There’s something about seeing those white grains of kitty litter on the black tray that holds Bathsheba’s box. It looks like the cosmos, little bentonite clay stars hanging in a plastic void. I see the cosmos every time I sit down to take a defecation. A shit, that is. We call it defecation at work.

Rachel and Little Kimmy and I don’t have a lot of room in our walkup apartment. We share a bathroom with Bathsheba, whose fur is as black as her tray is. We leave the door cracked in case she needs to get in. The litterbox sits across from the toilet. Sometimes Bathsheba and I make resentful eye contact while defecating. There’s not a lot of privacy in our household. I have to go to the Dunkin Donuts down the street to masturbate in their bathroom. I buy jellies so that nobody gets suspicious. I’ve put on a little weight, but Rachel doesn’t mind. She’s sweet, sweeter than I deserve.

It’s not that I don’t contribute at home. I cook some nights, I help with Little Kimmy and the chores, and I’ve formed a truce with Bathsheba, who moved in when Rachel did. Little Kimmy came along a year later, and she loves that cat. They cuddle up on the couch every chance they get. Bathsheba grooms her like she’s a kitten. I hadn’t owned a cat before. I don’t like bringing work home with me, but I’m getting along for the sake of my family.

I can tell by the odor who’s been in the bathroom last. My job with ScooperTrooper has made me a bit of a sommelier. Human feces and cat feces smell more similar than human urine and cat urine do, but they’re still distinguishable from each other. Cat feces are a bit meatier, more gamey, with a hint of barnyard. Depends on diet and age and hydration, of course.

My brother-in-law, Shayworth, gets drunk at tailgates and calls me a shit-sniffer. I laugh along with him and his college buddies, and he makes sure to clap my back afterward, but the experience always hurts my feelings. And my back. His rocky palms leave bruises.

I didn’t grow up with my job in mind, but I do it as well as I can. I receive positive performance reviews and, more importantly, provide for Rachel and Little Kimmy. And Bathsheba. I get vouchers for 20% off ScooperTrooper litter at participating pet stores. The nearest participating pet store is a bit of a drive, but it’s worth it. When I travel forty-five minutes to that PetsLess and thump that big cardboard box down on the counter and flourish that voucher scanner on my phone and say, “Perks, you know,” to one of those three listless teenagers, I feel like a true Company Man.

Shayworth may call me shit-sniffer, but my actual job title is Olfactory Response Expert. My supervisor, Brian Waggingham, says that Olfactory Response Experts are like taste-testers or test-drivers. Instead of dipping fries in new condiments at Craft-Heinz or taking the latest Audi for a spin around a track, we smell cat feces and urine. We smell cat feces and urine separately and together, outside of and mixed in with the new masking and clumping litter prototypes. Sometimes we smell cat vomit, but that’s more of a niche skill reserved for people like Tara Bulba, who works with our ScooperTrooper Field Medic branch, geared toward terminal kitties. We’re a veteran-owned company.

Olfactory Response Expert is not a glamorous job, but I take to heart the slogan that appears on every box of ScooperTrooper litter.

WE defend YOUR nose!

The scientists who create the litter formulas may get drunk at company functions and call me piss-sniffer and slap my back with soft hands, but my work is essential to the lives of millions of Americans.

And it’s all in jeopardy now that I’ve got COVID.

I woke up on Monday, four days ago, with a sore throat and a headache, which progressed through the usual cough and fever. Then came the loss of taste and smell. At first I was thrilled to enter my own bathroom and not smell the sick chemical waft of used litter, but when I saw the dark urine craters arrayed in Bathsheba’s box, I panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The tiles swirled around me, and I hunched with my hands splayed on the sink.

“Everything ok?” called Rachel from the hallway. She could see me through the cracked door. I straightened too quickly and almost fainted. The stars in my eyes lingered and I thought I’d lost my sight too, but I realized I was just staring at the kitty sprinkles on Bathsheba’s tray.

 

My mother-in-law got COVID and lost her smell in 2020, right before Thanksgiving, and it stayed lost. If the same thing happens to me, I’ll be ruined. I wouldn’t just be losing my ability to enjoy food, coffee, and beer. I’d be losing my most marketable skill, honed over years of hard work and company loyalty. Rachel freelances when she can, while Little Kimmy naps, but it’s not enough to support the three of us. And then there’s the health insurance.

Little Kimmy has a condition. Fabry disease. Her body lacks an enzyme needed to break down certain fats. Pain wracks her hands and feet, and she has vision problems. It can be fatal if left untreated. We take Little Kimmy to the doctor every two weeks.

