Garbage Read online

  About two weeks after Al starts bartending for me, he doesn’t show up. I call him at home but nobody answers. I wait till ten o’clock and then a little unused to working so many hours in one day I say “Last call, everyone,” and stick the garbage in trash bags and bring them to the basement. A lot of customers are disappointed Al didn’t show, but I tell them he’s probably sick or maybe had to suddenly fly to a sick parent or his wife’s someplace and he’ll be in tomorrow or the next day. I lock up and take a cab to my hotel, as this time so late at night I’m still too scared with my head still in bad shape to walk home alone.

  I call Al next morning and say “Where were you?” and he says “I’m really sorry, Shaney, but can’t say.”

  “Why, you were sick or something bad with your wife and kids?”

  “I won’t say, I should’ve put it like that. That way I didn’t say anything, neither no or yes, so it’s silly of you to guess.”

  “It’s Stovin’s.”

  “Did I say?”

  “Just by your voice I know they got to you.”

  “I’m afraid what you know is nothing, not that I mean to be mean to you over the phone. You’ve been good to us and I appreciate it.”

  “Then continue coming in.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’ve really gotten used to you. You even have the job after I get well.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Even Tina, who on weekend nights and Sunday I’ll pay.”

  “We’d like to but can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “You know I won’t say.”

  “Then give me a hint. Blink once for yes if it’s Stovin’s who’s stopping you and twice for it isn’t.”

  “How will that help you?”

  “You mean if I knew?”

  “I mean in my blinking over a telephone, but that too: if you knew.”

  “Oh, I got one of those old videophones installed last night, didn’t you know? I can see everything to everyone I dial to but they can’t see me back.”

  “Sure you do. Me too. I can see you right now lying and crying your ass off. But again, how would it help you if you knew?”

  “Knew what?”

  “You joking me?”

  “No, I’ll be honest, I forgot.”

  “Your head’s really in first-rate remembering powers today. If I was you I’d see a doctor fast. Knew who it was I was saying—not that it was anybody or anything except my not wanting to continue working for you because you’re a little tightfisted. You also drive me too hard and I don’t like the way you treat my wife and also that I got a much better job.”

  “All that’s bull and you know it. And who’d hire you except someone desperate as me?”

  “A bar. Nicer and cleaner place and which pays better and longer hours. I’m not saying where so you can call up and say lying things to fire me. But how would it help you if you knew?”

  “Knew it was Stovin’s who got you to quit? Why you so interested in knowing? They also ask you to find out my next moves?”

  “I’m not interested, see ya.”

  “Hold it. It would first of all prove my first impressions of you when you were just a customer and make me think I’m thinking right and true again and that’s that you’re a fucking scumbag and rat who’d screw anyone in the back for a few bucks and drinks the first time someone asked.”

  “Sure I am. That’s what I did. Boy, you know me better than my wife. I only wish she had a second chance to take care of your head. This time I’d show her how.”

  “Don’t come in my bar anymore, weakling.”

  “Why should I? You’re crazy and a liar. Besides, I got my own now,” and hangs up.

  I slam the receiver down. “You bastard,” I shout.

  Customer looks up at me. “What’s wrong? One of the guys you give credit here gave you a check and his bank won’t honor it?”

  “You have a job?”

  “Yeah I have a job. What’s it to you the personal questions? I pay, don’t I?”

  “I thought you might like to help me out with my garbage tonight if you didn’t.”

  “Garbage? Me? In these clothes?”

  “For after.”

  “For after I put on even better clothes.”

  “Know anyone who’d like that kind of work? Just for an hour or two six nights a week and good for a couple of bills and free drinks and eats.”

  “If I hear of anyone I’ll let him know.”

  “No, forget it. Next person I get to help me will screw me even worse.”

  “Uh, no offense, but that’s your attitude not to trust anyone, who’d be dumb enough to come here to work?”

  “Shut up. Have another on me.”

  “Eat shit, Fleet. I need your lip too?” and slaps a bill down and starts out.

  “I didn’t mean to ‘shut up’ like I meant it. I meant it to mean—” Hell, he’s gone. It’s partly my head. Has to be. It’s all excitable. Maybe something festering in there. I’ve had headaches all week. I don’t take care of myself well. I don’t want to be in more pain and die. When my time comes, okay, but not from my stupidity in not doing anything about it when I could. Maybe Tina did something to it she knew would slowly make it worse. No, that’s not nice, she was all right. What should I do? I pour a drink. No, that’s not it, and I put it down without a sip. Do something sensible, that’s what. Customer comes in. I say “Closed.”

  “Closed when the door’s open and place is freezing inside? Now it’s closed,” and he shuts the door.

  “Last customer left it like that when he left. But closed. I got to get to the hospital. What are you, you look like one, a cabby?”

  “I’m off duty now. All I came in for was a burger and beer.”

  “But my head. I’ll get my coat on and give you a good tip. Hospital’s not that far.”

  “Really, it’s not the money. I’m bushed, six hours straight on the streets, I have to sit and be quiet and eat.”

