Garbage Man (15 page)

From his bedroom window, he could see the corner of the Doherty's house across the estate, but there were no windows visible. He sat there for hours waiting to see her, just to catch a glimpse of her for a few moments as she entered or left. She wore summer dresses and high heeled sandals; she wore tight shorts and clinging tee shirts that showed off her breasts and behind; she wore her blonde hair in a pony tail; sometimes she let it flow free. He often cried with frustration as he masturbated. He didn't want his own pathetic, insufficient hand. He wanted her.

He wanted nothing else.

A yearlong week into the holiday, he began to grow up. It was time to stop wanking and do something. If he wanted her that badly, he told himself, he had to find a way to see her.

***

Gone were the moody days, the indecisive days of frost then sun then rain. The world had bloomed and now, day after day, the sun stared at the greenness of it all through cloudless skies. Rain, when it did come, fell at night and was a ghost before people began their mornings.

In Mason's garden, the fruit and vegetables filled and fattened, drawing strength and goodness from the soil and his rocket fuel compost. He'd eaten all the new potatoes and as much of the broccoli as he could manage alone. The rest of it he canned and stored in his pantry. The garden helped him cut out many of the costs of living. He fed it and in turn, it fed him.

However, there were two mouths to feed now, one of which wanted nothing the garden had to offer.

He no longer sat to read in the cool of the shed or rested there when his energy flagged - he was tired most of the time these last few days. There wasn't enough space any more and the shed-thing was so ravenous that Mason didn't like to be near it for a moment longer than was necessary.

At night he put drugged cat food out to attract animals into the garden. Long before dawn, he would collect them while they slept and throw them into the shed. There wasn't always an animal to give to the shed-thing and on those mornings, to keep it from making its increasingly louder groans of hunger, he was obliged to give of himself. The neighbourhood was running out of hedgehogs and stray cats. When Mason looked at himself in the mirror in the mornings, he was pale beneath his tan. There was no way he could give this much blood and remain strong and healthy. Maintaining the garden was becoming a struggle. Keeping the shed-thing properly fed was becoming impossible.

And, pretty soon, someone was going to knock on his door asking if he'd seen their pet moggy.

On the nights after it had engulfed an animal, the shed-thing scratched at the shed door and Mason would let it out. It would slip and slummock its way over to the back wall where he would open the gate for it. Each of these nights it went back to the landfill and returned with extra parts. Blood was enough to keep it alive, but it needed bone and soft tissue in order to grow. The first time it absorbed a sleeping cat, it returned from the landfill with a second eye and a replacement for the first one. The eyes were made from a discarded pair of spectacles and caused the creature to look bookish and short-sighted. Everything it added to itself was made of garbage. Inside, Mason imagined it creating amalgamated organs that grew as it grew. Three hedgehog livers and four cat livers to make one shed-thing liver. Each brain adding to the ones already in its ever-changing head.

So far the shed-thing still looked like a developing foetus, its reclaimed limbs made from anything it could find - old chair and table legs, the wheels from the corners of sofas, joints made of rusted hinges or ball bearings fitted into approximated sockets to give it a greater range of movement. Flimsy carrier bag or bin-liner skin was exchanged for cloth and leather and sheets of flexible plastic.

It went on all fours, like the living creatures it had taken into itself, but it was no animal. Mason could see the growing intelligence behind its glass eyes. There was a blackness within that shone from its reconstituted lenses, a depth Mason had never seen in a human eye.

As exhausting as nannying and suckling the newborn shed-thing was, Mason couldn't stop himself from doing it. There was such sound
reason
in keeping it alive. He could find no argument against it. There was something else. He was fascinated by its development. He cared about it. It was not his pet. It was not his child. It was the future.

And yet, sometimes he talked to it in mock-scolding, motherly tones.

