David Jackson - Marked

‘Garbage? No garbage.’

Two more male staff members glide silently toward Harold. The smiles have all evaporated now, but Harold isn’t fazed by the pathetic attempts to look stern. These guys have never encountered Mrs Bloor.

‘You don’t have garbage? Of course you have garbage. Everybody has garbage.’

One of the men calls over to the man behind the bar. Gives him some instructions in Chinese. The barman picks up a phone.

Says Harold, ‘You want to know where your garbage is? In my trashcans, that’s where. Your stinking garbage is in my trashcans.’

There is much head-shaking now. A whole row of heads on swivels. ‘No garbage.’

‘Yes garbage. In my trashcans. And it’s not the first time, neither. Every time I go to put out my trash, I can’t because the trashcans are full. They’re full of your shitty Jap food.’

‘Not Jap food. We not Japanese. We Chinese. Is not same.’

‘Whatever. It’s your garbage. From your restaurant. It stinks. It brings rats. Put your crap in your own friggin trashcans.’

He hopes that that will be an end to it. He hopes they will get the message and say sorry, and he can go home, secure in the knowledge that his waste will never again be adulterated by these people.

But no.

‘Maybe. .’ says one of the men. ‘Mmm. . maybe is your people eat Chinese food. Is people in your building trash.’

Harold wonders how these people get by on such piss-poor English. Well, I ain’t got all night to teach ’em how to talk good, he thinks.

He wags a finger at them. ‘No you don’t. I know my tenants. They haven’t changed for the past five years. I know their trash. This is restaurant garbage we’re talking about here. Your garbage.’

But the waiter is undeterred. ‘Yes, I think so. Is your people trash. Not restaurant.’

Harold looks each of them in the eye. He sees no sign of contrition, and every sign that they are going to continue to act dumb when it suits them. This softly-softly approach isn’t even scratching the surface.

Time to break out the big guns.

‘I’ll be back,’ he says, thinking they must have heard of Arnie. Everybody’s seen the Terminator movies. Even the Japs.

Tell someone you have a dog called Agamemnon, and they’ll assume you have a Rottweiler or a bull mastiff or some other nasty-ass monster just looking for the next limb to tear off. Geoffrey Landis’s Agamemnon is a tiny West Highland terrier. The only chance it has of killing something is to get it stuck in its throat. He’s had it for five years now — two years longer than he’s lived with Stuart. Probably have it a lot longer after his relationship with Stuart too, the way things are going.

He is ambling along East Sixth Street, heading in the direction of Tompkins Square Park. Aggie is on one of those extensible leashes that allows him to have a good roam and to investigate all those aromas that assail his doggy senses.

Stuart should be on a leash too. I mean, why does he think it’s perfectly okay to entertain other men in bars without even telling me? What if I did the same? What would he say about that?

Ahead, a burly man turns the corner of the block and starts coming toward Geoffrey. Although not as the crow flies. He weaves along the sidewalk as though he’s aboard a ship in a storm.

Geoffrey pauses. Winds in the leash a little. Wonders whether to cross the street. The man looks far too inebriated to be capable of putting up much of a fight, but Geoffrey’s maxim has always been that discretion is the better part of valor.

The man continues his serpentine meandering, but then lurches to his right and trips over his own feet. He crashes into an array of trashcans outside a drugstore, knocking a couple of them over and causing their contents to spill out onto the sidewalk.

The drunk struggles to his feet again, but then seems confused as to where he was going. Seemingly at random, he selects a bearing and follows it, apparently oblivious to the fact that he’s going back the way he came.

When the man has disappeared around the corner, Geoffrey resumes both his walk and his train of thought. He gets to the corner of the block, still seething over Stuart’s actions, and tries to decide which way to go next. It doesn’t seem sensible to follow the path of the drunk — Geoffrey’s other maxim being that it is better to be safe than sorry — so he could either continue along Sixth or take a left onto Second Avenue. Whichever direction he chooses, he thinks he should take his time about it. Give Stuart something to worry about. And if he phones me I’ll just ignore it. Maybe then he’ll realize just what-

He sees them then. Seated at the table in the window of that nice Italian restaurant across the street.

Antonio.

Or, to be precise, Antonio plus one. The plus one being a male friend. Although ‘friend’ seems a somewhat weak description, given that he has just twirled something onto his fork and pushed it into the mouth of Antonio.

Geoffrey’s evening suddenly seems a whole lot brighter.

It’s like disturbing a hornet’s nest.

When he walks back in carrying all those garbage sacks, the staff go crazy. All running around like headless chickens, yelling and jabbering.

Harold can’t stop a smile of satisfaction creeping into his jowly face. This is what you call an entrance.

When they descend on him, he holds his ground. He notices that they seem to have a leader now, an old guy with wild eyes and wild gray hair that looks to have been cut by its owner.

‘What you do?’ cries the old man.

‘Your garbage,’ says Harold, dropping the bags onto the floor. ‘I’m bringing it back to you.’

‘No. Not our garbage. We tell you before. Not garbage from here. You take back.’

The man picks up one of the sacks and pushes it into the arms of Harold, then bends to retrieve another one.

‘Not yours, huh? Okay, let’s see.’

Harold digs the fingers of both hands into the bag he’s holding. The flimsy plastic gives way easily, and he rips the whole thing open in one movement. As its contents hit the floor, a brown wet sludge splashes onto the old man’s shoes, and he jumps back in horror. Harold hears gasps from the customers, and even some laughter. They seem to be enjoying the show. The staff, on the other hand, are yammering furiously again and looking to each other to decide who’s going to do something about this refuse-slinging lunatic.

‘Well, what do we have here?’ says Harold. ‘Looks like gook food to me. And if my eyes don’t deceive me, I’d say those are napkins just like the ones you got on your tables here. Let’s try another one, why don’t we?’

He doesn’t wait for an answer. Just picks up another bag and tears it wide open, enabling it to disgorge its stinking sodden payload onto the intricately patterned Chinese carpet.

The staff are working themselves up into a frenzy now. They’re jostling each other and pointing at Harold and barking commands, but nobody seems to know what to do. It’s left to the old man to take action. He grabs at the third bag as Harold lifts it. Tries to yank it away from him. For a few seconds the pair form an absurd sight as they tug back and forth. It’s East versus West in a wrestling match for a prize that is literally garbage.

The inevitable occurs when the bag splits, and once again a pile of detritus cascades to the floor.

And that’s when time freezes.

This isn’t Chinese food, or Japanese food, or any kind of food for that matter.

It’s paper, mostly. Newspapers and magazines.

But there’s something else too.

It hits the floor hard and rolls across the carpet, stopping when it bumps up against the soiled shoes of the elderly restaurant owner. Everyone looks down at it. Customers seated at the nearest tables get to their feet for a clearer view. The yelling stops. The warring factions are on the same side now, united against whatever may have brought about the incredible apparition that has landed in their midst.