Series Notes Contact Rehearsal Hotel
Series Notes Contact Rehearsal Hotel
62.
GARBAGE /
IV of xx
Jon Auman
Kazuhide Yamazaki, ‘Untitled’ (Manhattan, 1978).
GARBAGE /
IV of xx
Jon Auman
The Whitney Museum of American Art.
The fourth in an associative thread
of works, works-in-progress, asides
& ideas from Auman.
of works, works-in-progress, asides
& ideas from Auman.
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939).
* * *
* * *
He spent most mornings wandering the streets around the old fish market watching men in hard hats breaking down walls. Teams of them used sledgehammers, jackhammers and the odd wrecking-ball wielding crane to smash through concrete, brick, wood, stone, glass, and plaster mixed with horsehair. In their wake they left mounds of gnarled, formless rubble until other men came with big trucks that were used to haul the useful and useless bits away to God knows where.
The men paid no attention to him, other than to remark on his strange presence. A young man with greasy black curly hair dressed in an ill-fitting three piece suit that looked 20 years old. The brown leather Arkansas boots that his father had made for him did elicit one or two positive comments.
Nice boots for a bum.
Probably stole ‘em.
Yeah.
Eventually the men gave him a nickname: Garbage Jacob
Garbage for short. As in: Here comes Garbage for his morning constitutional.
He was careful to not be recognized for the vulture that he was. There were things he was looking for: pieces of old industrial equipment, old posters, matchbooks, doorknobs, hooks and dented spittoons. He particularly loved finding still intact bits of the ephemera of business, like pads of company stationary and ink stained stamps that said things like: EXPRESS | OVERNIGHT | FRAGILE | VOID.
Some of what he found he kept for himself. The cold water apartment that he rented from an uncle for almost nothing had become a kind of museum for the choicest bits. He’d built sturdy rows of shelves and erected makeshift plinths for heavier, three-dimensional pieces like a busted-in motor and belt fan unit that he guessed had played some part in regulating cold storage. He had a collection of old nuts and bolts, and a Savarin coffee can filled with ancient looking nails. Over his single bed he’d pasted a poster depicting a man in a blue uniform looking out at the sea from the deck of an ocean liner, under which were printed the words GLASGOW & NEW YORK VIA LONDONDERRY in a bright emerald green.
What he didn’t keep for himself, he tried to sell. A man whose business card claimed that he sold Fine Objects of Antiquity out of his lopsided stall on Mulberry Street, would sometimes buy choicer pieces. Tools in decent condition he could take to Jameson’s Hardware on Canal. A horologist bought clock parts. Then the bits no one else wanted he took to Willy.
* * *
An acquaintance had once asked him how to get to Willy’s from where they were standing on the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway. He had thought about it for a moment, and quickly realized that he had no idea. When he had an appointment (Willy always demanded that an appointment be made by calling and leaving a message at a butcher shop on 1st Ave. that seemed to act as his message service), he would prepare himself first by drinking a cup of coffee, then smoking two cigarettes, then washing his face under the freezing cold tap. Then he was ready to leave. Wandering northeast brought him somewhat in range. He strolled past tenements and disused lots, and let his feet tell him where to go. Sometimes he would walk for twenty minutes, but there’d been times that it had taken two or three hours of circumlocutions, once in the middle of a blizzard. Eventually, he would arrive at a red door, the finding of which felt like waking from a dream. There was no buzzer or bell to ring. He would stand there on the doorstep and, without fail, Willy would suddenly appear.
The newspapers said that it was already the coldest December on record since records began to be kept. Downtown, the uncleared sidewalks were long slippery bowling lanes made of snow and ice.
For the first few blocks after he left his apartment, the lacerating wind and biting cold made it hard for him to reach the pleasantly half-conscious state that he knew was required for the journey. He walked northeast, then west for a bit, then north for a bit, then east for a bit, then he began heading south. After an hour or so, he was actually sweating. He unbuttoned the top button of his old seaman’s pea coat and adjusted his plaid scarf to let in some air.
