Going Postal

It is not what you think

 

Walking into the post office and handing the gum chewing postal worker his yellow parcel slip, Romeo receives a package showing no return address. Curious, he opens the package on the shadowed corner table right there in the busy post office lobby. Looking inside the package, he suddenly feels like a heavy stone in a box of marbles. He pulls an eye patch out and slumps over it with a furtive glance aside. He stuffs it back into the package’s white tissue paper nest next to the note. While the ten pen and ink portraits in head-on and sidelong poses scrutinize him with beady black eyes, an expensive suit glides across the lobby behind him. He turns his back to the suit and covers the package’s contents with his hand. A gray metal Government Issue trashcan sits at the end of the table, but he presses the eye patch and note back down into the package.  

Closing the package and holding it tight, he plods over to wait in line beside the burnished brass postal lock boxes for a second time. The suit finishes and rolls away, and Romeo takes three uneven steps toward the counter. The shiny postal worker looks down and then attempts to make eye contact with Romeo, but he stares at the package. Harried marbles roll into a queue behind him awaiting their consecutive turns.

 “Hello again, forgot something?” The postal worker asks.

“No,” he says.

“Then�"is something wrong with your package?”

“No,” he says, fidgeting. “Yes,” he adds. The woman behind him lets out a heavy sigh. Romeo shifts his weight and taps the package. He whispers. “Any way you can trace who sent this?”  

“No,” the postal worker says, but then she flushes and eases away. “Oh!”

She stops chewing. Her tongue stores the gum in her cheek. She takes a deep breath and carefully reads from an official postal instruction under the glass countertop.

“Are the package’s contents combustible, chemical, biological, corrosive, explosive, radioactive, offensive, contagious, contains an unidentified liquid, powder or substance, or is otherwise suspicious and potentially dangerous?”

His eyes lift to the red and white Suspicious Mail or Packages poster on the wall divider behind her. It shows a blatantly damaged and stained brown paper package with a scrawled misspelled address and foreign postage. Someone had wrapped his package in pristine white cardstock and had neatly printed his name and address on it.  

“No…NO.” Romeo says. “I just wondered where it came from because it doesn’t say.”

She steps nearer to her side of the counter as heads pivot toward a blue clad police officer sliding into the office. Romeo’s eyes widen as he pulls the package closer. In unison, the anxious marble heads return forward to pop out and peer aside the line to find out why this dreary man is taking up their shiny priceless time.

“No, it doesn’t,” she agrees. “Only the postal service point of origin.”

“What?”  

“We can only tell the point of origin�"where it was mailed from.”  She reaches to touch the stamps, but he pulls the package away. She points. “On the cancellation there.”

“Oh, right�"thanks.”

 He pivots on his toes while studying the stamp and smacks into the impatient woman behind him. The box tumbles to the Government Issue checkerboard-tiled floor. The package opens, and the marbles look down to spy on its contents. The eye patch lays there vile black on chaste white tissue. A titter sounds through the silent post office. Romeo squats, gathers the package up into a bundle, and ambles toward the double doors. Eight dour-mouthed bins yawn beside the doors holding neatly stacked postal forms.

“You there!” The police officer shouts.

The marbles start and Romeo glances back, but he continues moving toward the exit.

“You sir at the door,” the officer says. Romeo stops and half turns. “You have paper stuck on your shoe,” the serious officer points. “It could be important….” He breaks into a grin, “or embarrassing.”

Romeo lifts his heel. It is the note. He forces a smile and a nod for the officer who is already attending to his own business. Romeo reaches down and peels the note off his shoe. The note now has a tread print, but he sees it has more writing on the back. He wipes off the note and reads the few words accompanied by a set of numbers.

He reads. “Just kidding about that. Keep an eye out for me�"555-9876.”

Romeo rolls smoothly out of the post office leaving the dull stones behind.

Reviews

[wondering]

??? guess I don't get it