Package - By Joseph Duerst

A short story I wrote a few years ago.

Package

            The sawdust on my fingers became a nuisance quickly.  I had not noticed the brown powder film that clung to my knuckles and palms, nor had I seen the splotches of gunmetal gray lead salt that had collected underneath my nails.  In the light, I could see them clearly and so could the heavy-set girl behind the counter, whose nametag read ANNETTE in bold white plastic font.  As I handed my Discover card to her, my fingertips left gray smears on the dull, scratched, blue plastic surface.  Damn it, why did I use my card?  I tried to take it back and I had already raised my eyebrows, formed my mouth into an O and adjusted my hand’s position so that I could pluck my card from her plump fingers, but the printer had already begun spitting a receipt.

            “Here you go Mr. Collins,” she said as she tore the receipt off and held it out to me.  I took it with my thumb and index finger, pinching the corner of the paper.  Turning, I headed away from the counter.

            The room was much different than I had imagined, except for the aroma of spice and coffee beans.  Rounded wooden tables filled the center of the room and four tall black metal stools with red and white checkered cushions surrounded each table.  On the back wall were shelves, made of the same light skin colored wood as the tables and stretching the length of the room.  They held up a display of different plastic and metal mugs, tall and short, with pouring spouts and lids, blue, gray, red and black, espresso machines, coffee beans, key chains and any other merchandise the manager could have packed on that wall.  All this you could not see if you were looking through the large glass window in the front, from a car across the street.

            The stool cushion was covered in slippery plastic, which had white scratches all over it, probably from customers’ keys and clothes scraping it hundreds of times a day.  I glanced down at my receipt.  It rested between the swirls of the table’s wood pattern.  A gray oval of loops and whorls had stuck to the paper and was easily recognizable from a distance, because of its glaring contrast to the white surface.

            “Caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles.”

I stood, sliding the receipt off the table, pressing it to my side and rubbing it against my sweatshirt.  They had put my coffee in a white cup, so I picked it up with my fingertips around the lip of the cup, where the foamy whipped cream formed a mountain that nearly graced my palm.  Glancing at the receipt, I saw that the print was smudged, but still readable, so I crumpled and balled it with my free hand.  Nearby, a foot-activated, flip-topped steel garbage can stood on the floor, white straw wrappers hanging from its jaws like escaped paper snakes from an April Fools gag.  Pressing the lever, I dropped my balled receipt on top of the mound of garbage, which rose nearly to the top of the can.  I stared at it for a moment and then released the lever, allowing the lip to slam shut.

The Venetian blinds in my living room were closed, but sunlight managed to seep through and cast horizontal bars across the stale pizza from last night, which sat unfinished on my coffee table.  I could not keep the food in the kitchen, where I worked, because the fumes would leave an acidic taste on everything.  My nostrils burned red and I wanted to crack the window, but the steel screen prevented the window from being opened from the inside and I did not want the neighbors to smell the fumes anyway. 

Instead, I would take periodic breaks on the front porch until the headaches subsided.  I would smoke Marlboros to mask the stench of methane and gasoline that seemed to coat everything, including my clothes.  This did not help my appearance though.  My clothes, face and hair were clumped with sawdust and my hands and fingers were streaked with lead.  As neighbors passed they gave odd looks, but this did not worry me because I had seen their oddities too.  What did bother me was I thought I used too much sawdust.  The instructions did not explain whether the sawdust should be tightly packed or loose when measuring.  I had to guess.

I waited at my table, trading glances at my brimming coffee cup with glances at the steel can in the corner.  An old man with a white beard spotted with pastry crumbs stepped on the lever and my balled receipt rolled off the mound as he dropped his napkin.  At that moment, I heard the jingle of the bell that hung over the doorway and my eyes turned to see the newcomer, though I knew who it was.  She wore her charcoal gray business suit, which was made of wool and had padded shoulders.  A solid black leather belt was wrapped tightly around her waist in order to form that wavy curve she flaunted and her black high heels matched her belt and came to a rigid point at the bottom.  Her bright red lipstick matched her red blouse that showed through the top of her suit jacket.  As she walked to the counter, her heels tapped the floor and her straight auburn hair swung at her shoulder blades.  Her wide hips weaved from side to side like a boxer and her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and powdered to hide this.  She looked like something I imagined female Nazis would aspire to be.

