Tales From the Road

The adventures of guy doing food delivery at middle age

This is Ruby, my trusty steed.

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I’m up at 5:30AM, ready to tackle the day. Tired, but enthusiastic. Let’s do this thing!

But a conversation with my wife unexpectedly turns into an argument, which turns into a fight. It leaves me feeling ornery and miserable. I waste most of the time I should be working the breakfast rush arguing, and when I finally throw my hands up and leave, I’m too late for the good part. I’d been crazy busy the day before, but now, very few orders are coming in, and the ones that are aren’t great. My last assignment is to deliver a single, solitary side order of edamame from a sushi place. I navigate the labyrinth of apartment buildings, find the unit on foot, and climb the stairs. The instructions say to meet the customer at the door, but when I knock, and tell her I have the food she ordered, she sounds too terrified to answer. Instead, she tells me through the closed door to leave it on the welcome mat.

I cringe inwardly, but do as requested. You wondered what kind of person pays to have a single side order of soy delivered, I thought. Now you know.

Sometimes, customers like this wait until they see me leave the vicinity of their door, only to peek out like the Onceler and snatch the package back inside. It’s a maneuver not entirely unlike a frog catching an unsuspecting fly with its tongue.

I give up on making any money. I’m hungry, because I’ve eaten nothing all day. I come home for lunch, and despite my wife’s conciliatory tone, I wind up arguing more. I’m in a mood. The things that are bothering me are of the kind I just can’t figure out how to let go of. Old wounds, constantly renewed. She says things that trigger my defenses and insecurities. I say ill-considered things that make her angry. It’s a pattern I don’t know how to break.

Finally, feeling like garbage, I leave again. Maybe I can distract myself with more work, I think. Being busy drives out excessive introspection, and it also keeps me from hanging around, being obnoxious because I’m upset. I figure I can maybe catch some early dinner orders from the Pizza Hut on Greenway and 64th, where the talkative manager likes me and the orders are usually decent.

On my way there, I find myself thinking about popping in to a nearby Catholic parish. It’s a block away. I can go sling pizzas after.

Other than for a funeral last year, I haven’t darkened the doorstep of a Catholic Church since I shook the dust from my metaphorical sandals a few years back. So I’m a bit surprised by the impulse. But I’m really down in the dumps and don’t know who to turn to, and I figure that at the very least it can’t hurt to try.

Well, at least as long as nobody sees me crying like a chump. I’ve gotten more emotional in my old age, and getting easily verklempt has always been one of my least favorite traits.

Maybe I’ll feel something, I think. Maybe God has finally decided to reach out to me after all.

The thought makes me nervous. I’m not sure I’m ready for that jelly.

Heaven knows I still ask him to chat often enough. It’s just that he never accepts the invitation. I don’t know if he’s there at all, but if he is, I’ve come to a certain level of comfort with our silent détente.

I pull into the parking lot just as the attached parochial school is letting out, but despite the hustle and bustle I find a spot. Kitty-corner to my spot, a young blonde trophy wife in something that looks a little too much like a black catsuit is loading her 2.1 kids into her high-end BMW. It’s an odd outfit choice for picking up from a Catholic school. But then again, this is Scottsdale, which is rapidly becoming Beverly Hills East. A place where athleisure, lip fillers, and plastic surgery never go out of style.

I’ve been to this parish before. It’s a newer building, done in a neo-Romanesque style that used to be plain white like an unused coloring book. I haven’t been inside in a few years, though, and the internet tells me it has been given a rather nice coat of paint. Certainly far better than the 60s monstrosities one often finds around this city.

As I approach the building, however, feeling less trepidation than expected, I discover that all the doors are locked.

Every. Single. One.

I start to walk back to my car when I notice a side door. I turn back and check it.

Also locked.

Message received, I think. Every time I reach out to the big guy to see if he’s there, I get nada.

Or in this case, less than nothing. Something even worse.

A locked door in my face. No way to even have a personal sit down with The God Who May Or May Not Be. If you’re going to mine coincidence for symbolism, that one’s hard to miss.

So I let it go. The moment has passed. Once again, I’ve tested the waters, and found them unsuitable for use.

“I am a soldier of the algorithm,” I drone as I pull back onto the road, between bouts of the standard, autonomous, negative self-talk mantra I fall into when I get in moods like this. It repeats, ad nauseam: Nothing matters. I don’t matter. Nothing matters.

“I go where the algorithm tells me,” I continue. “I deliver what the algorithm wants me to deliver.”

I don’t deserve good offers, I think. I don’t need to be discriminating. I just need to work.

And then an offer comes in. Low pay, high miles. And it’s going to take me to a part of town I don’t want to get stuck in. Sketchville…