spent about five years yelling at us.”
“Nice.”
“Uh huh. Daddy said she was too young when they got married and she didn’t know who she was, and when she figured it out, she had an apartment and a husband and a little girl, and it drove her crazy.”
“That’s a lot of information.”
“Too much?”
“No. No. I mean, I’m surprised you know all that stuff. That your dad told you.”
Just then we rolled up to the next stop on the route, and I leaned the bike, which completely toppled us. Thankfully, we fell on grass next to the curb, not on a sidewalk.
“Oh my God!” Aleah laughed. We lay there on our backs laughing, spread-eagled on the yard. Then I did it. Just a burst. I rolled over and gave her a kiss on the lips.
“I didn’t mean at all that you were telling me too much.”
We stared at each other, my face like two inches above hers. Heart pounding. She’s so beautiful. We were probably lying there staring at each other for two weeks when somebody spoke above us.
“Excuse me. Could I get the paper?” It was the lady who lived there. She was none too pleased.
I jumped up and pulled a rumpled paper out of my bag. The woman grabbed it out of my hand, turned, and walked back to the house, mumbling, “Kid thinks he’s on a date. He’s got a job. This isn’t a date.”
Aleah and I quietly mounted the Schwinn, repeating our successful procedure from her driveway. About twenty feet down the road, Aleah whispered in this nasal tone that mimicked the woman, “This is a job, kid. You want a date, go to the roller rink. A paper route isn’t a date.”
“You’re funny,” I turned back to look at her, smiling my ass off.
“Oh, yes, I am,” Aleah whispered dramatically.
Then we hit a parked car (we were going really slow, of course).
It seriously was pretty smart of Aleah to wear her helmet. We could’ve sustained major head injuries no fewer than fifteen times as we teeter-tottered, occasionally crashing, through the rest of the stops.
Finally, we arrived at the crown jewel of the route: the nursing home.
“Do they really read?” Aleah asked.
“I don’t think so, but they get the paper.”
We both limped toward the front door. I actually had a welt on my thigh from the car collision. Because it was late, the old ladies were milling about in the common area at the front of the home.
“Let’s move fast. I don’t like the smell in here.”
“I don’t like it in here period,” Aleah said.
We rounded a corner, dropped off a paper in one room, then hit another spot down the hall where one of the only old men in the place lay sleeping on his back, the TV on in front of him, his mouth wide open. We dropped another off in an empty room (the one where I almost always find a half-naked lady who wants me to help her escape) and then high-tailed it toward the front to drop two off at the nurses’ desk. We flew around a corner and were instantly face-to-face with the younger woman who freaks when she sees me. On cue, she screamed bloody murder, turned, and ran down the hall, spitting and mumbling.
“What was that about?” Aleah asked.
“She’s a total nut bag,” I said. “She screams like that every time.”
“She’s like my mom’s age. They take just flat-out crazy people here, not just old ones?”
“I guess they do.”
We dropped the papers off with the nurses, hit the security code on the front door (1, 2, 3—Genius! No one will ever figure it out!), and then left the building. We were finished with the route.
As I held the bike to let Aleah get on, she paused.
“You mind if I do an experiment?”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“Wait here a second please.”
Aleah went back into the nursing home. She was gone for about five minutes. I had no idea what she was up to.
When she returned, she was nodding.
“That lady in there is terrified of you.”
“Well, yeah. That’s apparent.”
“I mean, just you. She didn’t look at me at all when she screamed. She was staring only at you.”
“So?”
“So I found her sitting at a table tearing a picture of George Clooney out of a People magazine, and I asked her how she was, and she smiled at me and said her breakfast was mushy, and she hoped they had something better for lunch.”
“Maybe she’s scared of men?”
“Hello? Tearing out a picture of George