Letters From a Made Up Ache

“So you want us to go back downtown to pick up a crate on West 55th and deliver it to Soho,” I said to our dispatcher Nick, repeating exactly what he said word for word, almost unintentionally mimicking his Queens accent.

“That’s what I said,” Nick said in his usual manner of flustered urgency. Bebo and Wendell, both prematurely ready for an early day, nodded their heads with their mouths agape, shrugged their arms and exhaled a tired “what the fuck” in unison, as if they rehearsed this earlier in the day.

“You got to be fucking kidding me,” Wendell said loud enough for Nick to hear him as he reached for my phone. “We’re halfway over the Queensboro Bridge.” Actually, we were stuck in Upper East Side Manhattan traffic courtesy of the never ending Second Avenue subway construction.

“I was trying to reach you all day to let you know you had an add on,” Nick said assertive enough for the three of us to hear from my cell. “You need to start answering your phones.”

“I didn’t know you called,” Wendell said not convincingly at all. “My cell phone usually doesn’t pick up in service elevators.”

“Oh, all three of you didn’t get my call because you were in an elevator,” Nick said with tone usually reserved for his eight year old.

Wendell looked over at Bebo and I for a non-verbal confirmation, as if we were standing around Nick’s desk.

“Did you guys get a call from Nick,” he asked in which Bebo and I shrugged our shoulders and shook our heads like we were also participating in his improvised play.

Nick let out a heavy sigh while I imagined him going through his usual frustrated mannerisms: Running his right hand over his thinning hairline, palming his face, pinching the space between his eyes and resting his elbow on his desk, forehead in the palm of his hand.

“Get down to Cirkers on the West Side. Pick up a fairly large crate. Take it down to Soho. You’re delivering to David Byrne’s apartment. The bill of lading information is at Cirkers. You’re going to uncrate and install whatever’s inside. If you have any questions, please call me on my cell. And if you can’t get through it’s probably because I’m in a fucking elevator.

Before Wendell could ask what exactly we were moving, Nick abruptly slammed the phone down.

“Fucking hate it when he does that,” Wendell said as he reached down to put my phone back in his pocket out of habit before apologetically giving it back to me while Bebo just looked straight ahead at the gridlocked traffic without saying a word and pointlessly moved the truck forward exactly one inch.

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Because of the aforementioned construction and overly cautious drivers who are annually caught off guard by the first snow of the year, every fucking year, it took an hour to drive two miles across town to pick up, as it turned out, a crate containing a miniature pipe organ of all things.When we finally made it to our stop in Soho an hour later, it was already mid-afternoon with groggy apathy way settled into our collective morale. The only obstacle in the way of finishing what we hoped would be our last job of the day was the service elevator to what we thought was David Byrne’s apartment when in fact, it was the offices of his Luka Bop record label. Actually, “service elevator” was way too generous of a description as it was the size of a telephone booth –commonly found in most century old Manhattan buildings, and could barely fit half of a person if they sucked in their stomach, let alone a pipe organ. This only meant a more grueling, painful alternative: The stairway.

Our initial reaction is to usually refuse by casually observing the time and how we’re suppose to be at our next job a half ‘n hour ago or if we’re really feeling ambitious, a long detailed story about a back injury from a prior job way back when. This time however, either because of unusually stubborn pride or because we shamelessly wanted to impress Davie Byrne, Wendell agreed that we could easily schlepp this crate up a couple flights of stairs no problem, which was annoying, but no one protested or conveniently remembered a ruptured vertebrae either.

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“So wait, wait a second,” Jerry said over the phone with what sounded like a sandwich of some sort in his mouth. “You want me to drop everything and drive all the way down to Soho and help you lift a large, heavy crate up multiple flights of stairs.” There was a half joking tone in his voice that made Wendell look partially concerned behind his smirk.

“I mean, if you guys aren’t busy,” he said. “We need help with this one thing, that’s all.”

“You mean like that one time you helped me and Dale with that marble table top at that second floor storage warehouse in Greenpoint?”

Wendell stood with his mouth slightly open, slowly realizing that he wasn’t joking after all.

“You guys got it down by the time we got there,” Wendell said.

“Or how about that time you got out of the truck to help us with that unframed Marilyn Minter plexiglass mounted c-print that we had to ride on top of the elevator at her studio? Remember that fun? Oh wait, you don’t because you didn’t get out of the truck to help us.”

“I had to stay with it because I didn’t want us to get towed, Jerry,” Wendell snapped with a reminder of that one time he left an unattended truck in a no parking zone a few years back.

“As much as I’d love to cancel my lunch break early and repay you for all the times you’ve so generously went out of your way for me…” Jerry pause to slowly take a sip of something. “Go fuck yourself,” and abruptly hung up.

“You’re fucking kidding me right,” Wendell said into his empty cell phone while Bebo and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Dejected from getting hung up on for the second time today, Wendell turned back to face up the three straight flights of stairs of where the crate had to go and mentally considered asking the very pretty, nicely dressed receptionist for help who was barely five feet in heels and from the inhaler on her desk, quite possibly asthmatic. Instead, he turned back to the front of the crate, literally rolled up his sleeves, slightly tilted the front of it by the handle while Bebo and I put our hands on each bottom back corner.

“All right,” Bebo said with an inhale, “A one, a two a three son-of-a-bitch-fucking-heavy-fuck.”

With a slight grunt, the three of us fast walked up the stairs, Wendell carefully leaning back to help balance out the weight while Bebo and I extended our arms so as our shoulders instead of our backs would take the brunt of the stress.

“You guys got it,” Wendell asked loudly through his teeth while our feet stomped on the stairs.

“Yeah,” Bebo and I said in unison as we plowed along with our heavy breathing.

By the time we made it to the third floor, the receptionist peeked her head out to see what the commotion was about and nearly got her head taken off amidst our rush. Carefully placing it on the ground, we slowly squatted down with the crate and dramatically leaned against the wall with an exhale, too monumentally spent to notice that it wasn’t going to fit through the front door.

“This fit last time we took it out of here,” the receptionist said partially annoyed from inside the office. “Do you guys need a glass of water or anything?”

Before any of us could respond, David Byrne’s head popped out from another room behind her and out of reflex, the three of us stood up in attention, clearly starstruck by what we saw while she casually turned to see what he wanted.

“Hey Natalie, have you seen my bike helmet,” he asked. Before she could answer, Bebo piped in a snort.

“Damn, nigga talks like he sings,” he said unintentionally loud enough for everyone to hear. Wendell, with his hand over his face, tried to his quiet laugh and beet red face while I looked over to the side, trying to avoid any additional awkwardness.

“It’s by the service elevator,” she said before turning back to us. “Do you guys have a drill or anything?”

“Yeah, we’ll be right back,” Wendell said quickly and turned back downstairs with Bebo before I could say anything. Not knowing what else to do besides wait for them, I leaned my elbows back on the crate and faked a yawn.

“So yeah, if you still have that glass of water,” I said just to fill in the silence.

Natalie nodded her head and turned away just as David Byrne popped out again, this time with his bike and helmet. He was about to walk through the front door with his head down at his cell phone before finally noticing his in the way crate delivery and looked up at me. We both acknowledged each other with a friendly nod and he slowly turned back towards the service elevator with his bike pulled upright so he could fit inside when it eventually arrived.