This is good.
Except for all of the people.
Lots of suitor losers, joggers, old craps playing chess, bicyclists. There’s more people here than back at the old spot.
No bums, though, not that Roger has seen, anyway.
That’s good.
Not a single hobo in the visible area is really good.
The people are staring, though. That’s usual. Roger’s used to it. If he catches someone really looking, he’ll just itch his nuts or something vulgar like that.
That usually catches them off guard.
Nobody wants to watch someone digging for gold underneath their sack.
Roger finds a place in the park, a less out in the open spot on the bank of the river. He sits down to relax for a few hours, it’s been a long walk.
But this is good. Here’s the river, here’s a park, here’s where Roger should be, where Roger should’ve been a long while ago.
This is better than before, much better. He doesn’t have to share his little something with fourth-rate-can’t-live-without-someone-taking-care-of-them bums, either. Like those placid pricks from Dark Alley. Those shitty bums wouldn’t jump the shallow end of a river without little floaties on their arms.
And sunscreen on, just in case the sun is out.
There’s no way they know about this place. How could they? It’s way too far from home, too far from comfort.
Good.
This is really good.
It’s pretty quiet here too.
Quiet enough to think.
Shelter and food.
Those are the next things.
Shelter for when it rains.
Food for obvious reasons.
Shelter is always easier. Anything from trees to a small picnic area with a roof is all he needs for shelter.
Food is a little bit harder. The last routine Roger had for food was tough to put together. It took weeks to get it all figured out, let alone the time to find the places.
But screw all of that now. Roger isn’t going back. Not after he gets things rolling here. Let Maynard take all of Roger’s old spots. It was bound to happen eventually at the rate Maynard was infecting Roger’s life, anyway.
Roger closes his eyes and enjoys the warm sun on his face. He can hear the gentle sounds of the river passing by.
Something like two hours pass.
Roger didn’t sleep but he feels more rested than he has in the past few months. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much rest you get in the subconscious, sometimes resting consciously is what you need. Roger ready to start the search.
Food first. Always food first.
Without leaving the park Roger scans the surrounding areas to try to locate the direction of a business district. He picks the most promising direction and heads off. Tall buildings is always a good indicator. If there’s office buildings, there’s bound to be all sorts of restaurants.
There’s a bike path that weaves through the park that Roger has to cross in order to continue his heading. As he does so, a dick cyclist decides to try to scare Roger by deliberately swerving toward him.
It doesn’t work. Roger already thought about this being a possibility, thanks to his immediate experience living as a bum and knowing how ‘people’ treat bums, and somehow came up with this grand idea on the spot. It seems most ideas are born this way.
When the cyclist swerves toward Roger, Roger anticipates which way the biker is going to break after the little scare attempt. That’s the way Roger leaps at the last second.
It works.
The two-wheeled-two-bit-son-of-a-bitch has to swerve harder than his bike can handle just so that he misses Roger. He goes cart-wheel-somersaulting over the handlebars into the grass just off of the path.
Roger continues walking like nothing happened. He doesn’t look back to see if the man is okay, he just hopes the cyclist isn’t.
This is good.
This is really good.
Except that bastard was wearing a helmet.
Oh well.
Chapter 56
The first place that could be a potential once a week spot is a Japanese restaurant. They look like they are really busy. Busy means a lot of food. Busy means good. Roger’ll be back tonight to check it out.
The second restaurant he sees is McDonald’s.
Moving on.
That’ll be an emergency only stop, if even that.
The sun is beginning to set. Roger has walked at least four miles in a sort of combing zigzag pattern through the area, that number doesn’t include the distance it took to walk from his old spot to the new spot.
He walks another block and there it is. The holy grail of food wasters.
A buffet.
A pizza buffet.
There’s always uneaten food in their dumpsters. Some of it hasn’t even been touched. They throw it out because it’s too stale or too brown or too slimy or something dumb like that. They throw it out for any reason that isn’t appealing to customers.
Whiners. Roger’s mind plays all of the excuses customers say when food isn’t presentable enough for them.
‘What kind of place is this?’
‘Do you really expect me to eat this?’
‘How can you call yourself a restaurant?’
‘I work all day only to come here and waster my hard earned money on what you call food? I demand a refund.’
‘You serve this garbage to other people?”
Roger doesn’t have any standards when it comes to food. As long it won’t kill him or make him sick, he’ll eat it.
Standards ruin people.
All those people worried about their appearance meeting societal standards, worried about their fucking food’s appearance meeting societal standards, worried that if somehow they don’t at least meet the bare minimum in fashion they’ll have to commit suicide. Even then they’ll try to die in a way that’ll meet some sort of standard.
Standard, standard, standard.
Stan the standard man.
Why can’t they just see what Roger sees? Why can’t they take off the god damn blinders? Why can’t they look in a mirror and see the contradiction?
