Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
Valor 1 Valor 2 Valor 3 Valor 4
I turn sixteen, and my father has the idea that since he's got an extra driver available to him now, maybe it was about time that Damico's started making deliveries. I was really pissed off about it at first. I didn't like feeling like a servant, and hated having to graciously accept the condescending tips offered me by the same families whose children feared me. There was one house though, just about three blocks away from the home I'd been living in for six years that I didn't mind visiting so much. I was making deliveries there at least once a week, sometimes more, and the door was always answered by a woman that seemed far too young to own a home like this on her own, particularly in a neighborhood like this.
She was always perfect, wavy brown hair fell loose, but it always fell perfectly, her lips were always a glistening red that was probably a little too bright to be fashionable. Her make-up, her lashes, every single time she opened the door she looked like she was set to spend a serious night on the town. She always smiled, thanked me politely and tipped well. She never asked me my name, or tried to engage me in some kind of conversation the way that most these families did. This was a little before delivery boys were officially less than human. She rarely ordered the same thing, and she always ordered for two. I never saw anyone in her home but her, and I was never invited in further than the entry way. By the third trip, however, I had noticed that there were always two cars in the drive. One was a nice little black coupe, and the other was different almost every time.
Dad didn't pay me well, but he did pay me, and I supplemented that by skimming a little off the gas money, and a lot off of the tips. I couldn't really spend most of it without the old man finding out, until the summer rolled around. It was a Friday night, and the call I was accustomed to came in. Chicken Marsala and my mother's special gnocchi this time around. I pull up to her place, and there's only one car in the driveway. I walk up to the door and knock and there is no answer. I look in the window and can't see anyone. I knock again.
"Miss, it's Michael from Damico's. I have your food. Is anyone home?" I yell at the door. No answer comes to me.
I don't know why, but I try the door. It opens, I let it swing all the way open and yell again, still standing on the stoop. Again no answer comes and I was about to give up, a little disappointed, and then I see a hand, a single slender hand extending into the hallway. I set down the food.
"Miss? Miss are you ok?"
I walked in and found the young lady, lying on her dining room floor with a slowly expanding halo of blood around her head.
"Oh fuck."
I was never that big, and I really wasn't that big at the age of sixteen, so I drug her along her hallway out the front door, and propped her in my passenger seat. I was a little worried about what my father would say when he saw the blood on the seat. It was a needless worry. I was driving fast, faster than I probably should have, but it felt like the thing to do. About halfway to the hospital she started to make a low moaning sound. She never opened her eyes.
I rip into the emergency lane and drug her out of the car, out of the driver's side since it was the side closest to the door. I back my way in through the doors and start screaming. A pair of orderlies lift her onto a gurney and I watch as they push her through a pair of double doors. I look down and I'm covered in blood. I want to light a cigarette, only I don't know that because I haven't started smoking like it was my business yet. There's blood all over my hands and I'm shaking and it takes way to long for anyone to speak to me.
"What happened kid?"
He's got to be speaking to someone else. It sounds like he's yelling through a plate of glass.
"Kid?"
"Kid!"
"Are you ok, young man?"
I look up at the man who has his hands on my shoulders.
"I need to wash up."
He points me to a men's room, and I hold my hands under the tap until the only blood on me is drying in my shirt. When I come back out there is a nurse waiting for me.
"You're the boy that brought in the young woman?"
"Yes."
"I have a few questions for you if you wouldn't mind moving your car and then having a seat in the waiting room with me."
"Sure."
My dad would have killed me if he knew I left the car running with the drivers door wide open. I came back in and found the nurse sitting with two chairs face to face. I sat.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"I was delivering her dinner, my dad owns a restaurant, Damico's, and I was delivering her some food, and when I get to her house there wasn't any answer and I yelled and tried the door, and it just swung open and I found her lying there on the floor. I haven't done anything wrong."
"No one is saying you have."
"Is she ok?"
"She should be fine, something gave her a nasty hit on the head but the doctors think she'll be fine, she may have a concussion, but we don't know for sure yet."
"Good. Can I go? I should be getting back. My Dad will be wondering where I am."
"You can call your father in just a second, I just have a couple other questions for you."
"Shoot."
"Do you know her name?"
"No."
"Do you know if there is anyone we can contact, a relative or boyfriend maybe?"
"All I know is her address, 452 November Drive."
"Ok, last thing, if you could just give us your information so that we can contact you if we find it necessary."