Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“No, I don’t really, um, do the card thing,” Jamie said.

“Well, come on in anyway. I’m sure we got something you’re looking for. Sort of in a transitional phase right now,” the little man said.

Jamie shut the door behind him and staggered around piles of model planes and collectible Star Wars figures still wrapped in plastic. There were no shelves left in the store, just busted glass display cases and tiny slivers glinting from the corners where they’d been swept.

“You musta pissed someone off,” Jamie said.

The short man smiled, showing a set of dentures under his thick moustache. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

“I’m always pissing someone off. Part of my charm, you know?”

“When did this happen? Who did this shit?” Jamie asked.

“Oh, you always know who. That’s the point. They want to strike some fear in your heart. If I didn’t know who…well, there really wouldn’t be much of a point, now would there?”

It looked like a sledgehammer had smashed through one of the walls.

“They do that too?”

“No, that was all me. I’m expanding the store. Can’t deal with such a cluttered space. I’m not Henry, by the way, and I don’t really know what half this shit is besides the baseball cards,” the man said. “I’m pretty sure that’s why he left the whole place to me.”

“Henry?” Jamie asked.

“My uncle. Crazy motherfucker — just a nut for all things teenage boys love. And I’m not saying he was into them. Not saying that. Just had a Peter Pan complex — never grew old.”

Jamie ducked his head under the pipes and followed the little man through a hole smashed into the abandoned unit next door. The place looked like an old dentist’s office. A forgotten Nintendo system lay buried under dust and flakes of plaster. There were files on the floor, old X-rays and yellowed receipts for forgotten procedures.

“You can’t just tear a place like this apart, can you?”

“When the landlord died two years ago and the family is still locked in some bitter feud over who gets his property rights, one that’ll probably go on for another fifteen years and inspire a whole new season of Dallas? ” the little man said. “Well, then I can do whatever I want. And I don’t even know why you’re here. You know, if you hadn’t said anything, you might have got to see some of the really good stuff in here.”

“You never asked me why,” Jamie said.

“Well, first of all,” the little man said. “I’m the Lorax.”

“Like the kids’ book?”

“Sure. Let’s say that.”

Most of the windows were covered with plywood that had begun to rot from the rain and snow. Moisture dripping in from busted skylights had turned part of the ceiling a bluish green.

“Now who sent you to me? I should give him a bonus for the referral.”

“I don’t think he’s really a repeat customer,” Jamie said. “It was, uh, this guy, Brock.”

“His face all fucked up like a pumpkin?” the Lorax asked.

“Yeah. Hit with a bottle from a car couple nights ago.”

“I just lost mine last year,” the Lorax said, and clacked his dentures together. He did not elaborate. A draft swept through the busted skylight in the ceiling, rattling the leaves of wallpaper that had come loose from the walls.

“He told me you sold him or no, sorry, he bought—”

“No, he sold to me,” the Lorax said. He pushed through tarps and broken two-by-fours that separated the busted offices into smaller compartments. Heavy bright lamps sat unplugged in each section, rows and rows of lamps taken from retirement homes and garage sales. Ugly brass beasts mounted with dogs and dragons and the occasional swan. A faint odor of manure pushed its way into Jamie’s nose. He recognized the smell somewhere in the back of his brain.

“You shit in here, too?” Jamie asked.

The Lorax laughed. “No, man, that’s not my shit. Best fertilizer known to man. Pig shit. I need it to keep this whole show running here. You get used to it, believe me. Start to pick out the nuance. Like wine or something. But enough of that, you’re here now. You can’t sleep?”

Someone honked their horn in the parking lot out front.

“Accident the other day,” Jamie said. “Fucked up my neck. Don’t wanna deal with a doc.”

“How bad was it? Inquiring minds and all.”

“I hit a buck. Yeah. A buck. Messed the grille up. Gave me and a buddy a mean case of whiplash,” Jamie said. “It’ll be a bitch to fix if I can’t get the cash.”

“Remember when I said the dude that owned the place died?” the Lorax said. “Now, he had some money. He wouldn’t have let this place fall like it has.”

Jamie sighed and tried not to breathe in the pig shit. Cables dangled from the ceiling tiles.

“Impatient, aren’t you? Friend with the fucked-up teeth stayed here all afternoon. We even had a little smoke, but whatever. Different strokes, right? I sit in this place all day. Least you can do is let my ass talk before you rip me off and step outside into fresh air.”

“I’m not exactly dressed for this shit is all. Shoulda worn my boots.”

The stink of pig shit grew heavier as he talked. The walls were damp to the touch.

“I’m a bit of a farmer,” the Lorax said. “I always got my boots on.”

Jamie noticed the small grey bulbs pushing through the manure under the tarps and the weak daylight punched through the ceiling in scattered patches.

“The holes work better in the summer months, when I grow bud. I just did my first harvest in here. The electrical bills are crazy, but I’m not paying them. That whole family just has a lawyer footing the bill for this place every month while they tear each other to shreds. Really nasty stuff. I think it might have been in the paper once.” The Lorax laughed. “If they ever bothered to come down here and check out some of the old man’s properties, they’d realize they were just fighting over who got a larger slice of the cow pie.”

“And then you’d be up shit creek.”

“I’m very familiar with that creek. That mess you saw inside?” the Lorax said. “Vicious mothers makin’ sure I stay far up that creek. You ever want to eat any of these?”

The pale blue walls of the operating chamber glowed around the two of them. A painting of a fox and her pups stood against the wall in the corner. Someone had smashed its glass case and drawn a top hat on the fox. The Lorax pushed a bundle of mushrooms into Jamie’s face.

“Eat that shit? All I want is some Vicodin, Percocet or something. Maybe some of the reds.”

The Lorax laughed and clacked his dentures in his mouth. He turned and climbed back through the gaping hole into the hobby shop. Jamie followed. One hundred special-edition Darth Vader models with hologram cards attached stared back at them from the pockmarked floor. All fake duplicates shipped directly from Mumbai. All gleaming black.

The smell of the pigs still clung to Jamie’s nose. “So, you’ve got it or not?”

“Straight from Quebec. That’s the best place to go get it,” the Lorax said. “A place where all they eat is gravy and each other. You know some of the early settlers were cannibals in New France? It’s true. They like to cut it out of the textbooks. Last time I made some joke about their priests and spent half my time talking myself out of a hole in the ground.”

“A hole?”

Jamie was barely listening now. His leg was starting to spasm with memories of the impact.

“An actual hole. They dug it and everything,” the Lorax said. “I’ve been partially fossilized. How many people can say that?”

The Lorax pulled a plastic grocery bag filled with prescription bottles and loose pills out from underneath a counter covered in stickers, shards of glass, and chewed gum.