She was thirsty, and the energy bars in her travel bag tasted like paste and required water to eat. She reached for her bag — her bag! She'd dropped it onto the concrete under the dumpster when the workers came by. She warbled with regret.
Hours passed.
Now she was unbearably hungry. She crumbled, and reached for one of the unsold burgers, its heat gone, recognizable as new only because of its wrapping. She ate it with as much gusto as she might eat Styrofoam packing peanuts.
Her mouth felt like the inside of a catcher's mitt. She ripped open the bag beneath her and rooted through its contents until she came upon a waxed paper cup containing drink remnants. She found a dash of Orange Crush happily diluted with melted ice cubes and downed it in one swig. She rummaged more, culling inert french fries, packets of honey-mustard dipping sauce, prickly drinking straws and smudged napkins.
Using folded cardboard, she built herself an impromptu shanty in the corner. For the shanty's floor she placed a buffer layer of dry garbage to insulate her from the dumpster's bottom, and to one side she built an avalanche shed, so as to be safe if the trash collapsed during the night. For a pillow she used folded cardboard, onto which she placed a bag full of crushed waxed paper cups.
She was surprising herself with her adeptness at navigating inside her new world — in her new life she'd have to start at the bottom — this was her trial by fire. And so it was with a strange pride that she fell asleep, proud she could handle herself no matter what was tossed her way, and her sleep was dreamless.
She was wakened with a stun-gunned jolt of fear by the industrial crash of steel on steel. Morning — a dump truck come to lift her and her new home away.
She heard the locks above her being unlocked and then almost immediately the dumpster was jolted upward, and her body was compressed by the wall of trash bags that had been against the opposing wall. Her mind raced — a trash compressor — oh
The bed was full, and mercifully it had no compressor. Feeling like Bugs Bunny, she poked her head up from her trash and looked over its edge and into the commercial strip she'd walked the night before, haloed in sunlight beaming in low from the eastern horizon. The truck moved onto an interstate with fresh, nonburger winds filling her nostrils and cleansing her hair of ketchup packets and salts and peppers.
It was a long ride, and Susan lay atop the waste and felt the sun on her eyelids.
The truck slowed down, changed gears, stopped, started, made various turns and then rumbled onto the dirt of a sanitary landfill. Trucks around her were beeping as they maneuvered themselves in reverse gear, as did Susan's. Its bed tilted up, up, then up some more, and yet again Susan felt weightless, scrambling up the dumping trash as though she were a monkey walking up a down escalator. She finally came to rest on the crown of a crest of a heap of trash. Sun — warmth — freedom.
She could only see trucks, not people, and she walked down and through the cones of junk, seemingly groomed but utterly filthy.
She came across a scarecrow for seagulls. She stole its mantle, a men's XL down ski jacket with felt pen stains around its hem, and small castanet of sporty ski lift tags chattering on its zipper.
Inside its chest pocket was a pair of bad, cheap aviator glasses of the sort found in dime stores. She put them on. She swept her hair back and left the dump, smiling.
She headed toward Indiana.
Chapter Thirteen
The day John chose for his walkout, he didn't wake up in the morning knowing that would be the day. Rather, he felt a twinge — 10:30A .M. in the Staples parking lot, while closing the door of his Saab under a rainless sky — and realized the time was now. His soul creaked just a bit, like a house shifting off its foundation just ever so. It felt to him like the moment once a year when he smelled the air and knew fall is here; or like the moment when a tamed animal bites its master's hand and reverts to the wild.
He shut the car door, and the annoying sonic blinks from inside stopped. Cindy and Krista had liquidated his chattels and were off once again to pursue their acting careers. He had $18.35 in his wallet, which he placed in the Muscular Dystrophy can by the cashier's till at Staples. He tucked his wallet, containing his driver's license, his credit cards, his various unmemorizable access code numbers, as well as home and studio security card swipes, discreetly inside a littered KFC box, which he dropped in a trash bin.
He was wearing a blue cotton button-down dress shirt, a previously unworn pair of cocoa («
He remembered his vision of Susan, its clarity and conviction. This reminded him of how he felt when he'd been called up onstage to receive his high school diploma. It had been years since he'd been sick or weak. Beneath his robe he was almost acrobatic with good health as members of the good-looking-girl-clique in the crowd behind him gave him cheeky squeals of reassurance that he was in fact a new person crossing a new line. He had the giddy sensation that came with knowing a part of his life was absolutely over and something assuredly more marvelous lay ahead.
He walked east, and an hour later was soaked in sweat.
It was time to eat and rest. Some blocks ahead was a Burger King, and once inside, it dawned on John that he was moneyless, so he asked for and received a glass of water while he tried to make a dining decision. A quick glance at his reflection in a counterside mirror reminded him that he hadn't shaved that day, and was now entering that small pocket of time in which he would look raffish, and soon after that, unmedicated.
«Can I help you, sir?» asked the manager with an air of understaffedness.
«Not just yet. Thanks.» Staying any longer was pointless. In his enthusiasm to run away, he'd skipped over the subject of food, assuming that it would somehow just appear. Walking away from the restaurant's chilled cube of air, he couldn't help but notice the colorful composts of uneaten food that filled its numerous cans, and as he continued his eastward trek, he realized he'd have to quickly invent some sort of nutritious idea.
The sun peaked and quickly fell to the horizon. The thrumming of cars was constant. It grew dark. The neighborhoods he passed through were consistently deteriorating, and soon even the fast food and gas outlets vanished. He was sweaty and thirsty and knew that by now he must be looking rather strange. He wondered how long his $150 haircut would keep him looking like Joe Citizen. His stomach cramped with hunger and dehydration.
A mile farther, at a road junction he spotted a McDonald's. At least there he could shit and wash and devise a food plan. Knowing this, his steps resumed their earlier bounce, and in the McDonald's men's room he sploshed his deranged face with tap water and then entered the main dining area, occupied by a few seniors, three borderline homeless cases and a sullen clump of Asian teens busy flouting California's nonsmoking laws. The counter staff were almost medically, clinically bored, and listened to John's request for water as if he were a dial tone. But he received a glass of water, which bought him time, and then,
Outside, he scoured the vicinity looking for a place to eat and chose a small concrete piling behind the restaurant, by some rangy oleander shrubs overlooking the dumpsters and utility hookups encased in wire fencing.
A helicopter flew overhead. He ate his food and then found a place to lie down, behind the oleanders, a spot