When he suddenly found himself passing in front of Cooper Union, he knew he wasn’t too far away. St. Marks was deserted, partly because of the temperature outside and partly because it was after midnight (the earliest Willy would accept an appointment was 12:30am). At the entrance to Tompkins Square park he hung a right, walked a few blocks south, then felt himself veer east again into alphabet territory. A was followed by B and then the red door.
You always smelled Willy before you saw him. Sweat, garlic and some kind of floral oil concoction that Willy claimed extended one's years of grace and beauty into eternity.
He smelled the smell, he heard the rattle and thwack of the two deadbolts opening, and then he heard the voice.
‘Welcome to the tropics!’
When the door finally opened, Willy wasn’t behind it. It was another one of Willy’s magic tricks. He was there and then now he was gone.
Willy’s apartment was a fourth floor walkup in a four story building that for all intents and purposes seemed to be abandoned. Why Willy had chosen the top floor was something of a mystery. As he climbed the stairs he imagined Willy’s answer to the question Why? ...
‘Heat rises sonny. Think about it.’
The actual apartment was much larger than anyone would have expected. Maybe Willy had knocked out a few walls—possibly load bearing—when he’d moved in. Regardless, there were surprisingly high ceilings, two ‘bedrooms’ which were filled with ‘props,’ a large open space with a card table in one corner, and in the other corner a small hip-high cabinet on top of which sat a hotplate with a single burner.
‘You can’t believe these FUCKS!’ he heard Willy shout from one of the prop rooms.
Sounds of clanking metal objects and crinkling paper.
‘These CUNTS will ruin me! You have no idea. You think they’re FAMILY but they’re THIEVES!
T • H • I • E • V • E • S—THIEVES!’
Suddenly Willy emerged from the second doorway on the right.
Tonight’s costume was, he quickly realised, an homage to Cary Grant’s character Jeff from Only Angels Have Wings. Grubby white gaucho-ish pants over a pair of cracked snake-skin boots. A kids imitation gunslinger belt complete with fake bullets and a holster for a six-shooter, which Willy had instead filled with a French maid’s feather duster. Up top he was wearing a blue men’s workshirt that he’d tied at his waist like a hillbilly washerwoman. A red bandana tied around his throat and a slightly cocked, flat-topped cowboy hat completed the number.
‘Well?’ Willy spat out with venom.
‘Well what?’
‘Well what? Jesus Christ. Kids these days. What’s wrong with this generation?
They’re all like Debbie Reynolds—MISCAST.’
Willy flung his arms up over his head—a typically Willy-an gesture that made his long goatee jiggle.
‘I have no money, just so you know. No CLAMS. Nada.’
This was the way that Willy always began negotiations.
‘Can I sit down at least?’ he asked.
Willy scoffed.
‘You’re like a dog. Just pee on the chair and be done with it. Claim everything.
I’ll be dead in 24 hours anyway, SO WHAT?”
He laughed.
‘You’re incredible,’ he said.
‘What’s that?!”
Now Willy was fiddling with the hotplate, which was unplugged.
‘I said you’re really wonderful.’
‘I know. Did you know that my mother named me Jonathan because I was God’s gift to her?’
‘I thought your name was William.’
‘WILLIAM?! Jesus.’
Willy turned around—it was the first time he had actually acknowledged with his eyes that someone else was in the room—and pointed an accusatory long index finger at nothing in particular.
‘LISTEN sister. If my mother wanted to name me WILLIAM do you think she would have married a man named ABDUL? I loved my mother, and JESUS she was not that stupid, and I honestly can’t believe you would cast aspersions on her name. Jonathan—GIFT FROM GOD—was just fine with her, thank you.’
During one of his less astringent moods, Willy had once explained that what they were doing was engaging in repartee. This was one of Willy’s categories: ‘repartee.’ Other categories included ‘tea time,’ ‘angels’ and ‘mollusk-types’ to name only a few.
