Collectibles

You might say he was living in the past. But it wasn’t his past—it was everyone else’s.

The man spent his days searching from dumpster to dumpster for collectibles. He had a particular interest in the collectibles of one young woman, a girl in her early 20s working in marketing with good credit. Week after week the man harvested her cotton swabs and junk mail to such an extent that, eventually, her discarded possessions made up the comfortable majority of his own.

He kept all these collectibles in the nest he called his home, in a forested area not far from a running path, just outside the city. It was a sea of collectibles that could easily be mistaken by outsiders for some anti-environmentalist’s dumping grounds, except that everything was arranged just too uncannily to have been dropped by happenstance.

“Deary Tina,” he said, arranging a number of chocolate wrappers from the latest crop into a styrofoam takeout container, “you’ve been eating a lot of these lately. Keep it up and you’re gonna make yourself fatty-tatty. No, no good.”

“I just had the worst day,” Tina said as she walked in. Juneau was on the floor, playing with their cat.

“Worse than yesterday?” he asked.

“Way worse. My boss doesn’t hear a thing I say and he’s got me on all these awful projects. And the people. It just pisses me off.”

“Here, play with Crackers; he always makes me feel better.”

“Yeah, because you don’t have a real job so you’ve got time to play with that dumb cat all day. I’ve got to go take care of some things.” She settled at the table and pulled her work laptop from her bag.

“You don’t think managing a restaurant is real work? You don’t think it takes time and energy and thinking?”

“Well, it’s certainly not the kind of thing you needed a college degree for.”

“Why do you always do that, Tina?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re so full of hate sometimes. Can’t you hear it?”

“Well aren’t you Mister High and Mighty.”

“Just listen to yourself. You’re always doing that.”

“Oh shut up, June. Let me get some work done or tomorrow’s gonna be even worse.”

“I need to get out of here anyway,” Juneau said as he grabbed his sweatshirt off the couch and left.

“What’s this?” said the man. “Photos of Deary Tina and this boy. Oh this boy, I know this boy; he’s one of those runners. I’ve seen him, running so fast. Did he hurt you, Tina? Did he take advantage of you and leave you, Deary?” The man was walked back to his nest with these new finds. “Oh, Deary Tina,” he said, “I’ll get him for you. He’ll wish he never did hurt you, my lovely.”

Tina was crying on the phone.

“…They said the guy just tackled him and started stabbing him,” her friend was saying. “Tina, I’m so sorry. I—”

Tina hung up.