neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow...
I leave my Avon brochures in a variety of places. Most customers like to collect them at the front door, so I hang them from a special plastic bag on the knob. A few customers are more particular. The old lady with no bottom teeth likes hers inside a clay flower pot way behind a bent corrogated metal garden shed in her backyard. She's never ordered anything, but I leave her a handful of practical samples every two weeks. Another customer likes her book slipped inside the driver's window of her pristine blue Mini Cooper. She's never ordered anything, either. I only leave her one sample.
One customer, a harried mother of five, likes hers inside the mailbox. She's a good customer. Every campaign she sends me an email with a list of her needs. Her children are grade-school age and younger, but she doesn't order bubble bath or kid's sun screen. She chooses the girliest girl stuff in the book. Last campaign she wanted that infernal Flip Flop Lip Gloss, the see-through Lace Tank and Printed Pant pajama set, Far Away perfume, and six lipsticks in shades of hot pinks and firetruck reds. It was the Father's Day brochure with soap on a rope and blue-checkered slippers, but she ordered nothing for her husband. I met him once, a tall quiet missionary with the Mormon Chuch. He looked through me and didn't shake my hand when I extended it.
I left her brochure in the ornate metal mailbox covered in script and scrollwork this afternoon. Her house seemed to rattle and shake with the cries of a baby and a strange rythmic hammering noise. I wondered what she did with all that lipstick and those daring pajamas. I pulled my water bottle out of my kilt and unpopped the top. It felt good to drink, to wash the pollen and dust from my throat.
"Excuse me, Ma'am?" It was more of a command than a question, a rough and ready voice with a hint of an Asian accent coming from behind a bushy pepper tree.
"Huh?" I cocked my head to see who was speaking and watched a mailman round the tree and shift his bag slightly on his shoulders. He was my height and beefy, and he wore tiny wire glasses with circular lenses.
"If you leave anything else in that box I will have to report you to my authorities."
I yanked open the mailbox and grabbed the brochure.
"See? It's just an Avon brochure. The lady of the house asked me to leave it here for her. I leave it here every other week. We have an arrangement. I'm not spamming her mailbox. She asked me to leave this. It's Ok with her." I waved the book at him as I explained, speaking faster and faster and higher and higher until my voice took on the squeak of a mouse at the end.
"I don't care if she's the Queen of Spain. It's against Federal Postal Law to tamper with the US Postal Service. Next time I report you. It's a seventy-five dollar fine for each offense plus postage on the offending materials."
He opened the white and black bag imprinted with his work god's logo and angrily shoved a handful of bills and sanctioned fliers into the box. It closed with a hearty thunk, and he turned his heel and walked to the next grand metal mail fortress.
9:14:49 PM 
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