            I watched her as she tossed her hair back and smacked her gigantic lips at Annette.  “I’ll have a grande caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles, and a blueberry muffin.”  This was Margo, not Margaret, not Maggie, Margo.

            She paid for her order and took two steps towards the overflowing trashcan and my eyes sunk to my paper ball as she nearly kicked it.  Her right toe turned 180 degrees and her other followed.

            “Jake Collins,” I heard her voice crack as I looked up and found her hazel eyes trained on me.  She held her blueberry muffin in her left hand and had already picked a bite-sized bit from it with her long red fingernails.  Her heels tapped over to my table.  We said our hellos and our how you beens.  I could not take my eyes off that ball of paper.  “Golly, it must be five years since I’ve seen you,” she said.

            “Six,” I said and folded my hands in my lap, out of her view.

            “Still doing maintenance?”  She asked it with that tone, as if she cared, but I knew she did not.  “My husband William, oh did I tell you I got married?  He owns the firm I work for and he’s been looking for a maintenance man, someone to take out the trash.  Well, you wouldn’t be interested would you?”

            “I’ve got my house and my job as a surveyor.  It’s a technical job,” I lied.

            Her eyes surveyed me from head to toe and she said, “Well it looks like you’re doing well for yourself.”  The corner of her mouth snaked up her cheek and formed a smirk.  I hated her.

            “Caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles,” the man said as he slid Margo’s coffee across the counter.  She grabbed it then turned back to me.

            “You’ve got dirt on your hands,” she said as she clicked her heels on the tile floor and sipped her mocha with her smug lips. 

            “See you in another six years,” I replied angrily, but long after the bell had jingled and the breeze from outside had passed. 

She was on her way to work at Getty’s office.  She did not even have to say it, I knew.  Every day she came to the same cafe in her red BMW Z3 convertible and bought a caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles.  Then she went to work in a large glass building with the prestigious sign that stated GETTY & PARSONS, P.C.  At around 12:03, she would emerge from through the swinging doors with a young blonde and they would go to lunch at any of a dozen restaurants downtown.  From one to five she would be inside the building again and then she would drive to North Churchill where she lived at 1402 Washington Lane, in a white, three story house with white pillars.  The mailbox was located at the front entrance of the neighborhood, where a video camera and kept constant observation.  It was a key locked box and measured four inches high by four inches wide by about eight inches long.  No packages were ever delivered to the box, because those were brought to the door. 

For an upscale coffee house, the bathroom was substandard.  One toilet, which was backed up and held a pool of yellow.  One sink, which featured a dirt-speckled bar of soap that sat in a cold, foamy, primordial soup of bacteria.  I used the bar of soap to scrub my hands rapidly.  Drops of black water fell from my fingertips as I foamed them up and massaged the soap under my nails.  I scrubbed and scrubbed harder, until my skin was white and my joints were sore.

            Bill Getty was an asshole; a gray haired lawyer who wore a black leather jacket over his white office shirt and black tie, as if he were some kind of biker businessman.  He wore sunglasses to improve this persona and slacks to satisfy the business part.  His cell phone was clipped at his waist, with a cord that ran up to his ear, so he was always connected.  Each day for Bill was similar to Margo’s, except he drove a Lexus to work and always stopped off for breakfast at a four-star restaurant called Marcello’s downtown.  For lunch, he would meet with clients at various restaurants and then after work he would head for his twelve year old son’s baseball games.  Afterwards, he would return home and would always make sure to pick up the mail.

            The blueprints I found on the internet called for sawdust mixed with stainless steel ball bearings, which were difficult to find.  Besides that, I chose a more fitting packing agent and spent the latter part of the evening sifting through my can of rusty nails.  Tetanus can be fatal if it is not treated quickly.  As I poured the orange juice concentrate in with the gasoline and brought it to a boil, I thought of what the newspapers might say the next day.  Words like police baffled and genius came to mind.  Nobody had ever attempted to combine two constructions in one and it took some creativity to combine the blueprints I had researched.  I chose a glass jar in lieu of the recommended plastic jug and decided to use an electrical firing mechanism instead of a chemical one.  This was going to be great.  The thought of it sent a chill up my spine, despite the warmth of the boiling mixture I stood over.  I had to light a cigarette to warm myself up.