‘One of these days the starving puppy routine is going to stop working, you know,' he told it. There was no animal to give it that morning so Mason reopened what was now a wound that would leave a deep and visible scar. He placed a quarter of a pint of his blood in the doorway of the shed and the creature seemed to smile at him as it lapped up his warm sacrifice. Gone was the burger box mouth and the pathetically crumpled straw proboscis. Now it lapped with a suede belt tip. Its mouth was formed by the opening of a plastic purse. ‘Don't worry. I'm just fooling. You're meant to be here. There's a reason for it. I'll make sure you're all right. I'm going to help you grow up straight and strong.'

The lapping paused, the belt dripping darkly. The shed-thing looked at him from far behind its glasses-for-eyes. He thought he saw the corners of the purse turn upward in a synthetic smile.

***

Kevin Doherty realised his marriage was over the day he lost the dogs. Ozzy and Lemmy had very little to do with it and yet, without them, it would never have happened.

At seven fifteen, he was halfway round the reservoir and two cigarettes poorer. It was then that he saw a girl sitting on a bench overlooking the water. She was wearing jeans and a black leather motorcycle jacket - it must still have been cool when she'd ventured out into the morning and he wondered how long she'd been there. Even from a hundred and fifty yards away she looked sad. The next thing he noticed was a cast or bandage on her foot and a pair of grey crutches leaning against the bench beside her. He'd known he would speak to her, that something was going to happen.

As he approached, Ozzy and Lemmy tumbled out of a hawthorn hedge ahead of him. When they saw the girl on the bench they raced towards her barking in penetrating stereo.

‘Bloody hell,' he muttered, knowing he was going to have to call them back and that she'd hear their stupid names. He started running, vainly trying to close the distance to the bench before them. It wasn't even a contest. The girl turned to see what the dogs were barking at and saw them inbound at high speed. Kevin watched her reach for her crutches.

‘Shit.'

And then he was shouting,

‘Ozzy, Lemmy, come here. Hey, HERE boys.' He whistled and watched them ignore it. They were yards from the girl who had struggled to her feet and realised there was nowhere to go. ‘OZZY! LEMMY! HEEL, NOW!'

He was there but not in time. Sensing the girl's fear, the dogs now ran around her in opposite circles, hackles spiked, white spittle scattering from their jaws. He caught Ozzy by the collar and fumbled around after Lemmy who hid behind the girl every time Kevin lunged for him.

‘God, I'm really sorry about this,' he said. ‘They won't hurt you, honestly. They're just a bit . . . exuberant. Come here, Lemmy, you stunted bastard.'

When he'd put them back on their leads he took them over to the fence that bordered the fields beyond and tied them to it.

‘Don't you show me up again or you're both going into kennels. Forever.'

He walked back over to the girl who was leaning on her crutches and trembling. Her head was turned away.

‘Listen, I'm ever so sorry. Are you going to be all right?' He didn't know whether he should put out his hand and take hold of her arm. He decided not to. She turned towards him then and her face was wet with tears. She'd been laughing.

‘I'll be fine,' she said through a giggle.

‘I thought you were traumatised,' he said stupidly.

‘Yeah, well I was to start with but watching you handle your highly-trained dogs helped me get over it. That and their heavy metal call-signs.'

Kevin's lips went tight. The girl was long-haired, kind of a rocker herself with all the leather and denim, and this close to her he realised why it was inevitable he'd talk to her. Even without the help of the dogs he'd have stopped and said something to her. What was that? Pheromones? She charmed him now, as he stood next to her, but he had no idea why. She was attractive in a way that made no sense to him. Not a single stereotypical beauty-feature in sight and yet he could hardly keep his eyes from exploring her.

And here she was taking the piss out of the dogs' names. Taking the piss out of him.

‘Not my idea,' he said and saw her glance at the ring on his left hand. He hadn't planned to admit he was married. Too late already.

‘Uh huh,' she said, as though she didn't believe him. ‘Well, they could really do with some obedience training.'

‘I'm sorry,' he said again.

For some uncomfortable moments, there was silence. The kind of silence that ought to have clarified the conversation was over. He didn't want that, though.

‘I feel terrible about this. They drive me nuts those two. Are you sure you'll be okay?'