Or better yet, look at the mirror and see it as part of the problem.
Right.
That’ll never happen. Roger has tried to show them their idiocies, but he failed.
They failed. They’re the ones who can’t see beyond a reflection. And that is where the answers are.
They don’t even know the question, though. Ignorance is not bliss.
Maybe Roger needs to try talking to people’s reflections instead of the actual people.
That might actually work, these days, anyway.
Christ.
Before leaving the pizza buffet place, Roger takes a quick peek in the dumpster just to see if there’s anything for the night.
Pizza by the slice.
Roger grabs three and starts walking back toward the park. He wants to hit the Japanese restaurant to check if they’re closed yet. It’s right on the way. Maybe they’ve thrown out some grub already. He will have to be careful when digging through this dumpster, all of those fish entrees spoil quickly.
Even though Roger has found an everyday pizza buffet, he can’t go there everyday or even every other day. People will start to notice and try to do something about it. Someone like Chad-Captain-Save-Mart, someone like Chad’s best friend or his brother or worse, his mother.
Roger’ll be careful not to go too much.
He eats his last bite of pizza as he approaches the Japanese restaurant.
It’s closed and no one’s inside. There aren’t any cars in the parking lot either.
Good.
Roger goes to the dumpster and flips the lid. It hits the back with a big bong followed by a smaller aftershock bong. He peeks inside to check for future reference.
Something brushes up against his leg.
“Meow.”
Roger looks down to see a dirty-raggy-shaggy t
abby cat rubbing against, between and around his legs.
“Get away, cat.”
It’s purring. Purr, rub, purr.
“Go home, cat.”
The cat looks up. It has mud-brown-filthy eyes.
“Meow.”
Roger ignores the cat and checks the dumpster one more time. Not much in there. Not this time. He’ll have to come back tomorrow and check again.
“Meow.”
Stupid cat. Roger starts walking away.
The cat follows. Its tail hangs like a broken squiggle.
“Leave me alone, cat.”
Roger stops. It rubs against Roger’s crusted pants. It doesn’t sound at all like what it should, more like mud-filled-dried carpet on sun-beaten-brittle cement.
Damn it. This cat isn’t going to leave him alone. Roger walks back to the dumpster and digs around. He pulls out a half-eaten eggroll.
“Here, cat.” Roger bends over and lets the cat smell the food.
“Good?”
Purr.
Roger stands up straight and tosses the egg roll a little ways away, maybe fifteen or twenty feet. It’s enough of a distance to get the animal away from Roger, but a short enough distance to where the cat can still see where it went. It watches the eggroll land then skippers over to it.
Stupid cat.
Roger walks away, toward the park.
A good day, despite a few minor things. There hasn’t been anything nearly as bad as what was going on at the old spot.
Roger could get used to this. Just knowing he has a buffet already on board is a huge relief. A spot like that is the backbone to any stable food rotation per week.
This is good.
Except that cat.
Roger won’t be coming back here. He hasn’t had good luck with oriental food, anyway.
Chapter 57
Purring and licking.
This is what Roger wakes up to. That cat followed him back to the park. That stupid fucking cat is licking Roger’s face.
He pushes it away.
“Leave me alone, cat, go back to your dumpster.”
It purrs and walks back up to him.
“Get back.”
He pushes again.
It comes back.
This is not good. This cat followed him all of the way here. That’s at least a mile. This is not good. It’s not unbelievable, though, Roger does have a very distinct smell.
He suddenly realizes why this happened. He screwed up last night by feeding it. He can’t do that again. This cat can’t se Roger as a sustained provider of food after feeding it just once.
Ignore it.
Just ignore it. Continue with the search for food. This cat won’t follow him forever, not as much as Roger has to walk today. And tomorrow. The whole week.
Get up and get going.
There is no cat.
“Meow.”
There is no cat.
Roger starts off.
It follows a short distance behind, ten or fifteen feet. It stops to sniff this and that, but otherwise keeps up with Roger well enough.
This time Roger goes in a different direction. He has the pizza buffet for sure, but he’s going to need at least three or four more stops in order to have enough to eat.
It’s early yet. Hopefully those garbage trucks don’t come today. They come in the morning twice a week and take Roger’s potential meals. They come bumbling up in their green trucks. Trucks with signs that say ‘Waste Management’ or ‘Disposal Services’ or ‘Go Green’ or “We’re Eco-Friendly’ or whatever idiotic little phrase someone with a lot of money said and someone else with less money agreed with them because they’re just sucking up, and it ended up being stuck on the side of these green machines.
And let’s not forget the saying on the side of pop bottles, milk cartons, whatever. Just about every piece of going-to-be-thrown-away-eventually trash says, ‘Please do not litter’. What it really should say is, ‘Please don’t litter where the majority of society would be able to see it. Instead throw it in these here containers and we’ll take it to a less habitable place and dump it in huge mounds.’
