The Delivery, page 3
* * *
The doors opened. A man and a woman came out. They looked sideways at the delivery boy, and entered their own apartment, latching their door; the kind of door that locks with a heavy click.
* * *
The delivery boy waited more. The bank of the delivery boy’s time-per-customer diminished further.
* * *
The dispatch girls clocked distance-and-time-per-delivery.
* * *
The Supervisor would check these figures. Not always, but at random times.
* * *
The delivery boy heard a peephole slide open behind him.
He waited, and anticipated hearing it chime closed.
* * *
It didn’t.
* * *
Customer seventeen returned to the hallway and gestured to the delivery boy.
The customer was out of breath. “Better you should wait in here.”
* * *
“Never go into their homes,” N. had warned, with particular emphasis.
* * *
But the delivery boy could not stand in the hallway forever; he did not want trouble from the doorman, and he was reluctant to frighten the customer’s neighbors any further.
* * *
He took a few steps, and just like that he was inside.
* * *
Then they went even farther in: leaving the dark vestibule and entering a large room.
* * *
Bright, colorful.
* * *
There were framed pictures on the walls. Clustered on every surface of the room and its furniture were objects (little figurines, fetishes, pieces of art, souvenirs, small easels with photos and miniature paintings, curios made of clay, wood, metal, so on. Dolls, pots, antiques of every stripe. On one of the walls was a large tapestry. Under it, on a wooden column, was a contraption involving thread and wood, a spindle of some sort, but not one that could possibly work in any meaningful way. There was political memorabilia, porcelain busts of old-world leaders, antique toys, and a large, tapering cylinder of brass. Puppets. Trinkets. Books on shelves, and on the floors. Stamped-metal road signs, architectural plans, clocks, a pendulum, a stuffed warbler …)
* * *
“I’m sure it’s in the kitchen …”
* * *
The delivery boy loosened the top button of his shirt.
Cocky, he thought.
* * *
Time ticked by, but then the delivery boy saw a statuette—of the Strongman, the ruler of the delivery boy’s homeland. It was standing among a crowd of other busts and junk, as if it were simply another knickknack.
The delivery boy left the bag on the floor of the colorful room.
He closed the front door quietly behind him.
He took the stairs down.
* * *
Later, sitting at a red light, he closed his eyes hard.
Stupid, stupid.
* * *
“That was a cash order,” N. reminded him.
* * *
(“The Strongman” was not the name of the tyrant from the delivery boy’s homeland, but will suffice.)
* * *
(Generalissimo, Commissar, General Secretary, Field Marshal, Chairman …)
* * *
No. No. The delivery boy was fine.
* * *
He was fine.
* * *
(The dispatch girl who had turned away from the delivery boy in the warehouse corridor: for a week afterward, she had brushed her hair forward, and to the left.)
* * *
Yes, he was fine. He would pay for customer seventeen’s meal himself. He would pay with the cash tip from customer eleven, which covered half of the cost, and the rest he would pay for out of his tips share.
* * *
So.
* * *
Customer eighteen.
Average.
* * *
“Pull yourself together,” N. said.
* * *
(N. had no patience.)
* * *
Rain again.
Pelting his helmet with mean little beaks.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
His legs were, like his bicycle, wrapped tightly in plastic delivery bags. These were, in turn, coiled with tape.
* * *
There were bags on his feet, covering his sneakers as well.
* * *
Another delivery boy had shown him these tricks.
* * *
That particular delivery boy had stopped coming to the distribution center … was it months ago?
* * *
N. thinks this missing delivery boy got a job upriver, in Manor Grove.
* * *
The senior delivery boys weren’t so sure.
* * *
“Who knows,” N. pronounced conclusively.
* * *
It was hot and wet.
* * *
The delivery boy also wore a poncho, made of a large, pale garbage bag.
He saw himself in the bike’s mirror.
* * *
Garbage ghost. I am a garbage ghost.
* * *
The day the delivery boy left his homeland, the town had been covered in a deep snow. There had been several other children from the youth orchestra in the belly of the vessel there, squeezed in next to the delivery boy, all of them craning to see the colorless town recede through a small window.
* * *
None of the children had their instruments with them.
* * *
Garbage ghost, garbage ghost coming through! the delivery boy shouted (to the rain).
* * *
(In his native tongue.)
* * *
(In his head.)
* * *
It was slippery out. He had to pay proper attention.
* * *
And, and … something was a bit loose on the power-assist. It was making a small, two-syllable, hollow sound.
* * *
Cocky. Cocky, cocky, cocky …
* * *
As if to confirm his sense of impending bad luck, as he swung right onto a side street, out of nowhere came another power-assist bike, directly across his path.
His brakes sobbed.
Near collision.
“Fucker!” the delivery boy shouted involuntarily, while his mount veered, violently juddered, then righted.
But the other delivery boy had already moved on, out of earshot.
* * *
“Fucker,” said the delivery boy again, without conviction.
* * *
He hopped off the bicycle, picked up the fallen—though barely dented, and still miraculously dry—box. He strapped it back onto the rear rack using the (green) bungee.
* * *
He sped down the rest of the side street, his bike still clicking, and now also thrumming at a slightly lower pitch.
* * *
The delivery boy stopped outside the destination, dismounted, and locked the bike to a signpost. He pulled once, hard, on the chain, to ensure that it was properly wound.
* * *
He looked back up the street to the site of the near-accident, then down to his mechanism.
* * *
(The person who had almost run over the delivery boy was one of those errand runners who take all their orders directly from customers. The delivery boy could tell, seeing the errand boy’s bright red bag.)
* * *
A shadow of envy drifted across his features.
