On floor one of this condo building, is a spacious Community Room, which one of my recent guests remarked, “somewhat resembles a luxury box” at a Brewers game. The usual luxe reigns: gas fireplace (actually it blasts out too much heat), full kitchen with ice maker, frig, and lots of counter space. Cushy couches in a rather outdated burgundy colored plush fabric, a clutch of comfortable upholstered chairs, necessary tables, soft lighting, book shelves with actual books (mostly not to my taste), CD player, flat screen built-in television, and on and on. It’s street level so the view is Prospect Avenue with a stream of fairly steady cars. There are two terminally ill potted plants stuck in a dismal corner, most likely left behind by a former tenant who couldn’t summon the strength to throw them in the dumpster. A lone fake plant is doing quite well, thank you.
It costs nothing to reserve the room, though around here everything eventually shows up somewhere in the condo fees. A few days ago I hosted 20 young writers at a thirdcoastdigest.com meeting, and it was perfect for my guests who came in out of the rain and put their feet up on the round table centering a duo of couches. By evening’s end, the trash cans were filled with empty foil containers, plastic bottles, bits of ham salad, a few crackers, and mountains and mountains of wasted paper products. The group stayed on, or at least a few did, to scrape up the ham salad and crumbs and run the handy dandy vac, stored in a nearby closet. The following morning I took two bags of trash to the bins in the garage area. One young woman even told me she loves to run a vac. I don’t remember ever having that kind of problem, even as a young bride.
Here’s the rub. A guest, a writer about things that grow on vines, specifically wine, e-mailed me early the next day. “Did you happen to see my cardboard Wine Thief box?” he said, adding that inside the box was a fancy doodad wine carrier made from poly-something or other. I had teased him earlier saying the item resembled a large codpiece.
I told my anxious caller that I did see the box and threw it in the garbage because it was, after all, on top of a trash can in the Community Room. In truth, I recall throwing the sturdy white box in the garage bin marked “cardboard.” After signing off, I ran downstairs to rummage through the trash, certain the box would be buried under mountains of pizza and greasy wing boxes, because it takes no time at all to fill the bins to brimming, not when multiple units are ordering junk food and such.
I was right, they were filled. Nevertheless, I poked hopefully around with a long pole in the cardboard and paper recycling bin, but the pole wasn’t long enough to reach to where I needed to reach, which was essentially the bottom. If you think of a bin as a kind of archeological time zone of what people dump, the bags I tossed were, within a 24-hour period, at ground zero. I sure wasn’t going to spend my time looking for my guest’s codpiece, er ah, wine tote.
Anyway, another e-mail confirmed that my friend would stop by and do his own seeking in the bin. A later one told me to forget it.
