“Mind holding there a second?” the driver says when I open the van door.
“Oh sure, anything, what else could be new?” and I stick a few mints in my mouth.
“You know what you’ve done is against the law,” other officer says, both getting out of the car.
“Wait a second, what is, what’ve I done?—crying? trying?” and think stop, shut up, you’re high, wise up, that’s what your mints were for.
“Why you acting stupid? Leaving your garbage around here like you’ve been doing.”
“Was not. I was collecting it. Only opening these bags and cans to see if anything of value’s inside. This is a fancy area. People around here got money up their ass to throw out fantastic trash that I sell as junk and antiques to antique and junkstores, whichever which.”
“We’ve been following you. And you smell from alcohol. Turn around. Put your hands on the van and spead your legs wide.”
I do. “All right,” when I’m being patted up and down. “I had some. I won’t lie. But I’m not drunk. You want to frisk my trash bags also, go ahead. Black one’s mine. Also the one on the extreme left, so be my guests. But none of the others. Never dropped off more than two to each stop and usually one.” They’re through. I turn around. “Because I’m not greedy. Not a collector too. Name’s Shaney Fleet. I’m a barowner, cheap joint. Here’s my address and name,” and show them my driver’s license and election registration card, only two identifications. “So it’s all just bar and grill trash I was dumping because I can’t get rid of it any other way. If you knew how far I’ve come to dump it, you’d laugh.”
“Let’s see this ‘just bar trash,’ “and he opens a pocketknife.
“Don’t. I’ll only have to carry it back slashed and spilling to the van, which I rented and have to keep clean. I’ll do it.” I unknot the two bags I left out here and three in the van and they look inside all of them.
“What’s wrong?” the driver says. “Business so bad you can’t afford a regular pickup?”
“No company will take mine. It’s a long story.”
“By law one of them has to. You’re either not asking the right firm in the right way or they’re in their rights to refuse you because you don’t want to pay today’s inflated prices.”
“See this head?” I take off my cap. “That’s further on. Listen from the beginning and maybe you can advise me. Two men came in my bar a long time ago. Month? Could it be three? I forget. But Turner and Pete. Oh, very sweet guys these two, your mothers would’ve loved them and I bet in several names they have records a leg long, and they said they represented—” but he cuts me off and says “We’d be interested if it was in our precinct. Tell whoever the cops are in yours.”
“Everytime I yell for the police these days they won’t believe me.”
“Cry fire, not police. That’s what I tell my wife. Okay, different situation, but maybe there’s something you can learn from it, because she’s in alone, couple punks raping her God forbid, neighbors will stay behind their doors if she shouts ‘Someone get the police.’ So cry fire I tell her and they’ll all run out and bat down her door with their heads if they have to to stop the fire from spreading to theirs.” He writes up a ticket for illegally dumping refuse on the street while the other calls in the van’s license number and description and my name and bar address in case I’m tagged around here again.
“Now get your garbage and drop it in some other precinct, not ours.”
I tie up the bags and carry them to the van. I could probably get rid of them in another borough or by the river but I don’t want to chance getting caught by the police who might call in and link me with the last ticket and pull me and the van in, making the van owner angry and maybe my staying overnight in jail again and whatever that might bring on. I drive back to the bar, think what would be worse: bags downstairs or on the street? and I carry them downstairs. Only five of them and if the health inspector asks why they weren’t dumped with the rest I’ll say “Those are today’s.”
I drive to the motel parking space I’m supposed to leave the van at, honk two dots and a dash to signal the loaner his car’s back and cab to my hotel.
“You worked much later than usual,” the nightclerk says. “All recovered?”
“Almost. Goodnight.”
“You have messages. Not that I’m a snoop, but I don’t understand them. Gruff but educated man phoned them in practically an hour apart to the second you’ll see dutifully marked on the time slot.”
I read them. “Boiling hot out today isn’t it?” the first says. “Boiling hot out tonight isn’t it?” the second says.
“Firstly,” he says, “they were phoned in at nine and ten at night so what’s with the ‘today’ and ‘tonight’ distinction? Okay. Your privilege not to answer and minor point. Secondly, your caller can’t be talking about the weather of course, because I froze my rear off getting here.”
“It is cold. When I was outside I wasn’t even thinking of it but it must be near zero.”
“Three above? Your room will be freezing now and by five there’ll be icicles inside. Want to borrow an electric blanket? Small charge.”
“I’m afraid of fires in those things. I’ll cover the covers with my coat.”
“Then if you weren’t a barowner I’d say ‘Like a bottle sent up?’”
“I would. Forgot mine and I’ve run out. Scotch, oldest and best you got. I feel I deserve it.”
“Like a little lady also? She lives here but doesn’t work out of the hotel and told me for my special friends she’s on call anytime.”
“No. It’s been so long I forgot.”