‘I brought you some real special numbers,’ he said as he pulled a small leather tool pouch from his coat pocket. (The pouch was emblazoned with its former owner’s initials, which had been burned into the leather: LMW.)
He watched as Willy zig zagged his way across the room, dodging seemingly empty cardboard boxes and a rocking horse whose head had been wrapped with some kind of rough twine.
‘The biggest mistake we ever made,’ Willy began again, ‘…was letting the Dodgers leave Brooklyn.’
‘Who was your favorite Dodger, Willy?’
‘Did you know that Pee Wee Reese is from a town called Ekron in Kentucky? Ek-ron. Like Akron, but Ekron. Incredible.’
Willy traversed the lateral breadth of the room again, this time stopping to use the feather duster to dust off the head of the rocking horse.
‘Did you hear me earlier, Will? I said I’ve got some good stuff.’
‘DON’T call me Will. Will is reserved for my mother, let her rest in peace. Well, go on. Jingle your sack for me.’
He held up the pouch.
Willy stopped mid strut, redirected himself, and then moved back over to the hotplate.
Willy bent over and plugged it in.
‘Now that you’ve got the talking stick speak your peace,’ Willy said, now affecting a soft effeminate tone that fell into the category of ‘Judy material.’
He stood up and unzipped the pouch. The first item that he pulled out was a small silver medallion with an eagle’s head embossed over the letters ANSCO.
‘I think this is some kind of badge,’ he said.
‘NEXT,’ Willy shouted, still with his back turned facing the hotplate and the wall.
Next he pulled out an oblong scrap of paper with three torn edges. It was heavy paper stock. The back was blank except for a pink stain, and on the front were two barely legible words scrawled in what looked like grease pencil.
‘What’s it say?’ Willy asked, even though he hadn't seen Willy turn around to look at what he was holding.
‘Salmon Cakes.’
‘Five dollars, and that’s my final offer,’ Willy said, now using the voice of one of his characters, The Bank Dick.
Five dollars was at least five dollars more than the piece of paper was worth to anyone else in the world, but he’d learned that there was no point in haggling with Willy, who had his own complex understanding of something’s use-value.
He stood up, walked over to the card table in the corner, and laid the scrap of paper on top of what looked like schematic designs for some kind of underwater tunnel.
‘Are you building something?’
Willy guffawed.
‘You think Robert Moses is the only genius on the Planning Commission?
Your five clams are on page 214 by the way.’
It took him a second to spot the hardback copy of Robinson Crusoe that was half hidden under an empty glass vase. After carefully removing the vase he picked up the book and flipped it open to page 214.
Five crisp one dollars bills were wedged inside, each one perfectly arranged on top of the other.
On Friday mornings he sat on one of the yellow leatherette stools at a lunch counter on Delancey and counted the week’s take. If he was light, he’d treat his anxiety with a dose of abnegation and only order black coffee and a plain donut. If the take was good he’d treat himself to a fried egg and a stack of pancakes.
As a child, when his parents had tried to teach him lessons about money, he’d listened. The five singles from Willy were divided into a stack of three bills and a stack of two. The stack of two could be used for rent or food. The stack of three went into a tattered envelope that was then folded and stuffed in an old Louis Sherry tin that he hid under a loose floorboard beneath his bed.
On Saturday mornings he usually brushed his hair and took a bus uptown. Depending on his mood, he would go to The Museum of Modern Art or the Met. Mostly he went alone, but once or twice a month he would meet Pat, and they would spend the day arguing about things like how de Kooning stacked up against Tiepolo and who had actually ordered the hit on Trotsky. Pat was studying at Teacher’s College. She was red-headed, fair-skinned and gentile, and he was sure that part of why she liked him was that, unlike the other boys she met uptown, there was no chance that she might have to marry him. When the subject of dinner came up after a long day of museum-going, Pat always got her way, meaning they went to Chinatown. Pat had an obsession with beef chow fun, which she said was the dish that told you whether a kitchen was great or mediocre. He didn’t know where she picked up these things, with the company she seemed to keep other than him. It was his first clue that you could like what you don’t know about a person even more than what you know about them.
