Short Story / The Hot Messenger (Analysis)
The day was hot – unrelenting heat that made Barry drink two gallons of water without pissing. He had a pickup at Avenue Talent, and he pushed himself to get there early, so he might bask in the air-conditioning while the receptionist got the package together. He imagined the trail of sweat behind his bike, visible from the air, making a scribble pattern across the city like a three-year-old’s drawing.
Barry got to the building, took two stairs at a time up two flights, and rushed to the door of Avenue Talent. He turned the knob and pushed (too eagerly, he thought later), and the door bumped into something only four inches in. There was a hidden negotiation of space, and the gap widened just enough for him to squeeze through, his messenger bag scraping the door-frame.
The waiting room was packed like a living-room punk-rock show, but instead of punks, the mob was all blond chicks. There might have been a brunette or non-white girl somewhere, but the blonds were so close and dense they seemed to fuse into a solid mass – all skin and spaghetti-strap tops or camisoles, designer sunglasses like black tiaras, knee-length and shorter skirts, mascara and eyeliner and lipstick, and perfume filling Barry’s nostrils; a thick miasma of chemical femininity.
Barry pulled his bag forward, using it as a wedge to furrow through the corn-fed girls. As much as he tried to squeeze together, his bare shoulders bumped theirs, leaving his sweat on them, and it didn’t help that they weren’t all standing still – his elbows brushed a breast or implant here and there. It was only fifteen feet, but it he must have left his scent on at least ten or twenty girls on the way.
“What’s all this?” he asked the receptionist, who must have been the ugliest woman in the modelling business.
“Open call,” she said. She was still putting together the package for him.
Barry turned around casually, and realized that the moment he entered the room, all eyes had gravitated towards him; he had a short, brushy mohawk, his aviator glasses pushed up, a sleeveless black T-shirt with the company logo, gray cut-off shorts, and a filthy messenger bag. He was radiating heat, every inch of him still damp, and he was sure he was radiating B.O. as well – a dark pit of male stench in a sea of blonds. You’d think they’d never seen a bike messenger before, the way they’re staring, but maybe some of them are from the suburbs or out of town.
He let his gaze drift over them, keeping his face devoid of intent – no hostility or challenge, just benign and slightly curious. He didn’t linger on one more than another. Since they were about to be judged on their looks, he didn’t want to show any preference and invoke jealousy. He noticed subtle differentiations between them; some with corn-silk hair to their armpits, or fake blonds with dark roots, or even faker platinum cut short; deeply tanned skin about to turn into leather to pale and freckled; athletic girls with cut muscles and ones he thought of as being from Wisconsin – comfortable with their big, undefined arms – the ones who ate nacho cheese and drank beer. None of them were chubby, just more or less defined. He noticed a woman with nearly skeletal arms and large bosom, which was disgusting. One girl looked like she was sixteen: shorter, with too much makeup, and the remnants of baby fat smoothing out her face.
They had to be auditioning for a commercial or something, he thought. Some of them were pretty, even hot, but he knew that the majority of them would be judged and rejected before they even shook the interviewer’s hand; it was the way the flesh trade operated. Once he had stumbled into Avenue to see the place crawling (yes, quite literally) with babies in only diapers – their parents sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see if he dared step over their babies. A whole busload of nervous, quiet blonds was a nice variation.
He couldn’t stare at them the whole time, so he looked back down at W. Nielson (he only knew the clients by how they signed) who almost had his run put together. She was middle-aged, overweight, and unusually wrinkled – he felt bad for thinking of her as ugly, because she was always nice, called Barry and the other messengers “hon,” and sometimes had snacks or drinks for them. He was sure that the girls behind him were stuck up bitches.
“Here you go, hon,” said W. Nielson, and Barry tried not to wince. The run consisted of five newspaper-sized, leather-bound model’s portfolios, stiffer than yearbooks and heavy as lead. It got worse, he realized: they were bound for Lincoln Park, and he was in River West – a twenty-minute ride, at least.
“Think it’s over twenty pounds?” Barry asked.
“Sure it is, hon.” W. Nielson winked at him, knowing Barry got a bonus for extra weight, perhaps a dollar or two more.
