Sorority Girls With Guns

by Cat Caruthers

  “Maybe it wouldn't be so bad,” Tiffany says. “I mean, we could wear rubber gloves, right? We wouldn't just be poking around with our bare hands.”

  “And we'd open the bags at the top and take a quick look, so if something was obviously, like, kitchen garbage, we could close it right back up and move on,” Morgan says.

  I groan. “We'd have to do it today if we want to list whatever we get on Feebay, sell it and get paid in time to go shopping for the party. And I insist on elbow-length gloves and one of those Michael Jackson surgical masks. And I get to pick the dumpsters we dive in.”

  “That's a good idea,” Tiffany says. “You can geographically pick the best dumpsters, just like you did for the thrift store. I am so grateful to the universe that you're my friend.!” And of course she hugs me.

  “That's....nice.”

  “And I forgive you for making fun of my efforts to improve myself,” she continues.

  She really shouldn't have pushed it after the hug.

  “Well, did you find true love for less than twenty-thousand a year in income?” I ask.

  She sighs. “You know who got in line? Charlie.”

  “How does he qualify?”

  “Yeah, that was my question,” she says. “He told me he's currently living on a budget of $500 a week, so I couldn't think of a way to automatically disqualify him without revealing the bet, with all those people standing there. So I told him I'd take him into consideration.”

  “And what about the other guys?” Morgan asks.

  Tiffany sighs. “Three of them lied about their finances. One of them wanted me to join the Peace Corps with him, so we could go dig ditches in Mongolia. You know, when I wanted to live without money, I meant in America, where there's welfare and free birth control and, you know, running water. I didn't mean I wanted to move to another universe where they don't even have network television!”

  I'm going to be honest here, I have no fucking clue where Mongolia is, but I'm pretty sure it's not in another universe.

  Morgan's trying not to laugh, so her mouth is twitching like a downed power line. “Didn't any of them work out?”

  “Well, I had coffee with this one guy who's okay.” Tiffany fidgets with the fringe on her pleather jacket. “He's kind of a hillbilly, but he's really sweet. He asked me out to his ranch.”

  I almost choke on my free-continental-breakfast-that's-gross-in-any-country motel coffee.

  “He owns a ranch and he passed the financial screening?”

  “No, no, he lives and works on a ranch. He doesn't own anything except a ten-year-old pickup truck. He herds cattle or something.” Tiffany shrugs. “I think it might be fun. He promised to teach me to rope a calf.”

  “So you can what, make your own Coach bag?” Morgan asks.

  “When are you going?” I chime in.

  “Tomorrow.” Tiffany leans back in her chair and puts on her “I'm thinking” face, which makes her look like an actress in a laxative commercial. “What do you think you wear to a dude ranch?”

  Morgan groans. “Something disposable.”

  “Save the plastic outfit you're going to wear to dumpster dive,” I say, turning back to my computer and pulling up my research file on wealthy areas.

  “You mean like a Hazmat suit?” Tiffany asks. “Where are we going to get something like that.”

  I sigh. “Do I have to do everything? This is around the time room service comes, right? Go out in the hall and walk around until you see the housekeeper who gets our room every day.”

  “And then what?” Tiffany asks.

  “Then you tell her that you've made a mess in your room and it's really embarrassing and you want to clean it up yourself to spare her the trouble. Ask if she'd mind if you borrowed some rubber gloves and trash bags.” I consult a map. “If she asks questions, start by saying how embarrassed you are that you got that drunk. Then say it's so humiliating you can't even talk about it. No matter what she imagines, she won't want to clean it herself, trust me.”

  “So how does Charlie feel about you dating him and the dude ranch guy?” Morgan asks as she and Tiffany get up to leave.

  He knows I'm casually dating several guys right now, trying to find someone I can really connect with,” Tiffany says. “We're not exclusive.”

  “But what if things go really well with the dude ranch guy?”

  “His name is Dusty, and if things go really well with him, then I'll cancel my date with Charlie and go to the party with him,” Tiffany says.

