The Box

I have a box that I have to take into town, and I'm debating on whether to go out and do that today. I'm not feeling very motivated today to do much of anything, let alone drive across town to deliver a box. It took me two hours to get up and get coffee today and three to get dressed, so I don't see how I'm going to magically get any will to get this done, even if there is a reward attached. There IS a reward attached, see.


Lemme give you a little background. I'm not a courier or anything like that, by any stretching of the term you want to attempt. I'm a landscaper, specializing in water features, and I spend ten hours four days a week digging trenches and pits so my clients can have a nice fountain or koi pond in their backyards so they can pretend they are Zen masters. One of these clients -and I should let you know that my clients all run together and I'm horrible with faces, so it's a big deal this guy is notable to me - was a man who I can only describe as mysteriously crooked, or crookedly mysterious. He had yellow -not blonde, but yellow- hair with a jagged streak of storm-cloud gray right down the middle. His right hand had only 3 fingers and a thumb and his left had six but no thumb, and his right leg was a skeletal assembly of PVC and steel that had the look of something he had constructed himself.


Needless to say I wasn't really looking forward to the prospect of engaging in small-talk with this guy, which often happens with some of my clients; they'll pull up a deck chair, fix a glass of lemonade and just watch me, making conversation or comments on my work like I was some sort of interactive manual labor theater. Thankfully he didn't go quite that far, but he did stay outdoors for the entirety of the job, standing in one place, talking to me. For the most part, I kept my eyes to myself, answering his questions with as few syllables as possible, in the hopes that he'd get the hint that I was focused on my work. Unfortunately, he kept at it, asking me how long I had been doing this job, what drew me to it, and if I liked it. To these I answered five years, my father had been a landscaper before me, and that no, I don't particularly, but I'd never done much of anything else and that it pays the bills. Pretty standard stuff, so far


Then he asked me if I'd rather work for him. Exclusively.


To say this caught me off guard was a bit of an understatement. I don't need to reiterate that this guy, by all appearances, was the exiled mayor of Creeptown, and the way the question was asked -in a slightly amused, vaguely accented deadpan that almost sounded like a statement- made me imagine the job he had in mind involved me being half naked and calling him "master." Despite my alarm and indignation, though, I tried to maintain a level head and simply asked him what he meant. "Whatever is necessary, my friend," was his response, in a tone that said, "Yeah, I know you don't like the idea of me calling you a friend, but screw you." Not the kind of answer I was hoping for, and my reaction showed. He simply laughed and said it was nothing like that, knowing that he knew that I knew what "like that" meant. He simply said that from time to time he would have tasks for me to accomplish, and that if I accomplished them to his satisfaction, I would be paid, and quite handsomely too. Knowing that I wouldn't necessarily be a tool for his perverted fantasies (directly, at least) helped, but only as much as an ice cube on your forehead helps on a hot day. Finally, he insisted that the rewards would be handsome, and that the work would not be illegal.


I don't know exactly why that was the clincher. It was still as vague as all hell, and even though landscaping doesn't have me eating steak every night it pays the bills, and I wasn't sure if these sporadic payments, no matter how handsome they be, would. Still, I agreed, and he gave me my first job.


Tomorrow, a box would be dropped at my front door. I would have until the end of the week to take the box into town, and these were the exact words, into town; no more detail than that. If I succeeded I would be paid. If not, the box would be taken from my custody, the job would go to someone else, and I would spend the rest of my life as not only a landscaper, but a landscaper who would go mad with regret and curious introspection. We shook hands on this, I hooked up his fountain, and I left, my old job done and my new one just beginning.


Yesterday, the box came; I found it on my doorstep when I went to get the paper. It was your standard moving box, made of brown cardboard with four interlocking rectangular flaps. The rear left corner had been crumpled in by something, probably jostling, something viscous and sickly-sweet smelling had dribbled down the side, and my name had been scrawled in large block letters on the front. By all accounts it intrigued me, but I had already scheduled two jobs that day, so it would have had to wait.


Cut to today, my day off, when I traditionally rest my aching back doing nothing in particular. I slept in, I ate a breakfast of only coffee and half a bag of fun-sized Twix bars, and I didn't put on normal people clothes until about 2:30. Now it's 2:45 and I'm sitting at the table, staring at the box, hoping that somehow it will come alive and tell me, "Hey jackass! Get up and deliver me already!"


No such luck, but as I sit here staring at it, I can't help but be overwhelmed with curiosity. What's in here that my employer needs "brought into town?" What's so important or sensitive that he can't do it himself and needs to hire a third party to take care of it? He didn't technically say anything about opening it up, and it's not sealed, so it can't hurt. I take a deep breath and then carefully undo the flaps.