“Don’t worry what she thinks. And baby-cute, dancer’s boobs, and to even men who are eighty and have no chance in the world of reaching it she never makes them feel like fools.”
“Just the scotch.”
“Give me ten minutes to age it.”
Knocks on my door while I’m under a cold shower because there’s no hot and I’m pig-filthy and reek. I yell “Hold it,” get in a bathrobe and then a coat and go to the door, pay him and give a tip. “Who minds the store while you’re delivering?”
“That mean you want to chat and offering me a drink?”
“Sure.”
“I bolt the lobby door—Pour just a trickle more. Switchboard rings or guests want to come in and their frozen fingers are falling off, let them—I have to turn an extra bill over my salary or my family and I can’t survive. When people complain I say ‘Diseased bladder.’”
“So you’re married.”
“Oh yes, it’s the best thing. Cheers,” and we click glasses and drink.
“When do you see your wife, and children?”
“Children sure. Why do without? Wife when I come home and snuggle into her an hour before she has to roust the house and kids and on my one night off. That’s time enough.”
“I ought to get married. Never bothered me till now and I haven’t spoken of it much before, but I’m damn lonely and for some probably logical reason getting lonelier every day.”
“Marriage covers lots of rough spots. Not that I want to force you into it, Mr. Fleet—Shaney may I call you now? And facetiously force you into it of course. Anyway, my petty enterprising is piss poor in this dive, since how many fine scotch tipplers and horny guys you think I’ve got? I only stay here because this hotel is still keeping barely alive, and locatable nightclerk jobs in safe neighborhoods are short. But if you’re seriously interested in getting connected, then once you give up your bandage and blackeye disguise and grow in the shaven scalp hair, there’s another little lady here, this one maybe big once but now stooped through age and not so shapely or cute, who’s quite rich and only tolerating substandard housing because she abhors hostel snobbery as she says. She lives on the sixth and is looking for a much younger man than she for companionship and to run errands and eventually keep and every so often if the desire moves her, a little physical diddling, and if it works out for both of them,
inheritance and wedlock. We could pretend you’re ten years younger than you are. For a small part of whatever she contributes to you, I could smooth through the introductions and claim you’re Casanova come back.”
“No, with me it’s got to be to fall-in-love. Must seem silly at my age and it’s another idea I haven’t thought about for years, but I haven’t felt strongly for someone since high school.”
“This is the one I’d fall for if given half a second chance. Though my wife’s all right. Works hard, great mom, lays out for me what I need and carries me through streaks of unemployment and debauchery, so I’ve no gripes. But think it over. And you must be freezing and I have to leave. Sure you don’t want the younger one? She can be rung up till past four and then she dreams till noon.”
“No thanks.”
“Then one quick one more. Higher… higher… lower the wrist some—there, and I’ll take the glass with me and send it back tomorrow smelling of soap.”
“By the way, if you were interested in a parttime or changing jobs to one with I think better hours and free food and drinks at the end of the day and perhaps more pay—”
“Oh, I don’t want to get tangled in what you’re presently involved with, kind as you are to ask. Just from those eerie phone voices and your broken skull, it eventually seems fatal.”
I drink some more. Probably just the unusual amount of booze that’s making me feel like having sex and I think what the hell, got a few dollars in my pocket and it’s been a long time, even though I know it’s not right and I could get a disease, but what the hell, tired of doing it to myself when I’ve the energy to and it’s been a long long time and there’s always antibiotics if they still work and I call the nightclerk and say “I don’t like asking this, but how much for the younger woman?”
“Sure you don’t and don’t worry: she’s in your means. I’ll have her rap on your door and you can catch me next loop around. If you want more from her the price rises by halves for each added service and a cut higher than that if what you want is bizarre, but nobody has enough cash for her to get kicked or slapped.”
“I only want the natural way once.”
“Twenty then.”
“Seems more than fair.”
She taps. I don’t want to answer, hold my breath. She taps. I get an erection, let her in, am nervous, in my street clothes, offer her a drink. She’s young and okay-looking and small and already taking her sweater off with nothing on underneath, and underneath has a couple of long stomach scars and stitch marks and pregnant belly I think and almost flat breasts, so I guess that’s what a dancer’s are, though I wouldn’t bet.
She says “No thanks, maybe just a glass of water if you wouldn’t mind. Let the tap run as the water here straight out of the faucet tastes like car oil, you find the same with yours?” Now naked, sitting on the bed, legs a little spread, squeezing something on her thigh. “Yes I’m pregnant if that’s what you’re gaping at and seems to be disturbing you. If it does I can go, no trouble, and you don’t have to pay me a thing. You want me to? Good. Take off your clothes, you’re making me feel like I undressed on the street and it’s not just the cold. Any other night I’d give you plenty more time if you wanted it, the whole foreplay, but can we start soon?—I’m pooped. But my water first. And wash your penis clean while you’re in there and then come and get on top and stick it right in—I’m ready. I might look frail but can handle three times my own weight.”