“Have a good one,” he said, and turned around.
He had to hold the bag in front of him the same way he came in, otherwise it might bowl over one of those starved girls on high heels. No longer shy, he took a good look at each face on his way out. Near the door, a girl about his height (just shy of five foot eight) with short crinkly hair (blond, of course) stared back, smiled demurely, and dropped a scrap of paper into his still-open bag. Barry beamed his teeth back at her, losing all his cool reserve, and hustled out the door.
Barry chuckled at himself down three flights of stairs and out to his bike. He wondered when he should call her, as with every time he got a girl’s number. He tried to remember her specifically – she wasn’t pale or tanned, just Caucasian, gray eyes – oh yes, those eyes were on fire! – and a regular nose sharp at the tip and round on the sides but not upturned, and he remembered her hair but not her body; he had been so careful only to look at faces.
The radio squawked: “One-two, you get that Avenue?” The tough-guy Italian southsider accent told Barry that it was Matts dispatching now – one of the company’s owners, which they called “Matts” because he was the size of two guys named Matt, put together.
“Ten-four. It’s a twenty-pounder. Want me to run it?”
“Negative Mango – I need you to do a Sex-pot on the way. Make that two outta Sex-pot. Copy, Mango?”
“Tenfourtenfour.”
Barry jumped on his ride and pedaled, wanting to punch out Matts. It was bad enough that the guy used every nickname possible, but the boss couldn’t dispatch worth a shit. Wang
(“the Thang”) must have gone home already – the guy had sounded sick all day. It was the owner’s idea to call Barry “Mango.” It just happened one day, when Barry came into base.
Matts was leaning back in the dispatch seat, with his usual gangster-glare, when he spat out, “what’s up Mango?”
“Nothing, man. What’re you calling me ‘Mango’ for?”
“’Cause yer Barry-Twelve. B-12, like the vitamin ya get in Mangos.” The boss looked supremely proud of himself.
Barry just shook his head, not wishing to dispute it. The next day Matts kept calling Barry “Mango” over the radio, using the handle unnecessarily, such as:”One-Two Mango, gadda Prince Albert goin’ da F.D.R., copy, Mango? And, hey, Mango, pick two outta Bees’-Knees, goin’ da Deliverance and goin’ da Can, Mango. Mango, yuh think yuh can do that for me, Mango?”
All Barry could do was shake his head and say, “Ten-four.” Soon the other guys at the office heard it and called him Mango, not really knowing what the nickname meant, and Barry’s messenger handle was forever “Mango.” When people asked about it, he would just say, “they call me that ‘cause when they see me, they’re like, ‘just lookit that man go.’ Plus, I like mangos.”
It was just another thing that was beyond Barry’s control, like the traffic he was weaving through. He predicted movement and flow, judged open spaces and velocities, twisted his bike and body to match, but there wasn’t anything he could really control in the situation, which was just fine for him. He had no say in things, other than exercising creativity when writing down the time on his manifest.
Barry wiped sweat into his mohawk, and after three or six ordinary, near-death encounters, took care of the three runs before the Avenue Talent run going north. It was just after four o’ clock, when he pulled up to the one-flat that he supposed some photographer or ad exec lived at. He rang the doorbell, and then waited an entire 20 seconds, then rang again, waited another endless 20 seconds. He put his ear to the door: nothing. He knocked hard and again listened to the silent house.
“Shit,” he muttered. Of course nobody’s home at four o’clock, he thought. And I’m stuck up north missing all the late-day action downtown. He queued the radio.
“One-two, in Lincoln Park, nobody’s home.”
“One-two, can you slide it?”
Barry eyed the brass mail slot; there was no way to fit the huge portfolios.
“Negative, not slide-able, not safe to leave.”
There was a few seconds of dead air, then, “sit tight Mango. They’ll pay for wait-time. Call back in ten.”
“Tenfer.”
Barry sat down with his bag next to him and drew out one of the leather books. The pictures were all clippings from magazines the model had been in – fashion shoots and advertisements; nothing you couldn’t see in Cosmopolitan. It bored him quickly. Then he remembered the crush of blonds and dug around for the scrap one of them had tossed in his bag. Before he knew why he was doing it, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number (a local area code – he wouldn’t have bothered if it had been from the suburbs). It rang twice and a cheery voice answered, “Hello?”
