Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“Well, like what if she starts thinking it means something?”

“She won’t. She’s got guys talking to her all the time. She’s got guys on the phone, guys on her walk home, guys in her apartment building,” Donnie said. “You ever see the shit they deal with? You’ll just be another face. And best thing about the bonsai tree is you don’t need to worry.”

“Why?”

The machines began to groan to life around them, the massive rollers churning the rubber belts into motion again. Don Henley stood up and rubbed his nose.

“Bonsai trees don’t bear any fruit. Whole thing is sterilized.”

It took Jamie a while to find his bonsai tree. He spent time hanging out in the parking lot, smoking cheap Indian cigarettes and listening to Springsteen, even though Springsteen was a fag too. Sometimes he’d be there until two before calling it a night. The grind wore you out; it got dust deep into your lungs, the booze sneaking into your chest so that every time you sneezed, all you could smell was gin. Emerging in the darkness every night to drive home on roads covered in everyone else’s road kill, all the girls you might meet either at work or in classes while you slept the day away. Brock to this day still kept in touch with Jean, the old lady who ran the receiving desk. She said if he ever got married she would just cry.

Jamie met his bonsai tree in the front office when he changed addresses. Payroll needed to know exactly where to send his new statements and find him during an emergency. Jamie had moved out of his parents’ place, out of the old living room where his father sat fingering the hole in his hand. His mother talked about nothing but the bingo scores and that time she and Rhonda bought up all the menthols at the hall.

His was a small place near the warehouse, a flimsy wooden box stranded between giant, faceless buildings built from concrete and iron. It came with five appliances and was fully furnished. An old Ukrainian couple rented it to Jamie, the woman doing all the talking, the mole on her chin distracting Jamie the whole time. It bobbed along with her lips, accentuating every syllable. The old man sat by the window in their retirement community, singing folk songs under his breath and swearing quietly at Jamie.

The girl had not even looked at him that first day. She took the form and went back to typing on her typewriter, her thin hands flying over the keys. The false ceiling hung low over Jamie’s massive slouching shoulders as he made his way out, back into the stench of stale red wine and rotten beer embedded in the concrete floor.

Jamie didn’t need to look at the warehouse to know what was in there. He drove past rows of old buildings, massive tombs to industries that had abandoned town as each decade passed. His wrists felt looser now, his tongue had stopped pushing at each rogue tooth inside his mouth. The radio was a quiet burble in his ear. Only the broken grille of his car and the one headlight probing the darkness ahead reminded Jamie of the night before. The little house filled with paintings of Russian skylines and old teak furniture was only a few minutes away.

Jamie had done what Don Henley told him. He found a way to survive the monotony of the warehouse, the smells of the cafeteria, the constant throb in his ears from the rollers. He dropped comments to this girl with black hair and too much eye makeup as they waited in line for free pizza every third Thursday. Sometimes she would laugh and tell him her name again like it was the first time. Alisha Wugg. He didn’t make fun of her name, but his tongue bled against that patient refusal. It bled every time he tried to speak to her. He would stand there with rust growing on his tongue, wondering what her feet looked like naked. And he didn’t even like feet — they were the ugliest part of the human body.

Jamie brought a thick black marker to cover up the graffiti about her in the bathroom. He keyed the cars of men who commented on her ass. He never followed her home. He never left notes inside her locker. He didn’t ask her if she dyed her hair or why she drew so much black around her eyes. He didn’t ask for her number, and he didn’t end up drawing pictures of her until he fell asleep on the couch while the television played Brady Bunch reruns with the wrong audio track all night. Jamie wanted to do all those things, but he was too tired.

Bonsai trees do not grow for long, but they do require constant maintenance. Don Henley always tried to make this clear. It was his wife he went home to every night. She was the one who fed him ice cream sandwiches and Greek yogurt when his jaw was broken in another unlicensed brawl in someone’s barn. Not growth, but maintenance. Pruning, trimming, maintaining a relationship with a little “r” to make the days pass quicker.

Jamie tried to remember that when he found himself waking up in the middle of the night with dreams of her crying about discrepancies in the payroll. The old Ukrainians’ house filled with pizza boxes and old underwear. He made lists to begin cleaning, but lost them in the mess. Laundry gathered everywhere, and Jamie’s smell began to penetrate the walls. Brock said it looked like home, but back then Brock was always drunk and still living with his mom, so any place with a spark of life in it seemed like home to him. Life for Brock was fluid and messy and filled with those little bugs that weren’t quite mosquitoes but weren’t gnats either.

So Jamie Garrison trimmed and manicured his bonsai tree, assuring himself it would never blossom. He continued to draw thick black lines over the graffiti in the bathroom about the Wuggly Dog. Each stroke of marker reminded him she wore too much makeup. Jamie’s hands grew callused and yellow, ridges of hard flesh gathering in the crevices of his palm where the synthetic rope burned cells like kindling every time he tied a knot. Alisha nodded at him in line for cabbage rolls and he made small remarks about the weather, her dress, the smell of cabbage. Anything.

Sometimes Alisha Wugg laughed, but usually she just raised her eyebrows.

The little house sat alone down by the water. There was a tricycle in the driveway, abandoned in the snow. The Ukrainian couple had transferred the lease after Jamie got married. After giving up the house and their old teak furniture, it only took the couple two months to die. Jamie’s car bumped up into the driveway, swerving around the tricycle. Don Henley had always told them the bonsai tree was a safe bet; just another way to pass the time. After all, a bonsai tree was never going to bear fruit. Just something to look forward to in between safety meetings, training new temps, pulling long slivers of glass from your palm with the emergency safety kit tweezers.

“Did you run over my bike?”

She was only five years old and claimed she was too old for a trike.

“Kansas, you know that’s a tricycle, don’t you?”

Kansas Garrison stood there with her orange snowsuit half zipped up and one mitten on her little hand. The wind tossed her hair across her face. Her bottom teeth made her mouth look smaller than it was, crowded and uncomfortable.

“I know what a trike is. Did you run over my bike?”

Handle bars poked out from under Jamie’s front tire.

“Oh.”

Don Henley was wrong about those bonsai trees.

The first postcards were landscapes. Barren deserts spotted with cacti and the occasional buzzard. The same return address spelled out in perfect looping script across the back of each card. Moses Moon had enjoyed watching the postal code burn under the flame of his lighter, back when he and Elvira still lived on Keewatin St., back when they had an address.

“Let’s just take the stairs. I got stuck in the elevator once with this dude who wore bunny ears to a party up on the fifth floor. Kept asking me what animal I’d choose if I could be one. When I didn’t say anything, he says a ferret. He called me a fucking ferret,” Moses said.