Stephen Dixon - Garbage

“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.”