I’m running out of sick days, and if my taste and smell don’t come back soon, I’ll have to start using vacation time. Rachel and I were planning on going to the Jersey Shore this summer. Little Kimmy’s a tough girl, but we want her to see the ocean, just in case. Kind of like a baptism. We’re not religious. Otherwise I’d be praying to God, begging him to let me smell cat urine and feces again.

 

I’m trying to be Tough-Naïve about the whole situation. Tough-Naïve is the state of mind and existence taught by Jad Bralt on his YouTube channel.

I have a lot of respect for Jad Bralt. He could hoard his knowledge if he wanted to, but he chooses to share it with people who want to better themselves the way he did. Jad used to be overweight, unemployed, addicted to pornography and marijuana, living with a stalker named Peek. One day Jad got frighteningly high and saw Peek watching him through his cracked bedroom door and decided that he needed to change his life. He discovered Tough-Naïve through a rigorous process of trial and error, and it got him where he is today: fit, hallucinogen sober, and successful on YouTube.

Tough-Naïve has not yet made me a better husband, father, or man, but it’s made me realize my failings as a husband, father, and man, which is a good start. My bout of COVID is just another failing to hopefully, eventually, overcome.

 

My phone rings. It’s my supervisor, Brian Waggingham.

“Happy Thursday, Brandt,” he says, too cheerfully. He asks how I’m doing.

Too quickly I say, “You know, I’m good. Feeling healthy. Just working on the old sense of smell.”

“Good, great, great. Here’s the thing…”

He tells me about ScooperTrooper’s company policy. Time off that spans more than one business week needs to be approved at least six weeks in advance. Tomorrow, Friday, would mark one business week. On Monday I’d start siphoning pay, even if I were to use a vacation day. Seven consecutive unapproved business days missed, and I’d enter something called Internal Probationary Review. I ask what that is.

“It’s basically a probationary review that we’d do internally.”

“A review of what?”

“Well, it’s internal…”

I gather that I could lose my job if I don’t get my sense of smell back by Tuesday.

The trick of Tough-Naïve is to open yourself up and close yourself off at the same time, to be both child and man. Jad Bralt says it’s dialectical.

When I get off the phone with Brian Waggingham, I allow a few tears to leak out, but I straighten my back and lift my chin, facing my fears head-on. I think I’d look tougher if I had a big sculpted beard like Jad Bralt does, but my facial hair comes in patchy, so I shave every day.

I run to the bathroom, startling Bathsheba, who flings litter everywhere and sprints away mid-defecation. I fall to my knees in the grit and hold my face right above the box and beg to smell something, but all is neutral and pristine. Rachel comes in and rubs my back and assures me that we’ll figure something out, that I’m resourceful and good, that she could always pick up a few more projects. I don’t want her to do that. If I can’t provide, what am I good for?

 

It’s Sunday, and I still can’t smell. Every time I change Little Kimmy’s diaper I start crying and straightening my back. It’s hard to change a diaper without hunching. Bathsheba is using her litter box more frequently than ever. She’s mocking me. I’ve never liked cats. The way they look at you, it’s like they know you go to Dunkin Donuts to masturbate.

Jad Bralt says that masturbation is a sign of either Weak-Naïve or Tough-Cunning, both states of mind and existence to be avoided. I’ve tried to quit, but I have a hard time dealing with stress, and Rachel and I are just so tired by the time we get Little Kimmy and then ourselves to bed. Part of me wonders if this bout of COVID is the universe’s punishment for my shameful habit.

I bargain with a higher power for my ability to smell urine and feces. Not with one of the religious gods, but with one of Jad Bralt’s favorites: the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace, the hand that long ago reached into my head and fiddled with my olfactory receptors and gave them the ability to discern good moisture absorption and odor masking from poor moisture absorption and odor masking. If the Hand fiddled once, it can fiddle again.

I promise the Hand that I’ll never complain or masturbate about anything ever again. That I’ll never wrinkle my nose, never glare at our company’s Odor Contributors, not even Fluffles, the flouncing white Persian who suffers from a terminal urinary tract infection. I’ll be good. I’ll be true.

I give it an hour. The Hand leaves my olfactory receptors untouched.

Rachel goes into the bathroom and through the cracked door I beg her not to flush. Minutes later she comes out with her eyes full of pity. A man shouldn’t be pitied by his wife. Men whose wives pity them end up on antidepressants and sex chats and suicide hotlines. Even Little Kimmy, curled up on the couch next to Bathsheba, looks like she feels bad for me. With her condition, I should be the one who feels bad for her.

