She laughed and the sound was refreshing to his ears. “Spy, huh? You, my friend, have been watching too much television,” Crystal said.
“For sure, Get Smart and I Spy,” Corey palmed the phone with one hand and proceeded to talk trash. “What you know about that?”
“How old are you, sixty?” she questioned. “’Cause I’m close to thirty, and I am pretty sure those shows were off by the time I was born.”
“You can find almost anything on television if you stay up late enough and have the right cable provider.”
“Well, the closest I get to spy work is tracking down lost packages. All I do is troubleshoot and follow up on complaints from your fellow drivers. And since I like you, feel free to call me . . . you know, with any future complaints. I’ll try to work it out for ya.”
Corey appreciated that she could be personable yet professional. It was always good to have a friend on the inside.
“You still there, Taylor?” Crystal chirped in with urgency. Transmission was easily lost with the walkie-talkies, but Corey still held on.
“Aren’t you supposed to remind me to keep my hands and mind free from distractions?” Corey said. He spoke of a driver’s number-one rule. They had been on the phone awhile. He didn’t even speak to Pill this long while he was working. Thoughts of Pill reminded him that he hadn’t spoken to her today. He hadn’t had time to call her, and she must be protesting by not calling him.
“Am I distracting you, Taylor?” Her voice was different now, less polished, and more playful. She continued, “Look, it’s at the end of the day. They got me supervising Package Operations and Chain Supply. I’m short of staff now that they have outsourced half my customer reps to Albuquerque somewhere. My guys up front usually don’t leave until the last of my morning runs are in. That means you. Besides, it wouldn’t make any sense to go home just to get an urgent call on my cell that truck eleven made off with Mr. Thomas’s meds and never delivered.”
“So you are filling in for one of those docket desk bullies,” Corey said, laughing as he spoke. He thought of a female version of Mr. Tisdale, the docket bully he was referring to, mustache and all.
“Hey, now, watch it. You talk as if you are one of those snobby drivers that come in and out but don’t bother to even speak. I mean, we are all UPS. It should be all . . .”
There was a pause that let Corey know he had accidently pressed on the talk button while she was speaking, breaking her message in two. Sometimes the person didn’t even know and a whole section of conversation would be lost if the transmission wasn’t cleared completely.
“I’m way down the hall and around the corner from the docket desk in the partitions they call an office.” She continued as if there wasn’t a breach at all. “So if you make nice with my guys up front, they can always check and see if I’m around when you pull the truck in tonight, or, you know, sometime,” she continued.
Corey waited for a disclaimer to her invitation. She knew where he was by GPS tracking, and she made sure he knew exactly where she would be. He liked talking to her, but he was thinking there was no need to meet. He tried to tell himself that she would have been equally as friendly if any other driver had called in. This was one random call on one late run.
Corey pulled in front of Mr. Thomas’s house again and let the truck idle. It was as good a time as any to extinguish what now felt like a very personal call, but he didn’t initiate it. He wondered what else she could find out about him.
“Since you got access to my file, how’s about telling me what’s in mine. I mean, do I have any customer complaints?” Corey said, pretending her overture went over his head.
“Okay,” Crystal said without hesitation as if it were a warm spring day and he’d asked her to play a game of hopscotch. She was game. “Let’s see what comes up.”
There was a pause. “We have a copy of your license.” She punctuated the sentence with, “Cute, very cute.”
He sucked in that ego boost. Then, he got a creepy feeling as if he were asking her to take sides between him and Big Brother. He was allowing her more access to him, and he didn’t know anything about her. Once again he wondered what she might look like. He’d seen women in and out of the docket area. Maybe she was the fair-skinned sister he’d seen this morning, but he could have sworn Crystal’s intonation had a trace of Hispanic heritage. He was intrigued.
“Wait, you were caught doing fifty-five in a residential area in a UPS-issued truck?” Her voice ranked somewhere between judgment and shock.
“What?” he reverberated shock back at her. He had the model driving record.
