Garbage Read online

  “He’s not supposed to drink,” one of the sons says as they walk Dibbeny out. “Because of all the smoke he ingested over the years his insides got messed and changed and maybe his brains, so don’t do us any more favors by serving him, you hear?”

  “Got you, son.”

  Next afternoon an envelope’s dropped through the bar’s mail slot. No stamp, just my address and initials on it, and inside a typewritten note saying “From Shaney to Shaney: written on my typewriter as a reminder night before I had a bosomy friend set fire to my apartment: answer phone!”

  Phone rings right then. There’s a phonebooth across the street but nobody’s in it. I lift the receiver.

  “It’s Pete, sweetie, how’s tricks?”

  “I was wondering when.”

  “Today, sweetie, today. But no time for amenities. I just want to direct and you listen and act.”

  “I don’t know what your amenities means.”

  “Social intercourse. Nice blab-blab. ‘How’s you? What’s new? Kill a gay? Fornicate today?’ But you haven’t a customer now, as that’s not how it was planned, so don’t use that as an excuse you can’t do the following what I’m about to say.”

  “I want to see you guys about my fire.”

  “What it is is this. Go with a thousand dollars—I know you can get it from your bank in ten minutes, and there’s no line right now—to a phonebooth on Second and Prescott. You’ll find a strip of thick adhesive tape taped under the phone shelf. Stick the thousand, which you’ll have stuck in an envelope to that tape, and fly back to your bar and make yourself an assuager sooner than you’re used to. The tape’s quite gummy so don’t worry about bringing your own tape or your envelope falling off unless it’s made of concrete. Bills to be large, naturally aged, of our nationality and denomination, ten of them to be precise, so decide what kind that is on your way to the bank. Do this now. Lock up, go. We’re watching you. Call in the cops and next time it’ll be two thousand we ask for and each time you bring cops in and stall us, a thousand more. But you’re not getting away from us till your dues are paid. We let one get by like you the rest might think ‘Hey, that’s the way!’ and next there could be open rebellion in the dumps and streets and then where would the free enterprise and great civilization system be? We’re being extremely lenient with you and you’re getting off light, though no other storeowner will, in case they ask you. That thousand you pay, or two thousand if you delay, is what we’ll deem the termination of our garbage contract which we think you thought was finished with just one charred apartment,” and he hangs up.

  I have my drink now, another one, chase them with ale, chase that with another scotch, man comes in and I grab my club and say “You from Stovin’s?” and he says “No, just want a beer,” and I say “Well go, closed, I’m sorry but I’m in no kind of mood to serve,” and he goes and I call Stovin’s and say “This is Shaney Fleet please, let me talk to Pete.”

  “What Pete?”

  “Any Pete. Pete the bum, Pete the thief. You have a Pete, get him.”

  “No Pete.”

  “Then why’d you say ‘What Pete?’”

  “That ‘Pete’ and ‘please’ of yours and ‘Fleet’ and talking so fast. You got me confused.”

  “Hell I did. Then Turner then. Get me any Turner you have there and don’t tell me you haven’t one.”

  “We don’t.”

  “Manure no Turner or Pete. You have a Stovin, right? Tell me you don’t.”

  “We do. Two. Which one? Mister or the boy.”

  “Some boy, I’ll bet, oh some boy. And he must be very proud of his pop too, or maybe the opposite’s true. And you must be of both. Everyone must. Whole joint. Well get me either. No, just the elder. Tell him Shaney Fleet of Mitchell’s Bar and Grill. He knows of me.”

  “Hold on.” Comes back. “I’m afraid no one heard of you here or your grill. What do you want? You new? We didn’t collect your trash yet today? If you’re on the Northside, Mr. Fleet, it’s because we had two unusual broken axles in our main trucks in one day, so we’re far behind. Later we’re making a double run.”

  “Listen, whoever you are. Who are you, just so I get a name?”

  “Jennifer.”

  “Well you take steno, Jenny, right?”

  “No, I only receive here and answer phones.”

