Okay, no reason to panic. I’d just wait until the guy was through and then I’d leave. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. I wasn’t the only one doing an impersonation of Niagara Falls that day. Finally, he finished. But then, just as he was washing his hands, another guy walked in.

They started talking about some idiotic football game, a conversation that lasted twelve minutes. I happen to know this because I timed it. At last, they started to leave, but on their way out, two other guys came in. And so it went. For the next hour and seventeen minutes, I sat on the toilet lid in that damn stall, my knees jammed up in my chin so my high heels wouldn’t be visible under the stall door.

The less said about what I heard (and smelled) in that hour and seventeen minutes, the better. I once read that men have a less developed olfactory sense than women. And now I knew why. Self-preservation.

On the plus side, at least I lost my appetite.

Guys came and went, a steady procession of men who’d clearly had massive portions of refried beans for lunch.

At one point, a couple of the branch managers came in and I heard them talking about me.

“How do you like the way Sam ambushed her?” one of them said. “Putting her on the spot like that.”

“Yeah, but she came through. That Tattler Tales idea was pretty good.”

I almost blurted out “Thank you” but managed to contain myself.

Eventually the bathroom emptied out. At long last, I was alone. I unlatched my stall and made a mad dash for freedom.

I flung open the bathroom door and ran smack into a guy who was just about to walk in.

Phooey. Just when I was convinced the coast was clear.

I looked up and nearly fainted.

I hadn’t bumped into just anybody. The man I’d practically mowed down was—why do these things always happen to me?—Andrew Ferguson.

Damndamndamndamndamndamndamn!

“Jaine!” His speckly hazel eyes were wide with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Breaking the world record for Time Spent Sitting on a Toilet Bowl.

“Actually,” I stammered, “I didn’t realize it was the men’s room. I thought the little blue person on the door was wearing a dress, but I guess not.”

We both looked at the figure on the door. Nope. No dress.

“Maybe you can write this up as a Tattler Tale,” he said, with a big grin.

He clearly thought this whole thing was a riot.

I, on the other hand, was desperately praying for a hole in the floor to open up and swallow me. This was all too humiliating. I’d just have to salvage whatever remnants of pride I had left and make my exit with as much dignity as possible.

“That would be very amusing, wouldn’t it?” I said.