            Emerging from the bathroom, I bent over, grabbed my balled up receipt, and shoved it in my pocket.  Next, I grabbed my paper cup, which was covered in gray splotches and carried them outside.  I poured the cold grande caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles into the rain gully and pulled out my silver Zippo.  Holding the flame to the cup, the remnants of coffee sizzled and the paper caught fire.  Unfolding the ball of paper, I tossed that into the cup and set it on the sidewalk.  Why did I use a credit card?  It was a repeated and self-destructive impulse, started by that she-devil Margo.  She always said that credit was a man’s way of showing his worthiness.  From now on I will use cash, I thought.  I will always have cash on me and I will make sure to buy each ingredient at separate stores and on separate days.  I vowed this to myself as I watched the cup burn.

            Getty never realized how vulnerable he was, especially on that thirty-foot walk from his car to the elevator in his office’s parking garage.  The video cameras do not cover that area and if someone were hiding there for Getty with a shiny new Black & Decker hammer, they would not catch him.  I stood in the shadows where a steel column blocked the light next to the elevator.  When Getty pressed the UP button, I stepped into the light, the hammer behind my back.  He stared at me through his shades. 

            “Bill Getty,” I said.

            “Yes?”  He raised his eyebrows and I could tell he was scanning me up and down.  “Who are you?” 

I prepared to strike, but as I fingered the sweaty handle of the hammer, I felt a sticky bit of paper rise up from the rubber: the barcode.  I remembered I had used my Discover card at the hardware store.  Mentally, I cursed myself.  They can trace that back.  In my moment of epiphany, I hesitated.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are,” Getty said as the elevator doors slid open.  He pressed the button for his floor and stared back at me.  I stood frozen, my right arm cocked behind my back, holding the hammer and I had nothing to say.  The doors began to close.

“I had her first!”  The doors closed and Getty was gone.

            For the final touches, I wrapped my package in red Christmas paper with little green reindeer on it and tied a blue bow around it.  If a package is wrapped, people do not open it right away.  They wait until they are in their home and can show their whole family the gift.  On the card, I wrote Getty and Family in as generic handwriting as possible.  I smiled as I admired my creation.  Pulling out a cigarette, I imagined the look on Getty’s face as he opened the miniature oak chest I bought at Ross for two dollars, charged to my Discover card.  I hoped that Margo would be sitting right next to him as he creaked the lid open.  That bastard doesn’t even know who I am.  He had asked for what was coming to him.  Bill Getty was going to get his.

            Lock picking was something my old friend from high school taught me and I had become an expert in the craft.  It only took me thirty seconds to pick the lock on old Bill Getty’s mailbox.  I wore a long, black, hooded robe, so the cameras could not identify me.  Swinging the four by four inch metal door open, I peered into the mailbox.  There were several letters.  I had not counted on this.  Pulling the package from my robe, I aligned its rectangular shape to the box’s frame.  A perfect fit it seemed, like a child’s blocks fit in that specific hole.  This package was made for this mailbox.  I pushed the package slowly.  The sharp metal edges of the box caught the wrapping paper and tore the heads off the reindeer.  I pulled back quickly and examined the damage.  The paper was ruined, damn it.  Tearing off all the wrapping paper and discarding it on the ground, I held the bare wooden box to the slot and pushed.  This time the metal dug into the wood, tearing the first layer of skin from each side of the box.  The light brown skin curled up around the edge of the metal mailbox, like coiled pencil shavings.  I pushed harder and the metal edges dug in deeper.  It did not fit.  I must have measured the mailbox incorrectly.

Disappointedly, I stared at the wooden box, which was now lodged halfway inside the mailbox.  What now?  For a moment, I did not move.  I could not move.  Then, sadly and slowly, I tugged the box from the mailbox and examined it.  Deep grooves had been plowed into the surface of my package.  It was not perfect anymore.  My eyes burned and my nose stung as if I were still standing over that boiling pot in my kitchen.  I turned and hurled the package as far as I could.  The package clunked on the pavement a few feet away and I heard the glass jar break.  It lay there on the side of the road, its contents leaking into the storm drain nearby.  I hunched my shoulders over, tucked my arms into the robe’s pockets and set off into the darkness.  On my way home, I passed Margo’s car, which was parked in the driveway of her mansion.  My fingers still covered in sawdust, I wrote her a message on her shiny windshield.  I do not have to tell you what I wrote.  Bitch.