My job here in the apartment building is to make sure people put their garbage down the chute. There’s one of them on every floor, so there’s no excuse for people to leave bags full of dirty diapers and kitchen scraps and used takeout containers in front of their doors. It’s not only unpleasant for the other residents and their guests to look at—not to mention smell—but it also attracts roaches. And then the management company has to call an exterminator. Exterminators cost money. Call the exterminator enough, and our rent goes up. We’re all in this together.

That’s what I tell everyone when I see their trash outside of their apartment. I knock on their door, and even if they won’t open it, I know they are in there, and so I say it anyway.

And then I take their garbage to the chute because that’s also part of the job.

I say job, but it’s not really a job, of course. It’s a volunteer committee, and our mission is to make the building a more enjoyable place to live. We also get ten dollars per month off our rent. That’s $120 per year. And that’s not nothing. So maybe it is a job.

We’re supposed to rotate jobs, so no one gets stuck with the unpleasant ones for too long. But I’ve had garbage chute duty for three years now. The committee says that I’m the best at it and that the residents know me as the person who enforces the garbage rules. They say having someone else do it would be a step backward because I’ve really connected with the other tenants over this. It’s what the residents know me as, they say. This is what they say: they say when people see me, they feel a responsibility to take their trash to the garbage chute. 

I don’t think they’re right about that. It’s not like I’ve seen less garbage out in the hallways over the last three years. It’s not like I’ve had tenants thank me for taking their trash to the chute and then promise me they won’t leave it out next time. If anything, I think they take their trash to the chute even less than they did before I started garbage duty. I think they know I’ll just take it away for them. And I do. Because that’s part of my job. But whenever I do, I knock on their door, and even though they don’t answer, I get down on my hands and knees, and I put my cheek to the cold tile and I talk right into the narrow space between their door and the floor, and I remind them that there is a garbage chute on every floor and that leaving garbage in the hallways attracts pests and makes for an unpleasant experience for their neighbors and neighbors’ guests.

They tell me to go fuck myself. At least the ones who speak English do. About half the people who live here speak Polish or Russian or Italian, and I don’t know what they’re telling me to do when they scream at me through the door. Though, I suspect it’s that I should go fuck myself.

But I don’t want to argue with the committee. We’re all just trying to make the building a better place to live. So I bring it up every meeting, but I never push it. I let them know very clearly that I’d like any other job. I’d be fine with being the person who takes down old flyers from the bulletin board in the laundry area. I’d be happy to be the person who brings the stack of newspapers into the lobby every morning. I’d love to be the one who waters the ferns and monsteras outside of the elevator doors on every floor. But that’s Cally’s job and she’s good at it and I’d hate it if Cally had to do garbage chute duty. I’d much rather do it than her. No question.

I’m in love with Cally.

I’ve been in love with Cally for three years now. I met her at the very first committee meeting.

“First of all,” she told us, “I am only doing this for the discount. And if they try to take that away, I will quit and I will not give notice.”

Everyone on the committee agreed, except for me. I didn’t disagree, either. I just didn’t say anything. I was too busy looking at her. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She still is. But, sitting right there in that first meeting, it occurred to me: this is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I tried to figure out why, but I couldn’t identify any specific attribute that made her more attractive than anyone else. They say that symmetry makes a person appear attractive, and while there was nothing particularly asymmetrical about her face, there was also nothing especially appealing in the way one side of her face looked like the other.

“I like caring for plants,” she told us. “I like plants more than I like people. It’s not even a competition,” she explained. “I really dislike people quite a lot. Whatever I can do that doesn’t involve people—seeing them or speaking to them—is best for me. So, I think, plants. My job should be plants,” she said, and we all agreed. Even me.

After the meeting, I introduced myself to her. I said, “You don’t know me, but I’ve seen you around the building, and my name is Lloyd.”

She said, “You don’t know me either.”

I said, “That’s true. So that’s why I’m introducing myself. I really like what you said in the meeting.”

“About not liking people?”

“Yes. It was very honest of you.”

“Yes, it was, Lloyd,” she said and she looked at me for a long time, her eyes narrowing as she studied my face. Her hair was black. It still is black. But I mean it was black back then, too, and I remember how I was thinking that I’d never seen such black hair before. It was completely black. Not like coffee or nighttime or the sharps and flats of a piano. Blacker. Much blacker than that. “Are you a plant, Lloyd?” she asked me after a while.

“No, I’m not,” I said with a little laugh.

“That’s too bad. We’d get along better if you were,” she said.

She started to walk away but before she could, I asked, “Has anyone told you that you’re very beautiful?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then you tell me.”

“I can’t.”

And I couldn’t. I still can’t, even though it’s all I think about aside from the trash.

Ivan says he’s a ghost.

It was a shock to all of us when we first heard about it, I think. It was at one of our committee meetings, and he kicked the whole thing off by informing us that he was stepping down effective immediately and that someone else would have to fill the birdfeeders.

