“Can you give me some money now? I’m starving. I need to get a burger or something on the way.”
“I’ll give you twenty now, but don’t stop till after you make the drop-off. This has to be there-A.S.A.P.”
“A.S.A.P. What are you, some kind of general?” He looked pissed off, and that made me laugh. “And you did not ever tell me before it was fragile. You did not.”
He growled. I loved it when he growled. That meant I’d got him good.
I waved goodbye from inside my mother’s car. It still smelled like her, that perfume she always wore, and the hairspray. She never got that old-person smell like some people. She just smelled like herself until the day she died, and then she had a weird shit smell cause her bowels sort of let go. There was a used Kleenex in the cup holder. Maybe her last Kleenex from the last time she drove the car. I didn’t like to think what was wadded up inside it. It had bothered me all the way over to Marcus’s and I had meant to take it in and throw it away in Kimberly’s little metal trash can, but I forgot. It made me mad to see it, so I opened my window and threw it out. I didn’t want to litter, but I just couldn’t stand seeing that tissue anymore.
This was all I ever did for Marcus, take shit places. Sometimes it was one box, sometimes it was many boxes and I’d get to drive the van. I liked his van; it was more official than Mom’s car. Usually I just took the boxes to the airport and waited around while the guy did all the paperwork.
Awhile back I had asked Marcus, “If you’re an im-porter, how come I’m always taking boxes away? Shouldn’t I be picking them up?”
“I use the smart guy for that.”
We both laughed at that one. I knew the other guy who worked for him.
This was the first time I’d taken anything to a parking lot. I didn’t care what Marcus was into, and I knew I was safe or he wouldn’t have asked me, but it was odd. When I stopped for my burger I would open the stupid case and look inside. Maybe I really was Santa Claus delivering toys. Somehow I doubted it.
I headed away from the airport, toward Westchester proper. There was an In-N-Out on Sepulveda, and if it wasn’t crowded I could just dip into the drive-thru and be on my way in minutes. I had to eat. It was after noon and I’d had nothing. Goddamn traffic. All around me. Who were all these people? Westchester had been a quiet place when I was a kid. I remember watching the gnats cluster in the sun right in the middle of Lincoln Boulevard. I remember crouching on the sidewalk in front of Baskin-Robbins and feeding ice cream drips to the ants. Mom always ate rainbow sherbet. I always had mint chocolate chip. I should have brought her some sherbet when I first got home and she could still eat. It made me feel sick suddenly that I hadn’t. I hadn’t brought her anything. I saw my Baskin-Robbins, but it just looked ugly, sandwiched between Starbucks and an expensive juice place. I felt so sad. And old. Thirty-three and I felt like I was a hundred years old. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I figured I’d just get on with delivering the stupid old case.
I turned onto a side street, Winsford Avenue, and wound back through the neighborhood toward Lincoln. Winsford wasn’t as nice as Orange Street, my street. Nothing looked as nice anymore. The sky was gray and nobody had a green lawn and the goddamn planes kept going overhead.
Then I saw it. I had to turn on 80th to meet up with Lincoln, and there it was: the Collier School of Aviation Technology. Her school. It was right here and I was driving right past and I knew it was another moment of destiny. It was brown cinder block, about three stories high, just a box, but what more did a school need to be? I could see the fluorescent lights on in the upstairs classrooms. That’s where she was, sitting under that vibrating, humming, greening light, listening to a lecture or maybe practicing carrying a tray of coffee cups down a turbulent aisle. Bump. Bump. Her hip jostling against my shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” she’d say. Then she’d turn and see me. “Oh, it’s you.”
“I wondered when you’d notice.”
I drove into the parking lot. I circled through until I found her Chevette. She really was there. All I had to do was wait. But I had the stupid case to deliver. It was quarter to 2. Her class was probably over at 2. I couldn’t get to the Ballona Wetlands and back in fifteen minutes. I could leave her a note if I had a piece of paper and a pencil, a note that would say, I was driving by on my way to an important meeting and saw your car. Hope you had fun at school. See you later. But she didn’t even know my name.
I sat in my mom’s car thinking about it, trying to decide what to do. She might remember me if I drew a picture of the coffee table, or of the birdbath with the plaster angel in my front yard. But again I’d need a piece of paper and a pencil. I must’ve sat for a while, because then I saw her. I saw a whole bunch of young stewardesses-to-be coming out of the building. They were walking together and talking and they were all so pretty, and then there she was. Prettiest of all. I saw those pink pants and that bright white white white top. She made me smile.
I got out of the car. “Hey,” I called to her.
Of course she looked startled. Who wouldn’t? She was not expecting me, her neighbor with the coffee table, her funny-guy neighbor all showered and shaved and standing by her car. She frowned.
“It’s me,” I said, “the guy from across the street.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You comin’ over here or what?”
She took a step toward me, then plucked at her girlfriend’s sleeve and pulled her over too. They stopped a little ways away. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to be a stewardess too.”
“We’re called flight attendants.”
“Lah dee dah. Well, I’m a goods-and-services transport technician.”
“What’s that?” It was the girlfriend who asked. Truth is, I can’t even remember what she looked like, I was so blinded by my girl’s shining radiance.
“I make deliveries.”
They both laughed.
“I was driving by on my way to an appointment-”
“A delivery, you mean.”
“And I saw your car. You wanna go with me?”
“On your delivery?”
It was a stroke of genius, thinking of that. I could see she wanted to. She was intrigued. What did I deliver? And where? I was in a service industry just like hers and we were interested in each other’s work. Sitting at the kitchen table at night, I’d ask her about the funny passengers she helped and if there were any babies on the flight, and she’d ask me about Roger the airport guy, and Marcus, and Kimberly. We’d talk and tell each other stories over dinner.
“Your chariot awaits,” I said to her, and I bowed.
“I’m bringing Chara with me. Okay?”
That was her girlfriend obviously, and I was naturally a little disappointed. “Okay.”
Chara got in the backseat. “Ooeee. What’s in there? It smells.”
“It does not,” I said.
“You’re not sitting right next to it. It’s like Clorox or something. Nasty.” She pushed it away from her.
“It’s fragile, so be careful.”
My girl sat up front. She turned toward me and smiled and her brown eyes were big and happy. They were beautiful eyes with black lashes so long and thick they looked like the bristles in my hairbrush. I wanted to feel them against my cheek; butterfly kisses, my mother called them.
“Where we going?” she asked.
“Ballona Wetlands.”
“What for?” Chara in the backseat was a complainer, I could tell. “I need to get home.”
“Won’t take long,” I said. “I’m just giving that suitcase to someone. My friend’s in the importing business. Stuff from all over the world.” I looked at the clock on the dash. It had been quite awhile since I left Marcus. I knew the guy would be there waiting. I hoped he wouldn’t be too pissed that I was late.