Stephen Dixon - Garbage

“Every penny I made I reported and paid all the taxes on too.”

“No wonder you’re in so steep. I don’t know what to say, baby. You haven’t the money, then you can’t engage me and for sure no other lawyer and you’re now wasting what might be left of your hard-earned income on what I charge for professional advice over the phone. That costs twenty dollars per quarter of an hour, seventy-five for the full. If I handled your case that charge would be appliable to the big fee. Since we only spoke fourteen minutes, my timer says, plus my chitchat now about what I cost over the phone and so forth, which I don’t charge for but is time-consuming. I’ll make it a flat seventeen just for you. Mail it to my business card address.”

“What I phoned for wasn’t so much advice but an estimate.”

“Fifteen then, but that’s rock bottom.”

“Still, it doesn’t seem fair.”

“You send me that fifteen, chiseler, or I’ll haul you into Small Claims and get you for what you owe me plus what my rates are to take two hours away from work and cab fare back and forth,” and hangs up.

I call back and say “Listen, Mrs. or Miss Pershcolt, don’t forget how you first got me. I’ll tell the judge that by law you’re not supposed to take me on as a private client when I was originally assigned to you as a public.”

“You win, you mooch, but I hope those Stovin creeps and all the city department slobs wind up with your shirt, socks and jockeyshorts and whatever you got underneath and in the middle of a major street.”

“Thanks, lady.”

“Oh, you going to be so asinine to give me an argument about that too?”

“No, I don’t know what asinine is, but go on, get out of my life — die why don’t you please, you SOB,” I scream and she’s laughing and I hang up.

I think give it up, sell out, let it go for peanuts if that’s the only way to get rid of it, walk away from it even if that’s what it has to come down to, start another bar in some other city or a different business in this one or work for a barowner or chain or just give yourself the time to do whatever you want to do with the money you might end up making from the bar’s sale. But those aren’t constructive thoughts how to deal with the two main problems: what to do about reopening the bar and carting away its garbage, so think some more.

Maybe if I don’t think about it and do something else for the next few hours or entire day, something will come to my head like a bomb going off. But what do I know from anything to do but work, eat, sleep and now drink? I pour another scotch and think forget that too: you’ll be blind by the night and a lush by morning or getting to be with maybe never another constructive thought about anything again but taking another drink, which isn’t.

I pour the scotch back in the bottle, lick my fingers where it dripped, put my rubbers and coat on and go to a movie house around the block just to do something but thinking about drinking and the garbage and bar.

Nobody stands so I squeeze along my aisle, brush an opened box of candy off my seat, sit down, my foot accidentally kicking an empty beer or soda can which rolls a few rows to the front before stopping I suppose against a seat leg or someone’s shoe. But I leave in an hour. After twenty or more years of not seeing a picture except on the bar’s TV, and that just snatches of but I don’t think ever a whole one straight through, it seems I’ve lost all interest in them or just can’t get in the mood and also every seat I tried was too uncomfortable with springs popping or padding sticking out and the theater seemed infested besides.

I buy a book off the paperback rack at the drugstore and go to a coffeeshop and read it while having a sandwich and milkshake. It’s a novel about an old plantation family years ago. Maybe it’s a good story and the writing’s surely all right and scenes and people true to life or at least what I know from those days, but the book or maybe just reading them or particularly at this time just isn’t for me. I give the book to the counterman along with my tip and money for the check and he says “Don’t bother, I can hardly rest long enough to breathe.”

“Give it to a customer and he’ll appreciate it and maybe give you a bigger tip.”

“All right, I’ll give it to a customer. Hey mac,” he says to me, “like to read a terrific spicy new pocketbook for free?” and we laugh and I lay down an extra quarter to my tip and take the book and drop it in a trashcan on the street. Now that’s the type of guy I should’ve got to work for me when I had the chance: tough but good sense of humor and smart and he looks honest and reliable, though who can tell till you really see?

I’d like to go to the park just to walk and in the quiet think, but it’s freezing and getting dark and I’m a little afraid to after what I’ve heard and read in the news what happens in there.

I go back to the hotel and watch TV in the lounge. The people there are so noisy and such a bunch of sad old rummies who make me feel sad that I rent my own set, carry it up, turn it on, off, in ten minutes I can tell that all late afternoon television, in the lounge or anywheres, is just too dumb and phony for me. But what does a person do when he has nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in? I lie on the bed and play with myself just to again do something and maybe get off a bit of tension and see the cemetery letter on the dresser while I’m doing this and think that I still haven’t sent the check for the gravesite’s maintenance yet. And then that I haven’t been out there for years because I couldn’t find the time to and that might be a good spot to forget all my bar problems and such till I suddenly in the quiet there solve them.

I call the cemetery and get directions because I forgot them after all these years. “It’s late,” person I speak to says, “but you can make it if you catch the next train and grab a cab at the station.”

I put on my warmest clothes and boots and catch that train. It doesn’t move for a half-hour after departure time and then goes unusually slow for even a suburban train, getting to the station an hour later than it was expected and a few minutes before the cemetery’s supposed to close.

I get a cab at the station and the driver starts taking me a different way. “Where you going?” I say. “I remember the ride and unless all the roads have changed since or they’ve moved the cemetery, then at that light back there you should’ve made a left instead of a right, because I know it’s not down this drive.”

“You said Saint Athemus, correct? So this is the quickest most direct way there.”

“I told you Pearlwood, loud and clear — Pearlwood, so don’t give me it you didn’t hear.”

“I didn’t. You claiming I did? I didn’t. I distinctly heard you say Athemus. But you don’t like the way I drive or a man can’t make a simple mistake with you, which mine only might’ve been but I swear wasn’t, then what do you want me to do?”

“To be absolutely fair, deduct a half-dollar off the meter and I’ll be satisfied.”

“And have it come from my pocket? Because that’s what my boss will want. He’ll say I was cheating him.”

“I’ll write a note for you that you weren’t.”

“He won’t take notes. He’ll say I could’ve signed anyone’s name to it and he could be right.”

“I’ll put on it my phone number and address.”

“For the fifty cents owed him you think he’ll phone you on what could be a dollar call? Just tell me you’ll pay the full fare that’s on the meter or I’ll have to let you off here.”

“You leave me out here wherever the hell we are and I’ll tear the back of your cab apart.”