“We’re sorry to see you go,” Seymour told him. “But, Ivan, may I ask why?”

“I died yesterday,” he said.

“I see,” said Seymour. “And may I ask how?”

“Choked.”

“Sorry to ask so many questions,” Seymour said, “but may I ask what you choked on?”

“A piece of banana,” he grumbled.

“He does eat a lot of bananas,” I said. “I see the peels all the time when—” I was about to say take his garbage to the chute, but I didn’t want Ivan to feel bad about not taking his trash out. The guy had already died, so I didn’t want to add insult to injury. Or, in this case, death.

After an awkward moment or two, Seymour cleared his throat. “Do you have any sense of how much longer you’ll be with us? In the building, I mean. Not the committee.”

“No idea,” Ivan said. “But I’m certainly not giving up on my lease, if that’s what you mean.” He stood up abruptly and the chair slid back. Then he left without saying goodbye.

“I very much doubt he’s a ghost,” a committee member named June said after he’d left the laundry room, which is where we held the meetings.

“Really?” Seymour asked, sounding sincerely interested in her perspective.

“My mother died thirty-six years ago. Thirty-six years. I haven’t seen her more than, what, three maybe four times. And the first time I did wasn’t for at least a couple years after her death. But you’re telling me he dies yesterday but he’s right back at a meeting today? I don’t buy it.”

“Well, everyone’s different,” Seymour sighed.

There was quite a long stretch of silence as we all tried to take in Ivan’s news of his own death. Finally, seeing an opportunity, I spoke up. “I’d like to make a request,” I said.

“Sure, go ahead,” Seymour said.

Hoping to make a strong impression, I stood. And then I cleared my throat. “It’s been three years now, and I’ve been on garbage duty. Perhaps with Ivan’s sudden death, we might shuffle jobs. Specifically, I’d very much like to take over birdfeeder duty.” I sat back down.

There was another long stretch of silence. Longer than the one that there was after Ivan told us he was dead.

Finally, June spoke. “Well who’s going to do garbage duty?” she asked. She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

I stood back up. “Well. I believe there are others in the building who might be very interested in getting a rent break. So I suggest someone new comes on and takes over garbage duty. And, perhaps, as an incentive, I’d be willing to kick in five of my ten dollars per month to whoever that is. That’s fifteen dollars a month savings for them. That’s one hundred eighty dollars per year.” And then I added, “And that’s not nothing.”

“Lloyd,” Seymour said, “I’m certainly willing to entertain it. But I couldn’t imagine a better person to be on garbage duty than you. I think we’d all better take a little time to think about this.”

I looked at June, and her expression seemed to have changed. She looked as if she was doing arithmetic in her head, trying to calculate, perhaps, if it would be worth it for her to volunteer for garbage duty.

“I’m not giving up the plants,” Cally said.

“Understood,” Seymour said. He was never elected chairman, but he had natural leadership qualities. He said things like Understood, and I’m certainly willing to entertain that, and I think we’d all better take a little time to think about this. “For now, let’s table the subject of garbage duty,” Seymour suggested.

Everyone nodded. Except me. But I also didn’t argue. I never did.

“Good meeting, everyone,” Seymour said.

The committee filed out of the room, leaving only Cally and myself. Any minute, a resident would come in with a heaping basket full of laundry. But for a moment, we were alone. It was just us and the Speed Queen washers and dryers and the empty vending machine that advertised detergents and fabric softeners and dryer sheets that it had not held for at least eighteen months.

“Cally,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said.

But it was too late. I’d said her name, which was all I’d wanted.

Ever since that meeting, Cally has stopped taking her trash to the garbage chute. She was one of the few residents who’d never left her trash in the hall. But now, every other day, I find a bag in front of her door stuffed with vegetable peels, apple cores, peach pits, celery stumps, coffee grinds, and tea leaves. It attracts roaches. Droves of them. Hungry, determined herds of them. Ravenous armies of them. I see the roaches marching toward the white plastic bag, the top secured with its red tie, and I snatch the bag up and rush it to the garbage chute, pull open the door and stuff bag into the void, where I wait as it falls for what feels like a full minute before it finally lands in some place I’ve never seen in the basement.

When I come back, the roaches are gone because they’ve picked up the scent of someone else’s garbage. I knock on her door.

She never answers even though I know she’s home because I can hear the radio or the television or her talking to her cat, trying to explain to it just how much she likes it—much more than she likes people, somewhat more than she likes dogs, not quite as much as she loves plants. And so I get down on my hands and knees and I press my face to the tile, and I look through space between the floor and her door and into her apartment—her world—and I see her get down on her hands and knees, only inches away, her black hair splayed out all around her on the worn wooden floor. And we stay like this. We stay like this for quite a while.

Someday, I will ask her if I can come in.

But for now, I have other bags of trash to collect, to send plummeting down the chute that runs through the center of this apartment building like the esophagus of some massive beast that is always demanding to be fed, cleaned, and cared for.

– David Obuchowski