Out of sight, out of mind.
Roger doesn’t want to see a dump truck, but it’s on his mind. He better not see a dump truck today.
What is today?
Wednesday.
They shouldn’t.
Purr, purr, purr.
Roger stops in an alley behind some low-rate grocery store. He peeks in the dumpster.
Empty.
Fucking empty.
Those bastard-trash-stealing-dirty-clean-freak trash men must’ve been here.
Ah hell.
“Meow.”
Ignore it.
Keep going. Find another spot. He’ll be back here tonight or tomorrow. Maybe something in that grocery store will expire today. Maybe they have a shitty bakery in there that throws day old donuts out.
Keep going.
This part of the city is much busier as far as traffic goes. And not just cars, but pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders. Everyone here is in a rush to get to where they are supposedly supposed to be. Everyone’s thinking about where they’re going rather than where they are. They’re living their lives hours, days, even years in the imaginary future.
The sun is nearly overhead when Roger finds another potential spot.
It’s a sit-down restaurant, a mom and pop diner.
Places like this usually have homemade pies and pastries and stuff like that. Food that doesn’t stay fresh for very long.
This is good.
Roger checks the dumpster.
Nothing.
It must be trash day. It must be shitty trash day. That means no food for Roger until maybe tonight.
He’ll come back.
Pie sounds good right now.
Roger looks around and finds two other potential food stops, but right now every dumpster in the neighborhood is empty.
No food today. That’s fine; Roger has done without food for a dat many times before.
Water is a different story. Roger needs water almost everyday. That’s why the river is a necessity.
Back to the river.
He turns around and starts walking. The cat almost trips him because it’s trying to rub against Roger’s leg.
Just ignore it.
No cat, no problems.
This is good.
On his way back to the park and river, Roger watches some highfly-swishie-shorts-and-a-sleeveless-shirt-because-big-muscles-get-ladies jock take two bites of a sub sandwich then throw the rest of it away.
He’s probably on some bodybuilding diet and couldn’t help himself to this one tiny little treat of soft, tasty carbo-loaded bread. He told himself that it’d be just one or two itty-bitty bites, that’s it. Man, if coach saw this…
What a waste of evolution. What a fucking mind blowjob. Why can’t anyone see past the mad ignorance of this world? This ignorance is stagnation. Ignorance is the downfall, the ceasing, the end of humanity. Ignorance is one non-material thing these people have more of than Roger. Ignorance is money. Ignorance is devolution.
Ignorance is also where Roger’s next meal is going to come from. He pulls the sub out of the trashcan and takes a bite.
Still cold. Turkey, ham and cheese.
“Meow.”
Good sandwich.
Roger starts walking again.
Mayo and mustard.
Lettuce.
Pickles.
Jalapenos.
Black olives.
The next bite Roger takes doesn’t cut all the way through and so pulls a piece of turkey out. It hangs for a second, not long enough for Roger to catch it, then falls.
“Meow.”
Before Roger can pick it up that cat eats it.
“God damn it, cat, leave me the hell alone.”
That’s twice now. Roger’s fed this cat twice now.
Ignore it. Ignore the shit-hair-no-one-cares-for cat. This is only temporary.
Cats have a shorter lifespan.
Ignore it.
Chapter 58
The next day Roger returns to both stops he found yesterday. There’s food at both. Expired Lunchables at the grocery store, and a few hard pastry rolls at the diner.
One day after trash day and there’s two hits already.
This is good.
That’s three places found in three days. Roger decides to take the rest of the week off because of the accomplishment. These three spots should cover one week by themselves. Nobody should notice if he goes to one of those spots twice during this next week. Everyone’s too worried about their hair, their fat, their self-consciousness, their careers, their homes, their big screen TV’s, their anything-but-what-actually-makes-sense shit that is the end product of the consumer digestive track.
It’s shit shitting shit.
Roger takes the rest of the week off. This helps him get more familiar with his new surroundings.
Saturday.
Roger watches a misguided parent correctly misguide her kid.
The kid spit a lugie on the ground.
That’s socially unacceptable.
That’s against the rules of acceptance.
That’s disgusting.
The mother grounds him for a week.
She’s told him this before. Three times now. That’s two times too many. He should’ve learned by now. For Christ’s sake he’s almost twelve years old. And by that age you should know that spitting is so barbaric.
The kid could’ve had something in his mouth like a bug or a hair or something. And if he didn’t, what the hell does it matter whether or not he spit?
Chapter 59
Roger finds two more sources for food in the next few days. Every one of his stops are much closer to each other than in his last set. And he’s still not seen another bum in the area.
Good.
Those no-ball-bums can have his old spots. He doesn’t need them.
One of the new places is a bowling alley with a restaurant inside and other is some fancy kind of coffee shop that serves food. The coffee shop isn’t going to be very reliable, but the bowling alley should be.
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