The Delivery: A Novel

PART I

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets …

CHAPTER ONE

Delivery 1:

CHAPTER TWO

It was raining, lightly. The wheels of the bicycle hissed down the streets.

Customer two had smiled, and said something to him he hadn’t entirely understood. She looked the delivery boy briefly in his eyes, before closing the door.

CHAPTER THREE

She said to ‘stay dry.’

A manner of speaking, N. said, not turning away from the dispatch computer, in case the Supervisor saw them talking.

Little-to-no traffic. Few customers.

(Slow time.)

The rain let up.

CHAPTER FOUR

(N. taught him. Customer, block, delivery, doorman, sidewalk, elevator, manor house, tenant, stoop, Supervisor, "stay dry,’’ so on.)

CHAPTER FIVE

Third delivery.

An indifferent man; a customary tip.

(No stars.)

The sun came out. Having rolled up his sleeves at a traffic light, the delivery boy felt the hairs on his forearm ruffle.

Slow, slow. The delivery boy squinted.

Still early, though.

Slow times were

1. Bad: few tips, but also

2. Good: no rushing or poor ratings.

He stopped at another light, listed over onto one foot, looked right, left.

Where were the customers. Maybe it was a holiday?

(Holidays were slow times …)

CHAPTER SIX

Green awnings (stippled from the rain).

Manhole covers (latticed).

Trees (on the median. Marbling shadows).

Pedal; coast. Pedal; coast.

Light (strobing).

The smell of the hot, wet pavement.

The phone: heavy in his pocket.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The holidays here were different from the ones back home.

Though he did not know all the names of the months and seasons, he had heard from N. about one or two of the local holidays.

(When they were, how they were observed … etc.)

There was a backfire. Someone shouted. A bus pulled into his lane.

The delivery boy drove around the bus, not knowing for a moment what lay on the far side.

You can still do our holidays, N. had allowed, with that weary look of hers.

Adding hastily, as he walked away toward the storeroom door: in private!

The light turned green, but he had kicked off just before, knowing the rhythms of the lights, and of everything on the street.

Later, he had said:

We should try their holidays.

Don’t be stupid.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fourth customer:

Customer four was in a hurry.

The man had spun away from the delivery boy almost as soon as he took the parcel. In the customer’s haste, the hand of the delivery boy and the hand of the customer had touched.

Do not touch the customer.

(N. was right, of course, but still it happened.)

When the delivery boy’s hand accidentally brushed the knuckles of a nervous, old, or overquick customer, he received poor tips, and was given: no stars; no stars; one star. (Respectively.)

Coming through.

Back at the warehouse, he checked the numbers, and then the tall shelves: two light shopping bags and two medium-size boxes.

The bags had gone over the handlebars, one box went under his left arm, the second was bungeed to the rack.

He had four bungees: two red, a yellow, and a green.

(The fifth customer had given him five stars and a 30 percent tip on a very large order.)

The sixth customer had smiled also, in the manner of the lady earlier, and had tipped him generously.

The bungees had been handed out to the delivery boy—along with his helmet and phone—by the shelf manager. The shelf manager was known by everyone as Uncle, and he was old and lank, with hard eyes. Uncle’s fingertips were yellow.

There had been strict instructions concerning all items belonging to the warehouse, which the delivery boy had understood in only the most general sense.

Seventh customer: average-to-big-size tip.

The day was improving. Even with average stars, the tips were piling in.

(Piling up.)

Right, he said to himself, remembering.

The delivery boy coasted downhill on a road that bordered a little park. The trees and the road curved and sloped downward, gently, in unison.

Honk.

Fucker!

(The general sense of the warehouse instructions had been—through a haze of missed words and half-understood phrases—that the phone and helmet and bungees and bicycle all belonged unequivocally to the warehouse.)

He leaned forward, down the hill.

The park and the road.

(These things belonged to the warehouse. Everything did.)

The delivery boy, looking over his shoulder, back up to the crest behind him, felt an unexpected tenderness, having noted the bend of the park and the road.

It would be a very hot day.

(The choreography implicit in the setting, the way the park and the road had curved—or perhaps it was the swaying of the trees—reminded the delivery boy of the dances; like those held in his homeland, on the marble floor of the old public hall.)

The feeling aroused in the delivery boy was (to my surprise) a form of pity.

The delivery boy, as a rule, had not participated in these dances.

The music had made him queasy; the accumulation of perfume, aftershave, and sweat had made him queasy; the marble dance floor’s lack of friction had made him queasy … But, mostly, his queasiness was due to not knowing the rules that governed partnership; i.e., who danced with whom, and why.

He wore a jacket to the dances. Which had seemed proper.

(The girls: ankle-length dresses.)

The delivery boy flipped up his visor, wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

Customer eight. Pickup at a corner café.

