No, I’m Not Security

The man handing me the package looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

This is a difficult expression to receive professionally.

A smile is fine. A friendly greeting is welcome. But an uninterrupted, ear-to-ear, shit-eating grin creates the impression that one of you knows something the other would find relevant.

I was the other.

It was a Friday night in Colorado, and until then, things had been going pretty well. The orders were coming steadily. I was making money. Then a package delivery appeared: around twenty dollars, ten miles or possibly more, with an estimated completion time just under an hour.

Not spectacular, but it cleared my rough twenty-dollars-an-hour threshold.

I accepted.

The pickup was in a well-to-do suburban neighborhood, the kind where the houses looked comfortable and the streetlights were spaced as though darkness were an amenity. I found the address, parked, and messaged the sender.

He came outside carrying my next financial decision.

Even in the limited light, I could see his pupils. Dinner plates. Above the grin, they gave his face the appearance of someone who had just heard the funniest thing in the world and was under strict instructions not to explain it.

We exchanged names. I confirmed that I was there for the package.

The grin stayed.

He seemed to be exerting actual effort to keep it from becoming laughter. Whatever was making his evening so enjoyable, my arrival appeared to have improved it.

Then he handed me the parcel.

It looked like someone had cut up a plastic grocery bag, wrapped it around the contents, and applied tape until further discussion was impossible.

There was a lot of tape.

I could feel what seemed like fabric inside, along with something plastic. This told me essentially nothing. Fabric and plastic describe a substantial percentage of civilization.

I looked at the parcel. I looked at him.

Still smiling.

Well. At least he was happy to see me.

I took the package and headed for the drop-off.

---

The destination was an upscale nightclub.

Of course it was.

I had started the assignment thinking in terms of mileage and payout. Now I was outside a club holding a taped grocery-bag parcel, waiting for somebody whose contact information I did not have.

At the time, the app gave me a way to communicate with the sender, but not the recipient. This meant that the person best equipped to explain why nobody was collecting the package was unavailable to me, while the man who had nearly laughed through our introduction remained my sole source of guidance.

I messaged him to say I had arrived.

The recipient was almost there. Keep waiting.

Fine.

People went into the club. People came out. I stood outside with the package.

I was wearing my usual button-up shirt tucked into slacks. I liked looking reasonably put together while working, although this occasionally caused people to assign me jobs I hadn’t accepted.

“Oh, are you security?”

For a moment, I considered it.

Yes. Let me see some ID.

Apparently, the qualifications were a tucked-in shirt and remaining in one place long enough.

“No, go on in. I’m waiting for someone.”

Which, in retrospect, was exactly the sort of thing security might say while allowing someone into a club.

I had denied the position and then immediately performed a small portion of it.

More waiting.

I checked with the sender again. Where was the recipient?

Almost there.

The problem with “almost there” is that it sounds like a measurement. You hear it and imagine a person approaching: turning a corner, crossing a street, descending a staircase. There is a distance, and that distance is shrinking.

After enough repetitions, you realize it may simply mean the sender would prefer that you remain where you are.

I remained where I was.

Someone else asked whether I was security.

Meanwhile, people leaving the club were beginning to give me curious looks. To those arriving, I seemed to be an employee. To those departing, I was apparently a man who had been standing near the exit for an unexplained amount of time.

Neither group came particularly close to the truth, which was that I was a delivery driver whose twenty-dollar assignment had developed a waiting room.

This was a nice club, too. It had the look of a place where one cocktail could cost what I was making on the entire trip.

Somewhere inside, people were having a Friday night.

Outside, I was holding mine.

---

Eventually, a man came out.

He walked past me, looking around, then stopped by the entrance to an apartment building on the same block.

And stood there.

I noticed him because, by then, standing outside was my field of expertise.

He seemed to be waiting for somebody.

Interesting. So was I.

We continued independently.

Five minutes. Maybe ten.

He stayed by the apartment entrance. I stayed near the club. Between us, we were providing the block with a level of stationary adult supervision it had not requested.

I had no way of knowing for certain that he was my recipient. He had walked directly past me, after all. Usually, if you are expecting a package, the person standing nearby holding a package merits at least a preliminary inquiry.

But perhaps he was waiting for a friend. Perhaps he lived in the apartment building.

Perhaps this entire street was full of people being told someone was almost there.

I messaged the sender again.

What was going on? Was I going to have to bring this thing back?

Returning the parcel was becoming a real possibility, and I wasn’t excited about it. I had already met the sender. He’d enjoyed our first interaction enough for both of us.

Finally, the man by the apartment entrance approached.

“Hey, are you delivering for so-and-so?”

There it was.

“Yeah. Is that you? Because I’ve been standing here this whole time.”

He looked extremely nervous. He barely made eye contact. Where the sender had seemed on the verge of laughing, the recipient seemed to find the entire concept of receiving a delivery almost unmanageable.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Well, thank you.”

He took the package.

Then he stuffed it into his shirt.

I had spent more than twenty minutes outside an upscale nightclub waiting to hand over a parcel, including several minutes within sight of the person who wanted it, and his final contribution to making this transaction look ordinary was to conspicuously attempt to conceal it inside his clothing.

He walked back into the club.

I watched him go.

Apparently, we were finished.

---

I never found out what was inside.

Maybe it was a shirt. I’d felt fabric. People need shirts. He was already wearing one, but perhaps that one had disappointed him.

Maybe it was a fresh pair of underwear. A private emergency, resolved through an unnecessarily public series of decisions.

As for what felt and sounded like a small plastic bag within the fabric, I’ll leave the contents to your imagination.

Whatever it was, the parcel had reached its destination, I could finally stop serving as the club’s unpaid, uninformed security presence, and I could move on from being someone else’s mule.

The sender added a few extra dollars for the wait.

I appreciated that. Whatever else I might have thought about the assignment, he had recognized that my evening had been spent standing on a sidewalk while his recipient practiced approaching me.

Hopefully, the delivery improved somebody’s night.

The sender already seemed to be having an excellent one. The recipient looked like he could use the help. And I had made a little money, completed the trip, and briefly qualified for a second profession.

No, I wasn’t security.

I was the guy security probably should have had a few questions for.