Postal Problems [FICTION]

“Three weeks late. These gifts are three weeks late.” That mantra races through my head over and over as I make my way through the post office parking lot with my oversized box.

I stop short as I find two tall men blocking my path.

 

I finally look up, “Excuse me. I just need to get inside…”

“We can’t do that ma’am,” the taller of the pair says, flashing me a badge.

“We need your help,” his shorter companion flashes me another golden badge.

The taller man takes over, “We are in the middle of an important sting operation. We can’t really tell you what is going on, but you have a nice honest face.”

“And obviously you can’t be a member of law enforcement,” his shorter counterpart adds as he  gives my rumpled clothes and scraggly hair a disapproving look.

“We just need you to go inside and make sure you are helped by a man named Burt. Tell him, ‘My stamps are looking a bit square these days, if you know what I mean.’”

“What?” I ask.

“Tell him. ‘My stamps are looking a bit square these days, if you know what I mean.’” He repeats.

“That’s ridiculous.” I shake my head. “I don’t think I can help you.”

“Please.” Shorty grips my hand insistently in his.

“Just repeat the words back, so we know you have them right.” Stretch glares down at me.

“Um. ‘My stamps are looking a bit square these days, if you know what I mean.’” I repeat in my most insolent voice.

“Don’t worry. We will be watching the whole time. You have nothing to worry about.” Stretch reassures me.

Shorty takes my package out of my hands..

“Hey. I need to mail that.”

“I’ll mail it for you, next day air.”

“Hmm. Sounds good.” I feel some of the anxiety I felt over mailing my best friend’s birthday gift three weeks late easing off my shoulders.

It is quickly replaced by different concerns as I step inside the building. No one pays any attention to me. Some of them seem to be shuffling huge piles of cards. Others are carefully selecting stamps from a kiosk. I join the line behind two other patient postal customers. Two people are working the counter. Since one is a woman, I assume the man is Burt. Luckily, I am next in line when he announces his window opens. I step forward.

“How can I help you?” His deep voice resonates through the room.

I lean in, take a deep breath and whisper the magic phrase. He glances around the room. After carefully looking at everyone but me, he scrutinizes me with dark eyes.

“I think I can help you with that.” He smiles as he makes one more glance around the room.

His suspicion causes my eyes to wander around the room as well. I don’t see anyone familiar. Neither of my new friends has made an appearance. I offer a smile that I hope doesn’t show the concern that rises as I wonder how they can keep me safe without me seeing any sign of them. Something about my sudden discomfort, decides him. His shoulders soften a little. He looks over my shoulder, out the door for a moment, and then he leans to his left, reaching into a drawer. Whatever he pulled out was so small, I couldn’t see it until he slipped it across the counter to me.

“This should help round out your stamps,” he smiles at me as he raises his hand, revealing four little white pills in a tiny bag. “Your postage is going to cost you two grand today.”

I balk. I wasn’t prepared to be asked for money, especially not that much. 

“Oh…I…uh…”

His smile fades and the packet disappears faster than it appeared. “If you can’t pay, your postage stays square.”

I stand staring at him, unsure what I am supposed to do. He frowns at me, all hints of friendliness washed away.

“Move on.” He looks back toward the line, waving the next customer forward. “She’s done. Come on up.”

I turn to see a familiar box approaching in the hands of an unfamiliar woman. She offers me a warm smile as she brushes against me. I feel the heavy weight of a gun on her hip. She nods her head as my eyes widen and tilts her head as if to adjust the way her hair falls across her cheek, but I read more in the action and step up the pace on my way to the door.

I am still struggling to maintain the happy medium between getting out of there in a hurry and not looking suspicious when a hand grabs my arm. Though the fingers lock around my arm gently, I still have to stifle a scream.

“Calm down. Calm down,” Shorty reaches out to place his free hand on my other elbow and guide me away from the door and past the window.

