by Jamie Knight
I had taken the job because the pay was decent. I thought it would be fun to be everybody’s everyday Santa, delivering all the stuff people were waiting for.
A guy with an English literature Ph.D. driving a UPS truck?
Sure, why not?
I made more money driving the big brown parcel truck than I would’ve been making as an adjunct professor. It was better than being a guy with an English literature Ph.D. riding the unemployment bus.
And even if I didn’t meet a girlfriend, I did see a lot of interesting parts of Manhattan. Every day my route was a little bit different. And that day, it took me to one of the New York Public Libraries.
“Oh, delivery? Um, we’ll have to get Eleanor for that.”
The library wasn’t one of my regular stops. For whatever reason, they didn’t get UPS packages. The desk clerk at the front of the library wasn’t accustomed to seeing the UPS truck, and I wasn’t accustomed to seeing her either.
“We usually only get stuff by USPS. Government funding regulations stuff,” she explained. “But due to the current mail delay, we’ve started getting some things by other methods.”
At the same time, she tapped her fingers on the desk and looked toward the back room, awaiting whoever Eleanor was.
“I see,” I told her, noncommittally.
Finally, a curvy, young, full-busted, green-eyed, eyeglass-wearing hipster emerged from the back room. That must’ve been Eleanor.
“Sorry, we do all our hiring online, no in-person applications,” she said, then turned around on the tips of her black leather heels and started disappearing back to the librarian-cavern she’d come from.
“No,” I spoke in unison with the desk clerk.
“Donation and sponsorship requests, please fill out the form on our website. Thanks.” The hipster girl righted her glasses to add emphasis to her avoidance of me. She looked like a cat trying to escape a bath, wanting to run back into the back room.
“I’m —” I started to say while holding up the UPS logo embroidered on my uniform. Everybody knew the UPS logo.
“Sorry, I can’t see that far,” hipster-woman answered. I was still far behind the desk, just a step away from the exit door she’d been almost running toward. She seemed afraid of approaching any closer. And her glasses appeared to be an inch thick.
“I’m the UPS delivery driver.” I again pointed to the logo on my uniform. “I’ve got some boxes for you.”
“Oh! Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, hurrying forward.
“I did, but—”
It wasn’t worth rehashing the detail of past conversations to some librarian I’d never see again. Even if that librarian was gorgeous and adorably geeky and I wouldn’t mind seeing her again and again.
“Anyway, I just need you to sign, and then I can bring in the boxes.” I lay the electronic signature pad on the library counter in front of Eleanor.
She looked down, took the plastic stylus in her hand, sniffed it for some reason, then put it to the signature pad and signed her name. Her signature ended with a flourish. Maybe she, like me, had once daydreamed of being a writer, signing my words with a flare.
The desk clerk who’d earlier received me now winked to me. “Hey Mr. UPS Man, you already got Eleanor’s name, so can you maybe tell her your name?” She smiled and looked at Eleanor, then at me.
Eleanor shook her head and signaled for her to pipe down. I felt singularly uncomfortable with the clerk’s unsubtle attempts at matchmaking.
Eleanor wiped a blonde lock of hair from her forehead and again righted her glasses while the clerk grinned mischievously at me. She knew what she was up to, and she loved it.
I tried to sound as businesslike as possible. “I’m Aiden. Aiden Green. UPS delivery driver Aiden Green.” As businesslike as a UPS driver who was checking out a cute librarian trying to run away from me could sound.
The clerk squeezed Librarian Eleanor’s arm as if Eleanor was expected to somehow act on that information bibliographically. Eleanor only shook her head again and waved her away.
Eleanor was cute, check. Nerdy, check. Brainy, probably; not many people worked in a library unless they liked books. Single, possibly. If her coworker, the front desk clerk, was to be believed.
Eleanor was the kind of girl I could imagine myself dating one day.
Was it appropriate for me to pursue love with a delivery recipient?
Nope.
The company would disapprove.
GPS tracking would disapprove.
I should keep my eyes and mind on the delivery packages instead of imagining things with a cute librarian who might not even be single.
I forced myself to walk away from the front desk area. Eleanor left too. Then a display shelf caught my eye.
“Oh, you’ve got the new James Patterson novel?” I called out to nobody in particular. Eleanor emerged from the back room, through the entrance out to the main downstairs book area.
“Yeah, sure, we’ve got everything. We get it in at the same time as any bookstore,” she nodded.
“Yeah, I just — I don’t know why. I just never went to the library. I just always thought—”
“You always thought it was only full of dusty old reference books?” She fluttered her eyebrows.
Maybe she was mocking me or inviting me to flirt with her, or both.
My eyes wandered over Eleanor, then over the books in front of me. There was a display of new releases. There was also a beautiful woman. There were science books by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
There were new bestsellers from John Grisham and Michael Connelly. There were sparkling green eyes, dirty blond hair, and eyeglasses so cute that they could’ve been fashion lenses, even if Eleanor seemed like the kind of girl who’d refer to fashion lenses as pure nonsense.
“And I never knew that librarians—” I began to say.