(Or perhaps it wasn’t the curve in the road, or the trees; but it might have been the swish of a skirt of a girl on the street that reminded him of the dances. Anyway.)

The delivery boy waited in the short line, and when he reached the counter, he held out the receipt and waited.

The girl behind the counter had such slender wrists.

He handed over the order form, and did not speak.

CHAPTER NINE

As he cruised down a hill, the delivery boy reached under his seat and flicked off the bicycle’s power-assist.

The sky lightened.

If the sun came out, he figured, the girls would come out too.

Customer nine: decent tip, no comments.

Comments, if they were good, were the best for a delivery boy’s average and his prospects.

The Supervisor took you into the office with the barred door if he became aware of negative comments.

At the very bottom of the rise, the delivery boy had stopped at a light, in a spot where the branches formed a generous awning. While straddling the bike, he pulled out his water bottle and took a long slug. He followed the water’s cooling passage down the inside of his chest until it leveled out at his midriff. He burped. Checked his phone.

Ahead.

It was slow, and he was ahead.

So he breathed deeply, twice, then he pushed off again, coasted to the curb, threw a leg over the bicycle, laid it down gently on the sidewalk, and sat on the sidewalk, his feet on either side of a small storm drain.

The delivery boy had seen a dispatch girl come out of the Supervisor’s office, only days earlier. She had a hand clamped over one side of her face, as if testing the vision in her other eye.

Never mind.

The day continued to warm.

Here and there, the old, used-up rain had collected, and was running into drains, carrying stuff—leaves, sticks, and some of the little yellow blossoms from the park trees—small bits of garbage. There was also a plastic glove, some cigarette butts, and a magazine that was stuck to the side of the grate. The magazine was missing half of its cover, and was slowly being turned into a colorful pulp. He looked up, away from it, and watched the water streaming down the edge of the curving hill; watched the debris carried along down this shining ribbon, drawn toward his feet.

Checked his phone again.

It would get absurdly hot, if it didn’t rain again.

But the girls would come.

Surely.

And he could look.

Only look.

(Not knowing the rules that governed …)

And the day heated up further, but the sky was still overcast. (I imagine the leaves were that pale green you often see before a storm.)

So the streets remained fairly empty.

The trees were almost glowing (such was the quality of this pale green color).

It would pass over quickly, he decided, and checked his phone once more.

He considered N., who had not messaged him for some time.

It is either a very slow day for her, or else she is very busy, he reasoned, concluding, jealously, that some of the other delivery boys must be doing quite well.

He prodded the shallow stream with the tip of his shoe, making it, briefly, two streams.

CHAPTER TEN

N. gave him the promising jobs.

But when he first arrived—before he and N. had spoken to each other, so on—every day was a slow day.

Moving packages from one warehouse to another. No customers. No tips, no comments. He was barely better than Wodge.

No better than his own bicycle.

Then N. worked something out. He was promoted.

The delivery boy didn’t understand (her benevolence toward him).

Maybe he reminded her of someone? Whatever.

But things improved, then.

Still, he remembered that, even after, there were periods when the rate of his pickups and deliveries would slow.

1. When he had pressed her about them doing the new holidays, or

2. When he had lost or forgotten tip money, or

3. Didn’t get required signatures, or

4. The time he had asked her about her parents, or

5. Just when he spoke to her too frequently, or

6. Spoke to her in front of the other dispatch girls. Such periods.

(Which is to say that the delivery boy knew: that she was speaking to him through the dispatches themselves.)

Cars and buses went by as he sat.

They went by, and by, until they formed a kind of fuzzy wall in his mind. There was that scent of wet grass. Sweet and rotten. (And the charcoal scent of wet pavement.)

There had been a park on a trip with his youth orchestra—in a country next to his own. In the park was a carnival, with rides, and a beautiful gazebo.

The conductor of the youth orchestra (the delivery boy remembered him, then). The conductor’s coat had been yellow.

The delivery boy’s plastic lighter was also yellow.

He shook it up and down.

The delivery boy lit a stub. He rounded his spine backward, until he was leaning on his elbows.

This is the best week here, N. said, the night before, as he handed over his tips in the warehouse hallway. Everyone was in the bunk room.

The Supervisor had been away. She was looser. More relaxed.

A great week. The yellow trees flower only once a year, she continued. It is superpretty. Though it will only last five, six days, tops.

After that, do the blooms all fall down at once?

Gah, yes; and then they smell like vomit.

(This, for N., passed as expansive.)

Buzz.

The delivery boy looked at the small, dirty stream. His phone buzzed, and buzzed again, and he hoiked himself up and threw his leg over his power-assist bicycle. He leaned on the handlebars, wrapped tightly with plastic bags. He waited for an opening between cars, and then kicked off,