* * *
January and February were so cold and snow-battered that the demolitions had to be put on hold. In March, when the first few spring-like days started to appear, he heard the news that Willy had died sometime just after New Years. Two cops who were looking for vagrants had found him slumped over behind a pile of illegally dumped trash bags out on one of the piers on the west side. As soon as he heard, he rushed over to Willy’s apartment—which was hard to find when you were trying hard to find it—but the entire building had already been cleaned out. All of the windows were boarded up, and a notice that said THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED was pasted to the front door.
* * *
When he dropped by to see his mother on a rainy April afternoon, she told him that spring is a season of change. The demolitions had resumed in earnest, April showers be damned. He was beginning to notice that there were fewer items of interest to be found among the rubble and ruins that had yet to be disappeared. Partly it was his own fault. He had been thorough. But there was also new competition. Recently, he’d seen other scavengers, including a guy his age who skulked around with a camera taking pictures of he didn’t know what.
In May, Pat told him that she was pregnant and that she was getting married. They’d never gone to bed together, so he knew the baby wasn’t his, but that didn’t stop him from feeling betrayed. He said mean things to her. He wanted to know who she was marrying. She said it would only make him more angry if he knew, but he insisted.
‘He just got hired to do contract law for Pan-Am,’ she told him, ‘You’d like him. He likes jazz and his favorite painter is Franz Kline.’
With Willy and Pat both out of the picture, he started to see something prophetic in his mother's comment about spring. He’d planned to spend the summer in the city, maybe doing odd jobs or maybe not. Then, one afternoon, as he was lighting a cigarette on the decimated corner of Water Street and Fulton, he was accosted by two men in civilian clothes. They’d looked like your average citizens. One was tall, a bit gaunt, with a silver watch chain hanging out of his left pocket. The other one had been short and flabby, but still with plenty of muscle visible under the excess padding.
The two men told him that they recognized him. They’d seen him snooping around, and just what the hell was he doing there anyway? He’d tried to explain that he’d meant no harm, and besides, what authority did they have to care? The chubby one didn’t like the word “authority” and took it as an excuse to punch him in the ribs. While he sucked in air from his splayed out position on the ground, they explained that they worked for ‘the people that own this place,’ and unless he wanted more of the same they didn’t want to see him in the vicinity ever again.
* * *
Pat had often bugged him with the idea of renting a beach shack in Provincetown and spending the summer there. He’d always shrugged her off. He had things to do in the city, like pay his rent and keep an eye on his mother, who wasn’t getting any younger. At least, that’s what he’d told himself and Pat. Now the idea didn’t sound half-bad. In fact, he liked it. He desired it, and when he desired something badly enough he almost always gave it a shot.
He made up a story about ‘looking for business opportunities in the greater Boston area’ to tell his uncle in the hopes that he could not pay his rent for a couple of months. His uncle had forgotten that he was renting the apartment, and told him not to worry. He was proud of him and had always said that his nephew would make good.
On June 1st, his birthday, he packed the last of what he was taking with him in his suitcase, barricaded the apartment’s front door, and climbed down to the street on the rusty fire escape. He wanted to keep as much cash as he could for contingencies, so he saved on bus fare and walked the couple of miles to Port Authority. While he waited for a bus that was bound for Boston, he bought a stamp and postcard depicting a view from the top of the Chrysler building. He wrote Pat’s address on the back, and thought about what else he should write. A station attendant announced that the bus to Boston was now boarding before he could make up his mind.
The bus was crowded. To take his mind off the whining children, the bitter motherly correctives and the smell of sweat mixed with noxious perfume and egg salad sandwiches, he tried to focus on the scenery which was passing by outside the window. When he got bored of looking at trees and fences, he took the postcard out of his pocket and looked at it again. He had an idea. Once he was settled in, he would draw her a little sketch of whatever his shack looked like. He wouldn’t need to sign his name. She’d recognise his handwriting from the address.
