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last mainland city had been overrun, but we never believed they would find their way here, to our island, our city, our Cherry Lane. After all, we convinced ourselves, how would they afford the ferry fees?
    MY WIFE, MY daughter, and I were seated in the formal dining room when they arrived. Ever since we’d let Lucinda go, my wife, Kathy, had been doing the cooking. She liked to separate our carbs from our proteins, so that night it was all carbs: linguine with some sort of seed sprinkled on top and a side of pale, delicate potatoes.
    â€œWould this be a fingerling potato?” I asked mere seconds before they appeared outside our window.
    At first there were only two. He wore a tattered tuxedo and pushed a cart filled not with empty bottles, but with books. She was wearing mermaid-green taffeta, pearls and heels. The shoes were shaped like playground slides and not quite her size, so she weaved and wobbled like a child playing dress-up. There was a certain aura about them—not the mix of sex and decay I’d expected, but something almost noble, as if they’d been plucked from another time. They were both wearing pink sun-halos. Even the sunset had been recruited for this, their arrival scene.
    My fingerling tumbled onto my plate, scattering seeds everywhere. My wife nodded to my daughter, then me, and we rose, moving to the window to watch the newcomers zigzag from the mouth of one driveway to the next, opening our recycling bins, the sturdy kind with wheels and lids. Creak-slap went those flip-top lids. Then the frenzied sifting—paper against paper against plastic.
    â€œIt’s happening,” my daughter, Jennifer, said, the small envelope of her lips quivering, a certain mosquito pitch rising in her voice.
    It was all too much for my wife—who swooned beautifully, allowing me to steady her. Then I remembered the boxes I’d stacked in front of our garage the day before, once I saw the Gregorys had put theirs out, each one marked CHARITY in Lucinda’s thick black writing.
    â€œWhat about the Large Garbage?” I asked my wife, tight-lipped so she wouldn’t see me tremble.
    For some reason the residents of Cherry Lane had taken to calling the third week of September “Large Garbage Week,” when we could just as easily have called it the Annual Charity Drive.
    â€œI don’t know why you insisted on putting that junk out so early,” my wife said.
    â€œBecause the Gregorys did,” I replied. “And the Felixes.”
    â€œThe Greg orys did because they left for Flor -i-da today,” she said. “And the Fe lixes did because you did.” When she was smarter than me in a particular matter she enunciated very clearly.
    The three of us leaned toward the window then, holding our breath, but it was too late. The strangers were tearing at boxes, emptying them of clothing, holiday placemats and old bedsheets. We looked at the tangle of high chairs, dismantled bunk beds, retro skis and tennis rackets stacked up in front of our neighbours’ garages, all the things we unearthed from basements and attics each September to prove our charity to ourselves and to each other. “One man’s treasure” and all that.
    â€œConstantine,” the woman called out from alongside our house, voice like a pencil scribble. “This one’s a veritable jackpot.”
    â€œConstantine?” my wife said.
    â€œVeritable?” I said.
    But by then Constantine had discovered Mrs. Felix’s box of books. “Proust!” he shouted, fanning the yellow pages. “Pinky, come see!”
    â€œPinky?” my daughter laughed. “More like Skanky. ”
    â€œEnough!” my wife commanded.
    â€œWhat did we even put out there this year?” my daughter whined. “Anything of mine?” Her voice had risen to a whinny. “Mom, you can’t just let them—”
    â€œWhy not?” I said. “Charity is