A Los Angeles Yard, One Dumpster, and a Deadline

The sun had already started to bake the asphalt by the time Maria noticed the pile on her front lawn. It was not the polite, arranged pile of old ceramics and picture frames she had in mind — it was chaos in miniature: drywall dust, a lamp missing its shade, the unmistakable curl of a former bookshelf. Across the street, a contractor in a faded Dodgers cap tapped his clipboard and squinted at the bungalow roofs of Silver Lake.