Bobby wasn’t sure why the special dumpster diver targeted his restaurant. Maybe it was because they were finally packed on weekends. Maybe because he forgot to close the lid properly one night. Maybe because life is a bitch and then you die.
After a week of this, the owner, Barb, had them clamp spikes around the lip of the metal like a medieval torture device. Those were snapped off. The next day the manager put a padlock on the lid. That was gnawed through and left on the ground covered in spit, glowing softly golden. The day staff poured cooking oil around the base of the dumpster like a looney tunes cartoon where they hoped it would slip and fall. Bobby had to assume that was lapped up, because the next day only shimmering three-toed paw prints were left and the lake of oil was gone.
And was it too much to ask for a break? Two months sober and Bobby wasn’t paid enough to defend an oil spill with his life, much less a dumpster. The only thing stopping him from walking the other direction was his mom’s voice. You get a prize for just a day? She laughed when she saw his first AA chip, her breath smelling of her favorite Patrón. Is it supposed to be some kind of good luck charm? Bobby, you’re a pickle now, you’re never going to be a cucumber again, baby.
“It’s not rats,” the exterminator said and Bobby would have gladly thrown his hands in the air and be done with it. The older man frowned. “You’re gonna need a shrine.”
“You sure?” Barb, the owner, put her hands on her hips, meaning she meant business.
“Look at the prints.” The exterminator’s eyes were already on the door. “Glowing like a disco party.”
Bobby ran a hand through his hair. “This is the city.” And it was THE city too, concrete and bricks and bad air. “Middle of the city.”
The big man shrugged. “Call a priest about it.”
Both the owner and the manager of Barb’s Restaurant were the good sort, probably gave them all too many breaks and sent everyone home loaded with food. You wanted old Corey in your corner if nothing else. So, Bobby did look up building shrines in his free time. Afterall, having an alleyway destroyed every morning–eggshells, plastics, noodles, spread out like a bomb exploded, it wouldn’t do.
Plus, as the main busboy slash kitchen help slash charity case, Bobby knew the dumpster was kind of his responsibility. He was lousy with a kitchen knife and even worse with waiter smalltalk.
The shrine looked like a doghouse when he was done. A cardboard square with a fake candle inside and fake roses pinned to the top.
“There.” He dusted off his hands and called to the darkening sky. “I worship you or whatever.” That day he went home early, turned the TV up high, and texted everyone back in his messages.
Bobby got a call in the morning, and he wasn’t even due in for another few hours. He picked up his phone and a part of him missed being hungover. Hungover-Bobby would never have answered a morning phone call and would have felt fine about that.
“Lou?” Bobby answered his manager sleepily.
Lou grunted. “You do this?”
“Oh.” Bobby’s heart sank. “Is the dumpster still standing?”
The manager snorted. “Not sure we’re targeting the right god.”
Bobby let his head fall back and closed his eyes. “Think there’s a god of trash cans? But like, a vengeful one.”
“Inventing new damn gods to give me a migraine.”
“Our lady of rancid lettuce. Hater of cardboard and eater of fucking take out boxes.”
Lou chuckled and Bobby could imagine him doing his slow head-shake. “You piss off any deities lately?”
Maybe the fake roses weren’t a good idea. “Not that I know of.”
“Well. You might’ve just started.”
The shrine hadn’t lasted the night. Apparently, plastic roses were the opposite of a good offering. Bobby dressed like he was headed to a funeral and found his latest project was a puddle on the ground. The thing had licked up the oil like it was a buffet but apparently plastic roses were a step too far. They twisted in a bubbling black puddle, shifting and oozing in place. Bobby’s heart squeezed painfully and he leaned over the tiny tar pit.
The puddle bubbled and when he put his head over it, it hissed at him. He screamed loud enough his mother probably heard that too. Probably said he was a baby, and never gonna be a man again.
They really did need a priest after that. The damned plastic roses were turned into a gross tar thing that hissed at you. They needed back-up.
“Isn’t the point of the city to get out of dealing with stuff like this?” Bobby asked, hands crossed over his chest. The priest was young, fair, and had dark circles under his eyes. They probably sent their rookiest guy, barely holy, to handle restaurants with dumpster-divers of an unusual sort.
The young man leaned over the sparkling paw prints and oozy little tar part on the ground. He grimaced.
