Tay Grange 43 (Libby Hansen Series #1)
Flash fiction
A letter came. The address is Tay Grange 43, and by addressee stood Scott Bennett. It’s the third letter this month. Only the third, Gary thought, tapping a thin envelope to his right palm.
He grinned widely like a child in a grocery store under the counter, watching a clerk wrapping a recently sold lollipop in rice paper. He smiled now, though after the letter before the last one delivered — the one that came as first this month — he had nearly quit his job. Not to be Bob, he would sweep streets now instead.
“Your job is to deliver that goddamn letter. What you see, what you smell, what you hear is not your goddamn business,” Bob had said, squeezing Gary’s shoulder as rather to threat than calm him down — as if bloody Scott Bennett’s shirt had not been a sufficient warning.
But that had been before, the most severe exemption of all exemptions. That had been before the last time he rang the doorbell at Tay Grange 43 — before that woman came to open the translucent entrance door, kicking out his breath by her naked stature, roundly shaped with beauty marks by her navel and over the left breast. She had been red-haired, thickly both up and down. Her lips had been thin but stretched widely into a kind smile. He had been staring at her since she appeared on the stairs and watched her breathless as she slid down her white toes by that red rug, step by step towards the door — towards him. In her left hand, she had carried a half-empty whisky glass she gave Gary later to hold while she signed for accepting the letter for Mr. Bennett.
“I… I have… a letter for Mr. Bennett.”
“I’ll take it,” she said in a voice soft as her touch was when Gary, and her hands dabbed clumsily as she took the pen he offered her.
“Sure,” Gary uttered off his dry throat and nodded.
“Should I sign it somewhere, or — “ She paused, shaking a pen before his eyes, as to hypnotize him more than he already was.
“Sure,” Gary said and picked up a form from a leather bag that throttled his neck. He pointed at the first empty field under the column of different signatures, saying, “Here. Please.”
She signed the form with S at the beginning of her signature, and two half ellipses crossed in a way resembling a heart drawing.
Then she stretched her lips even wider, grabbed the letter and whisky glass of his hands, changing them with form and pen, and turned to leave. By doors, she glanced at him over her shoulder, and blinking her eyelids, she said softly, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Gary whispered when the door behind her closed and her naked buttocks, shaking side to side, started to disappear up the stairs.
Just thinking about that last delivery, Gary was sweating when he had stood by Bennett’s porch for the last time.
He put the letter in his leather bag, hung it over his neck, and walked off to the office. What you see, what you smell, what you hear is not your goddamn business, Bob’s words resounded in his head. Gary smiled and kicked in his step. Sure it was not his business, but still, he may look, smell and listen.
