Mostly Anecdotal

He looked like a bulldog coming across the street toward my front door. He was snarling and drooling and kicking up chunks of pavement. His teeth were showing, and I could see that he meant business. I looked away, but when I looked back he was still coming. He was on my front porch in no time. It was his front porch now. He rang the bell. I considered not answering, but while I was thinking about it my hand turned the knob and the door opened.

“You can’t put your garbage out on both sides of the street,” he said, still snarling.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t know.”

“We get paid based on cans we empty and there’s no profit in emptying the same cans twice. You have three over there.” He pointed at my row of cans. “I emptied them when they were on your side of the street,” he said.

I looked across the street, he was right there was my green recycling container full of cardboard that wouldn’t fit the first time I filled it because it was filled with newspaper and cans and bottles. The other two cans, also mine, once filled with standard fare were now filled with the remnants of a small construction project we had undertaken. They held bits of scrap lumber, empty paint cans, and such.

The city provides one recycling can, and one regular garbage can. You can request an additional can for an eight dollar a month surcharge. We pay the surcharge. Most of our neighbors survive with one recycling, and one regular can, we don’t. I know we should; I know we need to get off the consumerist treadmill and start living the simple life. I know we’d be happier, the environment would be happier, but our piggy habits are hard to break. Some of our neighbors also have additional cans, we are a select club, we consumerist assholes.

I’ve done it before, I’ve had a little extra trash and after he emptied it on our side of the street I refilled the can and put it on the neighbor’s side, but this wasn’t just a single can it was all three. One of my neighbors on the other side of the street was outside when I was taking my extra cans out. I was embarrassed, what must she be think? She looked my way, and although she was close enough to say something she just smiled and waved. When I started back across I saw her walk to our side of the street and retrieve a can, her can, a can that was emptied when the truck passed on our side. She was going to refill it to be emptied again on her side. She is definitely a member of the club.

I wasn’t sure how to talk to a bulldog, I didn’t want to take the full cans back, I didn’t want my garbage stacking up, but there he was still snarling and giving me the evil eye. I decided on a course of action, I’d grovel.

“I’m sorry,” I said. He was unmoved. It was clear I would have to do a lot better than just I’m sorry.

“We simply don’t have the time” he said. “I’m not going to work extra hours for nothing and that’s what happens when people like you put their trash out twice. Get another can from the City if you need more, and pay your fair share.”

The problem with that is that I feel guilty enough with the extra can I already have, I can’t imagine what the neighbors would say if we had three regular cans and a recycling can.

I donned my most sincere face and said, “I’m really sorry, and I understand that it’s not fair to you and It will never happen again.” The scowl on his face relaxed just a bit and his hackles were down. “I would really appreciate it if you could take it this one last time, and like I said It’ll never happen again, honest.”

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me. I could tell he was considering my request, but had I said the right thing, had he already made up his mind, he hesitated, “just this last time he said,” and then turned and left. I thanked him again, as he was walking away and went back inside. Would he change his mind on the way back across the street to his truck. Would my apology hold, he got back in his truck and pulled forward a few feet, stopped next to my cans and emptied them both. The truck for the recycling can will come later in the day, the question is will I be taking the final can back full or empty.

I hear a beep. Something’s battery needs recharging, but what? Is it the alarm that goes off at noon each day? The alarm is a problem I should fix, but I’d have to figure out how it works all over again. It is the type of thing that you deal with so seldom that you forget how it’s done. There are other things like that I suffer from, but it’s not noon, and so it couldn’t be the alarm and so I expand my search.

First, I look to see whether the phone is in its cradle. It is, but a visual check is not enough and I rise to examine it and then reseat it just in case. I return to my desk, but a few moments later I hear the beep again. It sounds like the beep a phone makes when its battery is low. It must be a cell phone. I look at my phone sitting on the desk next to me. It can’t be my cell phone, can it? The sound seems like it’s coming from the right, or maybe behind me. I plug my phone into a charger anyway. Moments pass and the beep returns. I’m sure now, it’s behind me, but where exactly and what. Then I remember, my iPod is in the book bag directly behind me. My analytical mind triumphs—I take it out of the bag and plug it in.

The phone rings, a ring not a beep, it’s the Power Company. “What the hell,” the man says, “are you recharging your world again.”

I assure him I’m not, “just a few small items,” I say “I’m surprised you noticed.”

“Be sure to unplug them when you’re finished,” he says, “not only will it help with your power bill but we won’t have to build another coal-fired plant as soon as we would otherwise, and we know how you’re opposed to coal-fired plants.”

“How do you know I’m opposed to coal-fired plants,” I ask.

“Google,” he says.

He’s on the phone, but I’m sure I sense a conspiratorial wink at the other end of the line. I hang up. I’m pleased that the disturbing beeps have ended.

