Zheng, not Chen

I woke up in the clinic, and I guessed I wasn't dead after all. I felt terrible, but better than I had the day before. The taste of blood had almost disappeared from my mouth, but it was replaced by a god-awful combination of phlegm and morning taste.

Ugh. I rolled over, surprised at how much stronger I felt already. I looked up at the little clock on the wall, sat there for a minute trying to read analog time while half-asleep, and realized it was only 5:20. Once again, I cursed in my mind about the blasted Banging of the Pipes that had somehow managed to alter my natural waking schedule. But already the blurs were clearing from my eyes. I was awake now, and that was that.

So I sat up. A nurse walked in. "Someone's up early!" she said, with the air of someone who is paid to be chipper but was born without that particular talent. "Yeah," I said. I couldn't think of much else to say. "Well, Mr..."-- she checked her clipboard-- "Zheng, according to our reports you should be okay. Try and stay out of the cold and rain." She tried to wink. She was possibly the least nurse-y nurse I had ever seen. It was the equivalent of looking at a pastor who had mistaken gas pains for a call to ministry. Whilst I zoned out a bit, I must have missed something, because she removed the IV from my arm carefully and gave me a bottle of pills. "The instructions are right on here," she said, and forced a smile. I gave her my best sarcastic look, but she had already turned around.

So I stood up and walked out of the room, which felt a little bit odd. If you've ever been hospitalized, you know how strange it feels to just waltz out of your clean white jail cell room and out into the world. Personally, I've spent the night in medical facilities four times: once when I was born, once when I got some nasty flu at age five, once after the accident that killed my father, and once when I came down with a random coughing-blood ailment at age 33. But I digress. Xiu Li was asleep in the waiting room, taking up a ton of chairs for a girl of her size. She was drooling a bit, too. I poked her in the side. She jolted awake.

"Dad!" she yelped. "Are you feeling better?" I nodded. "Let's go home," I said. Carrying the pill bottle, Xiu Li and I walked out of the clinic into the fresh morning air and across the streets graced only by the occasional pre-6 o'clock commuter. We went up the stairs together and into the apartment. Xiu Li went through the door first, only to be greeted by two very hungry cats. Apparently Persephone and Fuzzballe were getting along well, though that may easily have been attributed to their shared desire for nutrients. Xiu Li fed the cats and I lay down on the couch.

She walked back into the room, put her hands on her hips, and said definitively, "So."
"So," I said back.
There was a pause.
She sat down at my feet. "What do we do now?"
I didn't say anything for a minute. "Well," I said reluctantly, "I hate to say it, but..." I trailed off.
Xiu Li got the gist, though. "I'm going back to school." She shifted so that she was sitting up straighter and nodded stoically. "I expected that. But what are you going to do?"
I hadn't gotten that far yet. I checked the time. "Going to work," I told her. "I have some money to give to my boss." She grinned proudly at me. Wow. She was so happy to have helped me get my truck back. She had no idea what it meant to me. My own daughter, faced with criminal charges and constant danger, got a job and gave me almost all the money. I'd raised a philanthropist. Or maybe she just didn't want me fired. Either way, it was a nice touch.

I returned Xiu Li's smile and swung my feet off the couch to sit up next to her. She still hadn't showered, I noticed. It was either that or she was considerably less of a blonde than when she originally left. Was I even allowed to call it left, now that I knew what was going on? I didn't even know. "Well," I said. "You go get a shower and get ready for school."
She smiled. "I can take a hint, Dad," she informed me, and stood up. Then her face darkened. "You don't think the police will be worried?"

I had completely forgotten about the police. "Then you should shower fast," I said, "and we'll run down there and have a few words with them before you go to school." Xiu Li's eyes bugged slightly. "What if they send me to jail?"
I gave her a derisive look that was much more confident than I felt on that particular topic, and motioned for her to go take her shower. "Shoo," I said, and smiled.
She shrugged worriedly and left the room. While the water started running, I went into my room to change. I really needed to do some laundry, I noted, and yanked my last clean T-shirt over my head. Actually, I probably should've showered, too, but I wasn't the one who had been living in the quasi-sewer. I changed the cats' litter box and kicked back on the couch.

