The Last Headliner.

Dave was buying a toilet when he found out The Foundry was still there.

He had known the building was there. He drove past it whenever he came home, which had lately become often enough that people had stopped asking how California was. What he hadn’t known was that the man standing beside him in the plumbing aisle owned it.

“Commercial?” the man asked.

“Upstairs bathroom.”

“At your house?”

“Unfortunately.”

The man looked at the box on Dave’s cart.

“Measure your rough-in?”

Dave looked down too.

“Standard.”

“That’s what I thought about the one at the club.”

“What club?”

“The Foundry.”

Dave took his hands off the cart.

“You own The Foundry?”

The man nodded. He had a gray mustache, a brown work jacket, and a package of toilet bolts in his hand. On the package somebody had printed UNIVERSAL in large blue letters. Dave had already learned that this was an expression of hope.

“Frank Deller,” the man said.

“I’ve seen a lot of shows in there.”

“Everybody has.”

“Some good ones.”

“Some expensive ones too.”

Frank put the bolts in his basket.

Dave followed him half a step.

“What’s happening with it?”

“Same thing that was happening last week.”

“Still empty?”

“Still costing me money.”

They stood beside an endcap of plungers. A woman reached between them for the expensive one.

“Sorry,” Dave said.

She took it away.

Frank was looking at Dave’s sweatshirt. The farmer on the front had a bent hat and a pitchfork. HAYSEED ran beneath him in faded cream letters.

“You’re one of those guys.”

Dave had become used to the interval before people explained which guys.

“The bar,” Frank said. “Read that article.”

“Yeah.”

“You get the toilet working there?”

“Different building.”

“Right.”

Frank smiled a little. He hadn’t been making fun of him. Dave found that more disarming.

“I’m doing merchandise for the company now,” Dave said. “Marketing. Out in California.”