"They get 'em to talk?"

"Guess so."

"Hey, Marco, you think this thing can talk?"

"I'm telling you, it can't do nothing. That's why it's in the garbage. Upsy daisy."

At the Hollywood Disposal Center, directly behind a yellow and red plastic banner reading "Garbage of the Stars," Lew Verbanic leaned against the truck as its contents rumbled onto a ten-foot-high pile of debris. Marco Gonzalez walked toward him in the moonlight, snapping the lids off two cans of beer.

"Here you go, champ," he said, thrusting a cold, wet can into Lew's palm. The two men drank greedily. "Man, this is my last year in California," Gonzalez said.

"How come?"

Gonzalez tapped his watch. "Almost one a.m.," he said between gulps. "Eleven hours' work. You know what we made for eleven hours' work?"

Verbanic tried to calculate it in his head.

"Less than eighty bucks. Hell, waiters make more than we do during lunch hours In New York

9

the sanitation guys get $36,000 a year, and most of the time, they're on strike anyway."

"You moving to New York?" Verbanic asked incredulously.

"Hey, man, don't knock New York. I got an uncle lives in New York. He say it's the best place in the world not to work. You got welfare, CETA, food stamps, unemployment—anything for a little bribe. If that don't work, you can always get a job at the MTA—the subway—and then you don't have to do nothing. You can buy guns in New York, get free dope at the methadone clinic, whatever you want. It's the land of opportunity, man."

Verbanic wasn't listening. His gaze was riveted on the pile of garbage beyond the banner.

"Hey, what's with you, Lew? You look like you seen a ghost," Gonzalez said.

"It moved." Verbanic stared at the pile of garbage. His face was drained of color and glowed a pearly green in the moonlight.