“Hi, uh is this-” (he looked at the scrap) ”-is this Anya?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Barry. You put your number in my bag back at Avenue-”
“Oh, right!” The voice giggled. “I don’t know what I was thinking, I mean, it was like a dare, you know? But hey, don’t get me wrong-”
“Ah, it’s cool,” said Barry. “It was pretty ballsy, you know, I’m flattered. I woulda gotten your number if I had time-”
“Yeah, right! I saw you…you were checking out all those girls.”
“Hey, what can I say?” He grinned. “So um, how did it go in there?”
“Oh fine, you know, they said they’ll give me a call-back-”
“Yeah, that’s cool.” He knew odds said they wouldn’t, but he couldn’t say that. “So, you want to meet up for drinks sometime?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Where do you want to go?”
“I dunno, what kinda bars do you like?”
“I dunno – it doesn’t have to be anything fancy.”
“How about a real dive?”
Anya laughed. “Sure, I can do a dive bar.”
Barry named The Goldstar, and gave her directions.
“How about tomorrow night?”
“Umm… I might be hanging out with friends earlier…well, maybe.”
“How about I just go there around nine, and if you show, you show?”
“Sounds fine to me.”
“Okay, then. Nice talking to ya, Anya.”
“You too, Barry.”
He closed the connection. The client showed up minutes later with a pit-bull, eying Barry suspiciously before he stood up from the steps. They exchanged signature for package, and Barry made it downtown in time to catch three more hot runs that day.
The next day being Friday, the Goldstar was packed with hipsters, bike messengers, and aging scenesters, though there was a smattering of preps in there for good measure. Barry went home, showered and changed into a wife-beater and sleeveless black denim jacket before hitting the bar, around eight. His buddies were all there, their bikes cluttering the parking meters and poles out front, their bags lining the filthy walls inside. They were all chattering about how many runs they did, how much water they drank, close calls with opening doors, how fucking hot it was, which asshole receptionist didn’t let them fill a water bottle in the bathroom sink, where they hid to cool off, how much the business slowed down in the summer, which rookie ate shit at which company, what kind of rims they rolled on, what kind of shirts work best in the heat, who the fuck is buying the next round of Old Styles, who’s up on the pool table, who the fuck keeps playing the same Television song on the jukebox, if anybody can spare a cigarette, how’s so-and-so’s injury doing, and so on, until Barry completely forgot why he was there, and anyhow he was there every Friday night.
“Hey Mango, that chick’s checkin’ you out,” said Dirty Dozen, whose biker number was also 12. They were congregated around the pool table, all guys and some girls that Mango no longer remembered the proper names of, just stupid nicknames like Poop-chute, Ol’ Dirty, Big Six, Lowlife, Passion, or just by their numbers, Forty, Forty-Six, Six-Oh, Oh-Eight, Two-Sevens…
Barry looked back, where the bar curved towards the wall. She was staring at him, all right – short, crinkled, dirty blond mop, a tight-red t-shirt cut to show most of her collarbones, a cutoff jean skirt with a store-bought studded belt, Keds, and a crooked smile. He went right over. The conversation behind him became stilted as his buddies pretended not to watch.
“Anya?” Barry held out his hand, matter-of-fact.
“Yeah, Barry, right?”
“Yeah, nice. You look pretty rockin’.”
Anya tossed her head back and laughed, not girlish but in a liberated way. At least she wasn’t nervous.
“Yer pretty rockin’ yourself, stranger.”
Barry shrugged. “You want a beer?”
“Yeah, but let me get it.” Barry shrugged again. Anya pulled some bills from her wallet, then turned and stepped on the bar-step, leaning way over to summon a drink. Barry didn’t miss the real estate revealed under the hem of her skirt. He guessed that he would get laid that night, and he was right.
