Ledman Pickup Page 3

Three

  Leonora Wells had a motto she lived by each day: get high early and get high often. This morning was no different, beginning with a wake-up scramble for a joint, which she pulled into her lungs on the fire escape that doubled as her front porch. Three floors above the alley she enjoyed the crack of light that sometimes appeared in the daytime above the apartment buildings that ranged about on every side. Behind her in the single room she inhabited was a pile of sheets, blankets, and a variety of tin foil wrappings left over from last week's burritos. The hot plate remained unplugged on the floor as she had not felt much like cooking in recent days. She was already wearing her outfit for the day - overalls, t-shirt and boots - so all it would take to get going was something to eat and a smoke. She stumbled back into the room and a quick glance told her she had nothing of those.

  Damn it, she thought, but she'd already known. Every day was like this. Still, it wasn't so bad. She had a half a bag stashed in the jar, nothing to do but the job, and the job was so easy it suited her fine. Half a block down the street was the warehouse: Ledman Storage and Pickup. Leonora Wells had been working there for a month and could hardly believe in her luck. All she had to do was wave some drivers around and sign in when they came and when they left. The rest was pretty much up to them and the guys. The guys were Junior and Rolando, fun-loving fellows who never had a bad word to say or a mean look on their faces. All they did was move things around. She was supposed to be telling them where, but they knew better than she did. After all, she was the new kid in town. Rolando and Junior had been there for what seemed forever. The previous "supervisor,” an asshole named Rick, was not missed at all. He'd been a micro-manager supreme, always on their case, scolding them about the proper placement of packages for maximum efficiency. What did they care about that?

  Ledman Storage was just a way station. Boxes come in, and boxes go out. Who cares where they are in the meantime? As long as they made their way out into the world, that's all that really mattered in the end. Imagine that Rick guy having a fit every time that Rolando put package A on shelf C! But that's how it went. It hardly helped matters that package A turned out to be some critical shipment on its way to a nuclear research facility, and shelf C was reserved for East Coast medical equipment. Cost poor old Rick his position though it was scarcely his fault. Now Rick was supervising garden hose salesmen at K-Po's. Rolando and Junior didn't care. Nobody ever blamed them at all.

  Leonora thought that she had it made. The pay was damn good, the job was a cinch, she could do it with both eyes tied behind her back, a thought which made her burst out in a flurry of giggles. She stumbled her way into work and was happy to see that the guys were also in form. A delivery had come in from Texas, a light one, half a dozen small boxes mostly intended for pickup a half hour later. Anyone could see they should stay on the table right by the front landing, but something about their sizes and shapes made them an irresistible target for Junior.

  "Go long,” he shouted, and heaved the first package along down the aisle, expecting Rolando to go for it. Rolando, however, stood still and the thing hit and went sliding beneath a rack of gray shelving along the west wall.

  "Aw, man,” Junior complained but Rolando just shrugged. Junior picked up the next one and this time they put together a decent string of tosses and catches, all the way to nine in a row before Junior went and dropped the darn thing and it busted. All sorts of stuffing and peanuts spilled out of the side of the box and the guys figured they'd better patch it up right away, and that was the end of that game. Leonora didn't even have to scold them. They knew their business and she didn't care. As long as there's no trouble she was fine, and so far whenever the boss had called to complain she'd just listened and hadn't really bothered to hear. It was pretty much all the same to her if they were going to fire her any day now or not. She had found a few beers sitting behind a blue dumpster and distributed them freely for breakfast.