Baked In Seattle

by Shaw Sander

  “Remember ‘Queen For A Day’?” Drake said wistfully, calling up the victimized woman’s biggest dream contest ever. The worst hard luck story won the weeping lucky contestant new home appliances, a stocked freezer, a beauty salon up-do, an ermine cape and a glittery crown to wear on the air.

  “We didn’t watch that show much, except when I was sick and home from school. I do remember The Jetsons. We had cartoons.”

  “I forget sometimes you were raised by leprechauns. You seem so normal.”

  “Thanks, I suppose. Or else you are simply as bent as I am.”

  “Possible. Did everyone on your kibbutz have those midi-length llama inside-out coats with the embroidery all over them? And aviator sunglasses like Gary Puckett? I’ll bet you wore Earth Shoes, didn’t you?”

  “When I lived in the Tenderloin I had glitter platforms. I wanted one of those llama coats really badly until I sat on a bus next to a girl who’d come out of the pouring rain and that coat stunk to high heaven. Like the worst wet dog you can imagine.”

  “The Tenderloin always scared me. I stayed in The Castro, of course. Did you listen to music on AM radio?” Drake asked. “I had 45’s of Smokey Robinson and The Archies.”

  “We had a good stereo in the dining hall and an okay one in Fawn Camp. We had red plastic records of Burl Ives singing ‘Little White Duck’ and ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain.’ My favorite was ‘Puff The Magic Dragon.’ I’d stack them on the record player and watch them drop. The needle would go over and then the next record would drop, remember?”

  “My mother thought that Puff song was about drugs so it wasn’t allowed in our house.”

  “Are you going to eat that radish?” I asked, since I knew Drake loved them.

  “Darling,” Drake immediately leaned in, catching the waitress flying by between us and the line cooks, “Would you be a lamb and get us some more antipasto? Thanks, Precious.” He sat back down in his big chair. “Yes. Now you can have the last radish.” He winked at me. “Have you seen it on menus as anti-pasta? Jesus, that slays me, like the Anti-Christ. Matter and anti-matter. Pasta and anti-pasta.”

  “Last week I saw ‘pouched eggs’ on a breakfast menu. And liver with smother onions. Is your arm feeling okay, Drake?”

  “Weak, a little. My leg is getting stronger in physical therapy or maybe it’s the motivation of the cute PT guy. My PT Gunboat, I call him. Just looking, darling, no worries. Larry and I are solid.

  “Good, good.”

  “How’s Simon?”

  “Dreamy,” I smiled. “A perfect Sunday kind of love.”

  “No ring yet?”

  “What is it with you guys? We may be fated to be together but why the push? Malcolm said the same damn thing.”

  “Christmas is coming.”

  “Fuck you and Malcolm.”

  I put my name on the list to work Christmas Day at FedEx. Officially, we were closed, but at every call center and station there were handsomely-paid personnel still scrambling to attach the badly addressed, label-torn, information-missing, misrouted packages to their rightful recipients.

  We kept a running sheet of incredible address errors. This shit list was comprised of the mangled attempts of shippers, mostly catalog call center operators, to translate the gift buyer’s recipient address information.

  James Jones

  17 South

  Settle WA 98134

  (No phone, no company name)

  South what? From the zip, this was an industrial area with thousands of warehouses. And I loved the city name.

  Ann

  Customer Service

  Washington Mutual

  Seattle WA 98101

  (No phone, no department)

  WAMU had four 35-story buildings, two mailrooms, five locations that did one service only such as commercial real estate, and three different internal tracking systems and gatekeepers through which to go. Ann was never going to see this package.

  The hands down winner was the box addressed, simply,

  Mary

  Seattle WA

  (No zip, no phone, no company name)

  We knew the couriers who had picked these bonehead shipments up had known it was going to end up a miss-sort but they were so time-pressured they had not been able to correct it on their end. The company policy was to ship it on and research it en route or better, on the receiving end, making it someone else’s problem.