“Agent Jens has this covered. I just wanted to make sure you are okay,” he reaches into my pocket and pulls out a tiny piece of tech. “And get this back.”

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“You already know more than we would like you to.” He smiles at me. “Thank you so much. You were very brave.”

“Was I?” I ask, still out of sorts.

“Yes. We heard everything with this.” He holds up the piece of tech again. “Glad I was able to slip this into your pocket.” He slides it into his own pocket and tilts his head to listen to the soft buzz in his ear.

He steps past me toward the door, one hand straying to the gun under his jacket. The buzzing starts up again. Shorty finally releases my arm as the noise tapers off. He steps toward the door. I find myself watching him and wondering if I have been released from service now.

“There you are.” Stretch looms over me out of nowhere.

I jump.

“Sorry.” His severe expression doesn’t back up his words. “We need your info, so we can contact you. If you are needed in court.”

As he pulls out a pad of paper and prepares to take notes, a commotion draws all eyes to the door. Burt comes through the door with Agent Jens clearly dictating his movements. She keeps a firm grip on his handcuffed wrists, forcing him in the direction of her choosing though he tries to resist and stop multiple times as they stand inside the automatic doors.

“I’m innocent. She planted that stuff on me.”

Agent Jens doesn’t bother to respond to his accusation. She guides him toward an unmarked car at the curb. He never looks toward me. I am not sure if she planned that, but it reassures me. I don’t want him remembering me. I take a couple of tiny steps to stand behind Stretch who has stepped forward in case his help is needed.

Shorty steps forward to talk to Jens. I can’t catch a word of their brief exchange, but she hands him what looks like a receipt. He comes back over to us.

“Thanks for the help. Here is your receipt in case you need to track your package.” He hands me the paper.

Stretch takes my information and I am free to go. Next year, I am mailing my best friend’s gift early. It should be a lot less dramatic.

(One of my best friends does have a May birthday. And now you are wondering, so did she really not mail it yet? I sent her Christmas presents a couple of weeks ago. Close enough to birthday presents, right? Nothing this exciting happened though.)

Moving On? Moving Forward?

This is the third segment of a longer story that I am working on. Feel free to read the first two entries: Entry 1 and Entry 2!

Crystal grinned as she leaned toward me, resting her elbows on her thighs. “Don’t get me wrong, Sarabeth. You’ve been a big help to me, but I like my privacy.”

She paused to gesture at the boxes piled between our desks. “Sometimes, I really need the extra space.”

“So how do you propose I get moved out of here?”

“I don’t understand why you’d want to work upstairs with the rats, but…” She pursed her lips 

impatiently before continuing. “If we work together, we can get someone else to quit and you can move up to push a lever for pellets.”

“Just like the Jeffersons.” I mumbled under my breath.

Crystal snorted derisively. “Not exactly.”

I cleared my throat nervously. “So how do we get someone to quit? Ask them?”

“I doubt it would be that easy unless you had a lead on a better job for them.” One of her eyebrows lifted quizzically as a half smile crept across the right side of her face.

When I looked at her blankly, she added. “Of course, you’d be smart enough to take that opportunity yourself.”

“So what do you propose I do?”

“I saw this in a movie once, so it might not work as well as we hope, but…”

“Yes.” I prompted.

“You just have to put something that smells atrocious where someone won’t find it and wait for it to scare them away.”

“But then I will have to deal with the smell.”

Crystal shook her head, flashing me a condescending smile. “You’d know where to clean when it becomes your cube.”

I shook my head slowly. The simplicity of her plan made it perfect. However, putting it into place couldn’t be as easy as it sounded. I mulled this over as Crystal turned back to her desk. She pulled a fruit snack out of the bag on her desk, placing it on her tongue as she waited for me to speak.

“Well,” she frowned at my silence.

“How do we get someone out their cubicle long enough to plant the ‘air freshener’?”

