It’s not the world’s greatest existence, but I’m alive and free to move around the neighborhood, so things could be a lot worse. Eating is a bit of a problem, since I’m not keen on rotting food, which is plentiful but likely to land you in the hospital, where there’s a danger the psych people will trundle you off to a place where they feed you full of drugs and bore you with talk, talk, talk.
But I’ve got maybe a half-dozen restaurant dumpsters around New Haven that serve quite a lovely cuisine, delivered daily, fresh enough, and meticulously prepared. You have to be careful with your timing, though after a few years of this, I’m pretty good at it.
My friend Harry is a most excellent guide. He absolutely knows what gets tossed out, when, and where. Better yet, he never eats anything, since he lives in a different dimension, so I don’t have to share. Though I always offer.
My favorite place in the world is Union Station. It’s always warm in the winter and cool in the summer and the architecture is so soothing. It only takes about fifteen minutes to walk there from my house under the tracks, but it’s always worth the effort. My goal is to sit on the long wooden benches, comfy and smooth on the ass, for at least an hour before one of the transit cops tells me to get lost. I always go quietly, since their German shepherds look so kind and apologetic, and tell me through Harry that I really don’t have to worry. They know I’m only enjoying a little of the luxury of the inside world and have no animus toward anyone, man or beast.
It was one of those times, sitting happily on the bench, that the man in the beautiful dark-blue cashmere overcoat came through the doors leading from the tracks. He had excellent posture, and his shoes were very nicely polished. I didn’t see a single scuff. He carried an overstuffed canvas bag, zipped closed, on the side of which was a huge logo of a resort in Jamaica. Since it was February, I really liked examining the palm trees and the girl in a bikini, fake as they were.
He had the high cheekbones and swept-back gray hair of a European nobleman, but Harry said there was something wrong with his eyes. I said to him, too blue? He said too empty.
I kept staring at his face as he walked by, but he didn’t look back, probably for the same reason no one else looked at me. Except for the transit cops, who kicked me out of the station soon after that. With nothing else to do, I wandered down Church Street toward New Haven Harbor. Before I got there, I saw the cashmere coat coming toward me. He was carrying his Jamaica bag, though it looked a lot lighter. Harry told me to duck into a doorway and stay out of view. I said to Harry, why do that, since the guy wouldn’t see me anyway? Harry got a little testy about that, and told me to just shut up and do it.
It wasn’t until spring, when things had warmed up a lot, that I saw the stylish guy again. This time I was down along the harbor’s waterline, trying to catch a fish or two for the evening’s meal. A tall guy with a full head of gray hair, he was still dressed like a duke, with silk pants and a suede jacket that hung on him like it was draped there. I wondered how he managed to stay so fit, since he could eat anything he wanted, any time he wanted.
Harry reminded me that people like him could afford private fitness instructors, and I said, of course. That’s how he did it.
He still had the big canvas bag with the Jamaica tourism logo. I didn’t think he’d recognize me, especially since I’d shed my winter ensemble, so I didn’t try to hide myself. I just fished and watched him walk up to the edge of the water and open the canvas bag. He knelt down and pulled out a big sous vide bag.
You probably don’t know what that is, but one of my favorite dumpster stops is a French restaurant where they toss out these vacuum-packed plastic bags with the planet’s best food inside that you just drop in boiling water. I know, you’re thinking cheap rice meals and crap from the convenience store. But you’d be wrong. Sous vide is at the other end of the spectrum. It comes from France, a place that knows a thing or two about tasty food.
Thing is, it wasn’t even legal then for restaurants to serve food prepared sous vide, and all the health inspector had to do was peak into the dumpster. Just shows you what people like me know about what really goes on in a city. Not that anybody would bother to ask.
I watched the guy take a pair of little scissors out of his pocket and cut open the bag. Then he pulled out the stuff inside — it looked from a distance like nice veal cutlets or chicken marsala — and started chucking it into the water.
This was very intriguing to me. Why throw a perfectly good, gourmet-prepared, sous vide meat course into New Haven Harbor?
I don’t know what possessed me — unless it was Harry, who urged me in a pretty imperious way to walk up to the guy and ask him what the hell he was doing. I said no freaking way, but Harry kept at it. So I did, trying not to show how nervous I was.
The guy just looked through me, like the first time I saw him in the train station, though he didn’t seem bothered by the question. Maybe because it was being asked by a smelly homeless person.
“I’m concerned about the world’s crustaceans,” he said, turning back to his task.
“Like crabs?”
“Specifically crabs. They are in danger. Someone has to replenish the stock, return ecological vitality to their environments.”
“I didn’t know crab food came vacuum packed,” I said, pointing at the plastic sous vide bag in his hand.
He turned to peer down at me from his tall, haughty-guy perspective. “It doesn’t. I seal it myself. I am a virtuoso of the culinary arts, trained in France. Preparation and preservation is everything.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “I get it.”
He turned back to his work. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “How could you know that within a few days, all trace of this finely prepared select protein will be utterly consumed? Vanished, irretrievably. Could there be a more elegant, definitive resolution?”
Harry said, “Huh?”
I said, “That must be incredible food.”
“Indeed,” he said, his voice a low grumble.
I started to walk away, but he grabbed me by the arm, digging strong fingers into my bicep.
“This work is highly confidential,” he said, staring at me with those crazy blue eyes. “Not a word to anyone or there will be consequences. You understand?”
He let go of me when I said I did. Then I walked down the beach, acting like it all made sense, which of course it didn’t, since I’d studied crustaceans as a biology major at Yale and knew that secretly feeding them gourmet meals in the New Haven Harbor would have little impact on the ultimate survival of species infraorder Brachyura.
I began to spend a lot more time around Union Station, watching all the time for the gray-haired guy with the Jamaica tourism bag. This ultimately bore fruit, when one day I was in the station and saw him come through the doors that led from the tracks, holding his canvas bag and looking fresh as a daisy in a light-blue blazer, red-and-white-striped shirt, and pressed white pants.
This time, I didn’t want him to see me, so I ducked into the newsstand and pretended to leaf through the magazines on the big rack. After a few minutes, I was able to follow him down Church Street, keeping about a block between us.
As always, he went to the edge of the harbor, pulled out his sous vide bag, and tossed the contents into the water. I was close enough to hear the kerplunk, but far enough away to stay out of eyeshot. I have to admit, I was drooling a little over what was in those vacuum-packed bags, and determined this time to grab some of it before the so-called endangered crabs had a feast.