Carrier Privilege

I've been carrying mail in Cactus Flats for twenty-six years. I'm fifty-four now, and my knees let me know about it every morning. But I still love the job. I love the route, the regulars, the dumb dogs that think the mail truck is their mortal enemy.

Dating, though. Dating I don't love.

Since I turned fifty I've gone out with maybe a dozen men. Guys my age, mostly, from the diner or the hardware store or the church potluck that Doris keeps dragging me to. And they're all fine. That's the problem. Fine. They talk about their cholesterol and their ex-wives and their boats they never take out. They look at me like a nice comfortable pair of slippers.

The last one, Kenji, took me to the Olive Garden over by the base. Halfway through the breadsticks he said, "You know, you've aged real well, Velma."

Real well. Like I was a barn.

I went home and ate ice cream in my yard and watched the soldiers jog past on the road. The base is a mile from my house, and when the boys are on leave they come through town looking for beer and food and something to do. Sometimes they wave. I wave back. That's been the extent of my excitement for a while.

So anyway. That's where my head was that Saturday morning when Colton Gavin started hanging around my case.

Colton is the postmaster. Thirty-two years old, transferred in from Tucson two years back. Tall, dark hair, always looks slightly amused, like the whole postal service is a joke he hasn't told anyone yet. Good shoulders. I noticed the shoulders early. I'm fifty-four, not dead.

That morning I was sorting my route in shorts because it was already ninety degrees at seven a.m. He came up behind me and just stood there. I could feel him standing there. The man radiates standing there.

"Morning, Velma."

"Morning. You need something from my case?"

"Nope. Just passing by."

"You've passed by four times."

He grinned at me. "You're counting."

"Postmaster, I've counted every step in this building for twenty-six years."

He looked down at my legs. Not sneaky about it either. Just looked, and then looked back up at me like he'd been caught and didn't care.

"Those shorts are a strong uniform choice," he said.

I felt it go through me like a jolt off a bad gate. That little electric snap in the stomach I hadn't felt in three years. I put a letter in the wrong slot and pulled it back out and said, "It's ninety degrees. Sue me."

"Not planning on it. Just saying the route's going to feel longer today."

"Colton." I turned to face him. "Are you flirting with me?"

"Little bit, yeah."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. "You're thirty-something. I've got socks older than your last birthday."

"And yet here I am, admiring the socks' owner." He leaned a hip on the case. "Any man your age who isn't flirting with you is an idiot. Any man period."

Well. What do you do with that at seven in the morning between the A's and the B's? I busied my hands with the mail.

"You're going to get us both in trouble," I said.

"I'm very careful."

"Uh huh. That's what careful men say while leaning on my case."

He laughed and pushed off and walked back to his office, and I stood there with a handful of catalogs feeling like I was thirty again. It was ridiculous. It was also the best feeling I'd had in a month.

The rest of the morning he stayed in his office, which I figured was that. Then around eleven he came out while I was loading the truck and said, "You've got the Schwartz loop today, right?"

"The heavy one. Furniture catalogs and whatever the base commissary is mailing this month. Sixty pounds of somebody else's junk."

"Mind if I ride along?"

I stopped with a bundle in my hands. "What?"

"Ride along. Help you with the heavy stuff. Inspection's Monday and I want the route timed clean. You're my fastest carrier but that loop's a bear solo."

"Colton, postmasters don't ride routes."

"Postmasters do whatever keeps the numbers good. Besides, I carried before I made supervisor. I still know how to hoist a satchel."

I looked at him. He looked back, all innocent, like he hadn't spent the morning making comments about my legs.

"So this is about the schedule," I said.

"Totally about the schedule."

"And the shorts had nothing to do with it."

"Nothing. The shorts are a staffing matter I probably shouldn't discuss."

I had to turn away so he wouldn't see me grinning. "Fine. Get in. But you're lifting everything over forty pounds, and you're buying lunch, and if you slow me down I'm leaving you at the duplexes on Cactus Road."

"Deal." He grabbed a satchel off the hook like he meant it.

We pulled out at 11:40. The Schwartz loop is my least favorite and my favorite, if that makes sense. Out past the feed store, along the base fence, all those little houses the army families rent. Young wives waving from porches, kids on bikes, the whole bit. Heavy boxes on Saturdays because everybody orders everything now.

