He plunged again. And again. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His thrift-store tie dangled into the danger zone. On the fifth plunge, a sound emerged: a wet, shuddering schlurrrrp , like a giant drinking the last of a milkshake through a bent straw.

He took his position, sighed the sigh of a man who has just subtracted $4,000 from a column that needed to add $12,000, and began to relieve himself. The stream was steady, unremarkable. For ten blissful seconds, all was right with the world.

He’d ducked into the second-floor restroom of the McKinley Building to escape a budget meeting. The lights hummed a tired fluorescent hymn. The air smelled of lemon-scented bleach and regret. Three porcelain urinals stood against the tiled wall: one chained off with a yellow “Out of Order” sign, one occupied by a man in a pinstripe suit who was clearly weeping into his phone, and the last one—the last one gleamed under the lights like a pristine arctic basin.