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Opening someone else’s mail was a federal offense.
This was what Rhen told herself as she stared at the cardboard box boasting a SEDONAN METALWORKS logo across the top. The package had obvious wear and tear, probably from traveling across the continent given that Sedonan Metalworks was headquartered over 3000 miles away. Which she knew because she’d googled it to make sure the package wasn’t hers.
(Lars was always getting on her about her order history. Rhen’s online spending habits were practical even if they were a bit…excessive. She didn’t order silly blouses from her Instagram feed, but she did own six different Swiss army knives. Always paid to be prepared.)
In addition to being on a completely different coast than Rhen’s first floor apartment, Sedonan Metalworks boasted a variety of specialty-made weapons, armor, and tools. Their reviews made it sound like their stuff was high quality, heavy duty, and perfectly specialized. Each piece also cost upwards of $800, which just made the package all the more tempting. The things she could do if there was a high-end chainmail something in there…
No, opening someone’s mail was a federal offense. She could go to jail. Worse, she could be fined. She was barely keeping her head above water with two jobs right now, and Rhen would prefer not to lose the nicest apartment she’d ever lived in. She would not open the package, no matter how sweet the siren song of expensive metal goods called to her.
She would stay strong.
Staying strong lasted about two hours.
“You could open it and retape it?” Dameon asked, fulfilling his duty as a constant devil on her shoulder.
“No way she’s getting this tape off without tearing the box itself,” Lars countered, fulfilling his duty as the antagonistic wet blanket on her other shoulder.
She’d invited her two closest friends over in an attempt to have someone else talk her out of breaking the law, but the bickering trio’s hangout quickly morphed into a strategy session to avoid getting caught. All the while, the package stayed perched in the middle of the card table that served as Rhen’s kitchen counter (you’d think someone buying up a whole block of apartments could afford to add a little more counter space).
At this point it felt like it was mocking her. The corners of the cardboard were bent and bruised, clear tape crinkled along every seam. It screamed You better open me soon because I won’t survive being lifted again . The thud it made when Dameon tested its weight said There’s no point in trying to take me anywhere, might as well open me now . The Sedonan Metalworks logo sang of a virtuous company fighting against mass production and planned obsolescence and sitting within her grasp , if she could just grab her box cutter.
“You two aren’t helping,” Rhen said abruptly. Lars and Dameon both turned to squint at her. Dameon raised one eyebrow while Lars’ forehead wrinkled in frustration.
“You’re supposed to talk me out of it,” she continued. “I feel like all we’ve done here is plan—what’s the movie with the guy? The heist guy?”
Lars rolled his eyes, “Ocean’s 11?”
“Yes,” Rhen snapped her fingers, “That one. We’re just doing another Ocean’s 11.”
“Au contraire,” Dameon said. “The heisting’s been done for us. We’re just collecting our spoils at this point.”
Now Rhen rolled her eyes. “But they’re not our spoils. They’re—” she checked the label for what might’ve been the first time, “ —Galahad Teomes’ spoils—Hey, wait I know who this is!” Jumping up from her seat, Rhen watched the card table wobble with her excitement. Finally, a clear path forward.
She shuffled around her kitchen looking for the business card she’d been given two months ago when she’d moved in. Pushing aside a bundle of loose embroidery string, Rhen figured that she should probably clean out her junk drawer after all this was said and done.
“Got it!” She exclaimed, brandishing a crumpled piece of white cardstock.
Lars and Dameon blinked at her.
“And that is…?” Dameon asked.
“The number for my unpleasant neighbor, you might recognize his name from the cardboard box you’ve both been trying to help me steal, Mister Galahad Teomes? He lives across the hall, the post office must’ve mixed up our apartments by mistake. I’ll just run this over to him and never have to think about it again. Problem solved!”
Her two friends exchanged glances, then all three pairs of eyes drifted back to the Sedonan Metalworks logo. Dameon shrugged, but Lars reached for the business card in her hand.
“You think this guy will be cool about the mix up?” He asked. “It says here he’s a ‘security consultant’, what the hell does that mean?”
Taking the card back from him, Rhen blew a breath out her nose, “It means he gets hired to be a mall cop and he works weird hours. It’ll be fine. I obviously haven’t opened it, which means he has nothing to complain about.”
“Well I’m not coming with you to give it to him,” Lars said.
Rhen rolled up her sleeves and positioned her arms under the box, lifting with a soft grunt and balancing its weight against her hip. “That’s fine. Didn’t expect you to.” She slowly set off towards the door, snagging her keys from the holder with her pinky, but before she could make it into the hall, she turned back to her friends. “Don’t eat all my snacks while I’m gone. I’m saving the queso for after my shift tomorrow.”
