The Delivery, page 4
* * *
Then he went through the door—the one with the number-lock on its knob—and skulked down another narrow and dark corridor to his area of the bunks. He looked around before stashing a few bills. Just a few. Wrapped in some bathroom paper, stuck to the underside of his soap bar, sealed in his soap box, zippered in his bathroom bag, placed in his shoebox, under his sandals, behind his small bag, under his bunk.
* * *
Then he made his way to the storage rooms, and searched among the tall shelves.
* * *
The storage rooms smelled like aluminum and dust and wet cardboard and droppings.
* * *
Uncle was not in his chair.
* * *
The delivery boy saw a glue trap, half under a low shelving unit. There was something dark and matted stuck to it. The delivery boy kicked the trap farther under the shelf, and out of sight.
* * *
Someone said something, and the delivery boy whipped around.
* * *
It was only Wodge.
* * *
The delivery boy waved hello to Wodge, who was balled up on the floor in one of the aisles, muttering to himself in that language only Wodge understood.
The delivery boy stepped over Wodge’s weird legs, and delved farther into the long row of dark shelving, to claim his numbered delivery merchandise.
* * *
He signed a clipboard again with the blunt pencil that was attached to the shelving unit by a fraying string. With his parcels in his arms, he maneuvered past a few warehouse men, went down another little corridor, to a small loading dock, where he squatted on his heels, pushed his back flush against the metal doorway, and watched the rain.
Five minutes, tops, he thought, taking out a brand-new cigarette.
* * *
He drew deeply on it, unlit; tasted its baked, vegetal tang.
* * *
On his way back out, he tossed Wodge an old butt from his cigarette packet.
* * *
Wodge grabbed it up, put it in his mouth, and sucked on it.
* * *
“Coming through.”
* * *
“See you,” the delivery boy said, over his shoulder.
“Uh,” replied N.
* * *
No rain again. At least.
* * *
He peeled the bags off his body in ragged strips.
Threw away the wads of plastic in a trash can.
Back in the saddle.
* * *
(Molted.)
* * *
Little flashes on the street. Weaving around (the word would be puddles, but in this case, I imagine that the delivery boy would think of it as something more like puh-duls, as this was how the word was taught to him).
* * *
He thought of this teaching-talk of N.’s. How he was given one bit after another; only one sound at a time.
* * *
(When N. spoke to him in this way, and in this special tone of voice, the result was that the delivery boy felt as if N. had somehow pumped extra blood into him.)
* * *
A taxi pulled out on his right flank. He adjusted his grip.
* * *
Difficult intersection. He sped forward, too quick, and had to brake. He veered, tried again, let a car go ahead, another; a truck in front of him threw up rocks and dust. He shut his eyes hard, then opened them quickly, only to see a streak of yellow cross his lane. A bus loomed, and passed.
And then he was through.
* * *
Then: a straightaway.
* * *
When the power-assist was on, he could ride and relax.
* * *
Sometimes his mind would wander. He would look to the side, and be surprised by a driver’s eyes, looking back at him. And he would look away quickly.
* * *
The street is no place to lock eyes.
* * *
Traffic. Crates had fallen from a truck bed. Smashed.
Honks.
* * *
Customer twenty-two: more food.
* * *
He picked the bag up at a quick-food place.
* * *
Some of the boys in the distribution center used to work at places like these. In many cases, the establishments were run by their own families.
Few such restaurants are still family-owned, so many of these (waiters, busboys, hostesses, cooks—even the managers who punched the overlarge calculators in back rooms at night) have become delivery boys.
* * *
Everything falls (he thought).
* * *
“Eventually,” the delivery boy tried out, “everyone will be making deliveries.”
He considered this idea, and considered his feelings around this idea, and found that he felt nothing in particular.
“Even Strongmen …” he continued, pushing the notion, but just then was forced to come to an abrupt halt, as a large, open moving vehicle was blocking access to the side street.
* * *
Honks (more honks).
