I went up the stairs carrying the two shopping bags full of Chinese food figuring on a fifty-cent tip. It was a good Sunday due to the rain, people stayed in. I had two more deliveries in the bicycle basket. I rang the third-floor doorbell and waited, feeling the sub gum sauce leak on the bottom of one of the bags.
A woman opened the door and told me to please put the bags on the kitchen table, pointing the way. I put down the bags and looked at the woman. She was wearing a half-open pink nightgown, her nipples standing out against the thin material. Her hair was black halfway down her head, the bottom half was bleached and stringy.
“How much is it?” she asked.
“Five dollars,” I said, looking at her purpled cheeks and chin.
“Just wait here and I’ll get it for you,” she told me. “Be right back.”
I looked around the kitchen. I was twelve years old and was not used to being alone in strange kitchens. There were dishes in the sink, and one of the elements of the overhead fluorescent light was burned out, giving the kitchen a dull, rosy glow, like the woman’s face, and her nightgown.
The woman came back and gave me a fifty-dollar bill. She had put on a green nightgown similar to the one she’d had on before, and flicked her pink tongue back and forth through her purple lips.
“I don’t have any change for this,” I said. “Don’t you have anything smaller?”
She smiled. “Well, I’ll just go see!” she said, and went off again.
I sat down on the kitchen table. I was beginning to enjoy myself, and was disappointed when she returned in the same green nightgown. She handed me a twenty.
“Will this do?” she asked.
I dug in my pocket for the change but she stopped me.
“Don’t bother, darling,” she said, smiling, and put her hand on my wrist. Her nails were painted dark red, but looked lighter in the hazy glow. “Keep it all,” she said, and took me by the hand to the front door.
She put my hand on her breast. I could feel a lump through the nightgown.
“Thank you very, very much,” she said, heavily, like Lauren Bacall or Tallulah Bankhead. I thought she looked like Tallulah Bankhead except for her hair, which was more like Lauren Bacall’s.
“You’re welcome,” I said, and she opened the door for me, letting me out.
It was still raining, but I stood for a minute under the Dutch elm tree where I’d left my bike and the bags of food covered by a small piece of canvas. I removed the cover from the bicycle and folded it over the bags in the basket. I felt the twenty-dollar bill in my pocket, and I smiled. If I could have two deliveries like this a day, I thought, just two.