(New York, NY, December 2025.)
A print of Auman’s GARBAGE will appear
later this year as a part of Cédric Fargues and
Jean Colombain Galerie Sympa's pamphlet
series (Capdenac, France).
Jon Auman is a writer renting in Brooklyn.
Back to Rehearsal.
The men paid no attention to him, other than to remark on his strange presence. A young man with greasy black curly hair dressed in an ill-fitting three piece suit that looked 20 years old. The brown leather Arkansas boots that his father had made for him did elicit one or two positive comments.
Nice boots for a bum.
Probably stole ‘em.
Yeah.
Eventually the men gave him a nickname: Garbage Jacob
Garbage for short. As in: Here comes Garbage for his morning constitutional.
He was careful to not be recognized for the vulture that he was. There were things he was looking for: pieces of old industrial equipment, old posters, matchbooks, doorknobs, hooks and dented spittoons. He particularly loved finding still intact bits of the ephemera of business, like pads of company stationary and ink stained stamps that said things like: EXPRESS | OVERNIGHT | FRAGILE | VOID.
Some of what he found he kept for himself. The cold water apartment that he rented from an uncle for almost nothing had become a kind of museum for the choicest bits. He’d built sturdy rows of shelves and erected makeshift plinths for heavier, three-dimensional pieces like a busted-in motor and belt fan unit that he guessed had played some part in regulating cold storage. He had a collection of old nuts and bolts, and a Savarin coffee can filled with ancient looking nails. Over his single bed he’d pasted a poster depicting a man in a blue uniform looking out at the sea from the deck of an ocean liner, under which were printed the words GLASGOW & NEW YORK VIA LONDONDERRY in a bright emerald green.
What he didn’t keep for himself, he tried to sell. A man whose business card claimed that he sold Fine Objects of Antiquity out of his lopsided stall on Mulberry Street, would sometimes buy choicer pieces. Tools in decent condition he could take to Jameson’s Hardware on Canal. A horologist bought clock parts. Then the bits no one else wanted he took to Willy.
* * *
An acquaintance had once asked him how to get to Willy’s from where they were standing on the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway. He had thought about it for a moment, and quickly realized that he had no idea. When he had an appointment (Willy always demanded that an appointment be made by calling and leaving a message at a butcher shop on 1st Ave. that seemed to act as his message service), he would prepare himself first by drinking a cup of coffee, then smoking two cigarettes, then washing his face under the freezing cold tap. Then he was ready to leave. Wandering northeast brought him somewhat in range. He strolled past tenements and disused lots, and let his feet tell him where to go. Sometimes he would walk for twenty minutes, but there’d been times that it had taken two or three hours of circumlocutions, once in the middle of a blizzard. Eventually, he would arrive at a red door, the finding of which felt like waking from a dream. There was no buzzer or bell to ring. He would stand there on the doorstep and, without fail, Willy would suddenly appear.
(An evening at Willy’s.)
The newspapers said that it was already the coldest December on record since records began to be kept. Downtown, the uncleared sidewalks were long slippery bowling lanes made of snow and ice.
For the first few blocks after he left his apartment, the lacerating wind and biting cold made it hard for him to reach the pleasantly half-conscious state that he knew was required for the journey. He walked northeast, then west for a bit, then north for a bit, then east for a bit, then he began heading south. After an hour or so, he was actually sweating. He unbuttoned the top button of his old seaman’s pea coat and adjusted his plaid scarf to let in some air.
When he suddenly found himself passing in front of Cooper Union, he knew he wasn’t too far away. St. Marks was deserted, partly because of the temperature outside and partly because it was after midnight (the earliest Willy would accept an appointment was 12:30am). At the entrance to Tompkins Square park he hung a right, walked a few blocks south, then felt himself veer east again into alphabet territory. A was followed by B and then the red door.