I charge into the bathroom and fall to my knees and lean forward and hold my nose an inch above the surface of the soiled water. I breathe deeply. Nothing.

Rachel comes in ten minutes later and finds me still kneeling, the toilet seat encircling my neck like a noose. She massages my shoulders and flushes.

 

It’s Monday, and I still can’t taste or smell. I’m losing pay, and if I’m not present and smell-functional by tomorrow, I’ll enter Internal Probationary Review, a fact about which Brian Waggingham has reminded me twice.

I pick up Little Kimmy and sling her over my shoulder, where she nestles her face and gurgles and drools a bit. I rest my forehead against the top of her head and breathe deeply, forgetting for a second that I can’t smell the strawberry shampoo that Rachel uses on her downy and slightly punky tuft of blonde hair. Without the smell, my nuzzling feels cold and mechanistic, as if I’m an animatronic performing the duties of fatherhood.

I never realized how much the sense of smell connects us to the world. I always thought of sight as the most important of the five, but without smell, the eyes are locked windows; you can tap on them, but you can’t open them to the air. Even sounds seem muffled. When Rachel baked cookies earlier today, I listened to the shrill of the timer, the creak of the door hinge, the clatter of the tray leaving the oven and coming to rest on the stovetop, and they all sounded muted and dead without the waft of warm mint-chocolate.

I have to hand Little Kimmy over to Rachel. I want so badly to protect her. I can’t stand holding her and feeling like I’m on one side of a glass and she the other.

 

Jad Bralt has a video on COVID. “Tips and Tricks”. How have I not realized this? I found the thumbnail while clicking through his channel archives, and it filled me with hope. I pull up the video and ready my Tough-Naïve state of mind and being. I’m prepared for letdown, but I believe with dewy-eyed belief that I’ll find an answer, but I’ll puff my chest out if I don’t, but I might cry a little bit.

“Hey, Spirit-Forgers,” says Jad, his beard as neat as a topiary. “Wanted to chop it up about COVID today. Who knows what it is or where it came from, but if you ask me, I’d like to be able to taste my raw wombat appendix and my citrus deionized ionized water substitute, so here are some tips and tricks to get your senses back…”

Jad runs down his list, beaming, unblinking, strong. He’s consulted experts, and Tough-Naïve men, whose states of mind and being make them implicit experts in most subjects. He suggests injecting responsible amounts of peppermint extract into a muscle. We’re out right now—Rachel used the last of it for her cookies—and I don’t want to waste money buying more, in case I lose my job. Jad suggests sensory overload, but I’ve already spent hours hyperventilating with my chin resting on the lip of Bathsheba’s litter box, and that hasn’t helped. He suggests prayer, but he doesn’t specify whether he means the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace or his other favorite deity, the Stern God of Christendom. I almost ask the Stern God of Christendom for help, but I figure it might look even worse for me to convert now, for a favor, than it would for me to not convert at all, so I skip that suggestion too.

Then Jad suggests sense swapping. One of his nutrition and esotericism advisors told him that you can trick your senses into working again through a process of confusion. For example, if you’re losing your hearing, you can stand in front of a speaker with your ears plugged and inhale the sounds and they’ll start to “take” inside your body. It’s worked for plenty of unnamed people.

The video ends.

Jad was right about my moral deficits, which I did not realize existed until I subscribed to his channel, so he’s probably right about my sensory deficits. I’m going to sense swap by taking a core sample from Bathsheba’s litter box—a urine-caked clump with feces lodged like a bug in amber—and staring at it until my sense of smell returns, all night if I have to. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll stick the clump in my ear, and so on. I refuse to let my family down. The stakes are high. I’m stressed. I tell Rachel that I’m going to Dunkin Donuts. She laughs, a bit sad.

“But you won’t be able to taste the frosting or the jelly.”

 

After a dinner of beef stroganoff that I can’t enjoy, I sit on the couch with Rachel and Little Kimmy. The movie Aristocats plays, mostly unwatched, while we cuddle in a family nucleus. I love them so much. I don’t deserve them. Rachel can tell how worried I am about tomorrow, so she mercifully avoids the topic, talks instead about the Jersey Shore, describes it to Little Kimmy, who doesn’t yet understand language, and to me, who’s been going since childhood. Listening to her words is like strolling the boardwalk again, my parents—both fading away in assisted living now—rising on either side like sentries, while cackling gulls steal hot dogs from people’s hands and fairground music cavorts around arcades and minigolf courses. My brain hitches at the memory of funnel cake. I remember the concept of the deep-fried, powdered sugar cloy, but not the smell itself.