He actually worked. I'll say that for him. He hopped out, ran parcels to doors, came back sweating, got in, drove to the next stop. Between stops we talked.

"Twenty-six years," he said. "You ever think about leaving?"

"Where would I go? I know every dog on this route by name and grudge."

"You like it that much?"

"I love it. I complain about it constantly, but I love it. What about you? Tucson to Cactus Flats. That's a step down in everything except heat."

He shrugged. "Wanted somewhere quiet. Tucson station had two hundred carriers and politics. Here we've got twelve carriers and one broken tape dispenser."

"And a postmaster who rides routes on Saturdays."

"Schedule," he said, deadpan.

"Sure."

We hit the loop of houses by the fence around twelve-thirty. I pulled a box off the shelf and about broke my wrist. Commissary catalog, sixty-pound thing.

"Give it," Colton said, and took it off my hands. He carried it up the walk one-handed, which was just showing off, and I watched him do it, and I thought, Velma, you are in trouble.

Back in the truck he handed me a bottle of water from the cooler he'd brought. He'd brought a cooler. The man packed drinks for my route.

"So," I said, cracking it open. "You do this for all your carriers?"

"No!"

"Just checking."

He took a drink. "Velma, can I say something?"

"You've been saying things all morning."

"Fair." He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "You're the most interesting person in this building. Maybe in this town. You're funny and you're sharp and you've got better legs than anyone in either postal district, and I've been trying to figure out how to say that without being a creep for about four months."

I sat there with my water. Four months. He'd been working on it four months.

"Well," I said. "You led with the shorts. That was a choice."

"I panicked."

I laughed, loud, right there in the truck, and he grinned like he'd won something.

"It's not going to work," I told him. "Whatever you think this is. You're my boss. I'm old enough to be your... well, not your mother, but your aunt's friend. Your cool aunt's friend."

"First, my cool aunt's friends are all great women. Second, I don't think it's anything. It's Saturday. We're delivering mail."

"Right."

"Unless," he said, and stopped there.

"Unless what?"

"Unless you want it to be something. Which is your call. Completely your call. I've got two years left before I can transfer anywhere I want and I'm not going to blow up this office over it. So if the answer's no, the answer's no, and Monday I'm just the guy with the broken tape dispenser again. Your route, your reviews, your schedule, none of that has anything to do with this. Yes or no, it's separate."

I looked out the window. A soldier in fatigues was walking his dog past the fence, and the dog was barking at the truck, and everything was normal and dusty and hot.

"The answer's not no," I heard myself say.

"Yeah?" He didn't move. He just sat there with his water like I'd told him the route was running on time.

"Yeah. But it's also not here, and it's not now, and it's not in the truck."

He nodded slowly. "Okay. That's fair. That's actually more fair than I deserve."

"Finish the loop first," I said, and started the engine. "Then we'll see what we see."

He picked up the next bundle of mail, and we rolled on past the fence line, and my hands were steady on the wheel and my stomach was not steady at all.

Three stops later we were on Desert Willow, the quiet street with the block walls and the shade trees somebody's grandmother planted in 1978. I handed him the bundles and he handed them back, one at a time, working out of the passenger side while I drove up and parked between stops.

He passed me a bundle and his hand came with it. His fingers dragged across my thigh, right on the bare skin above the knee, and stayed there a second longer than a bundle of mail requires.

"Colton."

"Sorry," he said. He did not sound sorry. "Fingers slipped."

"Fingers slipped."

"Twice." He looked at me. "Velma, I've got to be honest, I don't have a smooth move in my body. I've been planning this for four months and all I've got is clumsy hands."

"And the shorts comment."

"That was the panic version."

I took the bundle out of his hand, slow, so my fingers crossed his. "You're playing a dangerous game, Gavin."

"I know it."

"You're my boss. I could file a grievance."

"You could." He swallowed. "You won't, though."

"How do you figure?"

"Because you looked at my shoulders in the parking lot this morning and forgot what you were saying mid-sentence."

I had. I did not tell him that. I told him, "Drive."

"Your truck."

So I drove. Three more houses. At the last one he came back and instead of going around to his side he stood there in the doorway of the truck with his cap in his hand, and I knew what was coming before he opened his mouth.

"There's a row of storage units on Sander," he said. "Behind them. Nobody's back there on a Saturday."

"Colton."

"I know what you said. Not here, not now, not in the truck. I'm asking anyway, once, and if you