I cinched the ties around it all and knotted the bag tight. I slipped on an old T-shirt and sweats and pushed my feet into the lovely leather loafers that M wore to work. I grabbed the bag and headed out to the bins. It was better to have it all over and done with, put away, disposed of, to wake up to a morning in the apartment with no evidence of any day before.

On my way to the bins I passed the sign forbidding the disposal of garbage after nine o’clock, stepping softly on the thick soles of M’s beautiful shoes. I pushed open the top of the garbage bin and threw the bag down inside. It was amazing how still everything was. The big concrete buildings all around me were filled with families. Kids, dogs, cats, washing machines, all different kinds of lives stuffed into one, two, three bedroom boxes, and yet after ten o’clock everyone was quiet in exactly the same way. Just the way, I thought, that everyone either was or would be dead in the same way too. When we’re quiet we’re dead! I might have yelled, but didn’t.

There was a rustling behind me and I spun around. Over on the far side of the bins, by the paper recycling, crouched the woman from the cafe. She was squatting in a pile of garbage, opening boxes, running her fingers inside them. She pulled a crust from a wet-looking pizza box and began to eat it with one hand while she continued to search through more boxes with the other. A box of matches fell out of her sleeve and she snatched it back up again and dropped it into the pocket of her coat. She pulled pieces of what must have been some kind of sandwich from a small box lying on the ground, these too she shoved into her pockets. She finished the pizza crust and began chipping something off one of the other boxes, dried cheese maybe. She licked her fingers, ran her fingernails along her gums. Her eyes shot up to meet mine and she smiled at me, a finger still in her mouth. I could smell her breath, the things caught between her teeth, the damp rottenness of her gums. I felt gutted. Rooted and gutted and gasping.

I stumbled back and crashed into the garbage bin behind me. The noise was like snow cracking in the Alps. An avalanche. A noise that promised casualties. A light flicked on in an apartment above us. If I was seen, I could be reported, denounced. I jumped sideways into the shadowed grass, onto the carefully tended grass where it was forbidden to go. There was a sign posted by the concierge, promising terrible things to those that stepped off the concrete. One of M’s beautiful loafers sank into a pile of fresh dog shit.

I ran across the lawn that was not to be run across. When I reached the safety of the covered concrete walkway that led back to the apartment I looked back and saw the woman in the purple coat watching me. Light from the street spilled onto her, pooling in the folds of her coat, she hadn’t moved and as I watched she pulled another crust out of a box and began eating it. I ran back to the apartment and locked the door, stopped my ragged breathing in my throat. I would have to tell the rental company about the vase.