I'm staring down into a box full of eggs. Just eggs, it seems; the same size and color of chickens eggs. But then I pick one up and that's where the similarities end, it seems. They aren't cool and slightly bumpy like chicken eggs; they're warm, not like coffee warm or even blanket warm but just slightly uncomfortably lukewarm. On top of that, the texture varies, despite each and every one of them looking the same. One feels slightly textured and smoothish, like leather, while another feels completely smooth and glass-like. Another feels like cloth, and yet another just stung me like a nettle. I pick up one that feels a bit like sandpaper, place it between my thumb and forefinger, and carefully rotate it, giving it the once over. Again, nothing that would make me think these weren't just chicken eggs, other than the aforementioned feel. Then I lose my grip and it tumbles out of my hand.


There's a wet, messy cracking noise, less like an egg cracking and more like the world's largest watermelon dropped from a B-52 onto a stretch of blacktop. The contents still look like an egg; sunshine yellow yolk surrounded by transparent goopy white. The key difference is that I can easily scoop it off the floor without it breaking. It feels a bit like silly putty as I'm scooping, but then suddenly feels like a normal egg as soon as it's resting safely in my hand.


And now I'm hungry. Not necessarily surprising since I've not had any lunch yet, but I'm looking down at this egg and a fried egg sandwich suddenly seems very appetizing. Normally I'd just toss this thing in the trash and count it as a loss, but something is making me crave this thing like nothing else. So, I get out a skillet, turn on the burner, and add a pat of butter to provide some lubrication and nice sizzling flavor. Once it gets hot enough I gently pour the egg in.


As soon as it hits hot metal and grease it releases a thick cloud of black smoke. There's a sizzling noise like someone just napalmed my kitchen to hold back a surge of North Vietnamese, and I can't do anything but choke for about half a minute. I turn on the stove fan and the cloud dissipates as quickly as it plumed. The egg resembles a lump of coal now, and I feel extremely light headed. I decide that the best thing to do is to head to urgent care to see if they can do anything for smoke inhalation. I call up a taxi since I don't feel at all comfortable driving, and it arrives in about three minutes. Before I go, I take a look back at the box, and somehow decide it's the best time to take it. I still don't know where to take it and who to give it to, but I decide, hey, maybe inhaling all that smoke will give me some sort of entheogenic epiphany, so I cradle it under my arm and take it into the cab.


In about five minutes I'm at urgent care. I tell them my situation and they tell me to take a seat, without much emotion. I do as I'm told, with the box set in the chair next to me. A triage nurse who has clearly been here too long calls my name, and I stand up, ready to grab the box and head in to her small office; she stops me in my tracks and rather sharply tells me that she just needs to see me, not the box. I don't feel like protesting, and I could turn around and see it through the window, so I leave it there.


She gives me a battery of tests for about three minutes and determines that there is nothing wrong with me; I don't any signs of major smoke inhalation at all and didn't really feel it anymore. She chides me for wasting their time in the midst of flu season and sends me on my way like a bratty child.


I'm walking back to my chair, thinking of all the colorful language I could use to complain to the receptionist on the quality of the care offered at this facility, when I notice the box is gone. It doesn't even look like it was there in the first place, but in its place a check, signed my employer's signature and with $14,750 in the amount line. The memo line says, "-$250 for damage."


A job well done, I guess. Or sunny side up.

Christopher and his Friend

Christopher was the youngest member of the Bicycling Club. He didn't know quite why he joined the Bicycling Club, as he didn't have any particular interest or passion for cycling, but he figured that it had something to do with his friend, Bannon.


Bannon was a twenty-seven year old electrician from Ohio, and if anyone could be said to have enthusiasm for cycling, it was Bannon. Ever since he had developed the motor skills to pedal a bicycle he was biking everywhere; down the street, up the hall, over to the living room, across the park. For his third birthday he received a little yellow bicycle with two cute training wheels and a horn, and by four-and-a-half he didn't even need those cute little training wheels anymore. He won every cycling race he could enter and he even managed to win a stage in the 1999 Tour De France. Cycling was in his blood, quite literally; routine doping tests he was required to take in order to enter found that one-point-sixth billionths of his blood was made up of the aluminum, paint and rubber he had received via osmosis while handling his bike.


