Beacon Hill. 0200 Hours. Eyeing a pile of trash set on the corner.

The car idles at the corner of two small streets. The headlights are killed, but any attempt at blending in are shot because all the other parked cars are Jaguars, Jeeps, a Lexus and big shiny SUVs. The car idling is a 1982 Volvo with a twisted front bumper and a high idling sound which melts into a hideous fanbelt squeal. Also, the exhaust seems to be leaking. People are shouting from windows and strolling couples are pointing.

‘Just turn it off,’ Brennon says.

He’s sitting in the dark. The smoke from his cigarette curls out the open window and he’s getting antsy.

‘We need to get it soon,’ he says. ‘Or somebody else is gonna nab it.’

He was right. I didn’t see any other pickers out tonight, but we knew they were out there.

My mind flashed back to a man who’d caught me rifling through his garbage earlier in the night. ‘Will you just clean it up after you find what you want? So it isn’t all over the sidewalk?’ He’d asked me, and I’d made some non-committal reply. It had made me angry for two reasons. Firstly, because I wasn’t making any sort of mess. Secondly, because I was picking through his trash. If he knew I was on that level, what made him think I was civilized enough to clean up afterward?

Back in the car, another couple waltzed past. ‘What time is it?’ Brennon asked.

‘Late,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get going if we’re still gonna do Harvard.’

He made the motion, and we both jumped out onto the street. I fell around back to open the trunk and he rushed up to the corner. I followed suit. We went back and forth, from corner to trunk, until the trunk was full and the corner empty, hopped back in, and stepped on the gas. A minute later we were humming down Storrow Drive, negotiating methods for sacking Harvard.

Not our best night, not our worst. Tonight’s score was: a new-looking woven rug, a huge stewpot, a folding chair, two rolls of window insulator, five or six books and a picture frame.

Trashpicking is the ancient art of finding useful items in other peoples’ refuse. Beacon Hill Trash Night is the top echelon of this game. No need to sort through anything there: people just put stuff out on the street in neat piles, as if they expect someone to nab it. And who could blame them? Especially around move-in and move-out months, the trash was pure treasure. Desks, lamps, even televisions with VCRs, and everything was functional.

I had, by this point, come across some great scores by keeping an eye on what people throw out. In what I like to refer to as the Great Wine Scheme of 2001, I netted 12 cases of rich red wine from 1981 in a single day.

Brennon and I were, after all, professionals by now. We had long since discarded the giddy sensations that accompanied finding a new chair free for the taking, or an operational foot massager left out on the street. Surely, we were happy about our scores, but on the job we moved with an intentful grace and agility that suggested sheer business. We’d save the partying for later. In the meantime, we had a mission.

After all, we’d been doing this a while. Over the years, we stopped perusing the streets and starting combing them, putting together somewhat intricate plans and studying street designs. We were efficient and quick, and over a period of time we developed a sort of intuition as to where the best trash was gathered.

Brennon contacted city sources for garbage pick-up dates and put together a schedule. I picked out strategic parking and performed quick getaways with the larger, more risky items. We stored relatively small items in nondescript piles on street corners. We were quick and nearly noiseless in the night, but we were also thorough. No longer the wandering freshmen that we used to be, leisurely checking out bags and old dressers. Oh no we were refined.

But those freshman still posed a threat if we didn’t act quick enough. So we revised our techniques and quickened our pace. No point looking in bags, we figured. Just boxes. We had our tools, too a box-cutting knife and a pointing stick. In the later days, we also brought a flashlight.

This past summer, it was growing almost routine. We’d come a long way since the days when we relied on the T to haul back our treasure, but now we were growing bored. We had to branch out, ransack other communities.

Speeding down Storrow Drive, we figured the trash at Harvard would be rich and plentiful, but we ended up wrong. Harvard kids recycled too much stuff. There were no televisions on the street, not a couch in sight. There weren’t even any old jackets. Just milk jugs in blue plastic boxes.

‘These people aren’t any fun,’ Brennon said. And despite his occasional meandering incompetence, I had to admit he was right.

Which, naturally, is what the entire ordeal is about. Fun. Between that and picking up a few essential items for the apartment. It’s amazing what you’ll find if you can time your trips right. A couple years back, we looked up from some boxes to a young man standing there, looking at us. We were on Beacon Hill.

‘How’s it going guys,’ he said. A cop? We didn’t say much, but he continued. ‘Getting some good stuff?’

‘Yeah,’ we said. I had the foot massager in my hand.

‘Good. I furnished my entire apartment with this stuff when I was at college.’

And then he walked off into the night.