A few minutes later, Xiu Li emerged from the shower a couple shades paler and several shades less odorous. "Shall we?" I asked, and grabbed my mail jacket. She ran a comb through her hair and we set off down the stairs, eating toast as we went.
Xiu Li was visibly nervous as we headed down the block to the police station. She found a quarter in the stairwell and gave it away to the bum that I'd talked to a while ago, and fidgeted with the fuzz on her sweater. We didn't say much. I patted my pockets, happy with the thick wad of cash that was soon to bring my freedom.

I went first into the police station, with Xiu Li trailing me like an awkward shadow. Bruce sat at the desk, as usual. "Hello," he said. I smiled and returned the greeting before saying, "Can I talk to Officer Richard?" Bruce nodded, and got up from the desk. I found myself wondering what had happened to yelling "Ricky," and chuckled a little to myself. Xiu Li stood next to me, a shivering ball of nerves, and bit her lip. Officer Richard came out of the back room. He looked at Xiu Li. "We found your daughter," he said goodnaturedly. "She's standing next to you." I smiled. "Oh, thanks! Clumsy me."
"What can I do for you, then?"
"See," I said, "there's been a bit of a mixup."
Even while I spoke I could see the uneasy way he was looking at her. I guessed there may have been some sort of photographic device on the scene, and spoke faster.
"Xiu Li and I had a little trouble finding each other," I told him, "and she went to go ask my boss to see where I was. Unfortunately, my boss and I are hardly... compatible, and there was a little incident involving the police."
Officer Richard was now looking at Xiu Li dubiously. "You're the girl who caused the commotion in the post office!"
She looked really embarrassed. I didn't think I'd seen her that red before. "Yeah, I guess that was me," she said. But he wasn't finished. "You got out of the police car," he said.
"Um... yes."
Officer Richard laughed outright. "And you think that coming in and giving us an apology is going to fix everything?"
Xiu Li didn't say anything. She just stared angrily at the ground.
But his face softened. "Don't worry," he said. "We have better things to do than look out for teenage girls causing ruckuses in the post office. I'm just sorry we didn't put two and two together and get you back to your dad. I know the postmaster, and my best guess is he provoked you anyway."
I didn't know what I'd been hoping for, but here was a miracle.
"Go to school," he said, and slapped her on the shoulder congenially. "No more fighting."

We left the post office. "I didn't ask about Annalisa," muttered Xiu Li.
"You barely got off clean as is," I told her. "Do you really want to be on that report, too?"
She didn't respond, yet again.
"Officer Richard had a point," I said. "Go to school." I gave her a hug. "And come home straight afterwards, or call me. We aren't doing this runaway business anymore."
She smiled at me and walked off towards the school.

I had my own business to settle, though, and walked into the post office just in time for work. Mr. DuBolaire looked up at me. "Morning, Mr. Chen," he said. I clenched my teeth. "Morning, Mr. DuBolaire," I said brightly. "Lose the smile," he told me. "It's distinctly unprofessional, and we'll get sued if our postmen seem to be flirting with their delivery recipients."
"Don't flatter yourself," I told him. "I most certainly was not flirting. Anyway, here's the truck money." I pulled the wad of cash from my pocket and handed it over.

He counted it twice and checked it for counterfeit. "Are you sure this is enough, Mr. Chen?" he asked me cruelly. "I did mention the interest?"

I lost it. "You didn't." I walked up to him and got right in his face. I could smell the hairgel.
"You also," I fumed, "didn't mention that you pinned my daughter to the floor when she came looking for me."
"Your daughter," said Mr. DuBolaire, "is an insolent little bitch. And since when do your benefits include the knowledge of my interactions with every person who wanders into this--"
"No," I interrupted. "My daughter is neither insolent nor a bitch. You, however, sir, are both. And you treat your employees like shit--"
"I treat them how they ask to be--"
"Oh, do you?" I said. I was really getting worked up, and I could feel adrenaline rushing through my body. "Usually if every person in the office quits, you don't blame the employees for incompetence. Unless, of course, you happen to be an unjust, unlawful, abusive pile of scum who smears slugs into his hair every morning. Oh, wait. You know, Mr. DuBolaire, I could sue you. I could sue you and I could win. You're just lucky that I've spent every penny I have on your damn trucks and not a lawyer."
I stopped. He was laughing at me.