  “But you can see what kind of shape. I got hit. Long ago but haven’t paid much attention to it. I think I could be dying with a brain clot for all I know.”

  “You’re not dying, it’s just all of a sudden you’re scared you are. You’ll be fine. There are plenty of available cabs. I’ll go some other place for my break and see you another day. Lots of luck to you, friend.”

  He leaves and I lock up and call a cab and go to the emergency section of the hospital. I see a doctor and after some neurological nose-touching and barefoot walking she says I have the headachy remains of a concussion and a slight infection and gives me a prescription for it, repatches me with a small bandage and that’s that. “Stay off your feet for a week and don’t take any alcohol with your pills and you’ll live.”

  “I have to work.”

  “Then work less, nothing fatiguing, but you’re in no danger and practically healed.”

  I get the prescription filled, take a couple of pills, have a soup at a shop and go back to the bar. I feel relieved and even stronger now and my headache’s almost gone. I even look better, looking in the bar mirror: at least the hat when I wear it outside covers all the bandages now and doesn’t make me look so dumb anymore. And without the hat my whole forehead and top of my hairline now shows and I can comb some of the hair over the patch, though being thin and wavy it never stays and I was warned not to wet my hair and slick it back as the patch and tape have to stay dry.

  That night I unidentify all my garbage, stick it in several trash bags and tell my customers before I close that the next drink or a grilled cheese sandwich is free if they take a bag each with them when they leave and drop it only where there are other trash bags and cans legally placed. A few customers take me up on it and I put the rest of the bags and cartons of garbage in the basement where I already have a stack of them.

  Morning following the third night I do this and when I’m just about getting rid of all my garbage this way, I find five big trash bags in front of my bar and under my door
a summons for leaving these bags on the street overnight. I didn’t think I could get away with getting rid of my garbage forever like this but I hoped I could till I thought of a longer-lasting plan. I look in the bags and see none of them are mine. The name of the inspector I know is on the summons, as it wasn’t on the last one I got, and I phone him, he’s not in and much later in the day he calls me back.

  “Mr. Fleet?”

  “Mr. Fleet? Shaney. That garbage you gave me a summons for, Dolph, isn’t mine. Some group, and I know whose, put the bags there just to intimidate me more than they’ve done for the last couple of months.”

  “You read the papers?”

  “When I’ve time.”

  “If you read it every day you’d know my reason for not skipping you over this morning, or at least before I spoke to you about it, and also why I have to get tough with your sidewalk snow. There’s been charges, maybe some that are founded also, besides hidden-camera photos showing corruption going right to the top of our department. That’s why everybody has to do his extra effort to prove it’s not true and even no small spotlight falls on him or his brass, understand?”

  “All I’m saying is that garbage wasn’t mine. No corruption, no payoffs, none of those.”

  “Okay. Say I’m talking as though I never knew you, why should my section assume it wasn’t your garbage in front of your bar when it was clearly in front of your bar and garbage?”

  “Because I looked in those bags I got a summons for. It’s not bar trash. No twenty squeezed lemons and limes or long sandwich bread bags or empty gallon salad oil cans or a thousand cigarette butts and maraschino cherry stems. That was mostly household junk, old disposable stuff, paper diapers, breakfast cereal boxes, cat crap and banana scraps and used toothpaste tubes. But no envelopes and such identifying it as mine. One bag was even full of things that had to come from a drugstore, so it’s plain someone put it in front of my bar from there.”

  “The drugstore bag I can probably get the drugstore for, as that one really shouldn’t be in front of your bar. But someone else’s envelope could’ve been disposed at your bar and diapers changed when the customer and her baby were there, so could still be part of your trash.”

  “And the cat crap?”

  “You can distinguish between cat crap and a kid’s?”

  “They stink differently.”

  “Listen. You know bar garbage and I know all garbage and when a cat and kid eat milk and meat they both stink the same. And what bar doesn’t have a cat?”

  “Mine because the city health law says I can’t have loose pets lying around. But also, who’d bring in a big empty box of laundry detergent just to stick in my trash?”

  “Who’s to say? People are forgetful and might’ve forgotten on their way to your place to drop it in a street can like they intended and only realized when they got to your bar that they still had hold of it. That’s happened to me, it hasn’t to you? I’m not saying it’s absolutely so in this particular case, but you want whys and whatfors and I can give you all of them and some. But keep the drugstore trash there and a man will come by to pick it up.”

  “No, I know the druggist and he’s a nice guy and sometimes customer and I don’t want to get him in trouble.”

  “Either you’re a great storyteller or you’re showing yourself as this over-holy martyr, but if not the drugstore then what do you want from me? For one thing, I can’t do you any more favors, even tiny inconsequential ones which for the record was all they were, for things now are too hot. For a second thing, I might’ve just slit my throat out with all that talk now about favors and things being hot and inconsequential, because a colleague here known for her eyes said she saw some of our phones being bugged by the special anticorruption force. For I hope a final thing, if garbage is in front of your bar when it shouldn’t be, then until the current scandal’s over, it’s your garbage and only yours. I can’t be expected to inspect every trash bag to see whose it is.”