  I spin around and look at her. “Hey, do you think Dusty would mind if we tag along tomorrow? If you really like this guy, you should introduce him to your friends.”

  “And I've never seen a dude ranch,” Morgan says, as I go back to my map. “We'll be sure to disappear after dinner if you want some alone time with him.”

  Tiffany shrugs. “I”ll text him and see if he's okay with that. I know all of his buddies from the ranch will be there.”

  “Hurry up and sweet talk the housekeeper,” I say. “I think I've figured out where we need to go.”

  ***

  “Do you have any idea how many websites and blogs are dedicated to dumpster diving?” I ask, as we get out of the rented Buick and head for the ass side of the outlet mall we visited two days ago. We must look ridiculous, all decked out like Haz-Mat workers, wearing trash bags with arm and head holes cut into them (sealed with duct tape) and elbow-length rubber gloves.

  “It doesn't matter, as long as one of them told you this is the place to be,” Morgan says, looking furtively over her shoulder as she locks the car. “Are you sure we can't get arrested for this?”

  “Yes, dumpster diving is legal in Texas. Anything in the trash is fair game. As long as we're not trespassing on private property to access the dumpster, we should be fine.” I reach the end of one row of outlets and round a corner, Tiffany and Morgan lagging behind me. “That's one of the reasons I picked this outlet mall. Their dumpsters aren't compacted, so they don't have to be locked up. These dumpsters are in a public alley, and they're not marked as belonging to any one store.”

  “What's the other reason?” Tiffany asks, wrinkling her nose at the sight – and probably smell – of the big, green dumpsters.

  “The reason the outlet mall was a bad place to shop for Feebay is the reason it's a good place for dumpster-diving,” I explain, continuing down the row of dumpsters. “You see, this is a wealthy area with a median per capita income of close to-”

  “Skip the big words and tell me what that means,” Tiffany says.

  “It means that stuff sells fast in these stores, so the good stuff rarely gets marked down to a price that would be profitable on Feebay,' I say, wondering which big words she meant.

  “But you said we wanted a wealthy area.”

  “For a thrift store, where people donate stuff,” I say. “There aren't that many people who need to shop in thrift stores in wealthy areas, so there's more good stuff left, and more good stuff gets donated in the first place.”

  “But for-profit stores aren't dumping crap at super-low clearance prices,” Morgan finishes.

  “Right.” I decide to just start at one end and open every dumpster, so I tentatively reach up and slam the lid back with both hands. Then I immediately jump backward, because I've read sometimes rats or other animals will pop out. “But those dumpsters across the alley belong to an apartment complex in a wealthy area. We'll check out the store dumpsters in case we get lucky, but I'm betting we'll do better across the way.”

  “All I'm seeing here is paper,” Morgan says, fingering a see-through garbage bag. “Looks like receipts and office crap. And takeout containers.” She sighs. “Maybe we should just check out of our motel and sleep in our car for the next few days. That would save enough money to buy clothes.” She struggles to open the bag, tearing at it with rubber-dulled claws, and finally manages to make a hole.

  The good news is that this bag isn't full of old food, or anything that smells bad. Strong
, maybe, but not bad. The bad news is that when she rips it open, the effort causes her to lose her footing and stumble backwards on the pile of newspapers. She flails her arms, trying to catch herself and grabs the garbage bag. She winds up landing on her ass, with the bag and its contents landing on top of her.

  Like I said, it could be worse. It's cosmetic counter garbage – specifically, hundreds of nearly-empty perfume testers and those paper scratcher-sample thingies.

  “Shit!” she yells, as sample papers rain down on her head like confetti.

  Tiffany can't suppress a giggle. “Are you okay?” she chokes out.

  “I'm going to smell like the Sephora counter for the rest of the day, and my ass is going to be black and blue, but other than that, sure, I'm fine.” Morgan swats away the last of the fluttering sample pages, then starts picking out the ones that landed in her hair. “I should've worn a hat.”