  Three or four undeliverable attempts sent things to the cage for customer service scrutiny when anyone had a single moment of time. This was the strong province of those who couldn’t go on road, like injured, pregnant or sick couriers. No one, absolutely no one, ever, for any reason, ever got out of working peak. Your immediate family had to die before you’d be excused. If your grandfather passed away, too bad. Fred Smith had no grandparents and neither, at peak, did we.

  Simon said he’d meet me at my place, and he’d have dinner ready with the home fires burning while I made double-time and a half in the last twelve hour push.

  Christmas Day at FedEx was cake. The phone rang only every five minutes instead of five seconds, the warehouse sat full of silent trucks, and the cage’s pile grew smaller as customers made special trips to pick up their orphaned presents. We didn’t send anyone out on road except in cases of medical emergency, a prescription, say, or a kidney on ice. We made customers come to us, saying, “Well, we’re officially closed, but if you wanted to come get your package, we’ll be here until five…” It was the one day a year we had the power to make them come to us.

  Us couriers were happy peak would be over in a matter of hours and we’d survived another one, spending this relatively easy warm, dry day in the office helping out. The customers were thrilled to be united with their gifts. Everyone was in great cheery form, wearing Santa hats or bell earrings and the happy recipients sometimes brought candy, homemade fudge or cookies. If we were really lucky they’d bring fancy bath salts, flowers or Tully’s gift cards.

  Our backroom favorites were the undeliverable perishables.

  The big food catalog houses always wanted their recipients, especially at Christmas, to have the freshest product possible. A two or three attempt perishable was a wasted gift and with one confirmation phone call to the shipping house, we’d get the answer we wanted: The shipper would re-send a fresh gift the next business day to the corrected address and we were to destroy the original shipment.

  “Destroy shipment!” the agent would yell out immediately after the authorization. She’d enter all the right codes, scanning the package each time a comment was added, covering her ass before we’d rip into the box and argue over the fresh lobster, cream-center Godivas, Omaha steaks, smoked cheese trays, Hawaiian macadamia nut cookies, New Orleans jelly roll, hazelnut Yule logs or Harry and David pears.

  Sometimes it was wine, sometimes flowers. Once it was even tropical fish, fifty green Tiger Barbs that one of the nerdy guys took home to his 100-gallon tank. He thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

  I called Simon from work, finally done with Christmas.

  “I’m not sure what you’re making for dinner, but we broke a case of Pouilly-Fuse so I’m bringing some home. And I have some French candy, too.”

  “Perfect. They’ll go great with the roaring fire and Prime Rib. What’s your ETA?”

  “Eighteen hundred hours.”

  “Roger that. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Despite my irritation at the fellows, I did wonder about Christmas and a potential ring. Things seemed so…foregone. Simon and I agreed easily, effortlessly on nearly everything.

  Our child-rearing philosophies were parallel, though all our kids were grown. We’d been frustrated non-custodial parents who’d placated the other parent while disagreeing with them. We’d done what was theoretically best for the children---not best by being non-custodial, but best by not contesting it and tearing the children apart.

  We liked the house kept at about the same level of clean. Simon knew
how to cook a little bit but appreciated my stronger ability and comfort in the kitchen, leaving that to me while he tinkered with my car or mowed the grass. Both of us had gender-specific skills and they meshed with silken ease.

  Even his anger management style synchronized with mine. I’d explode out what was irritating me and he’d yell back his angle, his point making just as much sense. By the next line of the fight, we each had seen the others’ side and realized some kind of happy conflict resolution. Our disagreement was done long before the adrenalin angry-rush dissolved, happily frustrating my old pattern of circular non-resolution.

  Simon said what he hated about his ex-wife was her haranguing endlessly on one point. Even after Simon had agreed and the fight was over; she always had to see it from 86 more sides, examining the wart over and over until he wanted to throttle her. Realizing I was imprinted with the same affliction, I aggressively un-learned that behavior, stifling the ten other arguments as to why the thing I had already stated was true. He’d already agreed. There was no need to browbeat. I had never known that about myself and was grateful he’d brought it up.