Oh, God, Hand, whoever…

If I lose my job, we won’t be able to afford Little Kimmy’s treatment, and she’ll never be able to look back and remember her own toddle down the boardwalk, waves crashing along the beach, Rachel and I at either side…

I’m crying and straightening my back again. Rachel holds me tight, and Bathsheba looks at me from the hallway and enters the bathroom.

 

I lie to Rachel at bedtime, tell her that I’m staying up late to work on my resume and bookmark potential job openings.

“Just to be safe,” I reassure her. “Everything will be fine.”

She smiles with her eyes and nods and says that she knows.

Bathsheba really had to go, from the looks of the litter box. I prepare myself with rubber gloves and with my favorite Jad Bralt video, the one in which he discusses the founding of Tough-Naïve.

“I’d been hitting my head against a wall in search of my true, fully-forged self,” he says, smiling with his mouth and doing nothing with his eyes. “Until I realized that I had to believe in my true, fully-forged self in order for it to exist. And the only way to believe was to be tough and naïve at the same time, to steel myself against the possibility that I couldn’t change, but to imagine against evidence that I could. And through the synthesis of tough and naïve, I altered reality itself, and got a phone call that my aunt died and left me her house and life savings.”

When the bedroom light switches off, I go to the bathroom. I reach into Bathsheba’s litter box and break off a good clump. Damp, a bit creamy around the edges, but solid—our product is the best, after all—with a nub of feces poking out like Little Kimmy’s favorite Pokemon, the mole creature known as Diglet. I cradle the clump in my gloved palm and creep down the stairs to the porch and lower myself quietly into the mint green rocking chair that my dad built for Rachel and me when we got married. I hold the clump like I’m an entomologist examining an insect, delicately, between my thumb, index, and middle fingers. The warm porch light sets the clump aglow, a meteorite bathed in the rays of a distant galactic sun.

It’s a warm night, and the buds are coming out on the trees. I’m tired. Hungry, thirsty, horny from stress. My wife and daughter are asleep upstairs, seemingly safe in bed and crib, but teetering at the edge of a waterfall, a waterfall whose wellspring is my stupid defective COVID-ridden nose.

I meditate on the clump, trace its contours, try to imagine the scent of the urine that formed it, of the feces trapped within. I picture the substances themselves being forged inside the black void of Bathsheba’s body, then move my visualization backward, to the time when the urine was water in the cat bowl, water in the pipes, water in the facility, water in the river, water in the clouds. I move to the feces. It’s meat slop in the tin, meat slop in the factory, meat scraps on the slaughterhouse floor, meat in the chickens themselves, protein in the eggs, eggs in the chickens, chickens in the eggs, eggs in the chickens, chickens in the eggs. I spend an hour stuck on the chickens and the eggs. Jad Bralt would commend my clarity of focus. Finally, I make my way back to the dawn of the universe, and the clump is the point from which the Big Bang exploded, and the individual litter grains spray to form the stars that even now pass overhead as the night rotates its way across the sky.

Close to dawn, within the tensor of birdsong and early morning car engines, as the sky lightens in anticipation of sunrise, something happens. An element adds itself to the world, bringing it closer to me, or me to it. A chemical sweetness tinged with sweat and onion. It’s coming from the clump. I take a deep breath of morning air. Then it hits me.

I can smell the clump.

The glass around the world has broken. I take another whiff. I can tell, mostly from the dry reek of the feces Diglet, that Bathsheba is dehydrated, that she needs to spend more time at her bowl. I call Brian Waggingham and tell him that I’ll be coming in today.

“Who is this?” he says.

“It’s Brandt.”

“Oh, Brandt, uh, what time is it?”

I don’t know. I’m too exhausted, too loose from relief. I tell Brian that my sense of smell has returned.

“Oh, that’s good; I feel like those symptoms usually clear up in about a week, right?”

I stay silent. I know it was Jad Bralt’s methods that saved me, not the standard disease course.

“Well, see you at work,” says Brian.

“You bet.”

I hang up and fall to my knees, still holding the clump between my three fingers, like a jeweler with a diamond now.

Everything will be ok. My family will be ok. Little Kimmy will continue receiving her treatments, and she and Rachel and I will stroll the Jersey Shore boardwalk and point at the gulls and the arcades and the waves and form memories that will last the rest of our lives.

I look up and wave to the kitty litter stars as the morning light erases them from the sky. One more time I breathe deeply the scents of cat feces and urine, then toss the clump into a bush.

What a beautiful thing it is to once again be a Company Man.