“I’m just joking, Taylor,” she said, testing his sense of humor. “Corey Taylor. Can I call you Corey?”
“Sure, and maybe I should refer to you as Queen of the Docket Bullies.”
“Cancel that, crazy,” she laughed. “Wow, 5620 East Wingham Street, Wingham Estates, huh? Must be nice.”
Apparently he needed to update his file. The license couldn’t tell her he had moved out on his own to a less envy-oozing neighborhood. Once again, the house that Rico built was impressive to the ladies.
Corey couldn’t chirp in fast enough. When he finally did he had to ask, “Why do women do that?”
“Do what?” she chirped back.
“Zero in on what a brother’s got rather than what he is made of,” he said as if it were obvious from her last comment.
“I’m lost. You asked me to look in your file. You had to know your nose is clean. You have an impeccable record. More than likely that is why they chose you to change routes with Honeywell. I have already hemmed and hawed over your picture. What else was I supposed to look at?”
He felt himself flush with embarrassment as he thought about what she’d said. “My bad, I’m trippin’,” Corey said, realizing she had no way of knowing why his mood shifted so suddenly. He could hear Pill saying, “Why don’t we move into your mom and dad’s house?” Now he was hearing his mother’s voice clearly saying, “Oh, Corey, you are so sensitive.”
“I am not a woman waiting on what a man can give me. There is no greater asset or accomplishment than what I can provide or do for myself.”
Corey nodded his head, like no truer statement had ever been uttered.
“That’s my parents’ address. I’ve since moved to my own spot,” he admitted. “It’s not flashy, but it’s mine.”
“Oh, I feel you. That’s the same way I feel about my place. God bless the child that’s got his own.”
There was a lull. Suddenly holding the talk button became tedious. “Look, I’m at Mr. Thomas’s door. I’m going to try again to see if he is home. If not, I’m going to check and see if a neighbor or some Good Samaritan will take these darn packages and sign for him.” Corey chirped off for what he thought was the last time.
“Go ahead. I’ll hold . . . you know, just in case,” Crystal suggested.
Corey queued the call but didn’t chirp off. He stepped from the cab through the door to the back of the truck. He thought strategy a moment and decided to haul it all to Mr. Thomas’s door in one trip. It was all or nothing. The one box visible from the bed of the truck served as a base as he used his crank key to open the insulated cell. He tested the load with bent knees and estimated it at about forty-five pounds combined.
He carried both packages out his open door, grabbing his signature pad and the walkie-talkie. He liked the fact that she offered to listen in. Like an undercover agent strapped with a wireless microphone, she was his evidence.
He couldn’t believe night had fallen as he approached the sturdy frame house in desperate need of repair. He set the load down at the top of the landing and stepped back to see if he could see any interior lights. The house was completely dark.
Corey picked up the phone, chirped on as if he were about to talk, and decided to knock anyway. There was nothing. Corey listened for footsteps, a house moan, or even a pet. Nothing. He knocked again, more persistently this time, more purposefully and imp
atiently.
Without warning, the door was snatched open by a mean-looking mid-sized man that Corey imagined was much taller until age, osteoporosis, and maybe his own nasty disposition set in. This was the guy that took down Honeywell.
“Mr. Thomas?” Corey asked, getting over his initial shock.
“I may be old, but I’m not deaf,” he replied. “What were you trying to do, break the door down?”
“I got two packages for you, sir. I came around twice before, once at a quarter ’til six and again at six-thirty. I understand this is a regular delivery for you, sir,” Corey explained as if he were a little boy on a paper route trying to collect. “I want to try my best to deliver in a timely fashion each month. If you work with me, we can connect the first time.”
“What can I say? I was in the crapper,” Mr. Thomas offered unapologetically. “Sure as heck can’t signal you from there.”
Corey was at a loss for words. He thought twice before handing him the digital signature pad and decided to extend it and hold while he signed. He had plenty of hand sanitizer in the truck. “Can you sign here, sir?”