It wasn’t anything difficult for or planned by him – he just talked and drank, asking her about her life, where she grew up, what she studied in school, what she did for money (administrative assistant), where she lived (Bucktown), if she really wanted to be a model (she was too short for the runway), where she thought her life was going (she didn’t know or care that much), and if she wanted to go to some other bar – all this in only three hours. She said, “how about you?” after answering his questions, putting her chin in hand, elbow on the counter, leaning forward to hear over the music. He told her (briefly, since it’s better to let the girl talk) about going to school (political science major), growing up in Ohio, becoming a bike messenger and liking it, working on papers, how stupid people were in school, how he never thought of himself as a jock until becoming a bike messenger, all the dumb shit people seem to care about but didn’t matter to him, wondering if there were good people in the world that weren’t too hung up on guilt or had a sense of entitlement, and finally, when last call hit, if she’d mind walking to a four o’ clock bar?
They left together and Barry walked his bike with them.
“You always have your bike with you, don’t you?”
“It’s the Un-American Express. Never leave home without it.”
“Uh-oh, what if I told you I was a Republican?” she teased.
“Then I’d have to say ‘good-night’.” Barry didn’t flinch easily. He looked her way and said, “even though I don’t want to.”
She smiled, might have blushed (too dark to tell) so he snaked his hand to the far side of her waist. “Hmm,” she said, glancing at him, still smiling as they walked. They were walking by the park, lined with an iron fence. Barry put his bike against the fence, looked in her eyes for a split second, and moved in for the kiss before she could think about it. Pick your move and commit, he thought, advice from some crusty messenger-veteran, talking about dodging traffic. It worked out just fine with Anya, too.
Anya never did get called back. It didn’t bother her too much – she was older than she looked, older than Barry, who was twenty-five and trying to get a commercial spot was just a whim of hers.
Barry spent many nights at her flat, playing with her cocker spaniel, watching her cable tv, and mostly enjoying an apartment devoid of roommates. She let him drive her Jetta when they went for groceries. He stripped her old ten-speed down into an efficient single-speed; tossing the kickstand, “suicide” levers, extra chain-ring, dérailleurs, reflectors, and all the other bits of plastic and metal that to him was simply dead weight. She cooked Indian food for him – he ate like man twice his weight – and they drank at the Goldstar until it was time to go to her place and fuck. When they went to taquerias Barry paid; when they went for sushi, Anya paid.
Since his crew was beginning to miss him, Barry agreed to take Anya down to a cookout some messengers were having in Pilsen. They pulled up to the house and locked their bikes to the fence. The house was ugly, like all the houses in Pilsen, but it had character: three stories, with shingles as siding. The side-yard was actually an empty lot connected to the property, down five feet at the original Chicago ground level and made green. The back of the yard had a few “ghetto-palms” – the long-leafed, twisting trees that grew like weeds everywhere in Chicago. In the two o’clock shade was ten or twelve people, drunkenly wielding brats and beer bottles.
“Mango-twelve!” someone shouted. Barry waved, crossing the yard. Anya was just behind him. He swung his bag down by the cooler and started unloading a case of PBR.
“Hey, Barry,” he heard – a sultry voice that could only mean Sticky Susan. He felt a hand on the small of his back where shirt and shorts didn’t quite come together. He straightened up.
“Susan, what’s up?”
“Nothin’ man, just waiting for your sexy ass to get here.”
Susan eyed him with lowered eyelids and working the popsicle her mouth like she was a pornstar. She noticed his attention on the popsicle and laughed hard, tossing back her crow’s nest of black hair. Her hand was still on his hip, her fingers slightly poking the elastic of his boxer-briefs. Susan’s penchant for physically attaching herself to guys is what earned her the name “Sticky,” Barry remembered.
Barry noticed Anya over Susan’s shoulder. He went to her, letting Susan’s hand drop away, and put his arm around Anya’s shoulders.
“Susan, this is Anya.”
“Hey,” said Anya.
“Hey, nice to meet ya.” Susan and Anya shook hands, and Barry tried not to think of all the places that Susan’s hand might have been.
Barry took Anya through, introducing her to Bones, Timmy-G., J.R., Dirty Six, Cooter, Harry, Peaches, Deuce, Puddles, Swampy, Rerun, and The Spark, who was officially Susan’s boyfriend. He noticed either frank pleasure or measured cool when they each shook Anya’s hand. Then they got down to the business of drinking and eating.