You always smelled Willy before you saw him. Sweat, garlic and some kind of floral oil concoction that Willy claimed extended one's years of grace and beauty into eternity.
He smelled the smell, he heard the rattle and thwack of the two deadbolts opening, and then he heard the voice.
‘Welcome to the tropics!’
When the door finally opened, Willy wasn’t behind it. It was another one of Willy’s magic tricks. He was there and then now he was gone.
Willy’s apartment was a fourth floor walkup in a four story building that for all intents and purposes seemed to be abandoned. Why Willy had chosen the top floor was something of a mystery. As he climbed the stairs he imagined Willy’s answer to the question Why? ...
‘Heat rises sonny. Think about it.’
The actual apartment was much larger than anyone would have expected. Maybe Willy had knocked out a few walls—possibly load bearing—when he’d moved in. Regardless, there were surprisingly high ceilings, two ‘bedrooms’ which were filled with ‘props,’ a large open space with a card table in one corner, and in the other corner a small hip-high cabinet on top of which sat a hotplate with a single burner.
‘You can’t believe these FUCKS!’ he heard Willy shout from one of the prop rooms.
Sounds of clanking metal objects and crinkling paper.
‘These CUNTS will ruin me! You have no idea. You think they’re FAMILY but they’re THIEVES!
T • H • I • E • V • E • S—THIEVES!’
Suddenly Willy emerged from the second doorway on the right.
Tonight’s costume was, he quickly realised, an homage to Cary Grant’s character Jeff from Only Angels Have Wings. Grubby white gaucho-ish pants over a pair of cracked snake-skin boots. A kids imitation gunslinger belt complete with fake bullets and a holster for a six-shooter, which Willy had instead filled with a French maid’s feather duster. Up top he was wearing a blue men’s workshirt that he’d tied at his waist like a hillbilly washerwoman. A red bandana tied around his throat and a slightly cocked, flat-topped cowboy hat completed the number.
‘Well?’ Willy spat out with venom.
‘Well what?’
‘Well what? Jesus Christ. Kids these days. What’s wrong with this generation?
They’re all like Debbie Reynolds—MISCAST.’
Willy flung his arms up over his head—a typically Willy-an gesture that made his long goatee jiggle.
‘I have no money, just so you know. No CLAMS. Nada.’
This was the way that Willy always began negotiations.
‘Can I sit down at least?’ he asked.
Willy scoffed.
‘You’re like a dog. Just pee on the chair and be done with it. Claim everything.
I’ll be dead in 24 hours anyway, SO WHAT?”
He laughed.
‘You’re incredible,’ he said.
‘What’s that?!”
Now Willy was fiddling with the hotplate, which was unplugged.
‘I said you’re really wonderful.’
‘I know. Did you know that my mother named me Jonathan because I was God’s gift to her?’
‘I thought your name was William.’
‘WILLIAM?! Jesus.’
Willy turned around—it was the first time he had actually acknowledged with his eyes that someone else was in the room—and pointed an accusatory long index finger at nothing in particular.
‘LISTEN sister. If my mother wanted to name me WILLIAM do you think she would have married a man named ABDUL? I loved my mother, and JESUS she was not that stupid, and I honestly can’t believe you would cast aspersions on her name. Jonathan—GIFT FROM GOD—was just fine with her, thank you.’
During one of his less astringent moods, Willy had once explained that what they were doing was engaging in repartee. This was one of Willy’s categories: ‘repartee.’ Other categories included ‘tea time,’ ‘angels’ and ‘mollusk-types’ to name only a few.
‘I brought you some real special numbers,’ he said as he pulled a small leather tool pouch from his coat pocket. (The pouch was emblazoned with its former owner’s initials, which had been burned into the leather: LMW.)
He watched as Willy zig zagged his way across the room, dodging seemingly empty cardboard boxes and a rocking horse whose head had been wrapped with some kind of rough twine.
‘The biggest mistake we ever made,’ Willy began again, ‘…was letting the Dodgers leave Brooklyn.’