With the signature pad in one hand and the walkie-talkie in the other, Corey waited while Mr. Thomas scribbled what looked like a capital T. He picked up the packages and waited for Mr. Thomas to shuffle out of the way before placing them just inside the door for him. Mr. Thomas closed the door in Corey’s face before Corey could suggest the time he’d generally like to close out his run for next month’s delivery. He interpreted that to mean, “Catch me if you can.” Instead of getting mad, Corey smiled as he remembered Crystal on the line still holding.
“Did you hear that?” Corey said, walking back to his truck.
“Barely,” she chirped.
“Trust me, it doesn’t bear repeating.”
“I got to know one thing,” she said. “How does my man look? I’ve tried to make a mental picture from talking to him because he can sure spit fire on the phone.”
“Just call him a geezer,” Corey said.
She laughed like a child on a warm spring day, and he joined in, not knowing when he’d have another opportunity.
“Well, I guess I’ve kept you long enough. Now you can go home assured that I didn’t make off with Ole Man Thomas’s meds. I think I can handle him,” Corey said, covering the distance between the door and his truck in four paces. “So, let’s NOT do this again.”
Choppy laughter was heard as Corey made his way through the side opening of his truck to his seat. He nestled the phone in his lap like a security blanket while he started his truck and released the brake. The phone was set for her to respond.
“I guess you can finally rush home to whatever is waiting on you,” Crystal said. Her question was camouflaging itself as a statement. “I won’t hold you. It was great talking to you, Taylor . . . I mean, Corey.”
“Likewise, Crystal,” Corey said, trying to identify this unfamiliar sensation he was feeling before chirping off. He had forgotten what flirting sounded like. What it felt like to be appreciated. In a fifteen-minute conversation with Crystal he remembered.
Chapter 12
It took close to forty minutes for all the stylists at Epic Beauty to finish up, lock up, and assemble at the restaurant. They pushed together the last two tables in the back of the dimly lit dining room and ordered immediately. Carmen pulled her chair to the head of the table, leaving little room for the waiter to serve. She started in on her decision to sign the salon up for a hair show competition in D.C. for the following month. Her presentation of the particulars was brief and to the point, as if she were on the clock. It was clear to Pill that it was all about branding Epic Beauty and that it had already been decided. Now she needed her stylists on board.
“This isn’t like creating those beehive hairdos with birds’ nests in them, is it? ’Cause I don’t understand where those people are going with their hair rigged up like that,” Mercedes said, frowning in all sincerity.
Pill always found herself at the crossroads between slapping and schooling Mercedes. “Boo, that’s fantasy styling. People don’t go anywhere but up and down the runway like that,” Pill said, choosing the latter approach.
“No,” Carmen said, after taking a sip of a fruity cocktail drink, “Epic Beauty is staying far away from fantasy. That is just one class of hair shows. The Classic Hair Wars prize is awarded to the salon that shows the most creative and technical expertise. It’s all about theme, execution, and exquisite styling. Y’all on board? ’Cause we need to start making travel plans now.”
Candy and Deena seemed to have already set sail. Four Mojitos between them helped. Candy was throwing out themes while Deena was anticipating the afterparties. Pill could not really join in the spirit of the discussion because she didn’t know if she would be going. That would be a decision after a very lengthy, and no doubt boring, discussion with Corey.
Pill was also calculating something else. She looked around the table at the six of them minus Shae and herself. They never seemed to worry about money. They ordered what they wanted and made plans for the hair show weekend as if everything were paid for with personality. She understood Carmen, getting revenue from the shop and alimony, but Candy was a single mother of three, and Mercedes was supporting a livein boyfriend. What was she doing wrong that she was always lacking?
“Half of us should model and half of us should style,” Mercedes threw out. No doubt she felt her five-feet-seven-inch frame would make a perfect model.
“I’ll work on costumes. Oh, you know what? My cousin Pete could design us some T-shirts,” Deena suggested.
