Mike Faricy - Bite Me

“Sure?” she said, raising her eyebrows and running her tongue back and forth over her lips.

“I’ll call my pal. I’m sure he can get over here in a day or two and get that taken care of.”

“No rush,” she said following me out the bedroom door and into her kitchen.

We stopped, kissed and groped for a few minutes at her kitchen door.

“I gotta get going, I said,” felt for my keys in the pocket of my jeans, kissed her a final time and stepped out the backdoor. She grabbed an apple off the counter, took a bite then stood there chewing, watching me as I walked out to my car in the alley.

“Hey Dev, oouuuuuu!” she howled, just as I opened the gate.

I smiled, shook my head, then quickly closed the gate behind me, jumped into my car and locked all the doors.

I didn’t drive home. Instead, I stopped by The Spot, just to see if I could piece things together from the night before. It sounded like Dean Martin on the juke box, I wasn’t sure, but it was too early for whoever it was. I nodded at the three guys drinking.

“Hi Dev,” Linda called as I walked in the side door.

“Linda, how’s it going?”

“Beer?” she asked.

“No, not right now. Just checking in, any messages?”

She pulled a handful of pink “While you were Out” notes from behind the cash register, flipped through maybe a half dozen, shaking her head.

“No, no, don’t look like there’s anything here for you.”

“Kinda working at putting last night together, anything you’re aware of?”

“No, I haven’t heard much. Usual insanity, but you didn’t shoot up the place or hide in the ladies room or anything, if that’s what you mean. Least as far as I know.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I walked across the street and up the stairs to my second floor office. The office door was closed, but unlocked. I stepped inside and glanced around, everything seemed to be in order. My laptop was open, but the screensaver was on, fireworks bouncing around. As soon as I touched the mouse the screen returned to a word document, a one page letter to Thompson Barkwell at KRAZ. The letter began with the greeting; Asshole. Not even so much as a ‘Dear’ in front of it. Then went down hill from there, demanding payment in full of the hundred and twenty-five dollars still owing. Two paragraphs calling Barkwell just about every name in the book followed by a third paragraph using rather colorful, often misspelled language describing exactly what I would do to him if he refused to comply with my payment request.

I always print two copies of letters, one for a hard file, and the other to actually mail. There was one copy of the nice letter I’d sent before I went into The Spot. There was also one copy of the insane rant I’d just read. The book of stamps on my desk was empty and I knew there had been two or three stamps in there yesterday after sending the first letter. I must have stupidly mailed this second awful thing when I was drunk.

I went out to the mailbox on the corner. Pick up in about an hour at four-thirty. I wandered into The Spot and waited.

I didn’t know her name, but I recognized her from across the street when she pulled up in the mail truck fifteen minutes early. Who ever expected the government to be early?

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I called from the front door of The Spot, then half stumbled down the three steps in my hurry to get to her.

She was busy shoveling envelopes into a white plastic box stenciled with black letters. “Property US Postal Service.”

“Excuse me ma’am, I’d like to get a letter back, I think I tossed it in there last night.” I called half running across the street.

“Sorry, no can do, it’s in the system now.” She said, shoveled the last two or three envelopes in then looked up at me, dead pan.

“Yeah, I get that, but see, I sent the letter in the first place and I forgot to enclose something, actually the check for payment. I don’t want to waste the stamp, if I could just get it back. I’ll put the check in, toss it back in the mail box, you can pick it up tomorrow.” I thought my little white lie sounded pretty convincing.

She smiled, nodded, seemed to consider my logic, and then said, “Nope. Sorry, against Federal regulations.”

“But I wrote the letter, see, and forget to put the check in, so if I could just get my letter back from you…”

“Yeah, I know, happens more than you think. Well, or so folks tell us. Anyway, I’m sorry, but once it’s in the system, we can’t. You could go down to the main Post Office, fill out I don’t know, maybe PS form 8076, oh wait, that holds mail, you don’t want that. They’d know the form number, this going out of town?”

“No, it stays right here, in St. Paul.”

“Oh, well then there’s really nothing we can do, it’ll be sorted and delivered by tomorrow. Did you use zip plus four?”

“What?”

“Doesn’t really matter, in town, it’ll be in their hands tomorrow. Why not just put the check in another envelope, mail it and maybe call them, explain what happened just to be sure.”

“Why not just give me my letter back?”

“Wish I could, but it would be against government regulations, no can do.”

“Come on, damn it, I mailed the damn thing to begin with. Besides, I don’t have another stamp.”

“So for the sake of forty-eight cents you want me to commit a Federal offense, that it? Sorry not happening,” she said and took two steps to her truck, tossed the box onto the floor and began to climb in.

“Aw come on, you gotta be kidding. I think I saw my envelope on top of that pile of letters.”

“Look buddy, I said no. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I grabbed her ankle, attempted to get past her to snatch my envelope back.

“Federal employee, mister, that’s assault.” I heard the hiss for a nanosecond just before the pepper spray hit my eyes.

“God, what the… Arghhh, Jesus Christ!” I screamed, and then collapsed down onto my knees.

“This is driver eleven twenty. Repeat, One, one, two, zero, assault on a federal employee, in progress. Subject has been neutralized. Please dispatch, repeat please dispatch. Corner Randolph and Victoria, repeat corner Randolph and Victoria.”

I think I was in the back of the squad car, I wasn’t sure because the paramedics told me to keep my eyes closed and my head tilted back. I was following their advice, doing just that. My eyes were on fire, my nose was running and my face felt raw. I could hear the paramedics laughing with the police officers a few feet away.

“Stuff’s lethal, man. We had to put a German Shepard down once, some mail carrier sprayed the thing. It was a blessing to shoot the poor dog.”

“This is so great, I can’t wait to tell my wife, she’ll go nuts that Dev was pepper sprayed by a Post Office gal, she hates him.”

Isn’t that cheery? Laughs all around after being assaulted by some reactionary wench who literally went Postal on me. Luckily for me I knew my arresting officer, Timmy Callahan. We’d played hockey on the same pee wee team. His wife Shelia had never quite fallen for my charm ever since I threw up on her prom dress junior year. It had been a particular off white color, unfortunately I’d had a number of bottles of Red Ripple. I vaguely remember leaning over to stare down her low cut top when things began to…

“Mister Haskell, I want you to keep your eyes closed and your head tilted back. I’m going to help you out of the car and we’re going to flush those eyes again.”

“Am I going be alright? Will I be able to see? This shit still really stings.”

More snickers.

“Yeah I think so, you might want to get checked out, but usually twenty-four to forty-eight hours does the trick. Okay, there you go, that’s right, just step out nice and easy. Keep the eyes closed, head back. Good, real good.” He was saying all the right things, but I could tell he found my predicament hilarious.