* * *
1. Upside-down chairs. 2. A disassembled bed. 3. Lamp bases without shades. 4. A wooden box slatted with dinner plates. 5. Rolled carpets fastened with twine. Etc.
* * *
Waiting in the line of stopped vehicles, the delivery boy looked around in all directions.
* * *
Then made a short hop onto the sidewalk, drove ten feet, bounced back onto the street, and was moving again.
* * *
An older woman.
“Sidewalks are for people,” she shouted.
* * *
The warehouse calls: a couple more packages to pick up from other pickup centers.
* * *
He did these jobs only from time to time. It wasn’t his job, but it was a slow day, and he should help out the other boys, and: How could he say no?
* * *
This was how, on many occasions, items were stocked in the warehouse. And for some of the other delivery boys, this was their only job: to pick up packages from other shops, distributors, and warehouses, and transport these packages to the delivery boy’s home warehouse for further distribution. These delivery boys did not make tips, and were paid in meals and bunks. This was how the delivery boy himself started out. Before N.
* * *
(It is not difficult for me to imagine this life, this world. A kind of closed vasculature. Nothing outside of a system of deliveries that pass unopened from warehouse to warehouse.)
* * *
(These were the saddest jobs, and it was a life that had almost become the delivery boy’s own.)
* * *
(Uncle, for instance, never even left the building.)
* * *
(Once, after a delivery, while waiting for an elevator, the delivery boy had looked out of a high window, and saw a woman walking her dog on a rooftop, opposite. The woman and the dog wandered around on the hot tar until the dog finally lifted his leg. The delivery boy wondered then if the dog had ever, in its lifetime, felt the earth with the pads of its feet.)
* * *
(Like this.)
* * *
(So the delivery boy felt grateful.)
* * *
N.
What would he have done without her guidance?
* * *
He thought about the conductor of the youth orchestra, with the fancy yellow coat.
* * *
He considered the other delivery boy who (may have) moved upriver.
* * *
He thought of Wodge.
* * *
“why so slow2day” he thumbed into his device.
Then:
“rain u think?”
Then he waited.
(…)
Finally N. replied: “Come in.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
N. looked up from the screen to make a quick, subtle, half smile.
* * *
(Half smiles were N.’s only smiles—and even half smiles were, for her, a rarity. Her face was a marvel of giving away nothing. Of the upturned-mouth expressions, she preferred the smirk.)
* * *
(So this was an event of a sort. But …)
* * *
“Fuck off,” she snarled at the delivery boy as soon as he smiled back at her.
He flinched. N. returned her eyes to the screen.
* * *
“Coming through.”
* * *
Back in the warehouse, he dropped off his items, then cross-referenced the numbers on his phone—the new pickups—with the numbers on the shelves.
V837 (small box).
H144 (three shopping bags).
* * *
When the delivery boy had debarked from the vessel, they were collected into a large holding room. In the room was a very large crowd of people, and a large board, covered in numbers.
* * *
Jammed up amid the others. He heard numbers shouted, mumbled, whispered, bawled. (Like this was a land that only spoke in numbers.)
* * *
The French horn player from the youth orchestra was number 479.
* * *
The delivery boy had wanted to go with her, but could not.
* * *
(The delivery boy wondered what number N. had been given, in her holding room.)
* * *
Back in the corridor, he had to step over Wodge again, who was now on the ground in the tight passage (the ground was where Wodge always was).
* * *
Wodge looked up as the delivery boy walked by and blurted something unintelligible again. He was still sucking on the used cigarette filter.
“Hello Wodge,” the delivery boy said in response.
Wodge winked at him awkwardly.
“Sure, Wodge, sure.”
* * *
Anticipating seeing N., the delivery boy increased his pace.
(Although he always did this going past the Supervisor’s office.)
* * *
“You look pretty,” he practiced, before pushing the swinging door in toward the dispatch corridor, knowing that he would never.
* * *
As the delivery boy came into the dispatch corridor, there was someone new at N.’s station.
A different dispatch girl.
His greeting to N. turned into a wordless exhale.
* * *
On a bathroom break, probably, he thought, entering the outside air.