But then I thought better of it and only finished the sentence mentally.
—were as hot as you are.
Suddenly, I caught a glance of my own reflection in the mirror and it was as if reality hit me over the head. I was in uniform. I was at work. I couldn’t stand around and chat.
“Shit, I’ve got to get your package!” I ran out to my waiting truck.
“No swearing at the library.” Eleanor wagged a finger in my direction in the most librarian-like way possible. “And no running either.”
I slowed my run to a brisk walk. Eleanor had spoken her reprimands in such a librarian-like voice; firm but polite, the same way she might’ve spoken to wayward schoolchildren in the library.
I fetched the packages from my truck; two small but heavy boxes, still not too heavy to carry both in at once — obviously, books. I instinctively went to the back package room area, but the clerk came running out again, telling me to bring the packages to the front desk again.
She must’ve also summoned Eleanor to that same front desk. Now she was there, waiting and looking slightly impatient, shaking her head at her coworker who’d sent her there.
“Alright, so this is it?” she asked.
“Yes. Thanks very much.”
I speed-walked back to my truck before anyone could summon me back or before my own desire could bring me back to revisit the cute librarian.
Chapter Two - Eleanor
“Eleanor! Paaackaaaage for you!” Claire called out in her usual tone. It must definitely have been UPS, and she really must have confused the New York Public Library with a matchmaking service. She never called for me to come out from the back room when it was just the USPS delivery woman or the elderly FedEx man making a delivery.
Claire meant well. She’d seen me ravaged by the breakup with Richard a year back. Richard went from being Mister Perfect to suddenly married when his rich ex-girlfriend came back to town. He quit his library job soon after quitting me.
Yes, I had moped, especially for the few weeks after the breakup, when the reality of it was sinking in,
that Richard was a jerk, maybe Richard still loved me, but Richard would never speak to me again. He was gone from the library and gone from my life.
That was also when I withdrew money from my 401K and went to the sperm bank. I had always wanted to be a mother and didn’t intend to wait any longer. After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting pregnant, I saw a doctor. Loads of tests later, I pulled out more money and tried in vitro fertilization. The hormones were awful, the shots were horrid, but I’d go through any physical pain to have a baby — still a no-go.
I didn’t even have a boyfriend, but I had a sliver of hope of one day being a wife to a special man and a parent to a child. Now that hope was gone. I was infertile. Adoption was still an option, but I had to save up again for that to happen. It was a hard pill to swallow, and my despair about never carrying a child wounded me deeply.
Meanwhile, Claire couldn’t let an opportunity pass her by to introduce me to almost any man who passed through the library. Her criteria seemed to only be that he was not obviously dangerous, not obviously taken, and not obviously over seventy years old.
Maybe she was flexible on the over-seventy part, judging from some of the patrons whom Claire had wink-wink-nudge-nudge suggested to me. Anyway, she meant well.
In part, she just wanted to get me to come out of my hiding spot in the back reading room. I knew that. I holed up there because I was most comfortable in its predictable ambiance of well-lit silence. I got a lot of work done sitting in that room with my laptop.
I ran the whole library from there. Still, I knew it was slightly unbecoming of a chief librarian to be so hidden away from the patrons and the library’s public areas.
I took the last gulp of my six-hour-old, no-longer-very-cold iced latte and stepped out to the main front desk area. There was Aiden again.
He was at least as handsome as last time, but even more handsome this time, because I had been thinking about him for the week since his previous appearance in my library: absence and heart fonder and all that.
I gulped. Unlike most guys, being blurred and far away wasn’t Aiden’s best side. He only got better when I was looking at him up close. This UPS driver was more gorgeous when I could see him and make out his features, which were hot as shit.
It was a pipe dream, of course.
No way was this dreamboat interested in me.
With his brown uniform and muscled triathlon-qualified legs, he was entirely focused on deliveries.
Other than the time last time when his eyes and attention wandered through the bookshelves — and was it only through the bookshelves?
I couldn’t help but think he was also looking at me, but maybe it was just wishful thinking.
“Hi. Thanks for the delivery. Um, I don’t think we ordered anything from Amazon.”
I shook the box. I knew the feeling of a boxed book, and this was definitely a boxed book. We definitely hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon. Maybe it was a donation or a free copy.
“I just thought you might — hey, you wanna open it?” The UPS guy was inquisitive. “I mean, just to, maybe, check for damage.”
In all my eight years working as a librarian, I had never heard of a book being damaged in transit. But maybe it was possible. And it wouldn’t hurt to open the package in front of the cute UPS guy.
I needed the box opener. “Hold on a second.” I looked around the front desk, but it wasn’t there. Maybe I could try to go without. “Do you mind — do you mind if I just open it with my hands?”
“Fine with me.” The UPS guy laughed.
I stuck my fingers down into the box and pried apart the lid. Inside was a layer of Amazon bubble wrap. I peeled it away, and inside was a book.
“Wow, Khalil Gibran. The Prophet. I actually don’t think we have anything—”
We did have it, but it was always stolen. It was one of those books that kept walking out of the library. Maybe people didn’t want to part with it when they were leaving the building.
