Mario Bros. Plumbing

Plumbing is an eccentric business

The doorbell rang. Greg opened the door, and there stood a man with a big bushy mustache. He wore a red cap and a red shirt with blue overalls. “Itsa me, Mario!” he announced in an apparent Italian accent.

Greg looked behind Mario and saw parked in his driveway a van with the wording on it “Mario Bros. Plumbing.” “You’re the plumber?” Greg asked.

“That I am! Where’s the problem?”

“The kitchen sink,” Greg said. “This way.”

He led Mario to the kitchen. “The whole thing is clogged up,” Greg told him. “Both the garbage disposal side and the other one.”

“Oh no! Well... letsa go!” Mario got under the sink with his tools.

“So the name of your company is Mario Brothers?” Greg asked. “You actually brothers owning the company?”

“I used to work with my brother Luigi,” Mario said as he worked. “He now has a mansion upstate and... well, it’s a whole weird thing.”

“Yeah, sounds like it,” answered Greg, not really understanding. “So wait... is Mario your last name?”

Mario didn’t seem to hear him. “My girlfriend thinks I should give up plumbing too. She says, ‘Oh, Mario, you don’t need to work. Just grab some gold coins floating around.’”

“Some... what floating around?”

“But it’s not about the money, you know,” Mario continued. “I like doing real work. I like doing something useful. I don’t want to just jump on turtles all day.”

“Yeah, that’s not a thing you would like to spend a lot of time jumping on,” Greg said, still really confused.

“I don’t even know how I got mixed up in all that,” Mario said as he worked. “I moved to America with my brother to start a plumbing company — that was my dream, you know. Not the other stuff.”

“The jumping on turtle stuff?” Greg asked, not quite following.

“Yeah, exactly,” Mario answered. “That’s fine and all, but at the end of the day, I’m a plumber.”

The doorbell rang, and Greg left the kitchen to answer it. At the door was a small man who looked like he had a mushroom for a head. “Is Mario here?” asked the man in a squeaky voice.

“Yeah.”

“Tell him that the princess has been kidnapped by Bowser!”

Greg was quite baffled. “Okay, I’ll tell him that.”

Greg closed the door and walked back to the kitchen where Mario was still busy under the sink. “Um... this mushroom head guy was at the door. He said something about a princess being kidnapped by Bowser. I don’t know if that’s plumbing code or something.”

Mario let out an audible sigh. “I have the most difficult girlfriend. Well, after I get this done, I better go rescue her.”

“Um... well, while I really want this fixed,” Greg said, “if your girlfriend has been kidnapped, I understand if you need to handle that right now.”

Mario kept working. “It can wait. It happens a lot.”

“Well, that... that’s weird that your girlfriend gets kidnapped a lot. That’s not normal.” Greg didn’t want to stereotype, but he was wondering if this Italian man had dealings with the mob.

“I know! Right?” Mario got out from under the sink to look at Greg. “And here’s the thing: I’ve started to notice a pattern. We have a fight, and suddenly she’s ‘kidnapped’ by Bowser. I used to not suspect anything — since he’s some sort of turtle dragon monster — but now I’m beginning to wonder.”

“He’s a what?”