  “But you can write, right? So if you please, get a pen and put this down to elder and boy and copies to Turner and Pete and whatever other upper-ups above your bosses if there are any. Ready?”

  “No Turner and Pete. And I can’t write fast. What I’ll do is type, while you speak, though it’s not my job, but okay: shoot, but short, as I got to also answer phones.”

  “Quote. Memo from S. Fleet to Stovin Private C.C. All you people will get back from him is trouble in the future if you continue hassling him which could mean broken windows in your garage, flat tires in your wheels, sand in your gas tanks and even a couple of cracks in your human heads. Because he’s mad as all anything—that mad. One fire in his apartment’s enough. One dead parrot in his ruins is too much. One almost burntdown building he lived in and several almost lost burnt lives is all there’s going to be. You getting this down, Jenny?”

  “Most of it.”

  “I’ll say this last part slowly. It’s the most important. And whoever’s listening on the extensions, steno this into your heads. Quote. Mr. Fleet likes his life all right but thinks it’s worth cheap. And you know he’s old enough not to go ‘Oh help I’m sorry but I’m dying’ or something or same time regret getting bopped around bad, but both for a good worthy fight if that’s how it has to be. Though he’s not such a dope to fight in a fight just to be in one, that you also have to see. So don’t tempt him please. Lay off. Do and he’ll about-face the police too. But that fire the other night is the next to last straw. He accepts that fire as the termination of the so-called garbage contract and nothing else, unquote, now you have that down or most?”

  “The next straw. What was that?”

  “Any way you want.”

  “I have it all then.”

  “Thank you. By the way, Jenny, if I can call you that, how can you work for such slobs?”

  “You mean because we’re in garbage? It doesn’t come in here. We’re enclosed and the trucks are washed and disinfected every day.”

  “I mean because they’re crooks.”

  “They’re not. Goodbye.”

  Police come an hour later. Different ones I’ve never seen before with a complaint against me from Stovin’s. “They say you threatened personal and property injury to them. What’s with you, Shaney? We hear nothing but great generous things from you at the precinct—from Brendon and Dom and Sergeant Lars. Stovin’s even has it that you had their receptionist type what you said were whole quotes from you.”

  “Look at this.” I show them the note. “Then they phoned and demanded a thousand. You know what it’s about, right?”

  “No.”

  I tell them.

  “So what’s it mean?” one of them says. “This your typewriter the note was written on and if so how come?”

  “I could say no and you’d never know because that typewriter was in no better shape than my parrot and I’m sure they’re both now junked.”

  “What parrot?”

  I tell them. “But the typewriter’s mine all right. I recognize the marks. The i without the dot and the half of e and f, not that I used it so much. It was willed to me by a dead customer.”

  “Hey Shaney, come here a sec,” one of the regulars says.

  “Not now, Lance.”

  “Not for a drink. What is it? You in a jam?”

  “I said forget it, Lance, I’ll handle it okay. A misunderstanding.”

  “You men are cops, am I right? I can tell by the way you’re sturdily built and your strong walk and hair combed down across your foreheads so neat and you plainclothes all seem to favor the more stylish synthetic leather belted jackets these days. I know. I’m in men�
��s clothes.”

  “You’ve something to tell us, sir?” one says.

  “No. Only there’s no misunderstanding between Shaney and me. He’s a great gallant—he’s the greatest finest most wonderfully thoughtful bartender there is—one from the old school, best they come. So anytime you need a backup for his good behavior or as a character witness, you see me.”

  “Lance,” I say. “I said to stay out of it or get the hell out of here.”

  “Shaney, what is this, what I say? I never heard you talk to me like that in ten years, and just after I said that about you to them?”

  “Excuse me, officers.” I go over to Lance. “Look, I’m in trouble. Nothing I did but someone else to me. It’s related to the fire so shut up, mind your business, and here’s a free one even if you’re half-loaded already and they could pull me in simply for giving you another drink, just so you know there’s no animosity between us.”

  “Never, Shaney, never. I told you he was the best,” raising his glass to them and sipping from it.