  We wished we’d have met in our teens when I was in the Tenderloin, and wondered how differently things would have turned out. I wished we’d have had children together.

  We spoke of fostering needy children.

  Truth was, we were both too fucking old to start that shit over. We’d pass cute kids and ahhhhh over them, how darling they were, tell a bit about ours when they were that age, get briefly wistful, but moments later express how grateful we were that ours were grown. We could have a few decades of peace and quiet together.

  Simon had my house steamy and warm with pretty little spinach appetizers, baked potatoes and rare red meat.

  “Weren’t nothin’, ma’am,” Simon grinned, pointing at the Trader Joe’s frozen appetizer box in the recycle. “Stick some nails in the potatoes like back in my Marine Corps days, put the appetizers on a cookie sheet….you need new cookie sheets, by the way…and singe the meat in butter like my mama used to.”

  “And my Jewish gramma,” I said, popping a little spinach quiche into my mouth. “My dad’s mother. We visited her once in Philadelphia before my dad split. I ate for three days. Her cubed steaks in butter were my favorite. And black cows.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Root beer and vanilla ice cream. An ice cream float, I guess other people call it. You eat things my dad’s family ate. Are you sure you’re not Jewish? You put salt on your watermelon like my dad did, too.”

  “It brings out the flavor.”

  “And you hate vinegar, like he did. My dad would shudder if he smelled it.”

  “Maybe that’s why I hate Tabasco sauce.”

  “You sure you’re black?”

  I hugged him as he turned the meat over in the sizzling butter.

  “I’m gonna take a shower and wash away peak season. I’m finally fucking done with FedEx nightmare until next year.”

  “Enjoy.”

  My dusty navy uniform was thrown in the basket and I flipped on the bathroom light, ready for my shower. Instead, the bathtub was filled with bubbles and hot water, awaiting me. Grateful for this dream man I’d kinetically imaged from my list of ideal qualities, I sank into the hot tub.

  “Take your time,” Simon hollered from the kitchen. “Everything’s on warm in the oven. I’m going out to get whipped cream at 7-11. Be right back.”

  He filled my eclectic inventory for my perfect man. I had told the Universe everything I wanted, daring to ask this time, refusing to “settle.” The paper had been on my fridge for celibate months, entries in different color ink added sporadically over time:

  Good-looking black man

  Strong

  Built thick

  Long legs

  Tall

  Kind

  Funny

  Good sense of humor

  Peacenik

  Must hate televised sports

  Loves children and tolerates cats

  Has his own career path

  Must have interesting dreams

  Good in bed, nothing flashy, no s/m: emphasis on steady, frequent sex

  Affectionate, must be a hand-holder

  Must have boy skill set, fix cars and repair houses, have his own power tools

  Must love girl skill set and admire it

  Has to want what I want for the future: peaceful co-existence, holding hands through everyday life, rare fighting

  Has to know how to argue with no threat of abandonment underneath

  Must not have the money angst I do and be good with money

  Must know computers and how to fix computer problems

  Has to smell good

  Must like bigger women---no weight issues

  Have decent running car

  Good job with good benefits

  Must want to retire early, build something, create something

  Must have a sense of spiritual quest and connection but not to a Jesus-type God

  Can’t be too emotional, has to be able to “man up”

  Can’t be too hard

  Simon came back, bringing a cool breeze swirling into the bathroom with him, his clothes smelling like the chilly outdoors.

  “Got whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. I wanted sweet potato pie but no one makes it.”

  “You mean like Safeway doesn’t make it? What do you mean by no one?”

  “Yeah, like the store.”

  “I’ll make you one, beautiful man. Sometime. Not today.”

  “My mom makes ‘em the best.”

