The Delivery

by Peter Mendelsund

Genres: City Life; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Enter the world of the Delivery Boy, who must peddle his way to 5-star customer ratings—and, perhaps, freedom—in novelist and graphic designer Peter Mendelsund’s The Delivery.

Countries go wrong, sometimes, and sometimes the luckier citizens of those countries have a chance to escape and seek refuge in another country—a country that might itself be in the process of going wrong.

In the bustling indifference of an unnamed city, one such citizen finds himself trapped working for a company that makes its money dispatching an army of undocumented refugees to bring the well-off men and women of this confounding metropolis their dinners. Whatever he might have been at home, this citizen is now a Delivery Boy: member of a new and invisible working class, pedaling his power-assist bike through traffic hoping for a decent tip and a five star rating.

He is decidedly a Delivery Boy; sometimes he even feels like a Delivery Baby; certainly he's not yet a Delivery Man, though he'll have to "man-up" if he wants to impress N.—the aloof dispatcher who sends him his orders and helps him with his English.

Can our hero avoid the wrath of his Supervisor, get the girl, and escape his indentured servitude? Can someone in his predicament ever get a happy ending? Who gets to decide? And who's telling this story, anyway?

Harrowing and hilarious, The Delivery is a fable for and about our times: an exploration of the ways language and commerce unites and isolates every one of us, native and immigrant both.

Release date: February 9, 2021

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Print pages: 304

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

Delivery 1:


CHAPTER TWO


It was raining, lightly. The wheels of the bicycle hissed down the streets.

* * *

Customer two had smiled, and said something to him he hadn’t entirely understood. She looked the delivery boy briefly in his eyes, before closing the door.


CHAPTER THREE


“She said to ‘stay dry.’”

“A manner of speaking,” N. said, not turning away from the dispatch computer, in case the Supervisor saw them talking.

* * *

Little-to-no traffic. Few customers.

* * *

(Slow time.)

* * *

The rain let up.


CHAPTER FOUR


(N. taught him. Customer, block, delivery, doorman, sidewalk, elevator, manor house, tenant, stoop, Supervisor, “stay dry,’’ so on.)


CHAPTER FIVE


Third delivery.

* * *

An indifferent man; a customary tip.

* * *

(No stars.)

* * *

The sun came out. Having rolled up his sleeves at a traffic light, the delivery boy felt the hairs on his forearm ruffle.

* * *

Slow, slow. The delivery boy squinted.

Still early, though.

* * *

Slow times were

1. Bad: few tips, but also

2. Good: no rushing or poor ratings.

* * *

He stopped at another light, listed over onto one foot, looked right, left.

* * *

Where were the customers. Maybe it was a holiday?

* * *

(Holidays were slow times …)


CHAPTER SIX


Green awnings (stippled from the rain).

Manhole covers (latticed).

Trees (on the median. Marbling shadows).

Pedal; coast. Pedal; coast.

Light (strobing).

The smell of the hot, wet pavement.

The phone: heavy in his pocket.


CHAPTER SEVEN


The holidays here were different from the ones back home.

* * *

Though he did not know all the names of the months and seasons, he had heard from N. about one or two of the local holidays.

* * *

(When they were, how they were observed … etc.)

* * *

There was a backfire. Someone shouted. A bus pulled into his lane.

* * *

The delivery boy drove around the bus, not knowing for a moment what lay on the far side.

* * *

“You can still do our holidays,” N. had allowed, with that weary look of hers.

* * *

Adding hastily, as he walked away toward the storeroom door: “in private!”

* * *

The light turned green, but he had kicked off just before, knowing the rhythms of the lights, and of everything on the street.

* * *

Later, he had said:

“We should try their holidays.”

“Don’t be stupid.”


Copyright © 2021 by Peter Mendelsund