Barry was up in the kitchen, back from the bathroom, when he stopped to look down in the yard and see how Anya was doing. She was sitting at the end of the picnic table, chatting with two of the guys – Cooter and Rerun – he seemed really interested in keeping her full view. She looked comfortable, Barry decided.
“That’s a nice groupie you caught there, Mango.” Deuce was standing behind Barry sipping a beer casually, but there was something of a challenge in his tone and look.
“She’s not a groupie, man. Don’t call her that,” Barry said quietly.
“Sorry. Where’d you meet her?”
“At Avenue.”
“No shit? The modeling agency?”
“Yeah.” And she slipped her number into my bag, he thought, but didn’t say it.
“Better hold on to that one,” said Deuce, then went into the bathroom when Susan came out of it.
“So you’re seeing a model, huh?” said Susan.
“Yeah,” said Barry, making ready to leave.
“Oh Barry, I was just teasing,” she said.
“Well, stop teasing.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“What?”
“C’mon, you can tell me.” Susan edged up close – Barry’s back pressed against the kitchen counter. “Are you in looooove?” Like a lot of girls, she was slightly taller than him – her breath washed over his face. She ground her hips against him and he grunted, feeling the first stirrings of an imminent erection. As far as he knew, Susan never cheated on The Spark, though she flirted with certain guys excessively.
Susan put her arms around his neck.
“You’re in loooove, aren’t you? I knew it!”
“Come on, Susie,” he said, trying to get out.
The toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened. Susan suddenly pulled away from him and Barry went back out, through the back porch. As he came into the yard, Anya looked up at him with look that either said “I’m getting a little tired of this cook-out,” or, “why were you gone so long?” and his face felt hot. He looked behind him to see Susan coming out, a wicked grin on her face, and he knew that Anya saw it too when he looked back, because she suddenly turned away from him to sip her beer.
Whether by coincidence or deliberate manipulation by the Female Conspiracy, Barry was taken to brunch with Anya’s friends the very next morning. The restaurant was one of many yuppie-friendly places that had popped up in Wicker Park over the last few years – the lighting was all from Ikea or Crate & Barrel; the furniture minimalist; the wait-staff young and white; the patrons all hipsters brimming with attitude, stretched out into a excited line.
It made things easier, for Barry, to think of the other girls as characters from Sex In The City, because including Anya, there was four of them. They had a six-person booth, and Barry sat on the outside, staring across the table at some other captive male, who looked embarrassed to be there. The girls – Anya, Heather, Brenda, Liz – had transformed into a four-headed alien, talking to itself in some bizarre coded language, making high-pitched noises and animated gestures Barry could not decipher. The other captive male – Mike or John or Matt – gave a conspiratorial smile.
“I feel like I’m watching an episode of Sex In The City,” he said.
“I was just thinking that,” said Barry, “because it’s like we’re not supposed to be here.” They nearly had to shout over each other – the place was mobbed and the girls were even louder.
Barry snatched a menu and winced at the prices.
“Nine bucks for French Toast?” He shook his head.
“Yeah, this place is pretty trendy,” Mike/John/Matt yelled back. “Notice how they don’t put the cents on the prices? It’s just ‘nine’ or ‘eight’.”
“Yeah,” Said Barry. He wanted to use the word “yuppie” but wasn’t sure if it would go over in that crowd – not that Anya didn’t complain about yuppies and use the word in a highly derogatory way, but Barry felt the word lose power when she said it, because she owned a dog and a Volkswagon Jetta.
“What’s the matter, hon?” Anya was nudging him.
“Nothing.” Across the table, the other guy was looking away.
Being called “hon” also annoyed him, too, like she was the suger mama in the relationship. Granted, she made twice as much money as him, but he felt that he put out his fare share in the relationship.
A waiter materialized – a skinny kid dressed in black.
“What’ll you ladies be having today?”
The girls ordered and Barry winced as they choose items they could have easily made at home at a fourth of the cost, not counting tip.
“And for you?”
Barry realized he hadn’t chosen anything from the menu.
“I’ll have an omlette.”
“Which one?”
“Umm, cheese.”
“What kind of cheese?”
“Uhh, mozzarella.”
