“Have a nice day,” he said.
I heard his footsteps recede, and I was alone again.
18
Later, I stood up, splashed some water on my face, and walked out into the empty station. An oscillating fan on a stand had been left on, and it nodded back and forth, as if speaking to someone it was unaware had left the room. When I stepped outside, my car was still sitting exactly where I’d left it, the radio on and the engine running. It was the only car in the lot.
19
The next time I talked to my daughter on the phone, she informed me that
“You don’t sound good,” my wife told me.
“I’m just tired,” I said. “I’ve been working a lot.”
“Other than the newspapers?”
“No, the newspapers are every night. It’s not easy.”
“How long are you going to do that?”
“As long as I have to.”
I heard her sigh, and could picture her expression, the way she pursed her lips when she was frustrated. “Why haven’t you ever, even once, asked about coming up to visit us?”
My jaw tightened. I could feel the blood pounding in my head. “Are you trying to get me to?”
“Don’t start that,” she said.
“We own a house here. This is where I live.”
“I don’t even know why you’re saying that. What does that mean?”
“It means I have to work to pay bills, to pay the fucking mortgage.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“So you don’t know what I mean, and I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m going to say goodbye now,” she said. “Don’t call me again tonight.”
20
I was still rehashing that conversation when I got to the distribution station later and found a rubber-banded stack of white envelopes on my table. I asked what they were, and the woman in the purple sweatsuit said, “It’s bill night. They should be in the order of your route. You just keep them next to you and slip them in right when you’re about to throw the paper.”
“That’ll take forever,” I said. “They’re ruining our night so they can save the price of a stamp?”
“They’re penny-pinchers,” the Deadhead said. “They don’t give a rat’s ass about us.”
“You know what?!” Carl yelled down from the loft. “I’ve had enough of listening to all of you bitch and moan. If you don’t want to deliver the papers tonight, with the goddamn bills in them the way they need to be and the way it’s your job to do, then you can just walk out the door right now. And you won’t ever have to come back, because I’ll replace you tomorrow with someone who’ll just shut up and do the work.”
Nobody said anything. It was the second time that day I’d felt like a schoolboy being scolded, and it disgusted me that I could still be made to feel that way. I bagged my papers as fast as I could, and left without saying a word.
21
I tried to sort through the bills and shove them into the papers while I drove between addresses, but it was almost impossible to mess with the papers while driving. I hated the fact that my route was taking so long, and I replayed both the phone conversation with my wife, and Carl’s challenge, over and over in my head, savoring my anger. When I reached the boy’s house, rolled to a stop, and looked through the screen door to see a woman holding him in one arm while she smoked a cigarette with her free hand, I slammed the car into park and got out. The gravel ground beneath my shoes as I walked up the drive, but the woman turned and walked deeper into the house as if she heard nothing. When I reached the door and knocked on the wooden frame, two men sitting on the couch inside-they might have been brothers-looked over in surprise. The one closest to me, who had a dark mustache and a thin strip of beard that followed his jawline, stood and came to the door. He wore a plain gray T- shirt and blue jeans that were turned up at the ankle above his bare feet, and as he came closer I could see that his hair hung to his shoulders in the back. “Can I help you?” he said through the screen.
“I’ve got a bill here,” I replied, “for your newspaper.” He opened the door and I handed him the envelope.
“Who is he?” the man on the couch said.
“It’s the newspaper boy, delivering the bill.”
“Ask him if he wants a beer,” the man on the couch said, raising his bottle as he returned his attention to the television. Though I was at an angle to the set, I recognized the images of a motocross race. Motorcycle after motorcycle flew into the air from behind a dirt hill, the riders in gear and helmets that made them appear only slightly less mechanical than the machines they rode.
“This isn’t due right now, is it?” the man at the door asked.
“No, I just wanted to make sure you got it,” I said. “A lot of people don’t notice it in the bag.”
The woman I’d seen earlier stepped back into the room. “Who is it?” Her cigarette was gone, but the boy was still curled in her arms. He was in his sleeper as always, and I could see that it was gray, with a pattern of small blue cars and red trucks. His head lay on the woman’s shoulder as if he were ready to go to sleep there, but his brown eyes were open, and he looked at me with a combination of curiosity and fatigue. Both he and the woman were younger than I’d thought-the woman seemed in her early twenties, and the boy murmured unintelligible babble as he ducked his head further into the point between her shoulder and neck.
“The newspaper boy’s dropping off the bill,” the man said.
“Does he take checks?”
“We don’t have to pay, he’s just delivering it.”
“We have the money, though,” she said. “He’s standing right there. I’ll get the checkbook.”
The woman left the room again, and the man looked at me uncertainly before opening the door a bit wider with his foot. “All right,” he said. “You might as well come in.”
I stepped inside and heard the screen door bang shut behind me. The man tore the bill open and examined it. “We don’t even read it,” he said.
“You’re collecting money all night?” the one on the couch asked.
“No, I just saw you were awake.”
“Aiming for a tip, huh?” he said, and laughed as if he’d made a tremendous joke.