What, another beep. I look at my iPod just to make sure I didn’t dream I plugged it in, and then I yell, “Gail there is beeping in our room and I can’t find it.”

“It’s probably my phone,” she replies, “it’s in my purse.”

I turnaround, there is her purse, a few inches from my book bag. She arrives removes the phone and plugs it in to recharge. “I sure hope the Power Company guy doesn’t notice,” I say.

She looks puzzled, but she knows me well. “I hope not,” she says and leaves.

There are some things you need to know before I begin. Like Stavros the Wonder Chicken, “sometimes entire paragraphs just appear in my brain right before I fall asleep.” It also happens to me sometimes upon awakening. I’m going to start writing them down, and sometimes I’ll share them. So here it is the beginning of a story I’ll never write.

When he walked into the room, he had an erection. Fanny Assingham had been standing just outside the door with her friends, and she had smiled at him. But, it was the sight of his Mother, and of his Father, as well as his brothers and sisters that took care of his rising star, and not in a good way.

Imagine there are nine inches of snow on the ground—the temperature is 27 degrees Fahrenheit and suddenly, with no warning, it’s the middle of the summer, well that’s how it was.

Jon was excited, sitting on the seat next to him was his copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Jon had read every Potter book, he had even memorized the last line of The Half Blood Prince, the sixth book.

His hand closed automatically around the fake Horcrux, but in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting path he saw stretching ahead for himself, in spite of the final meeting with Voldemort he knew must come, whether in a month, in a year, or in ten, he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione.

He took his book, went inside, and sat down in his favorite chair. He was ready to begin reading when Mary, his wife said, “Dinner’s on the table.” He’d waited two years for this moment, and a few minutes more or less was fine with him.

Dinner was a pizza his wife had picked up on her way home from work. Mushrooms, pineapple, Canadian bacon, and double the cheese were waiting for him when he sat down. He was hungry, and was on his second piece when his wife finished, walked over and picked up his book and started reading.

“Hey,” he said, “don’t get interested in that I’m reading it first.” Frankly, he was a little surprised she’d picked it up. She’d watched the movies and had even read the first book, but she was not what you’d call a reader.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “this won’t take long and she flipped to the last chapter and started reading.”

Jon choked on his pizza, “what the hell,” he sputtered. She didn’t answer and continued to read. “You’re reading the ending,” he said. She ignored him.

A minute later she said “huh” and set the book down. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t tell you how it ends.”

“You’ve spoiled it,” he said. “You won’t enjoy it now when you read it,” he said.

“I’m not going to read it,” she said, “I just wanted to know how it ended.”

Sometimes Jon wondered how it had gone so wrong, when they were dating she said she liked to read, it was only later that he learned she meant magazines, and not the New Yorker, or the Atlantic, well you know. “Fiction is boring,” she’d said. It was a major disappointment that he couldn’t share such an important part of his life.

I’ll see you later she said, I’m going to the gym to exercise and then Susie and I are stopping by the mall I’ll be home about 10:00 will you please TiVo CSI Miami she said, I’d like to watch it when I get home. Jon promised he would, but the more he thought about it the angrier he became. The last fucking page, how could she read just the last page of a book, any book. Didn’t she know the journey is the reward?

He sat in his chair and began to read. If the wind hadn’t picked up and he’d not heard the wind chimes he probably would have failed to notice that it was time for her program.

She arrived home just after ten, and said, “I hope you remembered to record my program.” He said he had. She grabbed an iced tea, turned on the TV, and settled into her favorite chair. She found the program in the list of recorded programs, and it started to play. “What the hell, did you watch this,” she said. “It’s near the end.” She hit rewind, but it went back only a few seconds, it was then she noticed the program length was only two minutes. “You screwed this up,” she said. “I can’t even count on you to record a program for me, and I really wanted to watch it,” she said.

“It’s there,” he said. “Right, the last two minutes,” she said. “That should suit you just fine,” he said. “I figured you’d just want to know how it ended and if you watch it you will. You know what they say, “all’s well that ends well.”

I prefer to sleep through the night. I don’t always get what I want—nature calls, the phone rings, usually a wrong number, the dog barks at the cat, the cat hisses at the dog. The alarm goes off, but that’s expected even if you’d rather sleep. Thursday night was different, a new goblin deigned to spoil my sleep, a beeping sound. A sound that took some time to work out because it was dark. The power was out, so why was there beeping? It was definitely coming from inside the house.

Zeus had been doing his thing emptying the heavens in our yard, a much needed shower, and Thor was speaking in a deep rumbling voice, who knew that the Greek and Norse gods worked together. I mistook Thor’s voice for my wife’s snoring. Yes she does, my wife snores. Anyway it was the beeping not the snoring that woke me. It woke her too.

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