"Oh, Mr. Chen--" he started.
"My name," I said, grabbing his shirt collar, "is Zheng. Not Chen. Zheng. Renshu Zheng, actually, but I'll start with the basics, since you're apparently too stupid to remember even one freaking name."
I was probably over the line with that one, but I was too angry to realize it.
"Renshu!" he yelled. I froze. "What could you possibly want now?" I screamed.
"The post office," he said, "belongs to you."

WHAT?

I stared, more confused now than upset. "See," he told me, "I would have fired you just now. But I realized something very important."
"I'm listening," I said coldly.
"This post office has no money. We've lost all our employees and people simply aren't mailing letters. I guess it must be something to do with our employees using sketchy shopping carts from charred establishments." I could have made a crack at that, but this was useful information.
"I don't need this job, Renshu," he said. "It was a placeholder. A placeholder until I could get a job at an office that wasn't in such a cesspool of a neighborhood. A job without stupid, disrespectful employees and their adopted brats. And I'm leaving. If you love this post office so damn much that you would sue me rather than find a new job, then take it. It's yours. But I'll warn you, you can't save it. It's too far gone, and you're too much of a backward dumbass."

He handed me back the pile of money. "Take it. Keep it. It's all yours now. You may wish to use it to pay back the monumental debt this office holds, though." He laughed sardonically, handed me a key ring, and walked out of the post office. I watched him go, just for the pleasure of knowing I would never have to see him again.

Then I looked back at the keys.

I had finally been promoted. I was a manager. I hadn't been promoted since I'd gotten the mailman job at 18. Fifteen years later, here I was holding the keys to an empty building full of letters.

Where to start?

I dialed the number for USPS and began arranging some things. I de-privatized the office and managed to get it back on the list of official government post offices. But only with a warning. I had to pull the office back out of debt. Which meant I needed workers.

I got on DuBolaire's computer and made a rough poster with a picture of a mailman, the words "USPS, Now Hiring!", and a phone number and address. I printed one off and went back over to the orphanage. It'd worked last time.

Sure enough, the people there were pretty nice and let me use the machine. They even kept a couple of the posters to hang up for their older orphans. I walked down the street looking for lunch and holding a pile of fliers.

I stopped into Casa D'Waffle and grabbed a bite to eat, and then proceeded to walk around town hanging up signs. A very small child with his mother stared at me and then "whispered" to her, "There's the shopping cart man, Mama!" I wasn't sure whether he found that weird or cool, so I refrained from waving.

After I'd managed to hang up all the fliers, I remembered that now I had my daughter back and went home to greet her. Five minutes after I'd settled on the couch petting Fuzzballe and being eyed suspiciously by Persephone, the door banged open and my very rattled daughter barged in. She flung herself down in a chair and shouted at nothing in particular.
"Uh. Hi there, honey, how was your day?"
She shouted again. Then she took a deep breath.
"I've been kicked off the swim team."
I held back my that was all? in favor of an "Oh, Xiu Li, I'm so sorry." I gave her a hug. "Why?"
"Missed too many practices." She kicked the floor.
"Xiu Li," I said, "I know this is upsetting, but... I didn't think you were particularly into swimming."
"I WAS!" she yelled. "All my friends are on the swim team! And Hana McMurray didn't talk to me at all, and Ruby, and-- aah!"
She kicked the floor again, harder.
"And they're all idiots! They complain about their iPad apps, and their hairdos, and their swimsuits being too tight, and it's not fair! It's not fair!"
I wasn't sure entirely what she meant by that, but I didn't have to know. She ran into her room and slammed the door. I told her through the door that I was going back to the post office. She didn't respond.

When I got back to the office, I looked through the records. The financial situation was even worse than I thought, and I spent a couple hours trying to calculate exactly what I planned to do about it.

It was really overwhelming. One minute you've got a crazy boss and the next there's no one at all. It was just me. My post office. Mine. And I had to save it or completely lose my job. I didn't know how to be in charge. I eventually got really frustrated with everything, shoved the money in my pocket, and went to take a walk in the park.

That's where I left off.

So then I was standing alone in the park with no money. None at all. My only hope now was that people wanted a mailman job. Of course, who would, when it looks like you have to push tents covering shopping carts through the pouring rain?

Demoralized and dejected, I set off for home. Xiu Li had come out of her room and was sitting watching some stupid show. She didn't even acknowledge my presence. And so, for the first time in forever, I went to bed early.