The last thing she saw before Dameon shut the door on her was his enthusiastic thumbs up. Yeah, she wasn’t getting her queso tomorrow.
Go down hall, check. Place package at door, check. Knock on door and explain to grumpy neighbor why she has his expensive specialized equipment of some kind, Rhen was still working on that one…
Rhen wasn’t scared of Galahad Teomes. More so, she didn’t think it was fair that she had to deal with horrible customers on her day off. Maybe he wouldn’t be an asshole about the mishap. Maybe she’d look out her window tomorrow and see a pig flying across the street. It could happen.
After 5 full minutes of rehearsing her explanation in her head, she finally decided enough was enough. With a shake of her shoulders, Rhen tapped out a (hopefully) non-threatening rhythm against the door.
Her neighbor opened it almost immediately. He had a scowl on his face and he was only wearing one shoe. “Yes?” he asked impatiently.
“Sorry if this is a bad time—”
“I was about to leave.”
“...Right, sorry about that, but this’ll only be a minute.” Rhen gestured to the box in her hands. “This package got delivered to my apartment earlier and I only just realized it’s not addressed to me.”
“This is my package?” Mister Teomes (Or should she call him Galahad?) asked. Rhen nodded and nudged the box with her foot. The scowling man’s frown turned a touch downward as he bent to lift the box (hoisting it over his head like it was made of foam and paper) and set it somewhere in his apartment.
Rhen stood just beyond the threshold unsure if she should say anything else or try to come in or some other thing that would make this interaction less awkward. The choice was made for her when Galahad shut the door in her face without another word. Okay then. She didn’t even get to see what was inside.
At least she wouldn’t have to deal with him again.
Famous last words.
Not even a week went by before another Sedonan Metalworks package made its way onto her card table. This one she’d grabbed from the mail room because she actually had ordered something from their online catalog (the cheapest possible mesh scrub brush she could find on the site at a whopping $50), but upon trying to drag it all the way to her apartment, she realized this thing was too heavy to be her new tool.
Sure enough, a glance at the label from the safety of her kitchen told her that some poor mail worker had delivered a package for Galahad Teomes to her by mistake again. Which meant she’d have to talk to Galahad Teomes again. Which meant that the shift she just spent dealing with two different 12-person parties at the same time wasn’t over yet.
Rhen’s eyes drifted around, looking for an excuse not to take care of this before she found herself blinking at the pumpkin pie John had left cooling on top of her microwave. For the past year and a half, he’d lived out of his van, taking contract work from anyone that would give it to him. He claimed he wasn’t made for a sedentary lifestyle, but Rhen suspected he mostly liked the excuse to invite himself in to use her kitchen now that they’d both gotten busier.
John made the pie to make up for trashing her place when he tried to host game night in her living room, which meant he probably wouldn’t mind if she took a slice to soften the blow of getting another one of Mister Teomes’ expensive packages by mistake.
With her mind made up, she dished out a hefty slice of pie and stuck it in her nicest looking tupperware. Armed with the delicious smell of pumpkin and a rolling chair holding the cardboard box (should she buy a small dolly? She already had a large one in the back of her closet, but it proved too unwieldy to try to get out just for this), Rhen set off down the hall with renewed purpose.
Her knock on the door was much more confident than last time. Everybody liked pie, right? That’s what the southern hospitality she’d learned growing up taught her. Bringing your neighbor a pie was a surefire way into their good graces. There was no way this interaction was going to end with her sighing in frustration, right?
There was a longer delay before the door opened to reveal her neighbor with his signature scowl across his features. Rhen had only just opened her mouth when he said, “Do you have another one of my packages?”
She nodded down at the rolling chair, where the words SEDONAN METALWORKS mocked her. “But that’s not all,” she tried her hardest not to make it sound like an infomercial sales pitch, “I brought a little something to make up for all this hassle.”
She could tell the second that he clocked the slice of pie she was holding, because his eyes widened and then narrowed inhumanely fast. Bracing herself for a tirade (maybe he was deathly allergic to pumpkin?), Rhen squared her shoulders.
But the yelling never came. In fact, her neighbor took the tupperware from her without another word. And then he lifted the package one-handed (show off) and closed the door in her face once again.
Through the wood, she could hear something that sounded suspiciously like a large container of pie being dumped in a metal trash can. She wasn’t getting her tupperware back, was she?
At least he didn’t yell at her.
Rhen’s first mistake was signing for the package with her eyes still focused on the fencing tournament unfolding on her laptop screen. Her second mistake was assuming the large, shoddily taped box was the refurbished game console she’d bought the week before. Given the amount of package weirdness from the past few weeks, she should’ve known to check her email for a shipping confirmation before opening mysterious boxes willy nilly.
