Hector couldn’t contain it, himself. He couldn’t stop it, himself. He couldn’t control himself or what he’d collected. It spread everywhere. The landlord didn’t fire him. The Big G said it was because they were trying to help him. Hector was old, he was an alcoholic, he had worked for them a long time, he was nice. Everyone felt sorry for him. No one wanted him to lose his job. He was just in the wrong job. But they didn’t fire him mostly because Hector worked cheap. He added to his puny salary by collecting bottles, the ones he hardly ever returned. He couldn’t give them in.
In the spring, summer, and fall, Hector and his wife set up a table in front of the building to sell some of the stuff he found on the street, couldn’t keep, or couldn’t throw out. Elizabeth despaired of the table in front of the building. Elizabeth discarded shoes or clothes in garbage bags. She set them on the sidewalk. Her throwaways landed on the table outside the building. She’d see a pair of her torn underpants or a ripped sweater hours later. Homeless people had no chance to rummage through the garbage bags and find something to wear. Even if she no longer owned it, after throwing it away, she was frustrated to see it lying forlorn on Hector’s table. Mrs. Hector usually sat behind the table, grinning. In the heat of summer, Mrs. Hector relaxed under an umbrella. She watched TV too. They had an extension cord that ran from their apartment to the street.
No one on the street could have anything for nothing. Even the most useless object. It happened everywhere, shoplifted books, furniture off the back of a truck, the worn and the used, peoples’ lives on the ground, bargains on blankets.
Everyone wanted a bargain. Even if it was stolen.
There was a man on Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue at Christmas selling answering machines in their boxes for twenty dollars. Elizabeth was with her friend Helen. The guy hawked hard and fast. A crowd gathered around him.
— With a remote, twenty dollars. A bargain.
— Can I see one?
— Factory sealed.
The hawker held up a box.
— Why’s a piece of tape there? It was opened.
— Factory rejects, lady, you want it or you don’t. Twenty dollars. A bargain. Remote.
All the while he’s talking to her, he’s selling them briskly to people rushing by, people listening for thirty seconds, people convinced quickly. They take twenties out of their bags or pockets, then move on. A bargain. Elizabeth wanted a new answering machine. She hesitated. Helen said, If you want it, get it. Elizabeth handed the hawker a twenty, took the answering machine. She and Helen went for coffee. Elizabeth opened the box and pulled out a brick.
That was a while ago.
It was weird to see your torn underpants, your former underpants, with a fifty cents sign pinned to them. Elizabeth would glance at the table, her rejects, and smile at Hector’s wife.
Mrs. Hector was friendly. The Hectors were good people. Mrs. Hector always said hello. She lifted her head up and down. She patted the dog. Their dog was big and slow, an old dog with a human name. Elizabeth would shake her head up and down in return or say hello. Then she’d go upstairs. She’d go inside. Elizabeth had no place inside for Mrs. Hector’s table outside, though it was there. She didn’t mention it to anyone.
— He’s the one who’s supposed to keep the halls clean, Roy.
— Drop it.
— It’s insane.
— So what.
— Why do we have to live like this?
— Forget it.
Sometimes Elizabeth had the urge to sneak in and view Hector’s apartment, the way she viewed dead bodies in coffins at funerals. From a distance, tentatively.
Now Frankie walked out to the street. He usually opened up the laundromat. That’s strange, Elizabeth thought, staring at Frankie, who didn’t notice her at the window, at least she didn’t think he did, because if he did, he would say Hey or Yo, they went back years together, it was too early for the laundromat to open. Frankie probably couldn’t sleep either.
Elizabeth’s chin rested on her hand. The night air was becoming lighter and thinner, distended.
Frankie lived in the Lopez apartment two floors below Roy and her. His mother had died not long ago. Elizabeth had known Frankie since he was five. Now he was an adult, he played basketball, he was strong, a regular guy. He was trying to stay away from girls, he told her. He already had two kids, and he was only nineteen. He’d grown up in a way she couldn’t understand. He knew that.
People with some money can bury their dead or cremate them. The Lopezes were poor in grief. When Frankie’s mother, Emilia, died, the funeral parlor wouldn’t bury her until all the money came from social services. You can expire waiting for social services. Gay Men’s Health crisis gave the family some of the money, Emilia had died of AIDS, but her embalmed body was kept over the weekend in a dismal funeral parlor on Second Avenue. The Lopezes had come to the parlor on a Friday, to take the body away, to bury Emilia, but the parlor wouldn’t let them remove the body. The entire family was there, and they couldn’t bury her. People with money can bury their dead. The funeral parlor charged them over four thousand dollars for a bare room and some miserly solicitousness.
Roy and Elizabeth paid their respects. The children wanted her to touch their mother’s stiff body. She tried to slip a rose under the swollen hand, but she couldn’t. The children, some grown, smiled at Elizabeth. Then they smiled at their young, dead mother. Emilia. She was a tenderhearted woman. Often she lived in the building, when Roy and Elizabeth had just moved in, Emilia restrained her kids from stealing their mail. They did it once or twice, but Emilia made them return it to Elizabeth. The kids liked to bust open mailboxes. Emilia stopped them. Elizabeth rented a post office box anyway.
Elizabeth stared at Emilia’s body. She didn’t want to go up to the coffin. She didn’t want to see vivid makeup on a dead face. She was afraid of the hand of death, its long reach. She went forward with Roy. Frankie and two of his sisters — Carmen and Susanna — wanted her there, closer to the coffin.
Frankie took Elizabeth by the hand and escorted her to it.
— Don’t worry. She looks nice. Doesn’t she look good?
Elizabeth thought, Death’s ugly.
Frankie surveyed the mess on the sidewalk. He shook his head. He didn’t become insane about the garbage and the damage. Frankie was cool. He didn’t approach the morons on the church steps, he checked them out, registered who they were, for the future. He stood there, his arms folded over his chest. Then he went back inside. Frankie kept an eye on the street. He was vigilant.
Elizabeth had been inside the Lopez apartment. It was clean, it was poor, it was livable. Nothing was like Hector’s apartment. Except for the apartment that was covered in talcum powder. It was in another building. Elizabeth saw it one night when the man who lived in it, a stingy man with a trust fund who drove a cab at night, wasn’t in. The people who rented him the room showed it to Elizabeth. The apartment was covered in talcum powder. The floors, the bed, the dresser, the bathroom — sink, bathtub, not the toilet — were under a thick layer of white powder, piled under a carpet of talcum powder. It was hard to breathe. That apartment was worse than Hector’s.
Sometimes she knocked on Hector’s door. Mrs. Hector opened it a crack. Elizabeth had to pick up a package that UPS left with them. Or sometimes Elizabeth brought Mrs. Hector a blouse, if it was in good enough shape, if it was something she didn’t wear anymore or never had. She’d do that rather than see it land as a reject on Hector’s table.
The old dog with a human name behind Mrs. Hector growled. Mrs. Hector positioned her body to block the dog from barging out. Elizabeth could see a sliver of the apartment.
— It makes me sick.
— He’s a collector, Roy said.