Number of Deliveries: 10
Sales: $314.41
Tips: $43
Hours: 3.63
Total Wage: $19.85 per hour
I've been reading Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott's co-authored book, Which Brings Me to You: A Novel in Confessions, and I came across this fitting passage: "I didn't want to be rich. What I wanted was the sense of ease I imagined the rich kids possessed, of being able to relax, not having to try so hard all the time." This has generally been my attitude toward the rich and being wealthy, but I've found myself slipping lately. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the oversized house and attendant staff, nor the gaudy, golden furniture with flower patterns, but every once in a while I'll see a real cool, Spanish-style house with nice, comfortable furniture and beautiful paintings on the wall, and I''ll think, That sure looks like a nice place to relax and read a book. Or I'll wonder what it's like to drive a nice car––say an entry-level BMW––since I've never owned a new car in my life, much less an expensive one. Maybe it's nice to settle into your squeaky, heated, leather seats without having to worry if today's the day your car is finally going to say it's had enough, that 188,000 miles is the limit. And if you're going to make the choice to drive a car, all environmental considerations aside, why not drive a nice one?
When you spend your life wanting to be a writer, it's as if you've taken a monastic vow of poverty. You're supposed to somehow be above the banal yearnings of worldly possessions. I'm always shocked when I enter writer/professors' houses that are really nice; it's something like the disappointment I felt when I found out a certain Zen poet/teacher smokes, drinks, and eats meat. But what is wrong with wanting a few nice things? Nothing, as far as I can tell.
I enter work tonight tired. It finally feels like fall, with fog creeping its way up the valleys from the sea. Darkness has been descending earlier and earlier, and people do dumb things when the weather changes. On two separate occasions tonight, a car stops suddenly in the middle of a busy road, trying to figure out where they are in the fog. I almost slam into both of them. People in San Diego aren't used to fog, and many make the mistake of turning on their brights. I have a premonition that something bad will happen tonight, like maybe I'll die in a fiery car crash.
I arrive at a darkened house in the Crosby, and ring their doorbell. Then I knock before ringing the doorbell again. Nothing stirs within the house. I pull out my cell phone and call them. "Oh, we're not home," the man says. I don't need him to tell me that. He doesn't apologize and say they'll be here in a minute, he says, "Can we pay with a credit card and have you leave it on the porch?" I explain that he'll have to call the manager, give her the number, then she'll have to call me back and okay the whole transaction. "How much is it?" he says.
"I don't know," I say. "I'm on your dark porch, and I can't see anything." We hang up, and I stand around on the porch waiting for the manager to call. It's cold, and the Halloween decorations, especially the realistic, miniature, hanging skeleton, are a bit unsettling. I stare up at the stars, which you can actually see tonight, and forget about the fake images of death surrounding me. I walk out and sit on their steps, and think about how I really want to celebrate El Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) this year instead of Halloween, that it makes much more sense to honor dead relatives than it does to carve pumpkins, gorge on candy, and attend parties where women wear various versions of the the same skimpy costumes––the suggestive nurse; the naughty cop; the unholy Catholic school girl––that aren't scary.
The manager calls and says everything is okay, so I leave the two large pizzas and salad to cool on the dark, stone porch. The man calls while I'm driving out and asks if everything is okay. I tell him his food is on the porch, thank him (not sure why), then quickly hang up.
Other than receiving fewer tips tonight, barely missing a few car bumpers, and wasting time on a dark porch thinking about my dead relatives, my premonition of a fiery death turns out to be wrong. These are the premonitions we can ignore and forget about, keeping our premonition batting averages higher. At the end of the night, I still have the same job, same old car, and the same unheated house. But that's good enough for now.
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