Mark turned out of the parking lot and onto Wood Oaks Boulevard with only a careless glance to his right. In truth he was looking mostly for other bicycles bearing down upon him and not for cars. Though once a very heavily traveled boulevard through the western section of Roseville, Wood Oaks was now an almost deserted strip of asphalt that you could stand in the middle of for hours without ever having to make way for anything but a bike. All along its length, at every intersection, stood darkened traffic signals, the multicolored vertical lights now the nesting spots of sparrows and robins. To the younger members of society, those who did not remember crippling traffic jams and rush hours, the four lane roads and the six and eight lane freeways seemed an absurd case of overkill. They could not conceive that just a few years before those roads had been choked with cars and trucks stacked bumper to bumper for miles on end. The highways and freeways of America were now used more for bicycles and hydrogen powered commuter trams than they were for anything else.
The AM/PM mini-mart in the corner of the stripmall was also a victim of the times. Once a thriving gasoline station where men and women and even teenagers had pumped their tanks full for the impossibly low price of only three dollars a gallon, it was now a boarded up, decrepit building. Graffiti marred every wall and weeds were growing through the cracks in the asphalt parking lot. The gas pumps themselves were smashed and broken, a few of them missing entirely, most likely carted away by some person who wanted to possess a relic of another age. Mark remembered when the store had been open. He used to ride his bike there to buy sodas or baseball cards or comic books. His mother and father used to fuel their Japanese-made sport utility vehicle there. The store had always done a brisk business, with every gas pump constantly in use and a perpetual line before the two clerks that were on duty. In a way, looking at the ruins made him sadly nostalgic. Would things ever return to the way they had been? Could they?
He did not know, could not guess. And what was the point of speculating about it anyway? The world was what the world was. The now was what they had.
He rode on, his legs pumping the pedals up and down, a thin sheen of sweat beading up on his forehead from the late May heat of California's central valley. He passed the front entrance of Wood Oak High School, where the marquee in front of the administration building read: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BUY STUDENT WAR BONDS!! From there he turned off the main road and into a residential neighborhood full of twenty-year-old tract houses. An American flag hung from nearly every roof and yellow ribbons adorned nearly every tree. Children played with toys on front lawns and older kids played basketball or soldier games in the streets. Nearly all of them, boys and girls alike, were dressed in the camouflage-patterned clothes that were all of the rage. Conspicuously absent from the landscape were vehicles parked in driveways or men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five.
His first delivery of the day was to Margaret Blancher, an eighty-year-old diabetic on social security. She lived by herself in a small three-bedroom house tucked away in a cul-de-sac. Mark, as well as most of the other delivery people, had been to her house many times before. She was a pleasantly feisty old lady who liked to chatter on about her garden and her grandson who had qualified for the college draft deferment but who had elected to go ahead and volunteer for the army anyway. He was currently serving as an infantryman at the front. Mrs. Blancher was fiercely proud of him and spent the majority of her days watching news coverage of the war.
"Good afternoon, young man," she told Mark as she answered the door for him. "My goodness, don't you look hot?"
"Yes ma'am," he said dutifully, picking up her two bags of groceries and hauling them into her tidy house. He followed her to the kitchen where he put them on the counter by the sink.
"Have you heard about those nasty chinks and their offensive?" she asked him as he pulled the Saving Center PC from his belt.
"Yes ma'am, I did," he told her. And he had. The offensive had been the talk of the school during the first half of the day. For a while there the news had not been encouraging and it had been feared that a break-through was imminent. If they managed to break through, how long would it be before they fell upon California, upon Roseville? Wouldn't the Sacramento area, with its major road junctions and its huge railhead be a primary objective for General Li Chan's troops? But by the second half of the day, the news that the lines were holding had filtered through and the talk had turned back to normal high school matters like girls and sex and drugs and alcohol.
"We held those dirty buggers back," she said with satisfaction, her hand actually clenching into a fist of victory. "I certainly hope we can start pushing them back where they came from now."
"Me too," Mark said absently, reading the screen on the PC. "That'll be $45.50 for this one, Mrs. Blancher."
She clucked a little at that. "My goodness how the price of groceries has gone up these last few years. Why I remember when I could get four bags of groceries for less than twenty dollars. And that was with fresh vegetables too, not those horrible jarred ones. Do you remember fresh vegetables?"
"I sure do," he said. "Corn on the cob was my favorite. My mom used to boil up a bunch whenever she made beef for dinner."