  “I hate this trade,” I say to the policemen, “or am beginning to. I think all my father’s and grandfather’s frustrations and long hours and tiredness from the bar business, not to say bad marriages because of it, are coming out through me from their graves. Stale piss in hell,” and I pour myself a scotch. “I don’t normally do this, honestly, never till closing at least,” and I drink it down. “But today? Too many drunks. Too many Stovin’s punks. Too much lousy of everything. The works, the works,” and I pour another.

  “So get out of it.”

  “Where? And why my crying on you? And who’ll buy my bar with Stovin’s demands hanging over me and business this slow?”

  “If it’s true, the business slow is one thing but don’t tell the buyer you sell it to the garbage part.”

  “Can’t do. No heart to. My father would turn over. My grandfather would smack me twice a night in my dreams for life. My greatgrandfather—he handhewn and shaped the oak kegs that used to store the stuff—I never met him but I bet I’d see him glaring at me in God’s beard. I won’t even mention my lovely buried mother what she’d do. No. Once I get them off my back somehow or they traipse away and business picks up, though I don’t see why for either, I’ll sell, go around the world, get a job tending bar or on a ship—no, not that anymore, I’d get sick mixing drinks on the sea. Had it. I don’t know what I’ll do. Drive a cab. By the way, you fellows like a nip?” They shake their heads. “Don’t worry about Lance. That freebie locked his teeth. And I know how superclean police are expected to be today, and I appreciate and respect that fact, but you do work hard and dark hours and this is no bribe—you heard Lance. I’m old-fashioned, just my way—a drink or sandwich on me and you’re ready to go back on the street doing double your duty, or even some pickled hardboiled eggs? I make them like no one else. Maybe because nobody makes them anymore.”

  “Double vodka for both of us, but in coffee mugs and with a little in it of that Mexican coffee liqueur to make it look and smell like black coffee.”

  I make their drinks under the bar. “I won’t toast to you.”

  “Good tact. Now, about this note. Why didn’t you phone us?”

  “It’s my typewriter. What could I have told you that you’d believe? They got me going eighty different ways.”

  “Then from when they phoned you today. Incidentally, too many Mexican beans in mine. Just for the color and a little smell it should go in, because now it’s too sweet.”

  I bring his mug back under the counter, take the coffee pot off the heater and act as if I’m pouring more coffee in while with my other hand I pour in more vodka from a bottle from the speedrack by my knees.

  “Mine’s perfect as it is,” the other policeman says.

  “What do you know? I introduced you to these. But Shaney, and thanks, just right now if you ever had to make it for me again,” and stirs the mug with the spoon I gave him, “when they phoned you should’ve phoned us to be at the booth to get them if there was one.”

  “They would’ve seen me lift it. I only had ten minutes. They have to be watching me almost always to know so much of my movements, though I don’t know from where. Maybe a window across the street. Or even that dog lady with the two giant wolves who just passed. But one hand on the receiver from me and I’m sure they wouldn’t have been at the phonebooth and neither the envelope and tape underneath and then you really would’ve thought me nuts. Because you don’t believe me much, do you?”

  “Nice as you are, it’s hard to. This nothing note. Your threatening calls. Phantoms on the street. From what window? Which dog lady?”

  “You were staring straight out there same as me. You didn’t see her?”

  “No.”

  “And that street window across is for you to check. Rap on doors. Do what you’re paid to. I’m only giving ideas. But you figure out how they know when I’ve no customers here and am phoning when I do and so forth. But you’re not going to be any help.”

  “I’m not knocking it, and the lure would more than undo me, but maybe you tipple a little too much on the job when you shouldn’t.”

  “Me? Only just recently. Ask anyone. Tell them, Lance. You ever see me throw one down before I closed?”

  “I’m not sure what I should say for you after that last time, but no I never seen him drink since the mini one they almost had to force down his throat New Year’s or was it Christmas eve?”