Heck no, Pill thought. Styling was her forte. She could see that she had to find a way to get to D.C. just to save the reputation of the salon.
“I’m in as long as we have a vote on everything that’s decided,” Pill said, messing with her bangs that were frozen into an arch with mousse and resting on her hairline.
“Shae, I hope you’re going too because we really need you. This thing runs in conjunction with the African Diaspora weekend. We can bob and weave all we want, but if you’ve noticed, natural hairstyles are the next big thing. It’s where the innovation is as far as creativity.”
Pill felt her friend tense up beside her. She knew where Ms. Militant’s mind was going and grabbed her arm under the table.
“Natural styling is the original aesthetic for black hair and therefore cannot be the next big thing. The brainwash of Western civilization is just wearing off,” Shae said to her captive and slightly stunned audience.
“If I’m going, she’s going.” Pill hunched Shae and whispered to her as a selling point, “It’s in D.C.”
“Yeah, and I might be reppin’ the Walker School,” Shae whispered back. “I can’t take much more of this.”
Pill wondered if she meant the cheese sticks, the company, or working for Carmen. She was the first to leave, discreetly giving Pill ten dollars for her salad that she had the waiter bring out with the second round of drinks and appetizers.
The table was teeming with empty platters. Deena and Candy were drinking to beat the band and had ordered entrees, which were on the way. Pill never drank. Watching her mom gave her plenty of reason not to indulge. She was sampling everything else, waiting on her Cobb salad. When Carmen was ready to leave, she heard someone mention splitting the check evenly. Carmen was fast to whip out a debit card and have the server deduct thirty dollars for her part before departing as well.
Going out with the Brady Bunch was one thing, but helping to feed them was not a budgetary option. Someone was going to pay, and she knew who it was. She would have to start in on the only person that could make a difference in the bill: the waiter. It goes back to the unwritten phenomenon between people she watched growing up. They always seemed to have a falling out with whoever took them down to their last dime, whether it was the grocery store clerk or the friend they’d have to pay back.
Of course she had learned a few restaurant tricks from her momma too. Her and
her sister used to love to help their momma deceive the server when they were younger by yanking a strand of each other’s hair and placing it in their entrée after they had eaten a sizable amount. She watched her mom complain so relentlessly that many of their entrees and sometimes the entire bills were deemed free.
Pill had to trim this bill before the check came, starting with the waiter’s tip. However, she was playing her cards rather late in the game. Usually if she wanted a discount she started collecting evidence from the time she sat down. Pill drained her glass of raspberry tea. As soon as their waiter that had previously introduced himself as Bradley came back, she tore into him.
“It’s about time you checked up on us. I needed a refill like ten minutes ago,” Pill said with a huff, thrusting the glass toward the timid young man before he could serve the meals he’d brought out. Then she murmured under her breath, “Service is so slow.”
Forgive me, Lord, Pill thought.
“I certainly apologize, ma’am. I’ll get that refill right away.” He was taken aback, but cordial enough to serve up a smile, setting enchiladas in front of Deena, a pasta dish in front of Mercedes, and what looked like a New York strip in front of Candy.
“Where’s my salad?” Pill snapped, surprising herself at how loud she could get.
Her sudden shift in attitude rattled the tray Bradley balanced with only her empty glass on it and started a beet red path from the waiter’s cheeks to the rest of his face.“It’s coming out right now, ma’am, with your refill.”
“You know what? Forget it. I don’t want it,” Pill said, canceling the whole thing with a wave of her hand. “I don’t know why it didn’t come out with my friend’s salad anyway.”
Bradley had a questioning look on his face, no doubt recalling that she asked for the salad to be brought out as her meal.
“Pill?” Mercedes tried appealing to her, but Pill was too far in character by now.
“I’ll take a refill, Bradley. Then I’ll be straight,” Deena shouted just as loud, but with a lot less fire. “You and me are cool.”
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