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.
Copyright © 2021 by Peter Mendelsund