Stephen Dixon - Garbage

He drives up the hill. I wait a while. Moon’s bright, with a kindly round face almost upsidedown, and the caws of some big bird or another jumping from tree to tree I’m under. I’d like to get even with the caretaker in some way but a threat. Like prying apart the intercom and camera and have him explain it to the owners. But that in the long run would end up hurting me more than him in cemetery costs and I guess they’re also there to protect the graves. Maybe an anonymous letter about his bribery to the owners, but I drop the idea for now and walk along the drive for about a mile toward the train station till I come to a phonebooth in front of the next cemetery. Meyermeg’s number is on the phonebooth wall and I call and tell the dispatcher “Send my old friend Nate to pick me and my wife up at Pearlwood. We were inside visiting too long and didn’t know the place had closed.”

I see Nate pass me as I walk toward town. In the dark I spit at him and would like to tell him a thing or two, but don’t want to get caught by the police through his two-way. Then I see him driving back alone and I’m so cold I want to hail him just for the ride and no words, but he’ll know the phone trick before was me so I hold back.

I walk the next few miles to town, in a cafe have a coffee and soup and rub my frozen limbs back to life, call a different cab company and because I don’t want to be seen by the police where they might be waiting for me at the train station, I tell the driver to take me to the next town’s station further out on the island where I have to meet my oldest son. He does, says “Want me to wait?” and I say “No thanks, my wife’s coming by car from the other way, “and get the train back to the city and subway to my hotel.

“Phone message for you,” the nightclerk says.

“Beautiful grave day,” it says.

“Listen,” I say. “Anyone calls for me like this or any kind, hang up.”

“No can do. It could be the cops, Narcotics, parole officers or the like, just for examples, so city regulations say I have to pass every phone and letter message on to the guest.”

“If I gave you a fiver you wouldn’t, right?”

“As I had to have told you before: that’s how I survive here, not that I ever got a dime for doing that. If there’s anything guests want it’s their messages.”

“Well these for me are just a crock to rattle me, I don’t want them anymore, and I’m not giving you a five to do anything again but get me a bottle of scotch if I haven’t for some dumb reason thought of getting it myself from my bar or before the stores close. But if you do give me another note like this I’m going to rip it to little bits and throw it all over you and your desk, understand?”

“I got ears.”

“Just answer if you understand me.”

“That’s what I meant about my ears. I hear. They’re clean, every day dewaxed. So sure, but what are you getting so testy all of a sudden for? I was only carrying out the law to its littlest letters, but now I know better with you. By the way—”

“No.”

“Not scotch but perhaps—”

“I know not scotch and what ‘perhaps’ and I don’t want it.”

“But you look cold. And she’s got a touch of the flu herself, or had, though nothing bad to pass any bug on to you, so she stayed in bed most of the day and by now should be real toasty. Or maybe you’re thinking of getting her direct over the phone and not through me.”

“No and goodnight.”

“If not Helena then, there’s another cute girl in the hotel. Blonde, almost as young, but a lot taller and bosomier and with legs that could wrap around a chaise lounge. If you want—”

Elevator door closes and I ride up and go to my room. I’d like a few drinks to warm me and help me get to sleep but want to be up early tomorrow and without a hangover and extra sharp. So I drink plenty of tap water and exercise, warmups, few situps, running in place, and turn on the TV and immediately start yawning, no doubt mostly from all that road walking before and clumping through cemetery snow.

Next morning I go to the Administrative Tribunal office downtown, show the clerk my summons for a hearing later this week and say “I’d like very much to have it pushed up to today.”

“Sorry, we’ve a full workload as it is. If we pushed you up, everyone would want to be pushed up and then we’d be working way over overtime which we don’t get paid an extra cent for, so you can see the impossibility of such a move.”

“I’m not interested in everyone. Because do you see everyone who has a hearing with you later this week in the room now?”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me.”

“Then give me a sensible answer why you can’t push me up ;”

“And don’t order me to answer you.”

“I’m not ordering, I’m asking. But since you are a civil servant supposedly paid to serve citizens like me and I’m a paying taxpayer—”

“And don’t give me that outdated fallacious line of argument either. Because thirty-five percent of the city’s labor force are paid public servants in one form or another like also state and federal. And we pay as much if not more taxes than most workers and have to put up with the same city machinery, but unlike all the noncivil workers, most of us get no unemployment insurance if we’re laid off.”

“You get other compensation.”

“Abuse, yes, if you like it.”

“You get other things. Continual raises for even the ones who don’t deserve them. Free subway rides for policemen and stuff and everyone a good pension plan. But how’d we get into this, and I know you’re just doing your job. But it does seem, job or not and which should be part of it I’d think, that if someone in my predicament whether I’m a city worker or not makes a reasonable demand from one, then that demand ought to be thought on if not granted if it’s not too unreasonable to grant to, which mine isn’t. Because you have to get cancellations all the time for your hearings, don’t you?”

“If you mean your taking over one of those cancellations, yes, we get several daily, but we take them into consideration when we speak about our full workload each day. It’s analogous to the airlines who intentionally, with the consent of the agency regulating them, overbook their flights by fifteen percent because they know a quarter to more reservations and even confirmed tickets will at the last minute—”

I see a well-dressed woman in a suit and briefcase having the door marked “Hearing Room” held open for her by a guard and I say “Who’s that lady there? Someone in the tribunal? The judge?”

“We don’t have judges. She’s today’s hearing examiner, which might as well be the judge and jury so far as you’re concerned, for her word’s fact and law.”

“Ma’am?” I shout to the door.

“Please, she has her own full workload — she has to prepare.”

Examiner’s stopped by the door and is looking at me. I run over to her.

“Ma’am? Hearing examiner? My name’s Shaney Fleet. I know you’re tied up but I own a bar and grill that’s been closed. Here, look at this please and see if I don’t rate something fairer — an earlier hearing today if you can make it,” and I open the summons to show her.

“I am extremely busy, Mr. Fleet. Any dealings with the tribunal, see the clerk there.”

“I’ve seen her. She’s been very nice but I can’t wait any more days. Each is a dollar for me — many. I’ve no savings. I owe rent — home and bar — you can’t imagine the bills. You shouldn’t’ve shut me down if you have to put so many days between the shutdown and trial.”

“If the city gave us the funds we needed we’d see you the same day you were shut down. And it wasn’t the tribunal that closed you. It can help reopen you though and return your health permit if that’s it, and it’s a hearing you’ve been summoned to, not a trial. You were closed by the inspection arm of the department which, after two mandatory inspections, must have thought your establishment was a hazard to your customers’ health.”