“We don’t have mozzararella. We have gouda, guerure, goat cheese-”
“I’ll have gouda, then.”
“That one is nine bucks.”
Barry turned to the waiter, suspicious.
“Why did you just tell me the price?”
“I dunno.” The waiter blinked, but maintained his pretentious air. “You looked like you wanted to know.”
Barry couldn’t say anything for a moment, but then everyone at the table handed over their menus and the waiter was gone.
“Relax, hon, he didn’t mean anything,” said Anya.
“Right.” Barry became aware of his clothes – cut-off shorts, and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. It really didn’t occur to him before, but the waiter had made him suddenly self-conscious. If he wasn’t trying to behave, the encounter might have ended up with Barry slugging the kid in the stomach – growing up shorter than everyone had conditioned him that way.
Anya whispered, “you just looked like you wanted to kill him.”
“Sorry,” said Barry.
The girls continued their four-way conversation, though the occasional looks they shot his way were laced with concern.
Barry measured time by incidents: if nothing out-of-ordinary happened, he didn’t notice time going by. The third incident of the relationship with Anya occurred in his favorite bar, the Goldstar. He and Anya occupied the couch in the back corner, slouched nearly to the floor. His eye-level was just high enough to see the action on the pool table, which occupied his attention while Anya made snide comments about the people around them. Her comments were witty and amusing, but having heard them so many times before, he was getting bored with her relentless cynicism, though he always managed to laugh at all the appropriate moments.
He could see The Blitz sitting at the bar through the thicket of smoke and moving bodies, looking stone-cold as he always did, as The Blitz was one of those guys that cultivated a hard image. Gordie was to The Blitz’s left, telling some story only amusing to himself, and on The Blitz’s right was a group of yuppies, with polo shirts tucked into their crisp khakis.
What happened next had to be partly reconstructed from scattered accounts, despite being a fairly clear-cut matter: the large, meaty yuppie to The Blitz’s right stepped on The Blitz’s messenger bag, which was lying beside his stool
“Hey, can you watch out for my bag?” The Blitz said, which was the most words he’d ever say at once. The meat-head just said “yeah,” perhaps in an irritated way, but The Blitz let it go. Gordie continued telling some inane story, which invariably involved girls and himself, which nobody could take seriously. Gordie had a curly ponytail and buck teeth, but since he was six six and two-twenty of chiseled muscle, most guys simply endured his bragging and lame jokes without complaint.
The Blitz felt an elbow graze his right, and he looked down to see his bag again being tread upon.
“Hey man, I already asked you to stay off my bag!”
The big meat-head screwed his turret of a head around to lock eyes with The Blitz. The Blitz made sure not to blink, smile, and as coldly as possible, he said, “thanks.” He turned away and raised his bottle to his lips, and that’s when the baseball-sized fist of the yuppie slammed into his right temple.
The Blitz was still in the process of falling when Gordie returned fire, his fists pumping one-two-one-two, with a solid follow-through with each throw. From across the pool table, Barry saw this as one stream of movement – first The Blitz getting hit, then Gordie on the yuppie guy not a second later, because a guy like Gordie reacted faster than he thought, which was good since he didn’t think very fast. Barry was out of the couch in a convulsive movement. He took two steps, no objective in mind, while Gordie had the yuppie on the ground, turning the bigger man’s face into hamburger. One of the yuppie’s friends now lunged at Gordie as Barry took another step, and when he took another, the third man in the triad of polo shirts was now jumping, grabbing downwards, somewhat off-balance, which is when Barry made up his mind who to hit.
The third guy, a little skinnier than his friends but still a good six inches taller than Barry, spun and stumbled on his knees when Barry connected with his jaw. A body was next to Barry, grabbing – another messenger, and Barry saw that the bartenders were coming so he went in to grapple rather than punch.
There was shouting – the yuppies were screaming bloody murder, the bartenders were hollering, bodies collided, and a swarm of bodies enveloped the three polo shirts, pulling them up, pulling Gordie back (he was still trying to kill them) and when the two bartenders locked onto the main offenders, the mass picked up momentum, past the long bar and out the door.
