This scene is an exercise based on a story I've bee working on about a kid who finds a polaroid of a naked woman in a library book. The kid in the alley is the main character of that story. This is a scene from a different person's perspective.
Closing in the summer is the worst. In the winter you walk through the kitchen feeling the air temperature drop as you get closer to the cold that seeps through the gaps around the door or comes crashing in like a wave when someone goes out to smoke. You don't even need your coat. The heat and sweat from working give you three refreshing minutes outside. The perspiration crystallizes into sludge on your back and it's relief. The air deadens the food smell in your nostrils and the gray alley feels cozy. You throw the trash in the dumpster and it barely stinks. The air is hard and resists the smell. There's only the far-off scent of smoke. It might be a chimney, but it might be that brittle winter nights always smell like smoke.
If it's the second or fourth Sunday of the month you have to drain the fryers into a bucket, then pour that into the grease trap next to the dumpster. Winter is no match for that smell. You have to hope there's not slush or ice, because if there isn't you can be quick and hold your breath. When that's over, you start to realize that you're sleeveless outside at 10:30 pm in January and it's time to go inside.
Summer is atrocious. The alley is hotter and thicker than the kitchen with the heat from the ovens and steam from the dishwashers. Inside, air is shuffled around by fans, the AC, doors opening and closing. You go outside and dark summer air sits on you like a wet towel you'll never find the edges of. There's nothing to savor, like there is in winter. As soon as you're out the door the dumpster smell walks up into your nostrils and down your throat. You can only jogwalk while holding your breath until you get back inside. The chemical steam of the dishwasher will seem like a Yankee candle. If it's grease trap week, you can't run because you'll spill. You just step quick. Alley dumpsters behind restaurants are like Satan's crockpots. Stewed rancid muck slow cooks on metal and wafts down the brick and asphalt corridor. Work enough shifts and you'll feel that scent dripping onto your tonsils every time you look down an alley.
One time, I was closing at some casual modern place--the kind with artisanal pizzas where they use every kind of olive except black, like traditional pizza is so gauche. Well, I was running some trash and had just gotten a couple of bags from the kitchen, not even a third full, but sagging with slop. I toss those normal, then go back to get the bathroom trash. When I go back outside, there's some skinny black kid standing next to his bike in the middle of the alley. He rode up in the two minutes it took me to go in and grab the bags. He's just standing there looking down the alley. He had a piece of paper--it looked like a polaroid-- in his hand that he kept looking at. I kind of stood there and watched him to see what he would do, but he never moved. When I let the dumpster lid close he noticed me. I asked if he was all right; he said yes and rode off. But he'd been standing there for a long time just staring at the alley. It was weird as shit.
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