  “I don't think the store dumpsters are going to work out,” Morgan says, lifting the lid of the next one over and peering into it. “This one's almost empty.”

  Morgan ducks her head inside the garbage bag she's wearing in place of a Haz-Mat suit and says, in a muffled voice, “Let's try the other side.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask her as we move across the alley to the other row of dumpsters.

  She pushes at the outside of the garbage bag, looking like she's feeling her face. “Wiping perfume off my face. One of those bottles splashed me, and my hands are filthy from digging in the trash.” She stops at the first dumpster and throws the lid open, standing on tip-toe to look inside.

  And that's when I hear footsteps coming around the corner. Oh, crap, I hope nobody heard the commotion and called the cops, thinking we were robbers or something. I've had enough run-ins with the police lately.

  I turn around and see a tall, attractive guy with cocoa skin and a warm smile, wearing a suit and tie. In contrast, the guy with him is in a t-shirt and jeans and doesn't look like he's shaved in a couple days. He's also carrying a video camera, secured in a sling that says “Channel 8 News”.

  “Hello,” the guy in the suit says, surveying the three of us, decked out in trash bags and rubber gloves. “My name is Harry Harmon. Perhaps you've seen me reporting on Channel 8 News?”

  “We don't really watch the news,” I admit. It's not on Netflix and it's not very interesting.

  “Well, my photographer and I are shooting a story for this evening's news about homelessness in our area.” Harry offers a sympathetic smile. “We're covering an event this weekend, the Downtown Homeless Shelter Benefit at the Luxe Hotel. According to the press release, the Downtown Shelter desperately needs money to expand, due to the rising homeless population in our area.”

  I manage to keep my face impassive when my jaw really wants to drop. I wrote that press release, although technically Delilah was paid to write it. How could he possibly know who wrote it? Wait, don't panic, I tell myself. Maybe he knows Richard's hosting the benefit and we're friends of his. Hell, maybe he's one of our two hundred subscribers on GluedToYou. “That's right,” I say carefully. “What did you want to talk to us about?”

  “Well...” Harry continues projecting the smile as he takes off his suit jacket and hands it to the photographer. Then he rolls up his sleeves, looks around for a place to sit, and chooses another pile of old papers. Bet he can't believe they're still printing those things any more than we can. He leans over, elbows on his knees, his we're-all-friends-here-just-chatting position. Reporters always sit like that when they're trying to relate to people they really have no clue about. He's trying to make us think he's just like us, when clearly he's not, because he's not digging in a dumpster. “We wanted to interview some homeless individuals, to kind of put a face on the problem. We want to tell your story, show the world what it's really like, so our viewers can understand the importance of expanding the shelter.”

  “Wait...you think we're homeless?” Morgan shrieks.

  Harry's eyebrows twitch towards each other like magnetic caterpillars. “We...overheard you talking about sleeping in your car so you'd have money for clothes,” he says.

  Oh, crap. What do we do now? We can't lie and say we're homeless, someone will find out and call us on that one. They'll think we're trying to defraud people into giving us food or clothes or money, like those people who sit on corners with streets signs, then pull out a smartphone and call someone to say they'll be home in an hour, put the roast beef in the oven.

  “She was...joking,” I say. “You see, the thing is, we are actually trying to raise money for the benefit ourselves. But our goal was to do it in the most eco-friendly way possible.

  “The truth is, we're not homeless. We're college students vacationing on a budget of $500 a week, but we can afford a motel. We like to do charity work whenever we can, and we wanted to go to the benefit but weren't sure we could afford it.

  “But then I had this idea. We've been trying to win an internship at Green Day, the environmental support fund – they want innovative ideas about improving the environment by reducing, reusing and recycling. For our submission, we've been doing this vlog – that's a video blog – about how green-friendly things like reusing and recycling can save you money when you're on a budget, like we are. So I thought, maybe we can help the homeless and the planet at the same time!”

