The Landlord's Wife

Every Monday, as the sun rises over D------ Street, it illuminates large gray mounds of rubbish in front of every house save one--mine. A passerby might fear that the owners of that one house had forgotten to put the trash out this week, but the owners actually prefer that their trash spend as little time as possible in public view.

To that end, the landlord's wife, who is short and about 70, commits herself to a meticulous, if briefly executed, routine. At around eight a.m., she moves carefully packaged and easily liftable parcels of trash from the back of the house to the curb. She then moves the recycling bin from the front porch to the curb. And then, she waits.

Despite the house abutting a very busy road, the landlord's wife can sense very well when the recycling truck's engine begins to hum from an oblique angle up the side street. She appears within two minutes of the truck's passing and retrieves the empty blue bin from the curb.

Later, when the garbage truck comes, the same process is repeated for the trash barrel. She never sees or makes contact with the drivers or collectors, but she never fails to move all empty bins within minutes of the trucks' passing.

It is in this way that our house, which is quite a nice house, never has trash in front of it as long as any other house on D------ Street.