Blue Scrubs leapt forward. My time was up.
I looked regretfully down the row of counter stations and saw, to my dismay, that all except one were now fronted by malicious little engraved signs reading COUNTER CLOSED.
The one man remaining—other than Blue Scrubs, who was having a pair of letters weighed for air mail, not that I was taking note of any details whatsoever—stood fatly at the last open counter, locked in a spirited discussion with the clerk regarding his proficiency with brown paper and Scotch tape.
Man (affectionately): YOU WANT I SHOULD JUMP THE COUNTER AND BREAK YOUR KNEECAPS, GOOBER?
Clerk (amused): YOU WANT I SHOULD CALL THE COPS, MORON?
I checked my watch. One minute to go. Behind me, I heard people sighing and breaking away, the weighty doors opening and closing, the snatches of merciless October rain on the sidewalk.
Ahead, the man threw up his hands, grabbed back his ramshackle package, and stormed off.
I took a step. The clerk stared at me, looked at the clock, and took out a silver sign engraved COUNTER CLOSED.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
The clerk smiled, tapped his watch, and walked away.
“Excuse me,” I called out, “I’d like to see the manager. I’ve been waiting here for ages, I have a very urgent parcel—”
The clerk turned his head. “It’s noon, lady. The post office is closed. See you Monday.”
“I will not see you Monday. I demand my parcel.”
“Do you want me to call the manager, lady?”
“Yes. Yes, I should very much like you to call the manager. I should very much—”
Blue Scrubs looked up from his air-mail envelopes. “Excuse me.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “I’m terribly sorry to disturb the serenity of your transaction, sir, but some of us aren’t lucky enough to catch the very last post-office clerk before the gong sounds at noon. Some of us are going to have to wait until Monday morning to receive our rightful parcels—”
“Give it a rest, lady,” said the clerk.
“I’m not going to give it a rest. I pay my taxes. I buy my stamps and lick them myself, God help me. I’m not going to stand for this kind of lousy service, not for a single—”
“That’s it,” said the clerk.
“No, that’s not it. I haven’t even started—”
“Look here,” said Blue Scrubs.
I turned my head. “You stay out of this, Blue Scrubs. I’m trying to conduct a perfectly civilized argument with a perfectly uncivil post-office employee—”
He cleared his Bing Crosby throat. His eyes matched his scrubs, too blue to be real. “I was only going to say, it seems there’s been a mistake made here. This young lady was ahead of me in line. I apologize, Miss . . .”
“Schuyler,” I whispered.
“. . . Miss Schuyler, for being so very rude as to jump in front of you.” He stepped back from the counter and waved me in.
And then he smiled, all crinkly and Paul Newman, and I could have sworn a little sparkle flashed out from his white teeth.
“Since you put it that way,” I said.
“I do.”
I drifted past him to the counter and held out my card. “I think I have a parcel.”
“You think you have a parcel?” The clerk smirked.
Yes. Smirked. At me.
Well! I shook the card at his post-office smirk, nice and sassy. “That’s Miss Vivian Schuyler on Christopher Street. Make it snappy.”
“Make it snappy, please,” said Blue Scrubs.
“Please. With whipped cream and a cherry,” I said.
The clerk snatched the card and stalked to the back.
My hero cleared his throat.
“My name isn’t Blue Scrubs, by the way,” he said. “It’s Paul.”
“Paul?” I tested the word on my tongue to make sure I’d really heard it. “You don’t say.”
“Is that a problem?
I liked the way his eyebrows lifted. I liked his eyebrows, a few shades darker than his hair, slashing sturdily above his eyes, ever so blue. “No, no. Actually, it suits you.” Smile, Vivian. I held out my hand. “Vivian Schuyler.”
“Of Christopher Street.” He took my hand and sort of held it there, no shaking allowed.
“Oh, you heard that?”
“Lady, the whole building heard that,” said the clerk, returning to the counter. Well. He might have been the clerk. From my vantage, it seemed as if an enormous brown box had sprouted legs and arms and learned to walk, a square-bellied Mr. Potato Head.
“Great guns,” I said. “Is that for me?”
“No, it’s for the Queen of Sheba.” The parcel landed before me with enough heft to rattle all the little silver COUNTER CLOSED signs for miles around. “Sign here.”
“Just how am I supposed to get this box back to my apartment?”
“Your problem, lady. Sign.”
I maneuvered my hand around Big Bertha and signed the slip of paper. “Do you have one of those little hand trucks for me?”
“Oh, yeah, lady. And a basket of fruit to welcome home the new arrival. Now get this thing off my counter, will you?”