(25 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 6

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

I walked into Kinko's, relieved and paranoid. I’d made it to my destination (albeit, not the original one) without having been arrested or dispossessed of my pkg, yet was paranoid that everyone was going to notice or already had noticed my being stoned.
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I asked the counter guy if I could ship my pkg from there, if that was something Kinko's did. He nodded and pointed me to the corner where the FEDEX display was.
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I went over to the display and found an international waybill. I was elated! The realization that I was close to getting the pkg sent thrilled me and I bent down to fill out the form.
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I had no pen, however.
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And there was no pen on the FEDEX display.
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I felt my pockets and looked around. There was no pen in sight for me to use.
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A beautiful young woman in a pair of hip-hugger jeans walked into the store, her bare midriff momentarily distracting me.
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Meanwhile, there was nothing on the floor, nothing on the counter, nothing anywhere, except for a display next to the front counter. It was full of ballpoint pens, the perfect kind needed to press through the carbon paper on the air waybill adequately. I was saved!
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However, I didn’t want to buy any of those pens. I just wanted to use one of them.
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I was afraid to ask the counter guy if I could borrow one because I thought he might notice that I was high, or he might make me buy one. I was caught, undecided as to what to do, and felt the honey in the hip-huggers at the counter staring at me as if I were a new species of insect—or so I imagined (wished?).
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I knew I was bound to attract even more attention if I continued just to stand there, next to the pen display, and not do or buy anything.
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I tried to think quickly, but that was impossible given the blockage of my mindset.
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Hell, I tried just to think at any rate of speed, but that, too, was difficult.
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I realized that I had no choice. I had to pretend that I was interested in buying one of the pens, so I began to take the cap off of some of them and pretended to examine them, nodding as if giving my approval to some, shaking my head as if in disappointment at others.
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I think I inspected over ten pens, but then, just like my sense of time was then, I’m not sure how reliable my sense of arithmetic was at that time, either.
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I couldn’t inspect these pens much longer without attracting the dreaded undue attention, so I took a deep breath and did it.
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I walked over to the FEDEX display with the chosen pen in my hand, as cool as an iceberg (or so I thought), as if I’d been carrying it the entire time.
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I filled out the form with no incident, which was good because it was the last instance lacking incidents for a few hours.
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I walked to the front counter again, the filled-out form in my hand, ready to be plastered to the box, paid for, and shipped to my destination. I felt illogical, lucid, giddy. The machinations of paranoia had begun to fade because I was on the precipice staring out over my valley of contentment and accomplishment. I was to the point of not caring whether or not anyone noticed that I was stoned.
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‘I’d like to ship this to -----’, I said.
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‘No problem’, the clerk replied. ‘Just fill out this section with your credit card information and I’ll be happy to give it to the FEDEX guy when he shows up later today.’
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The paranoia came crashing back down upon me; my giddiness and lucidity were plundered; my accomplishment was halted in mid-action.
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Credit card information? There was no way I was sending something illegal across international borders and paying for it in such a way that I could be tracked. Nor did I want to pay with a credit card when the names of the sender (after the founder and CEO of a former dot.com I’d worked for, an ugly man, both in appearance and in mentality, who had cheated many people out of money they had rightfully earned) and the addressee (a pen name I used on occasion when I’ve had a poem published) did not match who I was or the name on my credit card (I was proud at how deftly I’d avoided leaving such a paper trail, even in my altered mindset).
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Proud though I was at my perceived genius, I still had a potential problem staring me in the face.
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‘I only have cash. Is that OK?’
‘I’m sorry, but you can only pay with a credit card.’
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I was stunned. What kind of place was this?
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‘Why can’t I pay with cash? This is an urgent matter and I need to ship this pkg today.’
“Because this Kinko's is a FEDEX drop-off point only.’
‘What does that mean, a drop-off point?’ I was becoming less and less stoned, which was not a good thing.
‘It means that customers can only pay with credit card or their FEDEX account number and then drop their goods off here for pickup in the afternoon. There is no FEDEX person who works here, like there is at the Kinko's over on Hawthorne.’
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Hawthorne? Hawthorne Boulevard? It had taken seemingly a week for me to make it from my friend’s apartment to this Kinko's; there was no way I was going to make it to Kinko's on Hawthorne, even if I’d had six weeks to do it.
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I was beginning to think that this was some sort of evil movie I was starring in, a conspiracy movie where everyone I encountered knew I was stoned, knew what I was mailing, and was in collusion so as to prevent me from doing my duty. They knew that I was near my breaking point, that I was very close to just saying, ‘The hell with it’, and giving up.
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The fact that I knew they knew, however, is what kept me from losing it, but it took every effort of my numbed mindset.
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It was in this mindset that I walked out of Kinko's to try and figure out what my next step would be.

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(to be continued...)