  “What should I do then—stay awake every night in my place to see that no one dumps garbage in front?”

  “Tell me, why would they?”

  “I don’t want to say.”

  “Come on. Maybe with all my garbage knowledge I can help and even the anticorruptors bugging this phone if they are—why would they?”

  “Okay. After hollering till I’m hoarse about it I kept quiet because I thought they’d go away, but it’s obvious they won’t. You see, for years I had the same carter. You know me so you know never a garbage or sidewalk violation from you guys except maybe a rare mistake that’s one, but anyway now the old carter won’t cart. A new carter wanted to and for all I know frightened the old one into not carting for me anymore. But now the new carter which wanted to cart less trash for more money, won’t. They also I think think I’m going to start off like a snowball a whole slew of small stores not to throw in with them too.”

  “This new carter’s Stovin’s?”

  “You heard what they’ve been doing to these neighborhood stores?”

  “I only know them because they’re the only new carter in your area, so two and two makes sense. We’ve heard no complaints about them.”

  “People are scared. I am too in a way but I don’t want to commit business suicide, because this bar’s my life.”

  “Storeowners haven’t even complained that they’re scared. No sign of coercion in any way do I get and I speak to them every day.”

  “Because they’re very scared. Believe me I spoke to several of them too. They won’t tell you I did because that’s how scared they are. And why should I lie about this to you? There’s no gain in it for me. And if I seemed crazy for a while it’s because of the pipe I’m positive Stovin’s put someone up to fixing my head with, but even now, even if I don’t sound so sometimes, I’m pretty clear. And I don’t want to tussle with them. I just want to get them off my back and someone else to cart for me.”

  “Who was doing it for you before?”

  “Can’t say. That guy could also get his pipe from Stovin’s.”

  “You went to the police?”

  “Sure. They say I’ve no proof.”

  “No proof for them’s supposed to be proof for me? You can’t name names, how am I to believe you?”

  “When it comes between this nice company owner’s life and you not believing me and my getting more summonses, which you think I’ll choose?”

  “Look, stop the over-holy martyring for a minute, for how my to help?”

  “By just giving it. Name me one other company than Stovin’s who’ll cart for me.”

  “Hold it.” He gets a list and says “For your area,” and rattles the names off including Eco.

  “Tried them all. None’ll budge. They say it’s not their area or a dozen other excuses. There’s no real competition for business garbage in the city. Either one shoves the other out or together they got it portioned off.”

  “First offense I never heard of. As for portioning off, that’s one way of keeping the streets freer of traffic and noise during sleeping hours. But who of I mentioned before handled you—Eco? It’s the only one on the list I heard’s going out of business.”

  “You just talk to Stovin’s or any of the other carters and see why they won’t handle me and I bet you learn something you didn’t know before, or am I fooling myself?”

  “I can’t deal with them. That’s private garbage, we’re public. So only when rubbish blows off their trucks or they mess up the streets picking their customers’ stuff up do we have any reason to squawk.”

  “Then why my talking to you for? Anyway, I’ll think about answering your summons and I might even call your anticorruption force. Yeah, I’ll call them, maybe I’ll get some satisfaction finally—know who there is in charge?”

  “Read the newspapers,” and hangs up.

  I borrow a customer’s newspaper. It’s the better paper here, bigger so more unwieldy flipping through it, smaller runnier print, no scandal in it today, if they do have an
y of the others any other day, but federal: senator sentenced in influence-peddling case, ambassador called back for not paying income taxes, energy executives accused of entertaining environmental chief, vice president’s administrative assistants take mistresses and boyfriends on round-the-world junkets.

  Little later a man comes in selling the afternoon tabloid and I buy it. Lots of stories of city and state corruption: top judges give in-laws jobs through court, parents buying their children’s way into medical and dental colleges, morticians burying cheaper coffins than they sold the bereaved, doctors collecting illegal health insurance fees, lawyers selling babies stolen from hospital incubators to childless couples out West, and way further in the paper the Sanitation scandal. While I’m reading Dolph calls. “If you’re serious about seeing the anti people, don’t breathe you ever treated me to a beer, even if it was always off-hours for me and the regular free beer you give everyone after the first three. Just say I bought the first, we rolled double or nothing for the second and I won and that was my heavy drinking for the night: twice. Better yet, say I won the toss but refused the prize as one’s where I draw the line. No, don’t even say I was gambling, innocent dice or otherwise. I just have one beer, watch a little TV and go home.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m known as tongue-tied Shaney for my friends.”

  “Where’s my guarantee? Choice of saving or wrecking your business, anyone’s mouth could go haywire.”

  I finish the article and find it’s District Attorney Talven I should contact. I call, get somebody under him and say “I think I’ve important information on the Sanitation scandal or at least can add to it, my information can—” and he says “Listen carefully to me. Don’t give your name, address or phone number unless I request it or say another unsolicited word. Our phones here have a tendency of getting disturbed. Are you presently in any personal danger?”

  “I was clubbed once. Before that—”

  “That’s all. Next answer just a negative or yes to the question are you now on a private line?”