‘Who was your favorite Dodger, Willy?’
‘Did you know that Pee Wee Reese is from a town called Ekron in Kentucky? Ek-ron. Like Akron, but Ekron. Incredible.’
Willy traversed the lateral breadth of the room again, this time stopping to use the feather duster to dust off the head of the rocking horse.
‘Did you hear me earlier, Will? I said I’ve got some good stuff.’
‘DON’T call me Will. Will is reserved for my mother, let her rest in peace. Well, go on. Jingle your sack for me.’
He held up the pouch.
Willy stopped mid strut, redirected himself, and then moved back over to the hotplate.
Willy bent over and plugged it in.
‘Now that you’ve got the talking stick speak your peace,’ Willy said, now affecting a soft effeminate tone that fell into the category of ‘Judy material.’
He stood up and unzipped the pouch. The first item that he pulled out was a small silver medallion with an eagle’s head embossed over the letters ANSCO.
‘I think this is some kind of badge,’ he said.
‘NEXT,’ Willy shouted, still with his back turned facing the hotplate and the wall.
Next he pulled out an oblong scrap of paper with three torn edges. It was heavy paper stock. The back was blank except for a pink stain, and on the front were two barely legible words scrawled in what looked like grease pencil.
‘What’s it say?’ Willy asked, even though he hadn't seen Willy turn around to look at what he was holding.
‘Salmon Cakes.’
‘Five dollars, and that’s my final offer,’ Willy said, now using the voice of one of his characters, The Bank Dick.
Five dollars was at least five dollars more than the piece of paper was worth to anyone else in the world, but he’d learned that there was no point in haggling with Willy, who had his own complex understanding of something’s use-value.
He stood up, walked over to the card table in the corner, and laid the scrap of paper on top of what looked like schematic designs for some kind of underwater tunnel.
‘Are you building something?’
Willy guffawed.
‘You think Robert Moses is the only genius on the Planning Commission?
Your five clams are on page 214 by the way.’
It took him a second to spot the hardback copy of Robinson Crusoe that was half hidden under an empty glass vase. After carefully removing the vase he picked up the book and flipped it open to page 214.
Five crisp one dollars bills were wedged inside, each one perfectly arranged on top of the other.
[ $ ]
On Friday mornings he sat on one of the yellow leatherette stools at a lunch counter on Delancey and counted the week’s take. If he was light, he’d treat his anxiety with a dose of abnegation and only order black coffee and a plain donut. If the take was good he’d treat himself to a fried egg and a stack of pancakes.
As a child, when his parents had tried to teach him lessons about money, he’d listened. The five singles from Willy were divided into a stack of three bills and a stack of two. The stack of two could be used for rent or food. The stack of three went into a tattered envelope that was then folded and stuffed in an old Louis Sherry tin that he hid under a loose floorboard beneath his bed.
On Saturday mornings he usually brushed his hair and took a bus uptown. Depending on his mood, he would go to The Museum of Modern Art or the Met. Mostly he went alone, but once or twice a month he would meet Pat, and they would spend the day arguing about things like how de Kooning stacked up against Tiepolo and who had actually ordered the hit on Trotsky. Pat was studying at Teacher’s College. She was red-headed, fair-skinned and gentile, and he was sure that part of why she liked him was that, unlike the other boys she met uptown, there was no chance that she might have to marry him. When the subject of dinner came up after a long day of museum-going, Pat always got her way, meaning they went to Chinatown. Pat had an obsession with beef chow fun, which she said was the dish that told you whether a kitchen was great or mediocre. He didn’t know where she picked up these things, with the company she seemed to keep other than him. It was his first clue that you could like what you don’t know about a person even more than what you know about them.
