Killer Content

by Olivia Blacke

  “Hey? What did I tell you?”

  I stifled a groan. Maybe if we all pitched in, we could buy a bell to hang around Todd’s neck so he wouldn’t always be sneaking up on us. “What’s up?” Around us, we got several angry shushes and more than a few glares. I didn’t blame them. They’d come to hear Tate, not me and Todd. I made my way back toward the café, with Todd in tow. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Yeah. Do something with Huckleberry. It’s too crowded and he’s getting underfoot.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked, confused. I guess I could lock him in Todd’s office, but that seemed mean. Technically, he wasn’t allowed back in the café area since we served food. That didn’t leave a lot of options when the bookstore was this crowded.

  “I don’t know. Why do I have to do all the thinking around here? Take him on a walk or something.”

  “It might be hard to get through that crowd,” I pointed out.

  He pursed his lips. “Your generation doesn’t know hardship. I remember having to log off the internet because my mom needed to use the landline. Now that’s hardship. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

  “That you’re old?” one of the customers asked, visibly annoyed that Todd was talking over Tate.

  “What’s a landline?” his friend asked, snickering.

  Todd did not appreciate that. His nostrils flared and his eyebrows knitted together as he turned his back on the customers. “Take care of the dog. Now. Don’t make me ask you again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I found Huckleberry snoozing in the narrow hallway that ran the length of the store. I guess that was Todd’s definition of being in the way. “Come on, buddy,” I said, in my most encouraging voice. “Wanna go for a walkie? Maybe go to the park?” He lifted his head and looked at me before flopping back down.

  In my experience, Huckleberry was as independent as a cat, and twice as stubborn. If he wanted to do something, he did it. If he didn’t want to, he didn’t. No amount of cajoling would make him change his mind. Even when he was wearing a leash, he had a mind of his own and weighed almost as much as I did, so it would be more accurate to say I let Huckleberry take me for a walk, not the other way around.

  “Hold up, I’ll be right back.” Avoiding the crowd, I slipped along the hall and emerged right next to the kitchen. “Hey, Parker, got any returns this morning?”

  “Just this bacon and egg on brioche sandwich,” he said, waving toward a plate sitting on the far edge of the counter, right next to the walk-in. Whenever a customer returned a perfectly good, untouched meal, it was up for grabs for the rest of the staff. “He said he ordered turkey bacon substitution, but that wasn’t on his ticket.” Parker shrugged. He was easygoing. Someone could probably call his mother names, and he’d let it roll off his back.

  I don’t think I’d ever seen him flustered, much less close to losing his temper. And in a kitchen, that was saying something. I mean, I think I’m pretty upbeat and I tried to not let anything get to me, but between the stress of waitressing and the attitude of a few of the customers, I’d spent a break or two in my life crying in the bathroom. It came with the territory.

  Not Parker, though. He was as cool as the cucumbers he was currently slicing into thin strips and arranging in between layers of damp paper towels.

  “Mind if I take the bacon?”

  “Help yourself,” he said. “Might as well take the rest of it, too, instead of letting it go to waste.”

  He had a point. Sure, I’d had a bowl of cereal for breakfast and the eggs were now room temperature, but the day I turned down anything on brioche bread was the day they played “Amazing Grace” at my grave.

  “Thanks.” I separated the bacon and gulped down the rest of the sandwich as I returned to Huckleberry.

  “Got something for you,” I told him, holding out one of the strips of bacon. He rolled to his feet and lunged for it. “Not so fast.” I broke off half a piece and tossed it to him. “You’ll get the rest if you cooperate.” I turned and headed toward the back door. Huckleberry loped after me. Most days, he was as big and slow as a Zamboni, but when bacon was involved, he was a souped-up 1964 ½ Mustang.

  I clipped the leash to his collar. I’m not sure why I bothered. Usually, when Huckleberry needed to do his business, he’d let himself out of the shop and wander back in later, sometimes waiting by the front door until a customer let him back inside. He was at least as street smart as I was, probably more so. But the last thing I wanted was a ticket for an unleashed dog, especially when he wasn’t even my dog. “Good boy.”

  We went out back, past the overflowing dumpster. Once, when I was ten or so, my parents planned a summer retreat to Galveston, Texas. When we got there, the stench coming off the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico was enough to make a nun curse. My dad explained the fetid, pungent aroma came from rotting seaweed suffocating all the ocean life. Personally, I thought the devil had farted.

  That smell was bad, bad enough to keep us from ever going to the beach despite driving five hours. The reek of the dumpster behind Untapped Books & Café was worse. Three times as bad, easy. And the temperature was still climbing, so the trash still had a few hours to bake in the blazing sun to reach peak ripeness. When the trash collectors came by tomorrow, I hoped they were wearing hazmat suits.

  A thought hit me. When I’d searched for Bethany’s missing cell phone and bracelet, I’d looked under the bushes and in the rocky and grassy areas. I’d looked around benches and checked the elevated walkway. But I hadn’t thought to check the nearby garbage cans. I mean, why would I? Public trash cans, especially those at a popular park, were beyond nasty. They were filled with all sorts of sharp, filthy objects that I didn’t even want to begin to think about.

