things one should not find humorous in a bathroom

Here are some things women find disgusting in public bathrooms:

unflushed commodes
impolite odors
empty toilet tissue rolls
water of unknown origin welled on the bathroom floor

This last item is what I discovered in the restroom of a massive bookstore. I was wearing sandals and noticed the questionable liquid puddled around the commodes as my bare toe touched the cold wetness. So out loud I say, "Uck." An Asian woman comes out of the stall next to me and scrunches her face into the universal word for grody.

I check under the stalls. There's dry land under the feet of a lady in the large stall. I decide to wait for her to finish.

My Asian comisserator gives up unrelieved, washes her hands and leaves the room.

The lady in the stall starts chortling. I realize her silence wasn't earnest concentration on the deed at hand. She was listening to someone speak to her on her cell phone. She speaks in a low tone so I can't make out what she's saying. Is she saying, "It's so funny--I'm in the only dry stall and I'm holding this woman's bladder captive"?

She's not speaking English. I only know how to say, the other two commodes are broken in two languages. Senora? Miss? I tell her, "los otros banos estan rotos hay agua en el piso" and the English equivalent.

"Oh, oh. OK. So sorry." She pulls what sounds like several feet of toilet paper off the tube. A short pause, then perhaps ten more feet of toilet paper. A short pause. Just two more feet of toilet paper. Ok that's enough. Then she flushes. I'm betting on whether all that bulk will go down. Her phone plays a dance beat. She answers, "hello? hello?"

Now, out of politeness or embarrassment, she sprays something that smells like Pledge into a little cloud that dissapates through the joints in the steel walls. Out through the wide door, she slips one foot in front of the other like she's ice skating. She is also Asian. I chalk one up to effort without efficacy for speaking Spanish to her.

"Oh, so sorry. I was talking to my sister."

I'm on the verge of laughing out loud, but I keep my eyes on the puddly white floor. Oh no, that's OK I reply. As I get ready to finally relieve myself, I wonder all at once:

• Did her sister, perhaps somewhere in Asia, realize that this woman was talking to her while taking a crap at a bookstore?
• Was there some reason this woman couldn't talk to her sister some other place than the handicap crapper at the bookstore? (Flash: Angry Asian husband handing out no more than 2 squares of TP at a time...) Was the restroom her only refuge?
• Does this lady have a thing for paper products?

After she washed her hands, I could hear her coax about 6 feet of paper towels from the dispenser. She was a tiny person, what could she be drying?

For a moment, the bathroom is quiet. Personal. My own. Like swimming alone in the pool at the gym. The library at noon on Wednesday. Inded, we can feel private in public places, but discovered, interrupted our faces turn flush.