"Oh, that sounds just heavenly," she said nostalgically, picking up a large purse from beneath her telephone. "Those rotten chinks. Darn them for taking away our corn on the cob."
"I agree," Mark said with a smile.
She dug around in her purse for a moment and finally came out with a roll of bills. Mark internally sighed as he saw this. Many of the elderly still insisted upon using cash for their transactions, which created a royal pain in the ass for everyone involved. Why the hell couldn't they get with the times and use a PC or a debit card like everyone else?
"Here you go," she said, handing him a fifty-dollar bill. "The leftover is for you."
"Why thank you, ma'am," he said graciously, even though it was almost more trouble than it was worth to actually go down to the bank and deposit the $4.50 into his account.
Mrs. Blancher of course wanted him to stay for a glass of iced tea and a little conversation but he pleaded bicycle security and a tight schedule. With a few more comments about those rotten chinks and how she hoped her grandson was safe fighting them, he made his escape, mounting his bike once more and heading off deeper into the suburban neighborhood.
Diane Grommet was his next delivery. She was a thirty-year old widow who survived on the meager offerings of a military death pension. Her husband had been a fairly successful independent truck driver before the war. Once the supply of diesel fuel that was needed to work his trade had dried up he had entered a government lottery that had been held to pick those lucky few who would be allowed to continue delivering needed stocks around the country. He had lost that particular lottery—for some suspiciously bizarre reason it had been the employees of corporate trucking companies who were mostly picked—and had been forced to sell his truck for less than a tenth of what he had paid for it. Left with no other option he had joined the army and been assigned to the transportation division driving a supply truck. Eight weeks later he was killed in British Columbia when Chinese planes attacked the convoy he was a part of.
She was sitting on her porch swing when he wheeled up, sipping from a glass of ice water and fanning herself with a magazine. Dressed in a pair of blue jean shorts and a half shirt, her blonde hair tied into a ponytail, she looked at him nervously as he came to a stop before her. Mark was careful to keep an innocent expression upon his face. Diane, as she insisted he call her, was nearly ready to try to "seduce" him and he didn't want to screw it up. Though Darren preferred the direct approach, actually flirting with his conquests to speed up the process, Mark had always been on the hesitant side and let his target be the one to make the first move. He had gotten pretty good at guessing when that move was going to be made. Diane had already exhibited two of the three signs he looked for. She had asked him about his girlfriends on the previous visit and she was tipping much more than was customary for the service he provided. The third sign, which he was expecting very soon, was explaining how lonely she had been since her husband's death. That usually came right before the invitation to come over for dinner.
"Hi, Mark," she said softly, her eyes flitting back and forth as he dismounted. "I'm glad to see you this early. I was wondering if you'd bring me my groceries in time for me to start tonight's dinner."
"You were second on my list today," he told her gallantly. "They had you a little further up but I shifted it around a little to make sure you were early in the route." This was, of course, a lie. One did not mess with the boss's precious delivery schedule. But she had no way of knowing this and the impression that she was receiving special treatment was certainly helpful to his cause.
"You're such a dear," she said, offering him her smile. "I hope you don't mind my asking for you by name, but you're so polite, not like some of those other people."
"I don't mind at all," he said, glancing at her two boys, who were playing with a collection of wooden military models on the grass, completely oblivious to his presence. They were four and six years old and dressed in identical cammie overalls. The game they were playing with their tanks and APCs was something they called "kill the chinks".
"Well," she said, standing up and setting her glass down on a small table, "shall we get them inside?"
"I guess we should," he said, reaching down and grabbing two of the bags.
She grabbed the other two and led the way into the neat, two-story house. Her kitchen was sparkling clean, almost medically sterile, and the scent was of some citrus-based cleaning product. A bowl of tomatoes and onions from her victory garden sat on the table. He set the bags down on the counter and she put hers down next to them. Their hands briefly touched as they performed this motion. Diane did not seem too eager to pull hers away.
"Can I get you something to drink?" she asked him as she pulled a few jars from the first bag and carried them to the refrigerator.
Normally his policy was to turn down such offers, which nearly every customer made (and the vast majority of the customers, even the single mothers, were not trying to seduce him). He had his own bottle of ice water strapped to his bicycle and time was somewhat of a factor in the bicycle delivery business. However, with likely prospects such as Diane, he always accepted, whether he was thirsty or not. It was over such drinks that the important conversations, the ones that got him laid, took place. "Ice water would be nice," he said casually.