When he met Christopher at a book club (because an interest that they did share was literature) his enthusiasm for cycling spilled forth on him in such a way that Christopher must have felt compelled to join. Whatever the case, the day after Christopher signed the release that made him a junior member, Bannon took him to the cycling shop and bought him a brand new Schwinn, helmet, and matching tangerine jersey and shorts. They spent twenty minutes every day, and then thirty, and then a hour and more progressively riding their bicycles around town, obeying all traffic laws and bestowing their goodwill and generosity on the pedestrians they encountered. Despite Christopher's prior lack of interest, he soon found he was good enough to enter a tri-county bike marathon, so he and Bannon wasted no time in registering, training and preparing mentally for what was sure to be one of their greatest mutual challenges.


The first day of the marathon dawned and the two friends found themselves at the starting line, amidst a sea of brightly colored jerseys and reflective protective helmets. At the starting gun they set off, keeping a steady pace with each other so that they could have regular conversations in a sort of body language shorthand the two of them had developed involving their eyebrows. For the first few hours they were doing quite well for themselves, making good time and keeping their bodies in good working condition despite the high strain that competitive cycling entails, but around the three hour mark they noticed a cyclist with a large number 37 on his back who was using a set of tires that were not quite regulation. Wanting to inform him of his error so he'd not continue to have an unfair advantage over the other cyclist, Christopher pulled up beside him and ask him his name. The offending cyclist said his name was Max and that he was from out of town, and would have gone into further biographical details in the usual small-talky fashion if Bannon hadn't had the bravery to broach the tender subject of his tires.


Max's face, covered in a pepper-colored mustache of a multitude of curls and ripples, was completely illegible, but it seemed this comment sent him into a severe fit of defensiveness, and without another word he switched to a higher gear and whistled past the two friends. Wanting to stop this enigmatic rule-breaker and maintain the sacred integrity of the tri-county bicycle marathon Bannon pursued him, leaving Christopher not much choice but to follow as well. Rather predictably Max strayed from the marathon's route, navigating through a set of barriers onto a side street that was ill-lit and ill cleaned. Bannon and Christopher's tires, being quite regulation and accustomed to more immaculately maintained streets, took a bit of a beating as they rolled across broken glass and old action figures tossed out by irate young boys, but this was only the beginning of their bicycles' tribulations.


Max then led them onto a pedestrian path proceeding parallel through one of their city's prestigious public poplar parks and it was here that he almost lost them; Christopher ran over the toes of a young busker and narrowly avoided becoming involved in a messy altercation with him, ducking the young musician's guitar as he swung it at his head. Unfortunately this musical expression of outrage sparked a minor riot as the crowd of young lovers and revolutionaries who had been placidly listening to the busker decided it was more entertaining to chase after Bannon and Christopher, forming a moving, pulsing gauntlet of angry beatniks who through bottles of water and lanyards at the two friends. This slowed them up for about five minutes and they nearly lost the villainous (at least, in their minds) Max, but thankfully the beatniks found a small detachment of The Man that they decided to protest, saving Christopher and his bicycle buddy from their violent attentions.


At last it seemed they were about to overtake Max and his Machivellian mobile machinations of menace, and would finally be able to force him to cede the race and enter next year with proper tires, but to their great bewilderment and dismay he seemed to have another trick up his sleeve; he took a sharp turn off of the path, rolled down the grassy hill and drove straight into the lake. This completely unexpected tactic of seeming desperation astounded the pair of friends not quite as much as the fact that he remained completely bouyant as he pedaled across the sky-tinted body of fresh water that was home to many a fish and soda can. They were so fixated on this incredible happening that they completely missed the fact that they too had turned off the path, torn down the hill and entered the lake themselves, and they too were not breaking through the water. It seemed the pair of them, and Max before them, were pedaling so very vigorously that their tires, regulation or not, served as paddle wheels and three of them became a trio of seated Samuel Clemens, shimmering droplets of water blasting out in their wake and angry fish caught in whirlpools by the disturbance of their aquatic home.


This adventure across the lake ended almost as soon as it had began, and once Christopher realized he was on black pavement again he also realized that he and Bannon were at the stating line once again, surrounded by the same sea of jerseyed competitors, now seeming to be much dirtier, exhausted and defeated-looking. Max was nowhere in sight, which disappointed Bannon greatly, but he didn't have much time to be, as at that moment the master of ceremonies thunderously cleared his throat and announced that the tri-county bicycle marathon was officially cancelled on account of all of the participants straying from the appointed course and taking various side-streets and shortcuts. Such flagrant disregard for the rules would not be tolerated and thus the marathon, or indeed any cycling competition, would no longer be held in this city.


Towards the end of this announcement Christopher noticed that the master of ceremonies had a curled and ruffled pepper-colored mustache.


Christopher lost interest in cycling shortly after this ordeal, as did Bannon, and the two of them took up Bridge instead, becoming quite good.