‘He’s doing it again,’ I shouted over to Jess. She was in the kitchen, sweeping up the biscuit crumbs I’d promised to clean up an hour before. ‘He’s moving all the bins again.’
‘You’re caring too much,’ she said, now joining me by the front window. ‘And your sweat is staining my blinds.’
I had my hands breaking a space between the blinds just large enough for my head.
‘You’re making fun of my disability now?’ I challenged.
‘You’re hard work today.’
‘I have overactive sweat glands in the hands and feet, how many more times do I have to say?’
‘Just enough to remind me why I decided to live with you.’ She snickered and went back into the kitchen.
We’d just celebrated our third month in the new house. A little pricey but nothing to stop us eating. It’s at the end of a small cul-de-sac, around eight houses of old people that could have been dead, and their ‘chavy’ grandkids you wished were. It was place of whispering gossip and day-drinking ex-minors.
The thing you soon discover when moving to a small village, is that each have their own customs. Their own traditions. Little nuances of personality that either make you or break you in the audition to be considered a ‘local’. One such quirk was to do with your bins. At least the bloke who lived next door sure seemed to think so.
Every Second and forth Tuesday of the month, just as it was approaching dusk, he would creek out into the street and drag every house’s bin from the drive way and place them into a collection in the middle of the street. He would leave enough space for cars to drive round, but there was no mistaking his little art display and his intention to micro-manage this area of life.
‘It’s to send them a message!’ He squawked to Next door-but-one. ‘They always bloody miss us down here. They do it on purpose, too lazy to go down all cutoffs. They’ll never miss us now!’
The neighbour nodded her heady slightly and promptly ushered her children back inside.
‘The guy is nuts,’ I called to Jess again, still standing firm in my peeper’s position. ‘He’s a loon and a bin fanatic. A loony-bin.’ I snickered but Jess ignored me.
‘Always judging a book by the cover. Maybe you should get on with some work now?’ She said. I carried on watching the old guy put the remaining bins in place. ‘You’re on with the American’s tonight. Plus I think his wife must’ve died, Val at number seven said she hasn’t seen her in about a month.’
‘You know he only does the green ones?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t touch the blue or brown. Probably doesn’t even know there’s other options to landfill.’
‘Christ, you moan when he touched the bins, you moan when he doesn’t.’
‘Didn’t know I lived with the bin man appreciation society.’ I scoffed. It irritated me that she didn’t agree he was odd. She pushed my head into the window. It was only light but not light enough to persuade me she wasn’t trying to end my life.
The old guy looked up at the bang my head made against the glass.
‘Shit!’ I cursed and pulled the blinds together. ‘He saw me looking at him.’
‘It’s not like he’s doing anything you’re not supposed to see’ she assured, acting like I was being dramatic.
‘Depends on your perspective I guess.’
It was approaching midnight and I was in my upstairs office, looking over prep for the meeting. I didn’t mind working late and the American’s always treated me like I was doing them a favour, just for joining the zoom call. If there was one thing I liked in this world, it was getting appreciation for something that took a relative lack of effort. I thumped my eyes over the notes I’d made and tried to picture how they sounded to someone who wasn’t in my brain.
It was then I heard a door close. It wasn’t a guessing game, I knew it was the nutty guy from next door, I could hear his breathing from behind our double-glazed windows. The guy apparently had lung problems but from the volume of each breath I assumed the problem was a lodged amplifier. I pressed my nose at the glass and looked out onto the street below. The old man had a hand full of black bin bags, each holding a small item. Varying shapes and impossible to decipher. I watched as he trotted over to the display of bins, that now after a bit of rain looked like the finale of a synchronised swimming routine, and place a bin bag into each of the bins.
He turned as if to check if he were being observed and I dropped to the floor. Maybe I should be a spy, I thought to myself.
After a five to ten second wait, I couldn’t be sure in the suspense, I looked up to see he was gone.
It might have been the boring call I was anticipating, or the suspicion that I might actually be able to prove to Jess that the guy was off his rocker, but I wanted to know the hell he’d put in our bins. No, I correct myself. I needed to know. I put my shoes on and tiptoed downstairs. I rushed to the fridge, downed the last tenth of the milk carton and rushed to the door.
‘I finished a milk, gonna put it in the bin,’ I yelled to Jess, and rushed out before she could tell me it was supposed to go on the blue bin, not the ones out front.
I tell you, I was a smug, smug bean when I found the old man’s wife. She was chopped up and scattered across all of our bins. I bloody told Jess the guy was nuts!