"One ice water, coming up," she said, abandoning the groceries for the moment and reaching into a cupboard above the sink. She withdrew a glass and carried it over to the refrigerator, which had an ice and water dispenser in the door. She dispensed some of both and handed the glass to Mark.
"Thank you," he said softly, putting a tone of shyness into his voice. "It's very hot out today."
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" she said, putting a hand to his forehead and wiping at the perspiration that had gathered there. "You're all sweaty. I don't know how you young men can hold up, hauling groceries around for us old women in this heat."
He enjoyed the touch of her soft hand against his forehead, and knew she was enjoying the contact as well. Yes, she was well on her way to making her move. He wondered how she would be in bed when she finally "enticed" him to it. He was starting to learn that the women's performance during coitus was directly linked to his own performance. When he was good, the woman tended to be good as well. He had now gained enough experience with the previous six war widows he had slept with to consider himself a decent lay. Those women had taught him much.
"You're not an old lady," he told her. "You can't be more than twenty-five, right?"
She laughed a little, giving his hair a playful tug. It was obvious she had enjoyed his compliment immensely. "You're a sweetheart," she said. "But you're not fooling me. I'm pretty sure I told you a few deliveries ago that I was thirty, didn't I?"
"I don't remember," he lied, manufacturing an embarrassed smile.
"Oh, you," she said, finally pulling her hand away. "Anyway, I thank you for saying that to me, even if it is a fib." She sighed a little. "It's so nice to have adult conversation once in while."
"Yeah?" he asked, sipping from his water.
"Oh yes," she said, grabbing a few more groceries from a bag and carrying them over to the cupboard. "I love my boys to death but sometimes I just feel like I'm going crazy in here, talking about nothing but television shows and Internet games and military toys." She shook her head a little. "I guess I just miss my husband a lot."
Bingo! Mark thought, suppressing a smile. There was sign number three, the final sign. "It must be rough," he said, quiet sympathy in his voice.
"I know it's been more than a year," she said, "and I should be over it by now. For the most part I am. But it's hard not having a man around the house sometimes. I guess you wouldn't understand."
"Well," he said, maintaining the sympathetic tone, "maybe not the man part. But I know what its like to lose someone to the war. My mom was a teacher at Thomas Jefferson School and … well … you know what happened there."
Her face immediately turned to syrupy sympathy. She did indeed know what happened there. Everyone in the Sacramento region knew what had happened there. "Oh, you poor dear," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
He shrugged a little, keeping his eyes cast downward, as if he were barely restraining tears. "Like you said, I'm mostly over it. You know when I miss her the most though?"
"When's that?" she asked.
"Dinnertime," he said. "My mom was the best cook. She used to make the best food, every night, even when she had lots of papers to correct from school. Even after the war started and we couldn't get vegetables or fresh meat anymore, she could still whip up some really static stuff. My dad tries to cook sometimes, but it's not even close. Mostly we just eat pizza and stuff we can put together out of jars."
He could see that his speech, which he had given to three other women to that point, was having the effect he intended. Diane's pretty face was puckered into an expression of pity and motherliness. "Well you know," she said softly, "I'm probably not up to your mother's standards, but I'm not too bad of a cook myself."
"I'm sure you're not," he said, as if he had no idea what she was hinting at.
"So maybe…" she said, blushing a little, " uh … well, maybe you'd like to come over and let me make dinner for you some night."
Score! Mark's mind screamed triumphantly. It was now all over but the copulation. And he would get a free meal out of it as well. "Oh, I couldn't do that," he said, giving the token I-don't-want-to-impose-upon-you refusal. "Not with what groceries cost these days."
She slapped playfully at his shoulder. "Now don't you go worrying what groceries cost these days," she told him. "It would be a pleasure to cook for a man for once. It's been so long since I've been able to do that. I simply insist that you come over and let me feed you."
"Well…" he said, as if on unsure ground, "if you're really sure that…"
"I'm really sure," she insisted. "How does tomorrow night sound?"
"It sounds good," he told her, letting the shy smile come back to his face. "What time?"
"How about seven o'clock? I'll make you my famous burgundy beef stroganoff. My husband used to love it." And then, almost as an afterthought. "The boys love it too."
"That sounds very good, Diane," he replied. "I'll be here then."
"I'll be looking forward to it," she said, entirely truthfully, and for more reason than one.