It’s midnight. We are in bed. There is the sound of hollow rumbling from the sodium lit, wet leather, street outside.
I look across at you. The dark gleam of your eyes tells me you are awake.
“What’s that?” you ask.
“I don’t know,” I reply.
I swing up to the edge of the bed, my knees protest at the hard wood rim and spread the blinds with my fingers. There is a man wheeling a bin down the road as if he were just pulling a bike along side him, never mind that it is the middle of the night, or that he appears to be not taking it just a couple of houses down – perhaps correcting a mix up – but taking it the entire length of the road. Each house in our street has three bins, one for each category: blue lid for recycling; black lid for rubbish; green lid for organic waste. His gait is defiant as if to query his intent is weird when in fact the reverse is surely true.
“He’s wheeling a bin!”
You crawl over to look before flopping back down bemused. “Why would anyone wheel a bin down the road?”
“Drugs?” I suggest.
“A body?” you offer.
I nod. “Could be? I think I heard a car, perhaps he was moving it.”
You stare at me across the bed. A question on your face. Something of so much import it over-rides all other considerations. “What colour lid..?”