Johnny Gortex balanced his coffee mug while reaching for his buzzing phone. His clock read 7:13 AM—a time when normal people are either still asleep or questioning their life choices. He was doing the latter.
“Hello?” he answered, with that special tone reserved for early morning calls and IRS auditors.
“Johnny! Thank God you picked up!” Henry’s voice had the frantic quality of someone who just discovered their pants were on backward halfway through a job interview. “I have a situation.”
“Is that… a goat I hear?” Johnny set his coffee down with the precision of someone placing a live grenade.
“Yes—well, technically three goats. I won a raffle at the farmers market. They said ‘free landscaping service’—who knew that was a euphemism for ‘congratulations, here are some animals that will eat your furniture’?”
Johnny pinched the bridge of his nose so hard he might have reset his sinuses. “Henry, you live in a second-floor apartment.”
“Which, as it turns out, is approximately two floors too many for optimal goat happiness. But that’s not the emergency.”
Of course it wasn’t. With Henry, goats were merely the appetizer in the seven-course meal of chaos he prepared daily.
“My building manager is coming for an inspection in forty minutes—it’s that annual fire safety and code compliance check where they verify I haven’t turned my apartment into exactly what it currently is. Mrs. Finkelstein threatened that after last year’s ‘sourdough starter incident’ that collapsed the ceiling in 2B, she’d be bringing the city inspector with her. And aside from the goats, there’s also the small matter of the bathtub.”
Johnny closed his eyes, experiencing what doctors would diagnose as pre-traumatic stress disorder. “What about the bathtub?”
“Remember when you said I should try growing my own vegetables? I took that advice and ran with it. Well, not ran exactly—more like stumbled in the dark with scissors. I converted my tub into a hydroponic lettuce farm. The problem is, I used blue dye in the water to track nutrient levels, and now everything—including the porcelain—is stained blue. I look like I’m running a Smurf spa.”
Something crashed in the background with the distinctive sound of expensive things becoming worthless.
“That was just a lamp,” Henry said quickly. “The goats are fine, which is more than I can say for my interior decorating scheme.”
“I didn’t ask about the goats.”
“Also, my smoke detector’s been chirping for two weeks. I tried to fix it by taping a slice of cheese over the speaker.”
Johnny nearly choked on air, which until that moment, he thought was impossible. “You did what?”
“The internet said cheese absorbs sound! It did not specify that cheese also absorbs dignity. Now there’s a new problem because the cheese attracted mice, which scared the goats, who knocked over my ant farm colony. It’s like a tiny nature documentary in here, except instead of David Attenborough narrating, it’s just me screaming.”
“You have an ant farm too?”
“Had. Past tense. They’re redecorating my kitchen now. If ants could charge by the hour, I’d be bankrupt. Anyway, I need to borrow your vacuum, three gallons of white vinegar, a hazmat suit, and possibly your basement for goat storage. I’m calling it ‘Operation: Pretend This Never Happened.'”
Johnny checked his calendar. Important presentation at 9:00 AM, now competing with “Rescue Henry from His Own Decision-Making Process.” “Henry, I have to be at work in an hour.”
“Perfect! That’s exactly how long it’ll take to vacuum up the ants, neutralize the blue dye, and relocate the goats. Oh! And I almost forgot—your mail got delivered to my place again. Your electric bill and what appears to be a court summons. I didn’t open it, but the envelope has that special shade of yellow that screams ‘someone in a wig is waiting to judge you.'”
Another crash, this one with the unmistakable timbre of electronics meeting their maker.
“That was definitely the TV,” Henry said with the conviction of a four-year-old denying cookie theft with chocolate all over his face. “The goats are still completely fine.”
A bleating sound directly into the phone suggested otherwise.
“Henry, is that a goat holding your phone?”
“No! Well… yes. Barnaby has opposable hooves, apparently. Quite the evolutionary marvel. It’s like thumbs were having a sale and he got there early.”
Johnny grabbed his keys, mentally canceling his presentation and possibly his career. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Try to contain everything to one room.”
“You’re a lifesaver! Oh, and can you stop for coffee? I would make some, but my kitchen is currently… what’s the opposite of functional?”
“Destroyed?”
“That’s the word! I was going to say ‘performance art,’ but yours is more accurate. Also, bring a fire extinguisher. Not because there’s a fire,” he added quickly. “It’s purely precautionary, like bringing an umbrella to ensure it doesn’t rain.”
Johnny was already halfway to his car, moving with the determination of someone who has accepted their fate but isn’t happy about it. “Anything else I should know?”
“Well, I may have also signed up to foster a retired circus bear starting next week. His name is Sergei, and his specialty was riding a unicycle while balancing a fishbowl on his head. But let’s solve one crisis at a time. It’s like they say: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with finding where the goats hid your shoes.'”
The line went dead as Johnny heard what sounded suspiciously like a smoke alarm finally surrendering to dairy’s superior will.
Fifteen minutes later, standing in Henry’s apartment—which now resembled a petting zoo designed by Salvador Dalí after a tequila binge—Johnny watched as a goat in a party hat calmly ate his presentation notes with the satisfaction of a food critic at a five-star restaurant.
“The good news,” Henry said, handing him a mug of something that was definitely not coffee unless coffee had recently decided to be chunky, “is that I’ve decided to pivot to urban farming as a career. I’m calling myself an ‘agricultural disruptor,’ which sounds better than ‘guy whose pets ate his security deposit.'”
A mouse ran across his shoe, followed by a blue-tinged stream of ants marching with the precision of tiny, six-legged soldiers on their way to colonize new territory.
“The bad news is I’m pretty sure my security deposit is a lost cause. My landlord’s going to need therapy after this, and I’m not covered for psychiatry in my rental agreement.”
Johnny took a sip from his mug and immediately regretted it with every cell in his body. “What is this?”
“Goat milk with a hint of lettuce water. Farm-to-table! I’m calling it ‘Apocalypse Brew.’ Do you think it’ll sell at the farmers market? I’m thinking of pricing it somewhere between ‘artisanal’ and ‘highway robbery.'”
As if on cue, the bathroom door burst open with dramatic timing that Broadway directors would envy, releasing a wave of blue water carrying what appeared to be several heads of partially grown romaine lettuce, surfing their way to freedom.
“On the bright side,” Henry said cheerfully as they watched the blue tide approach with the resignation of people who have accepted that this is just how their Wednesday is going to be, “I think I’ve finally fixed the smoke detector.”
The device chose that exact moment to resume its chirping, now with an oddly cheesy resonance that suggested dairy products and electronics should maintain a respectful distance from each other.
“Henry,” Johnny said with remarkable calm, the kind achieved only by those who have transcended normal human stress responses, “next time you call me at 7 AM, I’m blocking your number.”
“Fair enough,” he nodded, as a goat began to eat his left shoe while he was still wearing it, apparently critiquing his fashion choices one bite at a time. “But who else would help me bathe a circus bear? I bought him a shower cap and everything.”