  The Williamsburg of today was a different world than it had been thirty years ago. I’d heard that once upon a time, before being revitalized and repurposed, the huge warehouses that were now microbreweries and high-end apartment buildings were used for more nefarious enterprises. Nowadays, the drug of choice for most of the residents of Williamsburg was overpriced—but delicious!—coffee beans grown in the mountains of South America, but that didn’t mean that the streets were miraculously clean. There were still drug users in New York City, and a public park in the middle of the night would be rife with them.

  After all, my sleepy hometown of Piney Island was “safe.” Family-friendly. It was one of those towns where a girl could walk home alone at night. The majority of the emergency calls that the local cops responded to involved a possum in someone’s crawlspace or attic. And even in rural Louisiana, drugs were a problem. They weren’t common, exactly, but I knew which people and houses to steer clear of, and what late-night party spots to avoid.

  A late-night hangout in Williamsburg was a posh nightclub with a cover charge, dress code, and red velvet ropes protected by a scowling bouncer. Inside, they served overpriced drinks and played music so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. The hot spots in Piney Island were more low-key, leaning instead toward the parking lot of the high school, the playground at the end of the community park, or a circle of old stumps ringing a dirt pit that was used for huge bonfires in the summer. From hanging out at the ends of dead-end roads to climbing into rickety deer stands to watch the lightning bugs, Piney Island nightlife wasn’t exactly hopping.

  Even so, a wave of homesickness washed over me. But I loved Williamsburg. I wasn’t looking forward to my aunt’s return at the end of the summer, bringing my time in New York to an end. Sure, I missed my parents. I even missed my old job. But I wasn’t ready to think about going back. Not yet.

  To my surprise, I found myself at the gates of the Domino Park dog run. I looked down at Huckleberry, who gave me a sly doggy grin. While I’d been ruminating, he’d led me across several busy intersections, right into the heart of the park. Part of me had been on the lookout for tra
ffic, but one thing I’d learned early was that crosswalks and traffic signals meant little to New Yorkers—drivers and pedestrians alike. I was just as likely to be hit by a car while in a designated crosswalk, on the sidewalk, or, as had happened a few days ago, up on a curb as I was jaywalking into a busy street during rush hour.

  On the far end of Domino Park, in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, there was a small fenced-off area where dogs could roam freely off leash. There were benches for the human companions, water fountains, and plenty of trash cans. The dogs could run around on the turf or play King of the Hill on the stone risers in the center. Most of the dogs (and their people) were polite and well behaved, because any out-of-control dog would be quickly ejected by the other dog owners.

  I hadn’t thought of New York as dog-friendly before coming here. To be honest, I’d thought it was kinda cruel, keeping a dog in the city. In my imagination, dogs were cooped up in tiny apartments all day, only walked on bare concrete sidewalks in the early morning and late evening by people who were hardly ever home.

  On the contrary, New Yorkers loved their dogs. They took them everywhere they could. Even the little courtyard behind Untapped Books & Café not only allowed but actively encouraged dogs—as long as they were leashed and well behaved. We put out little water bowls for them and kept a tub of doggie treats for the waitstaff to give out to them. On top of all the businesses that welcomed dogs, there were lots of parks, dog runs, doggie daycares, and doggie spas.

  I was starting to see that New York dogs had it a lot better than the mutts back home, which were hardly ever leashed, rarely fenced, and certainly never invited out to dinner with the family.

  Huckleberry took his time, sniffing every inch of the perimeter of the dog run. It wasn’t a large area, maybe the size of a five-car parking lot. Right now, only four dogs other than Huckleberry were enjoying the ability to stretch their legs. As the day grew hotter, the small lawn would be abandoned as everyone sought air-conditioned spaces, but in the early morning and late evening, it would be packed nose-to-tail.

  I kept half an eye on Huckleberry, even knowing he wouldn’t cause any trouble. He was the largest dog in the run today, which wasn’t unusual. New York dogs tended toward teacup size. On the other hand, Huckleberry probably tipped the scales at almost a hundred pounds of fur and drool. He didn’t have a fancy collar like the other dogs at the park, and could seriously use a trip to the groomer, but what he lacked in fashion and hygiene, he more than made up for with his gentle personality and friendly demeanor.

  As I watched him ignore a miniature Chihuahua who was trying to pick a fight with Huckleberry’s long foofy tail, I noticed a park employee let himself into the dog run, pushing a large cart. He pulled the trash bag out of one of the bins inside the run, tied it up, and tossed it into his cart. Then he replaced the bag with an empty one and rolled his squeaky cart to the other bin.

  I intercepted him. “How often do you take out the trash?” I asked him.

  “Every hour,” he told me, giving me a quick once-over.

  “Once an hour? That seems excessive.” I’d expected once or twice a day. The park was technically only open from sunup to sundown, but that still meant twenty or so bags of garbage from this dog run alone every day. No wonder New York had a garbage crisis.

  He shrugged. “Why’re you so interested, anyway? It’s just dog poop.”

