collective, rented property of the neighborhood’s four pawnshops, including Orlando’s Pawn World, where I worked. On Dumpster Tuesdays, the first Tuesday of every third month—March, June, September, and December—the local pawnshops got together and rented a dumpster to use to clean out all the merchandise that had gone unsold for too long. The dumpster stayed in one of the pawnshops’ parking lots for ten days, and then the rental company would come and pick it up.
This time around, the dumpster was in our parking lot, outside Orlando’s. We took turns guarding it at night: me, Orlando himself, and four or five guys from the other shops. It was my first Dumpster Tuesday.
“But no one bought this thing,” said the old man, holding fast to the duck. “You tossed it out.”
“If everyone who pawned something at our shop waited until we tossed it out and then just came by and got it out of the dumpster, no one would bother buying anything from us, would they?”
“Friend, I’m an old man.” He smiled at me; I saw he was missing some teeth on top. “Memories is almost all I got left. And this duck brings up fond memories for me.”
“Like what?” I said.
“Pardon?” he said.
“I mean, what memories does it bring up for you? Name one.”
He studied the duck in his hand. “Well,” he said, “it makes me think of this one time my boy Jerricho and me, we went duck hunting together? We used this very decoy. And I’m saying, the boys couldn’t stay away from her. Thought she was a regular Marilyn Monroe.” He nodded at the duck. “She did her job that day. Yes, sir.” Then he turned back to me, waiting.
I stared at him.
“Aw, come on already,” he said. “Give me a break.”
“Sorry. You missed your window. You should have bought the decoy back from us while it was still in the store. Better yet, you shouldn’t have pawned it in the first place if you cared about it so much.”
Suddenly his eyes brightened. “Hold up, hold up. I know who you are,” he said, pointing at me. “You’re the guy who had all the problems with that country singer. I heard about you on News Twelve.”
I felt an uncomfortable tingle at the back of my neck. “Back in the dumpster,” I said, meaning the duck.
“Tell you what, it sounded like you was about ready to murder that poor cowboy. Following him around, threatening him and all. Not that I blame you, though. After the trouble he caused you? Bringing down a shit-storm like that?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. But I knew exactly what he meant. And I knew exactly who he was talking about.
“Listen,” he said. “It’s all right. I can’t stand that guy. Dick Doyle? I don’t like his songs. I don’t like his singing. Hell, I don’t like his whole, you know…” He waved the duck in the air.
“Act,” I said.
“Right,” he said, pointing at me. “That act he does. I mean, how in this day and age, with all our knowledge and computers and whatnot, can people still fall for bullshit like that? What a fucking phony, correct?”
The person the old man was talking about—the person who’d apparently brought a shit-storm down on me —was a country singer named Dick Doyle. Dick was the flashy kind of country singer, the type that wears the big white Stetson, the colorful suit with rhinestones sparkling all over the lapels. The big belt buckles. The cowboy boots with pointy silver caps on the toes. In the past couple of years, Dick had managed to become something of a local celebrity. He was always playing clubs and events around central Florida; he went on tour a couple of times a year, up to the Northeast or across the Southwest. He’d even been featured on some national television shows. None of this success had to do with actual talent on Dick’s part, though. No one paid to see Dick Doyle because he was a great songwriter or musician. People were interested in Dick only because of the bizarre circumstances surrounding his act.
“I don’t have any problems with Mr. Doyle anymore,” I said.
“That’s good. Because folks are going to get the best of you in this life sometimes, son. Make you look foolish. Doesn’t mean you’re a loser.”
“I never said I felt like a loser.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. Hell. People call me all kinds of things. I don’t let it get me down. Fuck them, right?” He laughed. “Fuck them right in their pieholes.”
A sickening feeling came over me: he was an old man holding a duck he’d stolen from a dumpster. He was giving me advice. Still, I refused to let myself get angry. Any day now I was going to leave Florida altogether and put the whole Dick Doyle mess behind me. I’d found a great new girlfriend, Joan; she was a young Chinese American, and soon enough I’d give Orlando notice, and she and I would head back north.
I tried to picture my real life then, the life waiting for me back home: I pictured the building I worked in, fifty-two stories tall, a glittering black tower rising above midtown Manhattan. I pictured my office, my desk, my leather chair, waiting empty. See? I thought. You have a good job out there. You own an apartment in Brooklyn. You are a real person.
“Who’s saying I’m a loser?” I said.
“No one, buddy. I just meant that there’s people on your side. That’s all. Like Jerricho, my son. Who bought me this duck. The one I’m holding.”
Just then Orlando’s truck pulled into the lot. He must have seen what was going on, because instead of parking in his spot he skidded to a stop right in front of us. The old man jumped back to avoid the spray of gravel.
Orlando got out and took a bat from the cab. He was from Argentina, and though he was shorter than both of us, he was a thickly packed person.
“Get out of here!” he yelled at the old man, his accent rearing up. He pulled the bat back like he was about to swing at the old man’s head. “Get off of my property!”
“Whoa, sir,” the old man said. “I was just leaving.”
“Oh, but you are not leaving with that.” Orlando grabbed the duck and dropped it on the ground. Then he raised the bat over his head. “This item is being sold for ten dollars. You pay ten dollars to me and you can have it.”
The old man studied the duck rocking on its side. “I’ll give you two dollars,” he said.
“Ten,” said Orlando.
“Two twenty-five.”
“Ten.”
“It’s got no beak. Two fifty.”
Orlando waved the bat high in the air. “Ten.”
The old man leaned over and spat on the duck. “Keep the change,” he said. Then he turned and started walking away. “Oh, and Dick Doyle’s a goddamned genius!” he yelled over his shoulder.
I took a step toward him, but Orlando grabbed my arm.
“What are you thinking of, talking to someone like that?” he said to me.
I watched the old troll vanish into the hedge. “I’m sorry. He started talking to me about Dick Doyle and —”
“Dick Doyle again,” he said.
“I know.”
“Get some sleep. Go home,” Orlando said, and gently took the spear gun away from me.
It’s difficult in this day and age to tell the difference between a real and an artificial plant. The technology has become so advanced. The age of rubberized stems and plastic leaves is long past. The synthetic plant of today is made from all kinds of designer materials—complicated organic compounds like fibercore and polywax and spongeform. For example, your typical synthetic palm tree, standing fifteen to twenty feet tall—the kind you find twisting up through every mall across America—its trunk is sculpted from a wood resin that sweats and breathes just like a real tree’s. The leaves are spun from a special waxen silk; they have actual veins running through them. If I were to plant a synthetic palm tree next to a real one, and then bring you over and ask you to tell me which was which, you wouldn’t be able to. Even if I let you use your hands. Probably the only way for you to discover the truth
