flush with success

"Don't faint," the voice on the telephone said. "It's (mumble)."
"Pardon me?"
"The plumber."
Give me a sec," I said. "I need to take a few deep breaths."
Background: While this plumber has opened and closed my house for years, he has never once responded to a phone call, nor even a long and elaborate series of increasingly frantic phone calls. Questions, problems, emergencies—I shouted them all out into the void. Magically, every fall when I wasn't there, the elves would turn off my water and blow out the pipes, put antifreeze in the traps, unscrew the showerheads and drain the hot water heater. Magically, they would restore services in the spring, at a time of their own choosing. But I never knew when this would happen, because the plumber would not ever call me.
My last call had been to say that a toilet seal was leaking and could he at least call to tell me if he couldn't fix it. It was a plaintive call.
Now he was on the phone.
"I'm busy pumping out basements," he said. "Can it wait until I shut down?"
"Which will be when?"
"Oh, probably the first week in November." Breezily. Like I don't have to plan my withdrawal as far in advance as American troops from Iraq.
"Well, maybe I'll do it myself," I said.
Then he invited me to a party he was throwing for his "renaissance," I think he said, or "liberation" or something that made me think of the gossip I had heard that he and his wife had split up. I was still in shock that he had called at all.
"Will you play?" I asked. The plumber is also a rock 'n' roll guitarist.
"Yes," he said.
So I took out the toilet myself. It's sitting on the front porch.