“Who said they don’t come to cities?” His accent was surprisingly thick. Bobby backed off when he smelled the strong liquor on his breath. Typical. Priests.
“Just what I heard,” he said, not meeting the priest's dark gaze.
“The whole world’s sacred. Up to the corners,” he said, surprisingly reverently and cracked his back like an old man when he stood. “I’ll get the traps.”
The priest set-up No Kill Snares. Real candles burning on long milky wicks and smelling of lavender. Sticky strings soaked in holy water poised overhead. A ring of pearls with an inscription in the middle, written on real parchment and good ink. A little talisman on the lip of the dumpster, warding. Barb must have paid a real penny to buy a ward.
Bobby was the most skeptical of the little tricks. If spikes weren’t going to deter it, then the talisman of a back-alley priest was just going to get in the way.
Late Saturday rush, sweating his t-shirt, running around like a chicken with his head cut off, and Bobby went to dump a nice big bag of trash. He sees it then. He sees with his own two eyes.
Glowing like a small sun, eyes burning gold, and body bursting with waves of dusty light. Unmistakable. A small god. It was in a bad way too, light shifting like a kaleidoscope, and falling off it in heaps. It seemed to lose more rays of sun than shine them, and its mouth dripped with glittery black oil.
The little god jerked its head back from the trash and snarled at him. Bobby put his hands together in prayer.
“I’m not here to hurt you.” The little god bared its dripping teeth and let out a sound like rusty bells. Bobby dropped the trash and got down on his knees. “Easy now.” His eyes softened, clumps of light falling off the miscreant. It was shivering. He put a hand out like you did at a church offering.
The creature sneezed, whole body seizing up, and whatever god it was, it was a dying one.
“Do you know where you are?”
The little god chimed and backed away. Bobby shook his head. Was there a tree that used to grow here? A well of clear water? Did gods remember what they lost?
Their trash was saved for the night and Bobby tried not to let on that he was a goddamn hero. Lou gave him the next day off though. Bobby, however, came in. He liked work. Needed it. Less time for drinking or thinking about drinking. The old Bobby would have never needed work. The old Bobby wasn’t full of craving on craving, not just the hot burn of drink or the oblivion. The despair. The panic. The knife’s edge. How good it felt to ruin yourself.
This Bobby came into work. He sat on the ledge by the dumpster, and tossed breadcrumbs to the ground. What did a little god need from a back-alley restaurant? He watched the clouds pass overhead and the little god did not show up.
The next night he played a little game with the customers when they walked in. “Write down the best thing you ever gave up.” He passed out strips of paper. Guilty, he checked them at the end of the night. A good number of them were someone’s name: George, Juan, Sylvie. A wistful heart was drawn on a few of them, and Bobby included those. More than a few were jokes: “Gave up your mom.” “Gave up being bad at sex.” “Gave up handwritten notes up until today. Thanks for nothing.”
The wait staff helped pick out twenty perfectly good wishes among them at the end of the night. Many people were game for a passing group activity–including prompts from restaurant strangers. They were lucky like that.
Bobby decided it was a tree, he felt a little bad, making assumptions like that. But no other alleyway in the neighborhood had to deal with an exploded refuse every morning. He bent the shape of the tree out of chicken wire and bits of twine. Fastening every single person’s half-decent answers to the ends of the branches.
He sat, long into midnight, writing his own answer on the wish paper. Gave up the drink. No. He had scratched that out. Gave up having fun. That one was also tossed out. Bobby thought, in the end, he wrote something serviceable. Gave up on giving up on myself.
A couple weeks later, Bobby ran into the young priest at an AA meeting. He found it kind of sweet, seeing the other young guy there, figuring it all out. He still had the deep shadows under his eyes and the look of a hunted man. That was probably why Bobby stopped him after the meeting.
“Did you ever figure out your pest situation?” The young priest asked, tired.
Bobby grinned. “Eventually, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Someone had to.”
“Did one of the traps work? Those usually do.” He snorted. “Even the city gods get conceited and will run into a trap.”
Bobby rolled his eyes. “Let’s get coffee, huh?”
He told the young priest a story: the little city god was never going to be worshipped as a tree or a sun or a source of happiness again. Had become a Problem Eater. But if you fed it right, little bits of what it used to be, new kinds of offerings in the old style, you might get a perfectly serviceable back alley.
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