  Police finish their drinks and get up to leave. “Anyway, you get something further on them, let us in on it quick. Otherwise, don’t crankcall Stovin’s anymore and subject yourself to arrest. They were being kind specifying us not to bring you in this time, not that you would’ve been held long, but next time on both you might.”

  “I get it. Thanks for coming.”

  I answer an apartment ad but then think I’m safer in the hotel. They want to burn me out again let them get past the desk and tobacco stand and all the traffic by the elevators and television lounge first. My room’s small, bed too lumpy and soft, furniture’s depressing, walls need mending, I miss my old things and parrot squawks and not having a refrigerator for early morning snacks and stove for breakfast and view of the planes and helicopters passing and sun rising and pigeons and sometimes gulls flying and tower tips of the lit bridge.

  For a few days I get calls at four or five a.m. from Turner or Pete just saying before they hang up “Sleeping late?” or “Rise and shine!” and once reveille blown on what sounded like a potato flute accompanied in the end by a humming kazoo. After the third call I phone the police and say “All right, you want to see who’s threatening who, start listening on my phone,” but they say there’s a state law forbidding them to tap hotels because they’d also be intercepting and snooping on other guests’ calls.

  So I tell the hotel not to put any calls through to me till eight a.m. But they still manage to get through with excuses to the nightclerk that my wife was just raped and is phoning me from a crisis center or some doctor from a hospital’s calling saying he has to speak to me because my sister just had a stroke in her sleep.

  “I have no sister, wife, child or anyone close enough like that to wake me before eight. Unless someone says my bar was broken into or is on fire, tell them to call back.”

  Next call to get through is from someone claiming to be a policeman who says my bar was just robbed. I say “I’ll cab right over,” hang up, call the precinct and find it’s another lie. From then on I don’t let any calls in of any kind till after I awake and phone downstairs and tell them it’s okay.

  Couple of weeks after I last see the police something’s slipped through the door. I’m bent down behind the counter looking for a dropped bottle cap when I hear the mail slot flap clink. I run around the bar to the door. Envelope’s on the floor. Same kind: my initials and address. I don’t even pick it up but run outside and look around. Only a kid on a tricycle and a dog lady but a different one from two weeks before.

  “Ned,” I yell
to the only customer in the bar, “don’t let anyone touch the till.”

  “Sure, Shaney, but what about my potatoes and grilled cheese?”

  I run after and catch up with the woman and her dog starts barking at me. “Pull it back, lady, call it off,” and she says “Let go of me first.” I didn’t even know it but my hand’s holding her shoulder. I let go and the dog stops barking but still snarls and I say “I’m sorry, but you just shove something through my door?”

  “You kidding me?” and she walks away.

  “If you’re the one, lady, I got your face. I now know who you are, so don’t try and come in my bar.”

  “And I got a pocketful of coins to phone the cops if you bother me again, crazy,” and her dog starts barking less at me than at the air over his head.

  I go back to the bar. Sandwich and potatoes are burning.

  “Shaney, will you? Potatoes are okay welldone but you know I don’t like my toast burned.”

  I run to the stove. “You should’ve gone around the bar and fixed it yourself.”

  “You might’ve thought I was stealing.”

  “Are you the one crazy now? Are you?”

  “No, but I just thought—”

  “Ahhh,” and I flip the potatoes and sandwich over, toss the sandwich to the side because it’s burned, prepare another one and smear butter on the grill and put the sandwich on it and open the envelope. Inside’s a note typed on my old typewriter. It says: “Memory still serves? Well, set 2, same booth, mixed metaphors, clever clever, lost game, 12 mins this time as bank’s a pinch packed, tho 2 thou now, sport, not won, your move, except 1st get on the ball and table your customer. Love.”

  “You see who put this through the mail slot, Ned?”

  “No, I was staring into my glass. Still nothing in it but foam. Fill her up please?”

  “Know what a mixed metaphor is?”

  “Hey, if you’re tossing away the burned sandwich, give it here for free but keep the new one cooking for me. I hate seeing good food go to waste no matter how bad it is. But mixed what?”