* * *
What would it be like, the delivery boy wondered (to be clever enough—capable enough—lucky enough to not need a warehouse at all; not need a dispatcher, a Supervisor …)
* * *
Then came customer nineteen.
Normal tip, no comments.
* * *
Green, green, green, green …
* * *
But he can’t rush now, with the damaged mechanism.
The delivery boy’s phone buzzed in his pocket once more.
* * *
Warehouse.
* * *
He strode right by N., as she made no move to speak to him.
(No stars, no comments, he thought gloomily.)
* * *
“Coming through.”
* * *
Parcel numbers B113, G725 …
* * *
He picked up his next parcels, and headed out once more into a light rain.
* * *
Hot and wet. Hot and wet.
* * *
Dark and shiny streets. Wheels sluicing through them.
(Smells of metal, exhaust. The city drawn in dust and ash.)
* * *
Customer twenty. Food delivery. More food smells.
* * *
“Gro-ss. It means vomit.” N. leaned over with her pointer finger headed to her (cartoonishly) wide-open mouth, pantomiming a big throw-up.
“It means,” she continued, “smells bad.” Then she pointed to a door.
“Boys shower here. Go.”
* * *
While on the vessel, the delivery boy had lost his sense of his own body’s smell, though it had returned over time.
* * *
At one point, he found a mostly used-up bottle of body spray in the bunk-room trash, and used it in small, carefully portioned amounts.
* * *
The delivery food in the bag on his handlebars smelled super.
* * *
He thought about what would happen if he were to reach in and pinch some out of one of the tiffins. But the light turned green, and once again he kicked off, just as before. Just as skillfully.
* * *
(Not that he would ever.)
* * *
After dropping off the next delivery (customary tip) he clambered up on the bicycle again and drove, at first cautiously, then with more confidence, as the noise from the bike “let up.”
* * *
(The second rain also “let up.”)
* * *
He stopped at another median strip, pulled some jerky from his pants pocket, and tugged off a hank.
* * *
He put an empty plastic bag down, fastidiously, and sat.
At one point, someone sat on the far side of his bench, then left.
* * *
The delivery boy considered the people around him. He flicked his eyes left, right, to the pedestrians on the walkway, going into shops and courtyards, waiting at crosswalks, then to the drivers in their vehicles.
* * *
I know when that car is going to pull out, he thought.
* * *
“… now.”
* * *
(And it did.)
* * *
So he knew the rhythms of the street, sure. He knew how these people moved. He knew when they moved, and how fast they would move. But he did not know the deeper rules governing the people themselves. Just timings, speeds, so on.
* * *
(In other words, he knew when, but not why.)
* * *
The delivery boy asked himself:
What does that cap there mean; what does that skirt say; what manner of expression is that; what kind of old man is this?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Stay dry.”
* * *
(The delivery boy took it as a rebuke, or an order. But it meant “thank you.”)
* * *
The day of his first youth orchestra rehearsal, he had noticed several of the violin players—as well as the principal oboe, and the timpanist—had worn small badges on the lapels of their green blazers.
* * *
(If it had been merely one person with a badge on his or her lapel, the delivery boy would not have cared so much. But the fact that there had been a group of them … This suggested that the badge meant something in particular.)
* * *
Eventually the delivery boy asked one of the violinists:
“What is that badge.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
So he tried the timpanist, a scrawny boy who stood next to the delivery boy at the back of the youth orchestra.
“It’s the future,” the boy said, looking away from the delivery boy with studied nonchalance.
“But why do you wear it?”
The timpanist’s expression said that this should have been the most obvious thing in the world.
Then the conductor rapped his baton, and all conversation stopped.
* * *
Okay.
So the badge was “the future.”
It wasn’t much. But even that was information. Of a sort.
(In my experience, any information, at the start, is important. Even a refusal to provide any.)
* * *
The delivery boy was beginning to get a sense about which customers would give good tips, for instance.
* * *
Not always, only sometimes.
* * *
It had occurred to him—when the man he was delivering the package of books to answered the door—that this man would under-tip him.
And the delivery boy had been correct.
* * *
Far up ahead on the sidewalk. A woman pushing a baby stroller.
The delivery boy made a small wager with himself.
* * *
As his bike sped past the woman, he slowed slightly, craned his neck.
Then he turned back to the road ahead, satisfied.
* * *
(The woman’s stroller had not contained a baby, but a small dog.)
* * *
“Knew it.”
* * *
(Actually, the delivery boy had guessed “bags,” but “dog” was close enough. The important thing was that he had known at a glance that there would be no baby.)
* * *
“Five stars for me, fuckers,” the delivery boy crowed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Hey,” the delivery boy said (sub-audibly) to N., as he walked by, waiting just a beat, which he hoped was not noticeable, for a response that did not come, before hustling to—and then through—the wide, swinging door, and into the storage rooms.
* * *
“Coming through.”
* * *
“You’ll see.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Soon they won’t need you, or me, or the bikes at all.”
“But someone still has to deliver the packages.”
“No. Not people.”
“How will they get to the customer?”
“Computers, asswipe.”
* * *
Smoke circled the bulb above the heads of the idle delivery and stock boys.
* * *
“Asswipe.” He tried the word out, quietly, to himself.
* * *
(He knew the word sideswipe, and wondered.)
* * *
The delivery boy rarely took part in the warehouse conversations. People rarely asked him anything, and he rarely knew what to say when they did.
* * *
As the delivery boy went past the door marked SUPERVISOR, he looked down at his feet.
* * *
And continued on to the far back.
* * *
Uncle hastened through the door, bumped the delivery boy, grunted.
* * *
(Asswipe.)
* * *
The delivery boy had a piss in one of the two tiny bathrooms.
