serial times, pt 11

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

The light changed and I crossed the street and went into the private mail center.

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I had just gone inside when paranoia hit me. I was going to be dealing with real people again and I was sending a pkg of illegal substances. Were people in this line of business paranoid and cautious about what people sent in the mail nowadays, especially in light of the "accidents" in New York City, Washington, D.C., and that Pennsylvania hayfield and the ensuing anthrax mail threats of several months earlier?

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I had completely forgotten about the aftermath of those incidents and to what condition they had led this county to be. I had been more focused on circumventing airport security and air travel than worrying about beating the mail system; I’d only a day earlier thought I should mail the ganja instead of sneaking it into my luggage or on my person. My heart really began to beat at a rapid rate and I contemplated how I was going to act or handle things should I get busted. Well, I still had on the label return address of the CEO of the former dot.com for which I had worked, so I decided to go in that direction of blame.

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I approached the counter to get the pkg weighed and priced. From a side door that led to a supply room came a young woman of no more than twenty years of age, an exposed navel and a look of mirth in her eyes that said she was more worried about what her boyfriend thought of her new body piercing, which made me wish either to be her lover or that piece of jewelry piercing said mysterious body part.

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When she spoke, I knew my worries were over. All I was going to have to do was sign and pay.

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“Hi, can I help you?” she said in a genuine Southern drawl that isn’t easy to find in a Los Angeles girl.

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This, I thought, has to be an omen of my impending good and stoned fortune.
-

I fairly beamed at her, no doubt leading her to think of herself as the main reason for my huge smile and consciously slid myself into that familiar drawl from my childhood. “Please. I need to send this on an urgent basis to another country.”

Until that point in time, I had never felt so simultaneously high and lucid.
“Where to?” she asked.
I told her and she took the pkg, weighed it, and looked up the pricing.
“FEDEX only has Priority International shipping.”
I didn't know what that meant.
“What it means is that they don’t have an economy shipping choice for the country you’re sending this to. All packages going there are shipped only by Priority.”
-

I couldn’t argue with that and asked how long it this type of service would take to deliver the pkg.
“It says here three business days.”

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It was early Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles, which meant that with the time difference between the two locales, I might expect arrival on Monday or Tuesday of the following week. I could deal with that.

-
I certainly could.
“How much?”
She jabbed a few times at her computer screen and answered, “$52.00 even.”
-

I didn't even blink, though it was more than I thought I’d have to spend, as I handed her the correct change.
She gave me a receipt and bid me adieu.
I stood there for a moment, dumbfounded.
After a moment, she asked, “Can I help you with something else?”
“You mean, that’s it?”
-

I knew that was it, that it was that simple, but it had been such an ordeal in getting to that point that the end had come so quickly and successfully (pending successful arrival, of course) and I was feeling a bit let down at the whole suddenness of the finish.

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“Yes, it is. FEDEX has made it pretty easy for us to send things internationally.” She gave me a look that I originally thought was condescension, but later came to realize was sympathy because of my seeming naïveté.

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I shook myself out of my daze, thanked her, and walked out of the mail center.

-

(to be continued...)