  Morgan's eyes light up, and I know she sees where I'm going with this. “So instead of just writing a check or donating our old clothes, we decided to dumpster-dive,” she finishes.

  “You don't think the homeless can dumpster-dive for themselves?” Harry asks, frowning.

  “No, no, we don't mean that,” I say quickly. “We're dumpster-diving for stuff we can sell on Feebay. We're going to use some of our proceeds to buy tickets to the charity benefit, which we couldn't otherwise afford.” Technically, that's not a lie. I said some of the proceeds, not all. Charity has to start at home, right?

  “And we're eliminating some trash that would have gone in a landfill,” Tiffany says, grinning like an idiot. I think she's proud of herself for remembering the word “landfill”.

  “I see.” Harry stands up. “That sounds really innovative. I think this is a great angle for our story. Do you mind if we follow you, see what you collect? Then we could follow up with you at the benefit on Saturday?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I say. “Our friend Richard is actually hosting the benefit. I know he'd be happy for the publicity. There's nothing he enjoys more than helping those less fortunate.”

  “So what do you look for when you dumpster-dive?” Harry asks, as we turn to the dumpsters. His photographer shoulders the camera and pans it across the alley, following us as we walk.

  “Well, we've been selling on Feebay for a little while now,” I say vaguely. “And we look for good brands in good condition. It depends what it is though – sometimes a slightly flawed item can still be worthwhile.” I drag over a pile of papers to stand on, hop up onto it and peer into the dumpster.

  Harry stands on the papers beside me and puts his hands right on the rim of the thing, which I wouldn't be doing without gloves. I suspect that, fake camaraderie aside, he's probably pretty good at his job. The photographer is on the other side of me, camera angled down into the dumpster. Tiffany and Morgan are on either side of the dumpster, having found their own piles of trash to stand on.

  “Do you go through all these bags?” Harry points.

  “Well, the semi-clear ones are good because they allow us to see what's inside and if it's worth opening.” I point at one. “Look at all those empty beer bottles. You might think there's nothing worthwhile in there, and there isn't, from a Feebay standpoint. But those can be recycled, which is better for the environment, and you do get paid a little by most recycling facilities.” I lean over, snag the bag, and pass it over to Morgan, who takes it with a half-disgusted, half-impressed look on her face.

  You know when you were a kid and you took piano or dance or karate lessons or whatever, and they told yo
u that line of bullshit about “practice makes perfect”? Of course that's crap. William Hung could practice singing every day for a billion years and he'd still sound like a sick cat trying to sing an opera. Morgan is like that with lying – she does it every day, multiple times a day, to the point where I'd even call her compulsive about it at times, but she will never be great at it.

  As for me, well, I was raised in a family of liars, thieves, backstabbers and will-forgers. Seriously, these people can destroy your Last Will & Testament, write a phony one and perfectly forge your signature before your body gets cold. I knew what will forging was when I was four, because I knew which of my relatives had done it and how much money they got out of it. I'm pretty sure I learned to lie before I learned to talk.

  And that is how I'm able to lie so quickly and so well to Harry Harmon and Channel 8 News.

  On a roll, I lean over and snag another bag, struggling to get the twist tie off with my rubber gloved hands. “So, you wear those gloves for safety?” Harry asks.

  “Well, you never know what you're going to find in the trash, and a dumpster is hardly the most sanitary place,”I I say. “It's just a precaution.”

  “What's the weirdest thing you've ever found in a dumpster?”

  “Probably a Justin Bieber blowup doll.”

  Harry grins. “Okay, the weirdest thing you've found in a dumpster that's fit to talk about on a family show?”

  “Oh...well, let me think a minute.” Finally I get the twist tie off and flick it away into the dumpster. “Probably a Coach bag that someone had dyed this awful shade of maroon. It was truly a crime against fashion.” I shake open the bag.

  And find myself, Harry and the camera lens staring down at an entire bag of used condoms.

  “And that's why I wear the gloves,” I say, twisting the bag closed again and shoving it toward the back of the dumpster.