  “I’ll call her, then. It has to be just like making pumpkin pie.”

  He looked horrified.

  “It’s nothing like pumpkin pie.”

  “Well, I’ll make you one.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “C’mon and get out now and eat my Christmas supper. I have a present for you.”

  My heart flipped over.

  RKelly’s “Marry Me” began screaming inside my head.

  Maybe he would have a ring after all, a tiny jewel box tucked under my napkin, or inside the potholder mitten. He’d light a sparkler and stick it in the pie, the ring wedged between them. On bended knee while he joked about stiff joints and old age, how we weren’t getting any younger, would I please be his next of kin? He’d pull the little box out of his pocket in a flourish at just the right moment like Jerry did for Gitta. Maybe it would be inside a big box to fool me, the huge parcel unwrapped to reveal the small box inside.

  It was a Sony laptop, waiting at my place at the table.

  “Merry Christmas, honey. Now you can write on something more modern than that clunky old typewriter. You can sit in bed and write if you want.”

  “Show me everything!” I smiled, kissing him, amazed that this man would drop a chunk of change for something so personal, so mine. He really did pay attention to what mattered to me.

  I let my little disappointment go, my chest still stinging a little. If he spent this much dough on my shiny new machine with all the boy doo-dads he was eagerly explaining to me, there was no ring possible. Maybe he liked things just the way they were, living a few miles apart, our lives parallel.

  Would that be so bad, anyway? Why did I want a little piece of metal and stone to have visible proof of his feelings and commitment? All those Sunshine years and I still longed to live a Diamonds Are Forever ad. The champagne glass would have a ring at the bottom. After many golden years, he would fly me to Rome to present our anniversary band in a crowded piazza, saying he’d marry me all over again.

  But not this Christmas.

  Simon excitedly turned the machine on, going into technical detail while describing the whiz-bang factors. I never understood boy toys, even though I had been trained across the board in basic life skills. Boy or girl, in Sunshine world everyone learned to change a tire, bake a loaf of bread, chop wood, cuddle a baby. But I’d had no feel for the manlier tools and activities
. They frightened me, frankly, though it wasn’t Sunshine to admit it. I had wanted to have a lot of babies and stay home, loving and being loved. That made complete sense to me, unlike the wow-power Simon was showing me, opening window upon multiple window, numerous programs running, set-ups taking place, passwords being chosen.

  I knew when he went home I’d gingerly, timidly open the laptop, holding my breath, turning it on as if pushing The Button to blow us all to hell. Electronics were the ultimate boy frontier and they scared hell out of me. I understood their capabilities in a vague, general way. I got it that they were the wave of the future and I said good riddance to typewriter ribbons, carbon paper, White-Out, correcting tape, hand editing the same page over and over again. I loved the idea of writing and storing information inside an electronic Etch-A-Sketch, arranging the document, cutting, pasting, editing and printing it out later. It was having to learn how to do all that overwhelmed me.

  “Let me get your present,” I said, extricating myself from the cords and wires.

  Simon was glued to the screen, his glasses reflecting the blue light. He was so goddamn handsome and he didn’t know how lovely he was. He carried himself with dignity and strength but not a shred of conceit. When I’d tell him he was handsome, he’d laugh and say “Yeah, right. Whatchu been smokin’, woman?”

  It made him uneasy. It was charming. I hoped to be able to reassure him of his masculine charms until the day we died. I was fucking crazy about this man.

  In the bedroom closet inside my cowboy boot was the beribboned box I’d gotten on my mid-week route down at Pike Place Market. The little jeweler on 1st had a lovely dyke working behind the glass cases who had pointed out their stunning cufflink collection. The green iridescent shell settings were perfect for Simon’s wardrobe of earth tones and Jerry Garcia ties.

  “Love you, Simon. I’m glad you came along.”

  I kissed the top of his head where his tight curls faded to the promise of a future bald spot.

  He squinted into the screen, concentrating.