Merde.
CHAPTER TWENTY
(Re merde.)
* * *
(The delivery boy had been, in his homeland, a student of languages. He was not a total country bumpkin. Nor was he some kind of half-wit.)
* * *
(I mean: neither was he some kind of famous genius, brought low by circumstance.)
* * *
(But the delivery boy spoke languages other than his own. Just not this language, in this city, here. He will be knowledgeable in some ways, ignorant in others.)
* * *
(Actually, his French was quite good.)
* * *
Scattered phrases came to him as he pedaled.
* * *
Une fourmi, de dix-huit mètres … the delivery boy remembered the children in his class chanting …
* * *
Ça n’existe pas …
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Musician,” the concierge explained, holding the receiver up, while pointing to her ear with her other hand. “Doesn’t hear it ring.”
* * *
(Sometimes doormen or custodians or concierges would call up to a customer, and the customer wouldn’t answer right away.)
* * *
Sometimes a customer might not answer at all. Often, after not answering, the delivery boy would have to move on to his next delivery, but then, an hour or so later, this same customer would call and complain, and N. or some other dispatch girl would pick up the line and get yelled at. Sometimes the Supervisor would get involved (the delivery boy never spoke to the Supervisor but N. would tell him later), and then the delivery boy would have to be rerouted back to the original delivery spot and his timing for the rest of the day and night would be ruined.
* * *
The delivery boy might wait to hear the customer’s muffled “Hello?” on the line (as if the customer had simply no idea why they were being called) or a subtle change in the doorman’s or concierge’s expression, and by the time the doorman or concierge was replying “Delivery here,” or “Your food,” or simply “Package” (and once: “Your errand boy is here …”), the delivery boy would already be moving toward the elevator banks (knowing the rhythms, so on).
* * *
This concierge was a young woman. You didn’t see many of those, thought the delivery boy …
* * *
The young concierge had called up two times already, and she had hung up twice, and was about to try a third time, when she cupped the phone, leaned over toward the delivery boy, and said, conspiratorially: “He’s practicing. Just go up. I’ll keep trying.”
* * *
The delivery boy pressed seven, but even by floor five he heard the music.
* * *
Growing as the elevator rose (as in a crescendo) and then, when the doors opened, it became abruptly loud. The delivery boy walked up to the doorbell and pushed.
And waited.
* * *
The delivery boy was not confident that this doorbell actually worked.
* * *
The music went on.
* * *
The delivery boy tried again, and again.
* * *
No luck.
* * *
So he decided to wait for a gap in the notes before pressing the bell again.
* * *
He stood there, pointer finger poised over the bell, hoping for a silence, a rest between notes. He would push the button at that precise moment.
* * *
The delivery boy’s mother had explained to him that they could not afford music lessons.
* * *
Some of the other children had begun to bring in strange, variably shaped cases to school. Long boxes, short ones, twisted tubes, geometric oddities, each made of dark cardboard, each with a handle. The delivery boy knew that each of these odd shapes must contain an instrument.
* * *
When he was a bit older, he would listen to the youth orchestra rehearse every week in the school’s ratty auditorium.
He was, for these rehearsals, the only audience member.
* * *
The orchestra was conducted by that teacher with the fancy yellow coat. The conductor was also art teacher, teacher of French, and coach of their sports team.
* * *
One day, the orchestra was playing a particularly long and complex composition. The conductor was waving his arms about wildly, and just as everything grew to a fevered pitch, suddenly, there was a rest.
* * *
The baton stopped in the air, bows stopped in the air, mouths froze, open to inhale the air, everything still.
* * *
Eventually, the conductor dropped his baton arm, chuckled to himself. He scanned his youth orchestra. The children looked back at him. He shrugged, then he turned around to the (almost) empty auditorium.
He said something the delivery boy couldn’t make out. Then the conductor put his hand up to the side of his mouth and shouted:
“Hey—”
“Uh …” (said the young delivery boy).
“Hey!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“But I’m not—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake just get up here.”
