He awoke alone, stretched out on a bench at his neighborhood basketball court, guilt-free and soaked in sweat. He rubbed his face and looked at his watch. Nearly five o’clock in the morning and it had barely cooled off during the night. He started walking home quickly, thinking it was going to be a brutally hot day; he had little more than half an hour to shower and eat something before Verrazano rang his doorbell.
The christening of the Outrageous Fortune was just another inoffensive oddity, one of the many that arise in a garbage man’s infinitely tedious life. Horowitz had chosen a fine name for his galleon and the Captain thought it would do no harm to make it official. After he got used to the sign on the rear bumper, he began using the name himself. He’d noticed that overlooking Drake’s whims helped the poor disgruntled fellow get on better with his job. His minor peculiarities were always pretty tolerable, like having to eat jerky and crackers when it was Drake’s turn to bring lunch; or getting used to those nautical terms: hatch for door, bridge for driver’s cab, helm for steering wheel, locker for glove compartment. They were inoffensive manias, at least compared to Verrazano’s outright insanity: the fat man was just as likely to pick a fight with a police officer as start kicking over the garbage cans at a house if he thought they’d been improperly filled.
The garbage truck had always made Drake think of a ship. But one morning the previous autumn the tide had brought them a box of books, and since then the idea had gained an increasingly strong hold over his mind. He was tying the remains of some broken furniture on top of the truck when Verrazano froze in his tracks, hands dead at his sides, a look of disbelief frozen on his face. Who do these people think they are? he screamed. This has got to violate every regulation of trash collection in the United States. Busy as he was with his task, Drake hardly paid him any attention. Look at this, Horowitz. Books. Right here, in an open cardboard box. I can’t believe it. Descending the poop-deck ladder, Drake suggested he just dump them in the trash compactor and leave it at that. Impossible, responded Verrazano. Just throw them in the back and forget about it. That’s a crime, Verrazano bellowed. Why? What do you mean, why; it’s perfectly recyclable paper. Besides, they’re books. Kids in the inner city can’t even go to school and rich people in the suburbs throw books in the garbage. Then take ’em to the library or file a complaint against this house for not recycling, Drake said. With spluttering bravado, the fat man declared he would do exactly that, then set the box down in the truck’s cab. Now with lunch finished — his wife had prepared them a fantastic lasagna — calm, settled, and bored by the long return trip to the plant, Verrazano began to look through the contents of the box. He leafed through two or three books. One of them caught his attention. Look at this one, he said, showing it to Horowitz. I can’t believe this: Song of Myself. So much pride can’t be good for kids. Verrazano grabbed the book by its spine and flung it out the window. The other two laughed. He kept on digging through the box. Oh, please, he said after a while, look at this. He showed them a copy of Junkie. Now, that’s just plain wrong. He repeated his prank, and this time scored a direct hit on a mailbox. Ugh, A Doll’s House. That’s for whores and stuck up bitches, and he sent it sailing with style, like a Frisbee. Mexico City Blues. He snorted. Beaners. Fuck that shit. I’m throwing that one, said the Captain. Nope, replied Verrazano, because here’s one especially for you, and he handed him a copy of Heart of Darkness. And this one’s for Horowitz: Drake in the Pirates’ Era. When they reached the plant all the books had gone out the window except the one about pirates. Drake began reading it that very night. Things at home were still going well then: there was less time for him and his wife to drink when he was busy reading for a few hours every night.
Such repose would have been impossible during that summer, when the highway was like the high seas. Verrazano thought it strange that Horowitz was already waiting for him — with a face like a castaway’s — on the front steps of his building. Even more so that he didn’t react when Verrazano parked his white Galaxie right in front of him: it wasn’t the kind of car that went unnoticed. He strained to lean over and roll down the passenger-side window, then whistled loudly to get his attention. Drake waved at him and got up clumsily, like a deep-sea diver moving with slow, meticulous care along the ocean floor. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before. From inside the car, the fat man saw him listlessly open the back door and drop a large, canvas duffel bag onto the seat, much bigger than the one he normally carried. The plush velvet seat cushions barely muffled the loud, metallic clatter of the bag’s contents. Are you going to play ball after work? Verrazano asked. No, said Horowitz. But you’ve got your bat in there, right? And my rifle. Sure.
Once outside the city, as on every morning, they chose a random street where they could steal a newspaper. We’re in luck, said the fat man as he spotted the New York Times in its blue plastic bag lying in the front yard of a McMansion. Out on the highway, they stopped for coffee at a gas station mini-mart. There, Drake told him what had happened.
When he got back to his apartment after spending the night, or part of it, on the neighborhood basketball court, he was still floating in that hazy serenity between drunkenness and hangover. It took a while for his clumsy hands to fish the keys out of his jeans pocket. Feeling a little dizzy as he tried to choose the right one, he stopped and rested his head against the door, which swung open under its weight. Although he knew right away that his wife had left him, he preferred to think that the door had been left unlatched by accident, and even thought about giving her hell when she woke up to make breakfast for their son. Drake went quietly into the kitchen and drank a glass of milk. As he closed the refrigerator he saw the Post-it stranded in the center of the door bearing the most laconic of farewells: I’m gone. He peeled off the little square note and read it a few more times, surprised that he felt nothing. Before going into the bathroom he went to make sure that his son hadn’t been left behind. Drake wouldn’t have known what to do with him.