There, right inside the dumpster behind my old apartment complex, was a Whole Foods bag full of her trash. She must have taken it out last thing before she left for work that morning. I plopped my bags of crushed beer cans inside the green bin marked "Aluminum" and just stared into the dumpster.

I doubt she's the only person in that apartment complex who shops at Whole Foods, but I'm pretty certain she's the only one who also throws out issues of Q magazine with my name on the mailing label. Gazing out the top of the bag, side by side with the Q logo, was Ian Brown, ex- of the Stone Roses. Ian looked as druggily surprised as if he'd found his own scrawny body in that dumpster in Austin. Bit of a bring-down, Ian, eh wot. Should've kept everyone wondering what Second Coming sounded like for another decade or so. Look at you now.

I'd paid $8 for that issue of Q at BookPeople. She'd called me a few months back and told me she wasn't going to keep saving my mail and why didn't I just put in a forwarding order with the PO, and I'd said I would, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet. No urgent need; all the important stuff - meaning bills - was already coming to my new address and I did all my correspondence by email. That at least was an address I hadn't had to change after the breakup.

I polled a bunch of friends about how quick they'd been after a big end-of-cohabitation breakup to get their mail forwarded. All the girls - the ones who hadn't retained the living quarters, that is - had done it in the first month. All but one of the guys had taken a long time to do it, when they'd done it at all. And Tony was the only guy to be the dump-er rather than the dump-ee. Figures.

I followed up by asking all the lazy-ass dump-ee guys why it had taken them so long to change their address. Never got around to it, is what they all said. A few of them went so far as to offer that by the time they finally found a stable place to live they'd forgotten all about it among the crush of other things that needed doing - getting the gas turned on, the DSL hooked up, things like that.

I knew why I hadn't gotten my address changed with the post office; I suspect that if you probed deep enough with the other guys you'd find the same thing. As long as she's still getting some of my mail, we'd say, there's a certainty that we're going to stay in some kind of touch.

A possibility that this Let's Remain Friends business might be for real.

That we might - just possibly maybe might - get back together again. That she'd move out Donna, or Terri, or Peter from County Cork or whoever was splitting the rent with her now and move us back in.

As long as she was still getting our mail, it might happen.

When I'd seen the Ian Q on the newstand rack I'd said, I've gotta read that article. Immediately amended to, I've gotta have that article. Just like that stark black and white picture of Peter Hook in his customary pose, Rickenbacker slung low and knees splayed, that I'd bought a whole issue of Sleaze Nation just to have. I'd drop by Jen and Pat's for the next couple of dinners instead of buying groceries for myself and buy the fuckin' Q and have it forever.

Then I thought, I don't have to endure another of Pat's variations of mac and cheese with olives for the sake of my Roses fandom. I've already got a subscription, right? I'll just call her up and fix a time to go get the issue.

The next thing I knew I was at the counter forking over the $8 - the $8 that, screw the groceries, I needed even more for resume-copying - for the Q. That's when I realized that we weren't going to get back together.

And now she was doing just what she'd said she'd do. Stop your mail coming here, she'd said, or I'll throw it out.

Get Over It is what she hadn't said. Getting Over It first was the inalienable right of the dump-er, as was telling the dump-ee to Get Over It much too soon for the dump-ee's comfort. Anytime this millenium would have been too soon. All of us guys agreed on that.

My new apartment complex didn't have recycling bins so I brought my empty bottles and cans and newspapers over here. At first I'd thrown it all out just to spite her. "She was always so fastidious about recycling that I'm throwing mine out just to piss her off," I'd told a friend.

"Does she know you're doing this?" the friend asked.

"No."

"That's pathetic. Either way, it's pathetic." I resolved to do better by my recycling after that.

My complex didn't recycle and it just so happened that her (formerly our) apartment complex and its recycling bins were conveniently on my way to work. That's what I told myself.

That sounded fine while I was still working. Now it was just out of habit. No, it had always been out of habit. That was reasonable, if someone asked.

Like anyone was asking why I was taking my recycling there. The building manager just waved at me when I drove in past the office. Her name was the one on the lease and I doubt he knew I'd moved out, if he even knew I'd lived there in the first place.

The dumpster was right next to the recycling bins - lot of trouble that caused, stuff meant for one was always ending up in the other - and I saw Ian looking blankly at me as I deposited this week's materials.

Her trash, I thought. My Q. What else of mine's in there?

Don't call me Stalker, your garbage tells me 'bout your life, I sang softly to the tune of an old Voice of the Beehive song as I lifted the Whole Foods bag out and placed it in my trunk.

Then I said Fuck It and took the bag back out of the truck. I pulled a flattened air-conditioner box out of the dumpster's corner, spread it on top of the refuse inside, and up-ended the Whole Foods bag on top of it, thinking: this is the funkiest desk I ever used.

Damn, she had boring garbage. Mostly from her desk - glassine-window bill envelopes, printouts of web pages she'd visited (mostly work-related), mail-order catalogs, crushed Amazon.com boxes - with a few apple cores and wadded-up tissues mixed in. A few pieces of paper were stuck together with gum - when had she taken up chewing gum?

A bundle held together with a rubber band was all stuff with my name. More junk mail. An offer for a guaranteed-acceptance credit card - that offer would be for-sure withdrawn by any company with access to my credit rating the last six months. A newsletter from a writer's group I'd dropped out of. Local college-radio station flyer. Nothing that I was the poorer for her throwing out. Even the Q, since I didn't see the need for a 2nd copy of what turned out to be a boring Ian Brown interview after all.

And there, right in the middle of it all - with an HEB circular, frozen-food coupons clipped out, stuck to it with pink hardened gum - was the CD. One of those 90-cent slimline-case Cds you buy at Target, with the label I'd printed out on my own printer at my new apartment.

The CD I'd made just for her when she'd gone on her road trip a few months after we broke up. My gift to her to take a little of me along in her wanderings.

"That's so sweet," she'd said and slipped the CD into her purse. Now I wondered if she'd ever listened to it.

There was some good music on there. Crystal Method, Flaming Groovies,Kruder and Dorfmeister, Emmylou Harris singing Dylan. And, yes, the Stone Roses. Everything that I put on that CD reminded me of her in some way.

If you read Nick Hornby you know that a guy makes a mix tape - or CD - for a girl he's courting, or trying to win back. I'd done it for her often enough. It'd worked when we were first dating. I wondered if I'd have found those early-in-the-relationship tapes in the dumpster if I'd taken to scouring her trash earlier.

I picked out the CD, looked at it closely, turned it over in my hands. I'd made a copy for myself and listened to it many times in the intervening months, picturing her playing it as she drove through the desert. Singing along with the peppier tunes and wiping moisture from her eyes during the introspective ones. Illusions? Good ones, anyway.

I took the CD and one of the glassine bill envelopes over to the car, shutting the lid on the dumpster - with Ian inside - before I walked away. Rummaging in my glove compartment, I found an ancient pack of Juicy Fruit and popped a brittle piece in my mouth. As I chewed, I wrote a note on the envelope. I didn't sign it.

I sat there until the gum started to lose its flavor. I started the car and drove the few hundred yards over to her building. As I walked up to her apartment I bit a little piece of gum off and stuck the envelope to the CD case. Then I used the rest of the gum to stick the case to her door. I hoped she'd get home before Donna, or Terri, or whoever.

The note read:

I got back in the car and drove off, vaguely heading towards Cheapo to look at CDs that I couldn't afford to buy.

I'd needed to find a new place to take my recycling, anyway.