“That’ll be my gift to you, and this…” She turned around to open her desk drawer.

An evil grin stretched across her face as she held out a foil packer of tuna.

“Thank you.” I took her offering tentatively.

“Let’s get this started?” Her chair creaked as she stood up and walked out the door.

I followed with a feeling of dread slowly closing in on me.

Moving On? Moving Up?

This continues last week's entry. I just couldn't help myself. Enjoy and keep commenting.

Another morning found me imitating a gymnast in order to get into my chair at work. So many packages remained from the previous day that they were piled tight against my small section of the mailroom. In inched the chair out just far enough for me to throw one leg the seat. Then I squeezed the chair tight between my thighs as I slowly scooted forward until I could maneuver my lower half under the desk. Even then, I almost needed to hold my breath to keep from pushing my chair back into the boxes every time I filled my lungs with air.

I drummed my fingers on the metal surface of the desk, reflecting on my current situation. Despite the new construction of the building, my curtain desk had migrated from our old office. The company ran out of money before they furnished this windowless room. Thus I balanced my work precariously on an antique, which I felt certain had barely missed being melted down to make bullets in the first world war. I reached for a heavy pile of loose pages as the door banged open.

I didn’t turn around. I could tell by the soft murmur of disgruntled whispering that the queen of the mailroom had arrived. I knew from experience, that she didn’t enjoy casual conversation. If someone didn’t have something concise and important to say, they shouldn’t waste her time. She ignored or offered harsh criticism to anyone who tried to do so. She barked orders at people on the other end of the line, expecting them to obey immediately without any further explanation from her. When people came to claim their packages, they peered around the door timidly to before entering. She had trained them so well that they usually addressed their questions to me. She never seemed to mind.

This morning, her first words to me solidified my ability to answer those questions. “All of these boxes are for Joe in accounting. Make sure he gets them all out of here at once… And soon”

“Yes, Crystal.” My eyes remained glued to the top page though my arm froze in midair.

I could feel her beady eyes assessing me from deeply embedded sockets, but I refused to turn toward her. A few seconds passed before she sank heavily into her chair. I could hear the casters squeal in protest as she settled in for another long day. If she had a good day, she would remain seated for the majority of her eight hour shift. Rhythmic crunching followed the crinkle of plastic. I turned now, unable to help myself.

She divided her attention between her first snack of the day and her email. In the small room we shared, she looked larger than life. Standing almost six feet tall when standing, she had shoulders one rarely sees outside of a football field.  Before the move, I had never met her, so I hadn’t understood why anyone could be afraid of her. Now I knew that fear, though I could tell she didn’t try to cause fear. She just used it to her advantage. Of all my coworkers, she was the only one who never got bullied into doing something she didn’t want to do, even if it was in her job description.

I pondered how I could learn from her example as I turned back to my work. About a hundred items into my daily workload, the sound of a phone ringing jolted me out of my groove. I reached for my phone reflexively before realizing the ringing came from behind me.

Crystal inhaled sharply before addressing the phone in surprisingly soft tones. “This is Crystal. How may I help you?”

I paused, listening shamelessly.

“Of course, Mr. Harrison, I can bring those up to you as soon as they arrive.”

I nodded my head knowingly. Mr. Harrison treated every one well, so we all catered to his every whim. I bent my head back over my work, half listening as Crystal carried on what was a lengthy conversation. When she finally hung up the phone, I was already immersed in my work.

“Sarabeth?” By the time I realized she was talking to me, Crystal must have said my name a few times. Irritation colored her voice.

“Sorry. Yes.” I leaped up from my desk, slamming my knees into the drawer and almost toppling the wall of boxes behind me.

She observed me speculatively as I bent over to rub my knees. “Do you want to help me with something?”

“What’s that?” My heart sank into my stomach.

“Well, it might just help you get a real desk.” Her words hooked me. I leaned in to hear more.

With a gleam in her eye, she detailed her plan…