Grobian strode along the back of the truck. Close your eyes, V. I.; blunk them up: you’re unconscious, the eyes blunk up when you’re unconscious. Grobian thrust a lid up with a rough thumb; he seemed satisfied. He grabbed me around the waist and slung me over his shoulder and thumped back out. I opened my eyes again. It was still night—being locked in total blackness had made even the night sky look bright at first.

“This time we’re in the right spot,” Grobian said. “Jeesh—suburban prick like you, dumping Czernin and the Love woman on the golf course instead of the landfill. This Polish cunt will be under ten feet of garbage by the time the sun comes up.”

“You don’t talk to me like that, Grobian,” Mr. William said.

“Bysen, from now on I talk to you however I please. I want that job in Singapore, running the Asian operations for By-Smart, but I’d consider South America. One of those or I’m talking to the old man. If Buffalo Bill finds out what you’ve been up to with his precious company—”

“If the shock gives him a stroke and kills him, I’ll be singing at his funeral,” William said. “I’m not worried about anything you say to him.”

“Big talk, big talk, Bysen. But if you acted as big as you talk—you’d never have gotten involved in crap like this. Men like your father, if they can’t do their dirty work themselves they’re smart enough to have friends of friends of friends figure it out so no finger ever points to them. You want to know why Buffalo Bill won’t trust you with more of his company? Not because you’re a lying, cheating SOB—he respects lying, cheating SOBs. It’s because you’re a lying, useless weasel, Bysen. If you hadn’t been Buffalo Bill’s son, you’d be lucky to have a job typing figures in your own warehouse.”

Grobian swung me like a hammock and flung me from him. I landed facedown in muck. I heard him dust his hands and then heard him and William head back to the truck, bickering the whole way, not looking back at me, not even talking about me.

I lifted my head just as the truck jerked into gear again. The headlights flooded me for a moment, showing me where I was, the side of one of the giant mounds of earth where Chicago buries its trash. Beyond the By-Smart semi, I could see lights from other trucks, city trucks, a line of beetles moving toward me. Every day, another ten thousand tons comes in, gets emptied, and covered again with more dirt. The city trucks work round the clock, hauling away our refuse.