Edward Zimmer and Rebecca stood in a small valley of garbage. Rebecca counted the seagulls wandering around the piles of trash and reached fifty-seven before a bulldozer scared them off. Leaning back, she watched the seagulls fly overhead. Her hard hat fell off, but she didn’t pick it up. Zimmer’s hard hat was also too big for him. He had buttoned his dress shirt up over his nose and tucked the cuffs of his pants into his argyle socks. Running from one pile of garbage to the next, Zimmer kicked small pieces out of the way and lifted larger pieces with the end of a broomstick. Sensing that Rebecca had stopped working, Zimmer turned around. He saw her hard hat on the ground.
“Pick it up!” Zimmer said, his voice muffled by his dress shirt. “They said we had to wear them.”
Rebecca did what Zimmer asked. The hard hat slumped forward over her eyes, so she turned it until the peak was at the back. She looked into the distance, where three garbage trucks were unloading. She watched garbage pour out. Rebecca had always thought of garbage trucks as big and the amount of garbage they held to be large, but she no longer thought this. Compared with all the garbage already in the dump, they were depositing very little. She looked down at her feet and kicked a plastic doll head. “This is hopeless,” she said. “And it smells really bad. Will you drive me home?” This was the first firm decision she’d made all day.
“No,” Zimmer said. He lifted a pair of blue jeans by hooking a belt loop with the broom handle. “We can find them. They’re somewhere in here. All we have to do is find them.” As Zimmer spoke, he waved the broomstick in the air, making the pants dance.
Rebecca stared.
“We have to find your things.”
Rebecca walked across the garbage until she stood beside him. She put her left hand on Zimmer’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. Zimmer sighed and his shoulders fell. The sun was setting behind the bulldozers as the operators shut down their machines. Zimmer nodded and Rebecca followed him to his car.
Zimmer parked in front of Rebecca’s house and rolled down his window. Rebecca traced the edges of the glove compartment with the tip of her index finger. A couple walked along the sidewalk beside the car, and Zimmer waited until they’d passed before he spoke.
“You know, it’s not so uncommon, what you have,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The emotions. That other people feel what you feel.”
“I’ve never met anyone else who has it.”
“You have. You just didn’t notice. Or you thought you were really in sync with them. That you just really got them. Everybody likes to think they’re empathetic. You know, all the things people think when they meet you.”
“Maybe.”
“Your solution isn’t unique, either. That’s why I know how much danger you’re in right now,” he said. He looked up, looked at Rebecca and then pulled a package of filterless Camels out of his pocket, lighting one with a wooden match. The smoke curled around inside the car before being drawn out the open window. “For years, decades, you’ve taken your strongest, most personal emotions and stored them outside yourself, inside all those things. But when the objects left you, the emotions left you too. You are now without an emotional past.”
“Is that so bad?” Rebecca asked. She saw an emotion flash across Zimmer’s face, but she couldn’t tell if it was anger or fear.
Zimmer looked at his cigarette, watching the end of it. “I urge you to start creating an emotional history as fast as you can. You need to be feeling significant things. Not just everyday emotions—anger at a parking ticket or whatever. But really deep, true feelings.”
“So you’ve seen this before?”
“I have.”
“And what happened to them? In the end?”
“Every case is different.”
“Edward …”
“You need to believe that every case is different.”
“Okay,” Rebecca said. She looked at Zimmer, who stared at the speedometer of the motionless car.
“You’re about to become emotionally invulnerable,” he said. “It will feel safe. It will feel like a good thing. But that’s the problem. Who’s gonna to make themselves vulnerable if they don’t have to? Who’s gonna willingly make themselves weaker? But if you don’t start feeling real emotions soon, you will quite literally become nothing.”
“You just need to start feeling something. Something meaningful.”
“What do you think my chances are?”
“You can do it. I know you can.”
“Okay,” Rebecca said. She opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk, then bent down and looked through the window. Zimmer briefly attempted to smile, then started the car. As he drove away, Rebecca realized that he had been crying. She watched her feet on the sidewalk and knew that seeing Zimmer’s tears could make her feel sad, even afraid. She also knew she could feel grief and sadness for Lisa, or for losing Stewart, or even for herself if she wanted to, but she didn’t have to. It was now a choice.
As she unlocked her front door, she decided she would choose not to.