“You don’t. I checked your online catalog. It was weird that you didn’t. That’s why I bought this.”
The UPS man nodded.
“You… you bought this? You sent this package?”
“I hope you don’t mind the donation.” Aiden smiled.
I didn’t mind the donation. The library received donations all the time, usually when people were moving and would’ve felt bad about throwing away books.
We usually received collections of useless, outdated junior-high history textbooks and pulp novels that had long gone out of fashion. Those well-intentioned dusty tomes went right to the monthly library book sale.
Library volunteers at small plastic tables in the parking lot hawked them for a dollar or so each, not a bad way for the library to add some money to its sparse budget. But a brand-new donation of a brand-new book shipped directly from Amazon; that was unusual.
“I made sure it was shipped UPS, so I could deliver it to you in person.” Aiden’s eyes shimmered.
“Wow.”
That was all I could think to say.
“I came here on Saturday, but your colleagues said you only work weekdays.”
“You came here—” I started to say. Claire made a gesture of covering her eyes, then her ears, shrugging.
“So, ordering this book for you on Amazon was the only way I could see you on weekdays. Since I’m making deliveries all day.” Aiden waved his UPS handheld at me as if I had forgotten that Aiden was, in fact, a UPS delivery driver.
“So, you just sent me a book—”
“Yeah.”
“You just sent me a book of romantic poetry—”
“You know Khalil Gibran?”
“I’m a librarian. Yeah, I know Khalil Gibran.”
“You didn’t have him in your collection, so I thought maybe you didn’t know—” Aiden’s eyes scanned around the room. The scruff on his face was sexy. He had just enough of a tan to show that he went outside sometimes, without being burned — and just enough wear on his face to show that he’d done some manual work, without being rough.
“We keep buying that book, and it keeps walking out of here.” I gestured toward the exit door. “People like it too much.”
“It’s one of my favorites.” Aiden smiled. This UPS driver read Khalil Gibran? Was Claire playing a prank on me? Were there hidden cameras around? It was my fantasy of fantasies. It was as if someone had read my mind.
“You, seriously, you know the book?” It wasn’t the politest thing to say, but I still wanted to make sure.
“No, I just clicked at random on Amazon, and that’s what came up. You know us UPS drivers, no education, never read any books.”
“I didn’t mean that — just that—”
“Come on. Everybody knows Khalil Gibran. Even the UPS driver.”
“You like to read?”
My question was direct. It sounded like a dating qualification question. Which it kind of was.
I loved to read. Working in a library somehow hadn’t extinguished my passion for books, despite all the stories I’d heard about people who lose their passions once their passions become careers.
“Well, this UPS driver has a Ph.D. in English literature, so I guess yeah, I like to read.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Seriously?” I still had the feeling of being pranked by the world, as if someone had sent me a poetry-reading, PhD-holding buff hunk just to mock me and my loneliness.
“Driving for UPS pays better than teaching, if you haven’t heard.” Aiden raised his eyebrows.
That wasn’t all that surprising to hear. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t gone to graduate school myself. Working as a librarian afforded me even more time with books than teaching would have. It also paid as much as a professorship, and it didn’t require anything more than a BA.
“Do you enjoy it?”
That was also a dumb question.
&nb
sp; But what else could I say?
“Yeah, I enjoy it — oh, oh shit, I have to go.” Aiden tapped at his watch, then at his handheld computer. He must’ve been on a delivery schedule. He turned and started walking away.
I called after him. “You want to?” I couldn’t believe I was doing this. But I was. I couldn’t let this guy get away.
“I want to?” Aiden looked at me, puzzled.
“Do you want to come back after work, and we can have coffee?”
Again, I couldn’t believe that I was doing this, saying this. Here I was, outwardly, openly asking out the UPS driver.
Before this day, I had never asked anybody out. I’d always been the one asked out. But I felt something for Aiden, something like an attraction that was driving me. I knew I had to act on it.
Chapter Three - Aiden
Seven P.M., an hour before library closing time, I got there as fast as I could. I changed out of my UPS uniform into jeans and a t-shirt in the back of an Uber car.
Once I arrived at the library, the nosy desk clerk was nowhere to be found. Good, for some privacy and discretion. Bad, because Eleanor wouldn’t be handed to me on a silver tray by the clerk as she usually was. I would have to fish her out from wherever she was hiding before bringing her out to coffee at whatever place the Yelp app recommended.
Alone amidst the tall Roman ceilings, I had to ring the front desk bell by myself and whisper-shout, “Eleanor! Eleanor!”
It was the year 2021, and the New York Public Library was still using a simple mechanical bell? Maybe it was intentionally quaint, New York style.
Eleanor peeked her head out from the back room. Then hid again and closed the door like a groundhog. Then peeked out again, this time waving for me to come to the back area with her.
A waist-high door blocked me from going to the employee area. I silently pointed down at it. Eleanor shrugged and pantomimed for me to push open the door. I did. I was behind the library counter. It felt like sneaking into the principal’s office after school. She waved me to go into the back area. I followed.
