walk to the back of the plane. One, two, three, four, five, six rows. Then the obese man. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven aisles and I’m there. The door says vacant so I pull the edges of my sleeve over my hand and use it to unlatch the handle and push. When I lock it behind me, the automatic light flickers on and hums, making my brain feel fuzzy. The grayness of the room and the dull, dead skin colored quality of fluorescent light bulbs makes me look much older than I am. Or maybe that’s the stress. I pull at the wrinkles around my eyes and pretend my skin is much younger, and more taught. It seems like a new line shows up every day that I am unemployed. I need to find a job soon or I will shrivel into a raisin.

I stop looking and start tearing pieces of toilet paper to cover the seat. I can’t touch it. I cover the seat and seven inches of the surrounding metal. I’m not that big, but what if I lose my balance and end up slightly left? I put an extra layer on. Yes, it’s a waste of paper, but that’s not really what’s important right now. I sit down carefully, so as not to disturb the sheets of tissue and relax as I let myself empty. I sigh with my head leaned back and my eyes closed gently and let my muscles loosen. After a minute, I bring my head back down and open my eyes. There, in the corner behind the door, pinched into the hinge is a twenty-dollar bill. Its frayed edges and overall crumpled demeanor speak of a fall from an overstuffed back pocket as its owner pulled up their jeans.

I contemplate the twenty. That’s a lot of money to me, now. A couple years ago I could have ignored it, but now that infected bill is almost as vital to my life as the soap I carry in my bag, or the rubber gloves I wear in the subway. I need that twenty for dinner. You wouldn’t expect finding a job to be so expensive. This round-trip ticket cost $287.63 with tax. I don’t even think they are going to hire me. That’s $287.63 of the $2,782.68 I have left. That seems like it could last you a while, but it won’t. I think of the twenty-seven pounds of rice I could buy. That’s sixty-seven cups of uncooked rice. So at the rate I am going, that could be almost thirty-three days of food. I need that twenty. I look at the floor of the bathroom. I look and see grime in the fake grout of the linoleum tiles. I look and see the sticky film that covers the floor and think of how that is all over the twenty now. I imagine E. coli, SARS, and H1N1 tickling Andrew Jackson’s nose as they squirm on his face.

I think of the swirlies of elementary school. The taste of toilet water on my tongue. The smell of stagnant sulfuric water it left permanently in my nose. I think of when I got sick in second grade. The stomach flu is not kind to a young kid. It’s not kind to anyone really. If I pick up the twenty, maybe I won’t be eating for thirty-three days anyways. Bacteria and viruses could take away my need for that money.

I think of ways to pick it up without being exposed. I could use my sleeve to shield my fingers, but what would I do with it? I couldn’t put it in my wallet; everything would be exposed. Normally, I would just zap it with my germicidal UV light, but they made me check it. I’m not sure if you could actually blind the pilot with it, but that is what they claim. I couldn’t put it in my pocket; I could never use the pocket again. I suppose I could wash it, but I once read an article that washing your hands in an airplane bathroom makes them more dirty than they were before because the water is germ ridden and the soap is not very strong. I could put hand sanitizer all over it, I guess. But they took my over three-ounce bottle when I went through security and the other bottle I have is in my bag in my seat. I think the attendants might get suspicious.

A knock on the door: “Sir? Are you okay? You need to finish up soon.