The Blitz was picked off the floor – the first punch had knocked him cold – Gordie was restrained for five minutes so he wouldn’t kill anyone, then things almost returned to normal. Barry, his heart still stomping on his ribcage, got a fresh beer and plopped down next to Anya.
“Fuck. Did you see that? Goddamn.”
Anya was quiet, and didn’t look at him.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?”
“Oh god, nothing.”
Barry figured she didn’t care too much for fights, so he just nodded and swigged his beer. He needed that cold beer, because his head was still hot with excitement, like he could keep on punching something or someone, breaking stuff or screaming real loud.
Ol’ Dirty swaggered up, clapped Barry on the shoulder.
“Yo man, good lookin’ out back there.”
“Yeah,” Barry said, still breathless. “Is Blitz okay?”
“Yeah, man, he’s drinkin’ a beer. Don’t even know what happened. He’s straight.”
“Cool.”
They touched their knuckles together and Ol’ Dirty swaggered away.
“You guys think you’re in some kind of gang or something, don’t you?” Anya was using the tone of superiority.
“Yeah,” Barry shrugged. “It’s kinda like that.”
He thought she would say more, but she didn’t. She could say a lot – that I jumped in there without even knowing what was going on, that I could have jumped between them to stop the fight instead of swinging, or I shouldn’t have jumped in at all. Her silence made him unsatisfied. He felt she was denying him the chance to defend his actions, so he just sipped his beer and replayed the events in his head backwards and forwards.
On their way out, some of the other messengers who were there clapped Barry on the back, giving him compliments/respect/props but rather than making him feel proud or worthy, it only added to his embarrassment.
It was early in the fall, and Anya was busy more often than not. Business picked up for Barry as well, since all the summertime messengers went back to school, or whatever they were taking a low-paying adventure-vacation from, and most nights he was too tired to see her, anyway. Anya went to Colorado with some cousins of hers to snowboard, only making a half-hearted invitation for him to join her, since they both knew he couldn’t afford it. “Next time I’ll go,” he said, though he couldn’t imagine when.
Anya was back four days later, and she called him on a Tuesday night, when he was relaxed on his mattress, reading a novel.
“So you had fun?”
“Yeah, I had a lot of fun,” she said.
“Cool.” There was a short silence. “Well, do you want me to come over?”
“Umm, no, I’m pretty tired and I have to clean up my place. I just got back and every thing’s a mess.”
“Oh, all right. How about I come over after work tomorrow?”
“Well, you know I want to talk to you about something.”
Shit, he thought. She’s going to break up with me.
“What’s that?” he said.
“I don’t think this is working out.”
“Oh.” Barry considered his options: begging, reasoning, anger, incredulousness, but realized that by his response, he had already chose indifference.
“You know, it was great and all, but I don’t think – and I know this is going to sound so cliche’, but I’m not ready for anything long-term right now. You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“No, I’m not angry.” Funny, he thought, I don’t really feel anything. Maybe a little sad. He said, “I feel kinda sad, actually.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice strained. “I’m really sorry I’m doing this over the phone, I mean-” she chuckled “-you’re such a sweet guy, I just can’t do it in person.”
A feeling of tiredness started in Barry’s extremities and washed up through his core, then into his head. It was gravity pulling him down, but something in his chest was a lead weight stretching the flesh around it.
“It’s okay,” said Barry. “I’m just… really sorry. I wanted it to work out. I mean, it’s like… I really liked you.” There, I just used the past tense. Should I say “love”? He didn’t, and there was more dead air before she answered.
“Yeah, me too.” There was another silence, then she said, “are you going to be okay with this?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. I mean, I’m sad, but you’ve already decided right?”
“Yeah,” she said, and sniffed loudly.
There wasn’t much said, but they managed to drag out the conversation another ten minutes, pledging to stay friends, reassuring each other they were doing the right thing, saying goodbye, and so forth. When he hung up he plugged his phone into the charger and sat on his mattress for a while with the novel on his stomach. He scratched his scalp, where the hair shaved for the mohawk was now an inch long.
Did I really let her go that easily? What exactly went wrong? Should I call her back and change my tune? Was she telling the truth? Is she seeing someone else? Am I ever going to know what really happened? Was I not doing enough for her in bed? Should I have talked about certain things more? What else could I have said?