* * *
January and February were so cold and snow-battered that the demolitions had to be put on hold. In March, when the first few spring-like days started to appear, he heard the news that Willy had died sometime just after New Years. Two cops who were looking for vagrants had found him slumped over behind a pile of illegally dumped trash bags out on one of the piers on the west side. As soon as he heard, he rushed over to Willy’s apartment—which was hard to find when you were trying hard to find it—but the entire building had already been cleaned out. All of the windows were boarded up, and a notice that said THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED was pasted to the front door.
* * *
When he dropped by to see his mother on a rainy April afternoon, she told him that spring is a season of change. The demolitions had resumed in earnest, April showers be damned. He was beginning to notice that there were fewer items of interest to be found among the rubble and ruins that had yet to be disappeared. Partly it was his own fault. He had been thorough. But there was also new competition. Recently, he’d seen other scavengers, including a guy his age who skulked around with a camera taking pictures of he didn’t know what.
In May, Pat told him that she was pregnant and that she was getting married. They’d never gone to bed together, so he knew the baby wasn’t his, but that didn’t stop him from feeling betrayed. He said mean things to her. He wanted to know who she was marrying. She said it would only make him more angry if he knew, but he insisted.
‘He just got hired to do contract law for Pan-Am,’ she told him, ‘You’d like him. He likes jazz and his favorite painter is Franz Kline.’
With Willy and Pat both out of the picture, he started to see something prophetic in his mother's comment about spring. He’d planned to spend the summer in the city, maybe doing odd jobs or maybe not. Then, one afternoon, as he was lighting a cigarette on the decimated corner of Water Street and Fulton, he was accosted by two men in civilian clothes. They’d looked like your average citizens. One was tall, a bit gaunt, with a silver watch chain hanging out of his left pocket. The other one had been short and flabby, but still with plenty of muscle visible under the excess padding.
The two men told him that they recognized him. They’d seen him snooping around, and just what the hell was he doing there anyway? He’d tried to explain that he’d meant no harm, and besides, what authority did they have to care? The chubby one didn’t like the word “authority” and took it as an excuse to punch him in the ribs. While he sucked in air from his splayed out position on the ground, they explained that they worked for ‘the people that own this place,’ and unless he wanted more of the same they didn’t want to see him in the vicinity ever again.
* * *
Pat had often bugged him with the idea of renting a beach shack in Provincetown and spending the summer there. He’d always shrugged her off. He had things to do in the city, like pay his rent and keep an eye on his mother, who wasn’t getting any younger. At least, that’s what he’d told himself and Pat. Now the idea didn’t sound half-bad. In fact, he liked it. He desired it, and when he desired something badly enough he almost always gave it a shot.
He made up a story about ‘looking for business opportunities in the greater Boston area’ to tell his uncle in the hopes that he could not pay his rent for a couple of months. His uncle had forgotten that he was renting the apartment, and told him not to worry. He was proud of him and had always said that his nephew would make good.
On June 1st, his birthday, he packed the last of what he was taking with him in his suitcase, barricaded the apartment’s front door, and climbed down to the street on the rusty fire escape. He wanted to keep as much cash as he could for contingencies, so he saved on bus fare and walked the couple of miles to Port Authority. While he waited for a bus that was bound for Boston, he bought a stamp and postcard depicting a view from the top of the Chrysler building. He wrote Pat’s address on the back, and thought about what else he should write. A station attendant announced that the bus to Boston was now boarding before he could make up his mind.
The bus was crowded. To take his mind off the whining children, the bitter motherly correctives and the smell of sweat mixed with noxious perfume and egg salad sandwiches, he tried to focus on the scenery which was passing by outside the window. When he got bored of looking at trees and fences, he took the postcard out of his pocket and looked at it again. He had an idea. Once he was settled in, he would draw her a little sketch of whatever his shack looked like. He wouldn’t need to sign his name. She’d recognise his handwriting from the address.
(New York, NY, December 2025.)
A print of Auman’s GARBAGE will appear
later this year as a part of Cédric Fargues and
Jean Colombain Galerie Sympa's pamphlet
series (Capdenac, France).
Jon Auman is a writer renting in Brooklyn.
Back to Rehearsal.