  “I was here with my friend the other day, and she lost her bracelet. An old family heirloom,” I said, cringing a little as I heard myself bend the truth. I probably should have just told him about the missing cell phone. It was more believable. “We looked all over for it, but never thought to check the trash cans.” Rookie mistake. “When was the last time the garbage trucks came by?”

  He pushed back his ball cap and scratched his temple. He was wearing thick leather gloves, despite the heat, and had to use the back of his hand to avoid getting anything unpleasant on his face. “Sunday night, I think. They should be coming by soon, come to think of it.”

  Uh-oh. Bethany was killed on Monday morning. If I had any chance of finding her bracelet or phone, it had to be before the trucks came. “Any chance I could take a look?”

  “Through the garbage?” he asked, and his tone indicated that I sounded as off-kilter as I felt.

  “Yes. Please.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I shook my head. “Dead serious.”

  He glanced skyward, as if praying for divine patience. “Follow me.”

  I whistled for Huckleberry, and he trotted back over to me and sat by my side, panting a little. I was glad that he was feeling cooperative. If he’d been in one of his stubborn moods, I could never have caught him, much less dragged him out of the park before he was ready to go. I clipped the leash onto his collar and followed the maintenance man.

  He led the way to a golf cart that had been modified to tow the handcart he’d been pushing. He snapped the cart into place, then told me, “Hop in.”

  I got into the passenger side. Huckleberry gave me a questioning look before slowly climbing into the small space. His back half squeezed into the area by my feet while his elbows and head rested in my lap. I stroked his ears as the maintenance man drove, reassuring Huckleberry that he was, indeed, the Very Best Boy.

  We arrived at a fenced-in yard that housed several metal sheds, each the size of a four-pack of shipping containers arranged in a cube. Seagulls circled overhead, and roosted on the shed roofs. I peered into the first shed and saw enormous piles of something that looked like dirty sand. I tried to imagine why the city was storing piles of dirt in the middle of prime real estate.

  The path that ran along the East River that separated Brooklyn from Manhattan had a railing to keep people off the enormous boulders—not sand—that lined the bank. As far as I knew, the closest sandy beach was Coney Island. “What’s with all the sand?”

  “Not sand, salt,” he replied. At my bewildered expression, he added, “For treating the roads in winter?”

  “Oh. Of course,” I said, feeling a little sheepish. I’d only been in New York a short while, and in that time it had gone from uncomfortably hot to unbearably so. Being from the South, sometimes I forgot that the rest of the country had more than two seasons. In Louisiana, we had summer and football season. We might get a rogue ice storm every couple of years, and once we got a whole quarter-inch of snow. It was enough to close schools for two days.

  New Yorkers didn’t even blink at a quarter-inch of snow. Like much of the northeastern United States, New York could be slammed with nor’easters that would drop over two feet of snow in a single storm. I couldn’t fathom what two feet of snow would look like, much less how the city managed to clear the maze of roads and sidewalks. I guess that was where the mounds of salt came into play.

  Then all thoughts of snow and ice and salt fled as my guide slid open the door on the next shed and the smell hit me like a physical force. I thought the dumpsters behind Untapped smelled bad, but that was child’s play compared to this. The piles of bags were taller than my head in spots, and it would take me two hours with a skidsteer to load it all onto a truck. I wondered how many trucks it would take to haul all of this away, and then realized with a start that this was only three days’ worth of garbage.

  13

  Odessa Dean @OdessaWaiting ∙ June 26

  Recycle, y’all

  Thanks 4 coming to my TED talk

  #recycle #recycle #recycle #goals

  YIKES! YOU HAVE got to be kidding me,” I said, staring at the mountain of waste. There was more garbage in this one shed than I’d ever seen in my entire life. I made a promise to myself then and there that not only would I up my recycling game, but I’d somehow convince Todd to implement a stricter recycling program at Untapped Books & Café—I was finding bottles in the trash bin all the time—and also to invest in a compost bin. So much food waste got tos
sed in the garbage that could be repurposed to fertilize community gardens, or keep what little green space we had in New York healthy and lush.

  Hashtag goals.

  The maintenance worker handed me a disposable mask and a pair of rubber gloves. I put them on. “If you’re serious, you’ve probably got an hour, maybe two, before the trucks arrive.”

  “This can’t all be from Domino Park,” I said, overwhelmed by the sheer volume.

  “Nah. This is a shared facility. We normally utilize that bin.” He pointed at the far corner. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I realized that there was some attempt to contain the chaos, and there were giant metal bins like dumpsters, only taller and with no lids, lined up in rows. Only most of the bins were overflowing and workers had begun tossing bags of garbage any which way, not caring where they landed. “But when it gets this full, it’s not hardly worth making a path back there and we do what we have to.” To emphasize his point, he tossed the bags he’d collected from the dog park on top of a nearby pile of black trash bags.

  I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the task at hand.

  Big mistake.

  Even through the mask, the stench overwhelmed my lungs. For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. I doubled over, coughing. He clapped me on the back hard enough to leave a bruise. “You get used to the smell after a while,” he assured me. I hacked up what felt like a chunk of bronchial tube. I never wanted to get used to this smell. “If you want my advice, go buy your friend a new bracelet.”