Standing in her living room, a light purple boxcutter still poised above crumpled cardboard, Rhen had a bad feeling about who the large piece of chainmail belonged to.
Barely a minute passed before she found herself wearing a hole in her carpet with her pacing. Opening someone else’s mail was a federal offense, and none of her interactions with Galahad Teomes thus far made it seem like it was one he’d be willing to forgive.
Rhen whipped out her phone and dialed the first contact in her call history. Lars took an agonizing ten seconds to answer the phone. When he did, he sounded disgruntled.
“Rhen? Didn’t you call me yesterday?”
“No being grumpy, I’m having a crisis here.”
She heard some shuffling on the other line, like her friend was sitting up from under the mountain of blankets he usually slept with. Before he could say anything, she couldn’t help but ask, “Did you just wake up?”
“I don’t have class today so I slept in. Sue me,” Lars grumbled.
“It’s 2:30!”
“Your point?”
Rhen rolled her eyes, but she knew when an argument was useless, especially against Lars. “Whatever, I need your advice.”
“Right,” Lars said, “the crisis you mentioned.” His tone was more annoyed than concerned and Rhen tried hard to remember why she’d become friends with him in the first place.
“I opened one of his packages.”
The other line went silent. Rhen assumed it was from shock until Lars said, “...and who is ‘he’? Is it John? He has no sense of privacy, I doubt he would care about that at all. Just put it back in the box.”
“No, it’s not John it’s—you remember the guy who lives across the hall? The one whose packages I keep getting?”
Now came the shocked silence she expected. After almost half a minute of nothing but static, Lars breathed out in a deep sigh. “Well…” he started, “you might as well turn yourself into the police now.”
“What?” Rhen groaned, “Lars, that is not helpful advice!”
“The second you try to return the package, that guy’ll call 9-1-1 for imminent mail theft. You just committed a felony—”
“On accident!”
“ —There’s no way that’ll hold up in court. Face it, your days are numbered, Pendragon.” She could practically hear the shrug in his voice.
“I don’t need someone to tell me I’m doomed,” she said. “I was hoping you’d help me write a note to leave for him or something. Anonymously. ”
Lars laughed mirthfully, “Oh, perfect, now you’re trying to cover up the crime.”
“I don’t need your sarcasm. If you aren’t going to offer me something I can use, I’m hanging up.”
“No, no, okay I’ll help,” Lars said, backtracking. “The note is a decent idea. You can leave it on his doorstep or something and just pretend you saw someone else do it.”
Rhen stopped her pacing in front of her desk and grabbed some nice stationary and a fountain pen. Might as well embellish it. “There you go, that’s how you help a friend in need.” She uncapped the pen, putting her phone on speaker and setting it on the far end of the desk. “Now, what should it say?”
“Maybe you could start with…”
DEAR
GA MR.
MISTER TEOMES,
IT APPEARS I HAVE ACQUIRED YOUR PACKAGE BY MISTAKE. UNFORTUNATELY IN MY FOLLY, I OPENED IT WITHOUT ASSURANCE THAT IT WAS MINE. I HAVE TAKEN NOTHING FROM IT AND NOW I RETURN IT TO YOUR HUMBLE DOORSTEP SO THAT YOU MIGHT ENJOY ITS CONTENTS.
MY GREATEST APOLOGIES,
YOUR NEIGHBOR
The note managed to keep Rhen from getting arrested, but it didn’t magically ward off any more of Galahad Teomes’ mail. Two days later, when a small cylindrical package bearing his name showed up in her mailbox, Rhen wasn’t taking any chances.
On her next day off, she pressed her back to the mailroom wall and sat down on one of her couch cushions that she’d brought so she wouldn’t have to sit on the floor. The post office didn’t list the times of their routes publicly, but she figured if she got up early enough and had enough patience, she’d catch whoever kept making these mistakes in the act.
Then it would be a simple fix to point them to the correct mailbox and Rhen would finally be free of ever talking to Galahad Teomes again.
Unfortunately for her, it turned out sitting in an apartment building’s mailroom for hours on end was just about the most boring way to spend a day off. She had her phone, a book, and a sudoku, but something about the stale atmosphere of the room made her less interested in occupying her mind. All there was to do was think about the poor unassuming postal worker that she was about to disrupt.
At a quarter to 9:00am, some 60 year-old walked in with her dog and started Rhen, but she was only checking her box. Rhen let her know that the mail hadn’t come and she muttered something about “no timeliness these days,” whatever that could mean.
At 10:27am, a jogger in bright blue picked up a package that must’ve been sitting there since yesterday. Rhen nodded to them and they gave her a confused salute back.
