Day 145: October 23, 2009 (flesh-eating zombie cougars, disembodied arms, and the scariest costume of the year: a••hole)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 9

Sales: $337.49

Tips: $44

Hours: 3.18

Total Wage: $21.84 per hour

As I said in my last post, the weather change seems to have gone to people's brains, making them behave in ways they otherwise wouldn't. Or at least I hope they wouldn't. Maybe it's the proximity to Halloween that brings out the freaks. 

A couple nights ago, on my last delivery, I arrived at a home candle shop where the porch was decorated with elaborately carved pumpkins, the most memorable of which was a professionally carved pirate face with a knife sticking out of the front and dripping blood actually carved into the pumpkin. (Side note: in general, people have gotten extremely lazy about pumpkin carving, leaving them blank or allowing their children to draw faces on them. These pumpkins should immediately be smashed in the name of tradition and artistic integrity.) 

Through the windows, I saw a couple of women sitting at the kitchen counter. An attractive woman––in a capable/confident, sure of herself New-age manner––answered the door and invited me inside. More pumpkin carving was going down, so I said, "You guys having a pumpkin carve-off?" as she walked me into the kitchen. There were actually seven or eight full-fledged female cougars (ranging from mature-attractive to scary-aggressive) hanging around, and as we entered, the woman who answered the door said, "Yeah, we're having a pumpkin-off, a drink-off, and a pizza-off," and another woman chimed in, "So why don't you take your clothes off?" Open bottles of hard alcohol sat on the counter near the women carving pumpkins. One pumpkin carver turned around and said, "Yeah, why don't you take your clothes off?" I let out a nervous laugh, and a woman seated at the counter said, "All the delivery guys do it." They laughed. Time slowed down, and I focused on the hostess cougar's forearm, which had a large tattoo of a scorpion. Oh, she's a Scorpio too, I thought, but her marked admission of her astrological sign is more of a warning to future boyfriends and husbands, I'm sure. Feeling like a piece of dangling meat, who would probably make more money if I allowed them to tuck tips into my boxers, I waited for them to reveal that they're really flesh eating zombie cougars. I realize this scene might be some men's fantasy, but I wanted to get paid and leave. It was a bizarre ending to a weird night. 

Tonight, I find myself at the door of a  family that has gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to Halloween decorations. Sure they have the usual pumpkins, spiders and skeletons, but they've added a hay bale, on which sits two disembodied hands, and over the door they've hung a large, orange Happy Halloween! banner, complete with the family name, meaning "mighty" or "powerful" in Arabic. 

When I ring the doorbell, I see through the door windows a large, Indian-looking (Pakistani?) man standing in the foyer. Instead of walking the ten feet to open the door, he nods to his Mexican maid, who is standing stage left, and he points at the door. She comes to the door wearing a maid's apron (not to be confused with a cooking apron), and asks in broken English if she or the woman needs to sign, while the man trails off down the hallway. I tell the woman the credit card holder needs to sign, and she closes the door before walking off stage left. The man enters from stage right, looks at me through the doorway windows, and just stands there, surveying his kingdom. The Mexican maid enters stage left, passes right by the standing man, who apparently doesn't deal with small scale finances of the household, and exits stage right. The man, buying into the meaning of his last name, wanders off stage left. While standing there, I decide to push the "push here" buttons on the disembodied arms. One lurches forward then dies. The other one, which has a referee's torn shirt, doesn't work at all.

The Mexican maid returns with a four dollar tip written on the slip, and asks if it's okay. I step away from the disembodied arms and tell her, yes and thank you. The aloof master's actions remind me that scary household tyrants come in all shapes and sizes, that being a wealthy jerk isn't the exclusive dominion of the lighter skinned people of the world. Maybe a more appropriate translation of the family last name would be Arabic for a**hole.