Barry fell asleep asking himself questions. The alarm went off, and he went out to deliver packages, his mind still churning out questions when he was riding through traffic, or standing around waiting for runs.
About a month later, Barry dropped a hot run (actually, it was already burnt) at Avenue Talent, and a couple of models in the waiting room eyed him and he smiled back as he walked out. He could tell they were pros – they were super skinny, just about six feet tall, and looked extremely unhappy.
Outside, he queued up the radio. “One-two, calling clean at Avenue.”
“Standby, Mangos.”
Barry leaned his bike against the building and sat against the brick, pulling out some trail mixed he’d saved from lunchtime. The radio chirped, but it was Matts this time.
“So, uh, Mangos, a little bird told me you’re dating a model at Avenues. Care to sub-stan-she-ate this rumor?”
“Uh negative, boss. We broke up a month ago.”
“Jeez. A nice guy like you, losing a hot dame like that? I don’t get it, Mangos.”
Barry chuckled to himself before answering. “Well, you know what, boss? She tried to change me.”
“Change you…? Shit, then fuhgeddabowddit.”
Barry was left to the peace of the afternoon, long enough to finish off the trail mix, before dispatch came on with an emergency out of Alpha, a direct from Cross Co., and a hot one from the Ticket Shop going to Wrigleyville.
“Ten-four,” he said, then hopped on his bike and sped away.
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I really liked this story. Bike messengers are a pretty cool topic to pick…I thought the whole piece flowed nicely and that the characterization was really well done. I had a prefect image in my head of everything that was going on at every point in the story. Wonderful job. The only question I have specifically, what’s a “yuppie”?
Suggestions for the re-write:
”...all skin and spaghetti-strap tops or camisoles, designer sunglasses like black tiaras, knee-length and shorter skirts, mascara and eyeliner and lipstick, and perfume filling Barry’s nostrils; a thick miasma of chemical femininity….”
I like this sentence, but it could be toned down and still have the same effect. I feel like I’m reading one of those SAT vocabulary building books when I see ‘miasma’. I would rather see a more natural word there. Maybe, if it were written this way:
”...all skin and spaghetti-strap tops, designer sunglasses like black tiaras, tiny skirts, too much makeup and enough perfume to last a lifetime….”
I think it still has the same effect, but I’m not gasping for breath after reading it aloud.
Oh yeah…I’m not big on parenthetical stuff in a novel…especially when it’s helping characterization:
”...a girl about his height (just shy of five foot eight) with short crinkly hair (blond, of course) stared back…”
I like it when an author weaves the characterization into the fabric of the story, gradually giving the reader an idea of the character. If I were you, I would clearly state Barry’s height somewhere else and THEN say she was his height. Anyone with enough common sense to read can recall his height. The blonde part, you could just work that in the sentence. Just say she has blonde crinkly hair.
”...punch out Matts…” omit ‘out’
I LOVED the ‘mango’, ‘look-at-that-man-go’ pun. I laughed out loud for that.
”...“Hi, uh is this-” (he looked at the scrap) ”-is this Anya?”…” drop the parenthesis.
The whole paragraph after Anya and Barry’s phonecall is a little confusing to me. So many topics for those guys to talk about! I’d limit it to just a few (3 to 5, maybe) save some for later if you need them to talk about stuff again, that way it won’t sound repetitive.
”...he ate like man twice his weight …” ‘a’ between like and man
You don’t really need, ”...Barry remembered…” after the explanation of sticky Susan (once again, I laughed out loud)
The scene at the restaurant with Anya’s friends and Matt/John/Mike was good and the way you wrote the dialogue made it feel snippy and punctuated…kind of like they were insulting each other…That part just really worked for me.
The part at the Goldstar when the ‘yuppie’ stepped on The Blitz’s bag was a little redundant. I think you could cut down on The Blitzes and just say him or he. The fight at the bar was pretty good and I was getting the vibe that Anya was getting mad at him after that, so, good foreshadowing.
I felt kind of sad at the end because it just…ended. Other than the break-up, there was no real ‘climax’ to think back on.
Good job though, with the whole story. I really enjoyed it!
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