Position: Driver
Soundtrack: Mahalia Jackson Gospels, Spirituals, & Hymns
Total Sales: $423.32
Number of Deliveries: 11
Tips: $71
Hours: 4.48
Total Wage: $23.85 per hour
I'm a big fan of creating personal experiments. One time, in preparation to walk across California and wanting to see how little I could survive on, I went four days eating as few calories as possible. By day four, I was down to about 700 calories per day, felt light headed at work, and bordered on hallucinations. In the same vein, I'm trying to only listen to "positive" music while feeding the rich in order to see if it will improve my outlook on life and my mission. There's something soothing yet defeatist about listening to gospel music that transcends this world's suffering, because it removes blame from those causing the suffering; it leaves the spoils of this world to those who are ambitious and secular enough to take them. But, in contrast, Mahalia Jackson's voice just makes me smile: "I sing because my soul is happy. I sing because my soul is free."
Tonight, I also keep track of the miles I drive my own car, 86, and the amount I'm paid in gas commission for driving my own car: $14.88. The 1997 Volvo 960 I bought off my co-worker for $2,000 is not the most fuel efficient car, so the 4.70 gallons of gas $14.88 buys me probably barely covers the price to drive 86 miles.
My first delivery tonight is in the Palacio del Mar complex. These are some of the less expensive town homes south of the Pizzeria, even though the price of the home I'm delivering to is listed at $825,000. In relatively poor neighborhoods such as this, the ethnic diversity is much greater.
The ticket says to "deliver to the small pool." I ask the gate guard where the small pool is located in the complex, and he busts out a map. I drive 5 mph over the 15 mph posted speed limit, enjoying the few blossoming Jacarandas along the path. I reach the small pool and see a dad standing on the pool deck cheering on kids swimming. I hold the pizza bag up at the gate and ask if they ordered pizza. He looks at his wife, who shakes her head, then at the kids, before saying, "No." The gospel music I've been listening to can't keep me from the internal combustion of my thoughts, I hate this shit. I hate delivering to pools, or parks, or beaches for this reason. I get back in my car and start driving toward the other pool in the complex while dialing the customer's number. A woman answers. "Where are you?" I say in a stern voice. "I was just at the small pool and you're not there."
The lady stammers, then says, "Well, they told me it would be an hour."
"That's a guesstimation, mam. Should I just come to the house?"
She pauses, says something to someone in the background, then returns. "My sister should be on her way there. She drives a white minivan."
I turn my car around and head back to the pool, where I see the white van pulling up. I put on my best smiley face while I hand over the pizzas and wait for the sister to sign. She gives me a $10 cash tip, and my smile becomes genuine. I'm such a sell-out, like a child who will stop crying for a lollipop.
At around 6:00 p.m., I get a delivery to the Cielo development, which sits in the hills of the northeast corner of our delivery range. It's just over four miles to the gate, but the house I'm delivering to is another 3.5 miles up a winding road. I twist and turn and push my aging car up the hill, one eye posted on the engine's temperature gage. When I reach the top, the 360 degree views of the coast and outlying areas are incredible. I even see a massive dam I didn't know existed out here. I can understand why the wealthy built their houses way up here, even if I think this development and the Crosby never should have been built based on environmental grounds. I've never read an "environmental impact report," which must be filed before any development is built, but they must read like great fictional novels, because I've also never seen a development stopped by one. After my long drive, the man of the house, who has an accent (there seems to be a disproportionate number of residents in Rancho Santa Fe who are foreign born––"papers, please"), gives me a tip that's less than 10%, and I'm less than thrilled. Damn Europeans.
Here's an interesting note on a delivery to the Del Sur Development: "Make sure you know where to go . . . she said ppl get lost and doesn't like it." I think, She doesn't like it, or the delivery driver doesn't like it? This is a new development, shaped like three-quarters of a boomerang, which can be confusing to a first time driver to the area. Many of the homes don't even show up in the right spot on our Thomas Brother's internet map. I'm tempted to call the woman and tell her I'm lost to mess with her, but I drive straight to the house without incident.
Around 7:30 p.m., I get another note on a delivery: "Call when you get to the house gate because the house gate is broken." The nonsensical thing about this note is that the address is located in Fairbanks Ranch, which means they have a house within the guard gate I must pass to enter the development. Are wealthy people that paranoid about their possessions that they imprison themselves behind gates within gates, or does it make them feel more important and heaven-like ("the twelve pearly gates" of Revelation)? Someone needs to perform a psychological study on the mind-set of "gating" oneself.
I get lost trying to find the house with the broken gate, because one of the phone girls put the address as Calle Sorrento, and I merely glanced at the map before I left the Pizzeria. I turn a couple circles and try to call the house––they don't answer; what if I'm at the gate already?––before I decide the street must be Calle Serena, not Calle Sorrento. When I arrive at the gate, St. Peter is nowhere to be found, and I'm assuming I'll be cast into more delivery hell. A kind man answers the phone this time and says they just moved in and don't know how to open the gate from inside. He gives me the code, which must kill him, and I now have unlimited access to his driveway anytime I want it. Sucker.
One of my last deliveries is to the Crosby Development. I ask the gate guard if I turn left or right when I reach Top O the Morning. He has an accent, possibly Yugoslavian, and he says, "I don't know. I never drive in. I think maybe left, because there are more houses that way. I don't want to misguide you." I'll figure it out. I get to the door and can see a couple watching TV right in the middle of the house, which seems to break some unwritten code of the super wealthy, whose homes usually have a antechamber-like space, complete with an elaborately carved, round table covered with a small tapestry and topiary or sculpture, for greeting visitors. The couple don't move. Out of the darkness of the hallway, three freshman-aged, high school, goth girls with their faces painted white with black eye-sockets––like ghouls––and their hair covering their faces, approach the door in a slow march that makes it feel like Halloween or the Michael Jackson Thriller video.
They open the door without saying a word, and I let out a nervous giggle. Two of the goths circle me, while the one in the center slides a twenty and a ten onto the pizza box. When I grab the money––this is part where I'm not sure if I'm hallucinating––and the girl goes to pull the pizza out of my hand, one of the other two girls bites me in the back of the right shoulder before they all scream and run inside, flipping the pizza box sideways. They disappear back into the darkness, and I look up to see the dad sitting on top of the couch in his white robe, enjoying the show. I assume they don't want change, nor do I feel they deserve it, after treating me like I'm some form of entertainment to be played with as they please, as if I'm Richard Pryor in The Toy.
But, again, the $9.87 tip on $20.13 order does more to assuage my bad temper than anything Mahalia's singing to me tonight. I shut the front door and feel something like the black elevator operator in Richard Wright's Black Boy, who allows white people to kick him in the ass for a quarter. When Wright asks him how he can do this, Shorty replies, " I needed a quarter and I got it." When Wright says, "But a quarter can't pay you for what he did to you, " Shorty replies, "Listen, nigger, my ass is tough and quarters is scarce."
I end the night on a delivery to Santa Luz, where I stare out toward the ocean and enjoy the near-full moon illuminating the cumulus clouds and surrounding hills. It's a perfect 64 degrees outside and silent. I get out my camera and attempt to record the moment, but the automatic settings don't capture what I see.
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