I threw the magazine on the couch and pushed myself up and made for the back of the store.

– Your wife rag like this, Po Sin?

He shook his head.

– My lady, she beams messages to me through her eyes. She dont got to rag on me.

– Lucky man.

– So says you.

I went in the back of the shop and got the red biowaste canister and brought it out front. Chev handed me the bag he was holding. I went to drop it in the canister and a wad of bloody paper towels fell on the floor. I bent to pick them up.

– Not with your bare hands, not with your bare hands.

I looked at Po Sin.

– Its no big deal, its just dry blood.

I grabbed the wad and dropped it in the canister with the rest of the waste.

He pulled at the waistband of his navy blue Dickies.

– Could have been a needle in the middle of that.

I slid him the canister.

– There wasnt.

– And you never know whats growing in blood. Living in it.

I showed him my hands.

– Too late now.

He looked at Chev and Chev shrugged. He shook his head and lifted the canister and considered.

– Ten pounds.

Chev shook his head.

– Eight, man, at the most.

Po Sin set the canister down.

– Got a scale handy?

– A scale? It look like I got a scale around here?

– Well, in the absence of a scale, Im the expert. And the expert says this is ten pounds of biohazardous waste and at two bucks a pound you owe me twenty bucks.

Chev picked up the canister.

– Telling you, this is eight, tops. Sixteen bucks.

Po Sin adjusted his tiny oval wirerims with his thick stubby fingers.

– Chev, do we have a contract?

Chev scratched the stubble on the side of his head.

– No.

– So, I dont charge you a weekly rate, then, for picking this shit up, I dont charge you the same forty-nine fifty a week minimum I charge everyone else on my route. Is that right?