On Work

The rumor at the sorting plant was that ten years ago someone had come across an actual head mingled in with the milk cartons, boxes and aluminum cans on the conveyor belt. This was five years before Leonard’s time, but even still he couldn’t believe that the state of recycling had ever been that bad, or had come so far. First of all, nothing ever happened at the plant. The trash came down one end of the belt, and the workers pushed some of it one way, and some of it another, and that was that. 

Three shifts, seven days a week, the constant maneuvering of usable garbage.

Nothing happened to the people who worked there, either, for that matter. Leonard was, he’d tell anyone, not the most observant person, but there has to be something to observe, for starters. Miranda Bollin, who worked third shift, wore modest costumes for various holidays, but that was the most Leonard had ever seen.

The day that the earthquake destroyed and essentially swallowed the sorting plant was also the first day in two years that Leonard had taken a sick day. His own apartment just a couple of miles away was demolished as well, and as he walked to the sorting plant, his legs still a little wobbly from fear of aftershocks, he thought about Miranda and her St. Patrick’s Day costume—a button with a shamrock, a flashing LED-necklace and green goggles. He hoped to see her at the conveyor belt, even as he stepped around the plastic bottles, tumbling down the cracked and shifted street.