Millie had walked up to the post office, which was like a mile and a half from Jackson’s, and she took the side streets because Downing and Corona had a lot of traffic (and the traffic, she knew, would be happy to killer her rather than slow down) and Broadway and Lincoln were even worse. Noise. Fuck that noise. She needed to think. Besides, it was a nice day.
She did have to cross Lincoln, though, which was a pain, because there was no point in backtracking down to 1st just to get a stoplight crosswalk. So four lanes of traffic needed dodging, like an 8-bit video game. And then she had to get across Speer and the creek, which took her over to Grant, where cars just weren’t even looking for pedestrians because of the timing of the lights… when she got past all that, and finally crossed Logan, she breathed out and took her time. Nothing super annoying now until Colfax, but she didn’t have to think about that yet.
Jessica had showed up just as Millie was finishing a greyhound. Jessica stepped into the bar and let her eyes adjust, but she knew where Millie would be sitting, and she knew what would be in her hand. Millie cursed silently as Jessica strode over, made an obvious glance at the juice-coated ice in Millie’s glass, and did the clock math to assess when Millie’s happy hour had begun. They looked each other in the eye. They both cocked their heads just slightly, with different intentions.
“Hi,” Millie said.
Jessica passed on the etiquette game. She pulled a pinkish slip of paper from her pocket and gripped it lightly between fingers and palm, and passively pushed it in roughly the direction of Millie’s belly. “This came for you.” Millie glanced down, then back and Jessica with a tiny, one-sided smile.
“Thanks. Have a drink?”
Jessica snorted. “The post office closes at six. You might just make it.” She turned and stalked to the door as if any of this was surprising, as if there were somehow fresh reasons to be indignant. She had to hold the miffed-but-still-insouciant scowl on her face as she turned and walked the length of the big bay window fronting Broadway. It was a long exit tracking shot, but details are important when you have a narrative to maintain.
Millie watched her go, and half-smiled again. She looked at the slip of paper. A package. An unrecognizable return address, somewhere up in that vague industrial world around the Mousetrap. No name. But why was it at the post office? And why the hell did Jessica think it was so important? She breathed out. She looked at the remains of the greyhound, sucked up the last bits of it, and pushed her dollar change toward the stack of napkins at the back of the bar. “Thanks Teddy.” Teddy looked up and gave her his usual shy smile, and nodded. She left.
The effort to get to the other side of Logan was enough to sap whatever boost she had gotten from the sugar in the grapefruit juice, and for the light fog of the vodka to drift in.
It was still sunny, though the air was cooling as the shadows of the buildings spilled over the streets. Millie almost sauntered, enjoying the cynicism of vodka fog, as she charted the track through Capitol Hill in her mind. She knew the neighborhood like the back of her hand, though she couldn’t afford to live here anymore. She climbed the hill through Governor’s park for the sake of quiet, forgetting for a bit to think about the package as she dodged traffic on 8th. The weird misalignment of streets at 9th posed a strange obstacle as three cars approached from all sides and she wasn’t sure anyone even saw her. When she got to 12th, she checked the time on her phone. It was 5:45. She cursed as she quickened her pace and zigzagged several more blocks. Then it was like she had to cross Corona, Colfax and Downing all at once. Denver streets are so fucked! Why can’t it just be a fucking grid? But she got past it all, had to cross back over Downing because the annex where you picked up packages wasn’t the office where you dropped them off… and got in the door at 5:58.
The clerk didn’t even bother to scowl. She had no agenda to prosecute with her face, like Jessica had. She didn’t even look at Millie as she took the pink slip and walked back toward the shelves of brown boxes with no visible sense of organization. She pointed her forehead numbly around the shelves, found a shoebox-sized package and shoved it at Millie, then turned and simply disappeared. Millie stood in the silence for a moment, then pushed back through the glass door.
She stood on the sidewalk, and for the first time all day, was directionless.
Should she go home? Open the package here? Find a bar on Colfax and get another greyhound before… She looked at the package. It was completely inscrutable. The address to her was printed on a label; there was no handwriting at all. It was light, as if it contained nothing. Nothing rattled or shifted inside it. She breathed in, and tried to breathe in what this package was, what it meant. Nothing came to her.
She dug her thumb nail into the tape covering the seams, but didn’t manage to do anything but dent it. But she had keys in her pocket that could rip, and rip they did, first across the tape at one end, and then down the big middle seam. The other end simply popped when she pulled up on the flaps.
Under the four top flaps was the carnation-petal mess of white packing paper.
And under the bloom of paper was a picture of Teddy, with his eyes crossed out.
She had to get back to Jackson’s.
Any fog of vodka was gone, now, as she ran back toward Colfax. She leaned into a run, her chest almost pulling her past the metal pole with the crosswalk button and into traffic. She heard no extra noise, saw nothing that didn’t matter; She only saw the cars that would kill her or the cars that wouldn’t, the lights that the cars must obey, the mailboxes and trees and homeless dudes and other sidewalk fixtures that might be in her way. She went back exactly the way she had come; the only thing different was her direction and the angle of the light. Everything was annoying, but nothing was; it was all to be expected. The zigzags, the misaligned street jogs, the Denver grid dissolving over the slope of Capitol Hill and shifting like air through the buildings and trees and the declining light. She was with the Grant Street traffic, now, so she felt immune to it. Speer zigged and zagged with the creek with it’s own fucked up but totally obvious logic. Whatever. It was what it was. It was all annoying but none of it mattered.
When she finally rounded onto 3rd off of Lincoln, she slowed. Surely it wouldn’t make a difference at this point. She could not feel her breath, or even identify how hard she was breathing. She didn’t even feel the box in her hand. But the creeping dread overtook her as she looked toward Broadway. What was it? How did she know…?
It was the vague reflection of red and blue, flashing dimly on the buildings across the street in the evening shadow, and the traffic that filled the intersection, which was being turned off to the side streets.
She rounded the corner, but the whole block had already been taped off with yellow plastic tape, wrapped around trees and signposts and even cars. The cop cars had all converged, just pointing their noses at the door of Jackson’s. A big uniform strode toward her, already pushing her away.
What the hell.
What the. Hell.
©2020 by Nick Trotter. All rights reserved.