‘I'm hard. I'll handle it.'

Before he could stop himself he said,

‘Do you smoke?'

‘I do, as it happens.'

Kevin reached into his pocket and drew out his glasses case. There were two cigarettes remaining, both a little wrinkled and bent. He offered one to her.

‘Here. It's the least I can do.'

She smiled and shook her head, drawing an almost full pack of Camels from her own jacket pocket.

‘I couldn't possibly take one of your last fags. Besides,' she said, catching sight of the Silk Cut logo, ‘it'll be like smoking hot air. I need some serious tar.'

She held the pack out. Kevin sighed, shook his head and took one, his humiliation complete.

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘I appreciate the offer. And the dog thing, it wasn't your fault. Just forget it, okay?'

He sighed again.

‘Okay.'

She cupped her hands over her lighter, a pink Bic just like his, and flicked it for him. The first rush of ‘real' smoke made him dizzy.

‘Been trying to quit?' She asked, noticing the look on his face.

‘Kind of.'

‘Not many of us around these days.'

‘That's how it looks,' said Kevin, ‘but none of the tobacco companies seem to have gone out of business.'

She sat back down on the bench and once more leaned her crutches against it. He joined her. As soon as they were sitting, the conversation died and he was left thinking he shouldn't be there. If anyone from the estate saw him, the rumours would spread like plague. He rushed the cigarette, heating and lengthening the glowing end in the process and crumpling the diminishing shaft of white.

She smirked.

‘That's quite an addiction,' she said. ‘Maybe you should just let the tobacco companies take your money. Looks like you need the nicotine.'

She was kidding, he knew, and it was good of her to be so pleasant natured when his - correction, Tammy's - dogs had just scared the crap out of her. He also knew she was right about the smoking. Her simple observation had an equally simple but unsettling inference. Kevin Doherty isn't allowed to be himself, he thought. Kevin Doherty does the things his wife wants him to do and he does it to keep the peace. Kevin Doherty's marriage exists beneath a patina of lies: two unhappy people share the same house and bed. Both of those people would like to be elsewhere doing other things with other people. Living other lives. Being themselves.

It was so obvious it was depressing. Why couldn't he have admitted before?

The thoughts had stopped him smoking and the ash had caught up with the rest of the cigarette. It toppled in a grey column onto his navy blue Ralph Lauren chinos. It broke up on impact and some rolled onto the gritty dirt under the bench. He could have brushed it away but he didn't.

‘Everything all right?' asked the girl.

‘Fine.' He took a deep breath. ‘My name's Kevin, by the way.'

He put the butt in his mouth and held out his hand, squinting as the smoke stung his eyes.

‘I'm Jenny,' she said and shook it.

He relaxed then, finding happiness in this other world, this real world that suddenly existed outside his marriage. He nodded towards her bandaged foot.

‘How did you break your foot?'

‘I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that.'

Shit, he thought, can I possibly get this any more wrong than I already have? But she continued and he could see her trying to save him from his newfound gift for crashing and burning:

‘What I mean is, it's difficult to explain. Maybe I could tell you about it another time.'

She allowed her eyes to meet his and he was both elated and terrified to arrive at this moment out of nowhere. What he wanted. What he shouldn't have. What he deserved?

He dropped the cigarette and crushed it out under his shoe.

‘I'd like that.'

He stood up and held out his hand again. Another lame-assed gesture that felt all wrong. She took it with a smile and a barely noticeable shake of her head.

‘Will I see you around here,' he asked, ‘or . . .' he didn't know where to go with the suggestion.

She was already writing down her telephone number.

‘Here,' she said. ‘Why don't you call me sometime.'

‘I will.'

He looked around as he accepted the scrap of cardboard from her Camel packet in case anyone was watching. It was then that he noticed the lack of activity over by the fence.

‘Oh shit. No.'

The leads hung there abandoned, each with the collar still attached. Tammy always insisted they not be too tight so that they didn't choke the dogs. Taking advantage of her thoughtfulness, the rock and roll Staffies were gone.