And finally, at 11:39am on the dot, a woman with bright red hair and a light blue button up with a USPS patch on it strolled into the mailroom like she owned the place. Her nails were sharp and painted with spiderwebs, her ears had long, coffin shaped earrings clipped to them, and her face split into a grin when she saw Rhen scramble to stand up.
“Hello, little sparrow. Are you waiting for the mail?” The woman asked. “Because the mail is here!”
Whatever words Rhen had rehearsed in the hours previous left her at the sight of this mailwoman. She didn’t mean to stereotype, but she’d been expecting someone a little more…boring.
With a shake of her head, Rhen got ahold of herself and cleared her throat. “Uh—I’m actually waiting for you. Not the mail. Well, yes the mail—but only because you have the mail.”
“Whatever for? I don’t believe we’ve met.” The woman looked Rhen up and down. “No, I surely would have remembered that lavender hair of yours if we had.”
“No, we haven’t met. I just—do you alway deliver the mail for this building?” Rhen asked.
“Every day, except on sundays. Rain, sleet, or snow, as the saying goes.”
Perfect, they were getting somewhere now. “Right. So I live in apartment 1A.” Rhen pointed to the mailbox associated with her apartment. “And I have a neighbor, he’s in 1C across the hall.” Again, she pointed to the corresponding mailbox. “And I’ve been having this problem lately where all his packages end up going to me in 1A when they should really be going there to 1C. Do you—I mean, I don’t want to accuse you of anything, but have you been reading the labels wrong or something? I just wanted to make sure the mistake was corrected so that we can all get our normal mail. Um, ma’am.”
A second passed. Then another. Then another. Rhen was about to take it all back for fear that all her mail for the rest of her lease would somehow be sabotaged when the postal worker did something she had no way of expecting.
She burst into obnoxiously loud laughter.
Her whole body shaking, tears streaming from her face kind of laughter. Those sharp nails clutched at the sides of her blue button-up. Her uniform creased when she threw her head back to cackle into the air.
Rhen could only stare in horror until, after way too much time, the cackling dialed back to a light hiccuping snort and finally to silence.
“Um…” she had no idea what she intended to say. Luckily, the mailwoman didn’t let her finish her thought.
“Of course you’ve been getting mail for 1C, little sparrow. That’s the point !”
“Sorry, what?”
The woman chuckled. “The man in 1C is my husband. I know how much things like breaks in routine and regulation rile him up, so I started this little game to add some spice to our relationship.”
…There was a lot to unpack there. “You’re married ? And you’ve been using my mailbox as a—a—” Rhen could not think of a way she felt comfortable ending that sentence. Then she realized something. “So you live in 1C too? I’ve never seen you in the building before.”
“Oh, don’t be silly! If I lived with him, I wouldn’t be playing this game, now would I?”
“But…you’re married.”
“6 years last December,” the woman said cheerfully.
“Ma’am—er, Mrs. Teomes—”
“Please,” she tutted, “I never changed my name. Te’ijal Ravenfoot at your service.” With that, Te’ijal bowed slightly and extended her hand. Rhen wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to shake it or kiss it, but went with the former.
“I’m Rhen. Pendragon. I guess you knew that if you’ve been delivering my mail,” she laughed awkwardly. This conversation was going to take weeks to recover from. “Listen, Mrs. Ravenfoot—Te’ijal, I…understand that you’ve got your own thing going on with your husband, but truth be told, I would prefer not to be the go-between for… this . Anymore. If possible. Ma’am.”
Te’ijal sighed in a way that eerily reminded her of Lars, though her eyes looked a lot more amused than Lars usually did. “Well, if you insist. I suppose the surprise is a bit ruined if you’re expecting me now.”
“So you’ll stop mixing up the packages?” Rhen asked, barely able to contain the relief in her voice.
“For you, little sparrow, I will.” Te’ijal smiled and winked at her, “I’ll just have to think of some other way to anger him.”
“Um—”
“Goodbye for now, Rhen Pendragon! Lovely to meet you. I hope we run into each other again someday.”
Rhen swallowed and waved her hand awkwardly as Te’ijal picked up the now-empty container of mail she’d been sorting. “Well, you know where to find me,” she said. Then cringed because she hadn’t wanted to remind Te’ijal that she knew where Rhen lived.
“That I do, little sparrow,” the mailwoman said on her way out. “That I do.”
Rhen didn’t bother waiting to make sure Te’ijal had left the building. She grabbed her bag and her couch cushion and booked it back to her apartment, the whole while praying that she didn’t run into anyone (including 1C’s resident) on her way in.
Once she locked her door and flipped the deadbolt, she collapsed on her couch in an exhausted heap. Forget working an eight-hour shift, Rhen felt like she’d just run a marathon from one conversation with an eccentric postal worker.
She was getting all her mail delivered to Lars’ place from now on.