I wash, give her the glass of water and sit next to her on the bed.
“Don’t worry about the fetus either if that’s what’s bothering you now—it’ll be dead in a few days anyway. Not a legal clinic, I’m too far gone for them, but a good butcher. But let’s forget all that now—get in here. Not around my knees but between them—that’s right, that’s nice, just the way you’re moving.”
Later she says “Truthfully I should be paid time and a half for what it took you, but you’re probably just a bit intoxicated and tired. At least your body was clean and not so fat and you were a gentleman and didn’t fake like a lot of men do that it wasn’t great and you didn’t squirt, just so you can get, after a long wait, your second as a freebie. Night-night, sweetheart. Beginning Wednesday I’ll be recuperating for a few days from the operation. After or before that if you want me again, help me skip the fee to the nightclerk. Just go outside and from the booth across the street dial the hotel direct. My name’s Helena, and maybe you can disguise your voice a bit when you ask him for it, and I’m in 807.”
After she leaves I scrub my genitals, just to be on the safe side, and have a drink and think I should get married. Someone to talk and get warm to and occasionally do it with but free from possible disease. And maybe to help around the bar like my mother with my father did, cooking big dishes at home for it and some table and counter serving at lunch where we could earn a little extra through her tips. But I don’t want to do it again, though it felt good, with a hooker. Not enough of that feeling of blamelessness and routine, so too much like doing it with my own kid or close niece.
Next day a few hours earlier than he said he would the health inspector comes in, shakes the sleet off his hat and asks to be taken to the basement. I pick up the bar slats, open the floor hatch and we go downstairs.
“I do have a couple of bags here from today, but all of yesterday’s I got rid of.”
“That’s good. Makes my job easier.” He takes a penlight out of his coat pocket and shines it on the bags. The light’s violet instead of white. He turns each of the bags over with the penlight always on them, though the ceiling bulb seems bright enough to see whatever he’s interested in.
“So. Going to close me for a few recent bags?”
“Hey, let’s cut out all the horseshit before we sink in it. Come here,” and he points to where the beam’s aimed at. There’s a little X on the bag and some scribbling beneath it. “That’s my mark and initials and yesterday’s time and day. I wrote it with an ink you can only read with this light. I didn’t X all your bags, though two of these have it on them.”
“Maybe you marked them just now, because I’m telling you all the bags here come just from today.”
“Did you see me just mark them?”
“If I didn’t see you yesterday, how could I today?”
“Yesterday you left me alone for a few moments. Anyway, the city will know it’s yesterday’s because I’m taking this one with me. You’ll let me, of course.”
“What could I do to stop you?”
“You could not block my way for one thing.”
“Oh, I thought something else.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. I’m confused and disturbed. Why shouldn’t I be? You think I’ve another living going? A rich father? Sure I do, but what I thought you meant—Not bribery for sure. I hope that’s not what you thought. But you know: a hot coffee or cocoa was what I was offering you because of the cold, that’s all. Look, I apologize, forget everything I said, but you finally want the truth of the matter?”
“You mean what you just said hasn’t been? No no, I’m kidding, go on.”
“The truth is I dumped and this is the honest truth, dumped all of yesterday’s garbage from yesterday’s bags into cardboard boxes and shopping bags and drove them to the Sanitation pier to dump. Call the guard at the gate shack there if the same one’s working late tonight and he’ll tell you he saw me around two: blue van and that he also gave me a ride in his electric cart when I thought I saw a dead human hand that was only a cadaver’s in their barge and so didn’t count. But the plastic bags from yesterday I reused today, because buying them even by the ton runs into more money than my poor business can afford. But I had a feeling before you wouldn’t believe me, so I told you the hoax story of these bags being fresh, which the garbage still is, from today.”
“Then you have yesterday’s bags here, which as far as the Health Department’s concerned is yesterday’s garbage, since the dirty bags should have been dumped too.”
&
nbsp; “What I say you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Who doesn’t? And please fight it if you like. That’s what our Administrative Tribunal’s for. Most of us inspectors love it when the less reprehensible stores like yours win, as we don’t see any gain for the city when you go out of business and possibly on welfare. At a hearing this week you can show why you failed to abide by the Health Code. If the tribunal judges against you, you’ll be fined. If it also decides, which is usually the case, that you’re entitled to a third inspection and at that inspection you’ve corrected your violations and can show proof of new arrangements where they won’t be repeated, your health permit will be restored.”
“How can I show the inspector I’ve corrected and won’t repeat my violations if I’m not being allowed to correct and not repeat by this company of hoods?”
“Coercion’s a civil court matter, not Health’s. Ours is simply to see that all the food stores and restaurants meet the Health Code.”
“But I won’t be able to prove anything to any court that I’m being threatened or other people are. I’ve no evidence of it and nobody who knows about it will be brave or dumb enough to testify.”
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