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Brown He comes every day, leaving a little something in our garage. He signals by tapping on the kitchen door twice. It kills me how they’re not allowed to let the trucks run. He turns it off, even though he’s only out twenty seconds. One day I hear the rumble of the truck, hear it shut off. I wait by the kitchen door, but no taps. After a whole minute the truck doesn’t start. I crack the door and see him standing in the only space left in my two car garage. “Nowhere left,” he says. “Why don’t you open any of these?” He shakes his head. It’s embarrassing. My wife and I are addicted to internet shopping, QVC, HSN. It paralyzes us, so we leave the boxes in the garage, ashamed. “We have to bring some of this in,” he says. “Come on.” My face burns. If my wife was here, maybe she could explain. He looks at me in my worn robe. I work nights, sleep only two hours a morning, waiting for him to come. I open the door and step out in my bare feet. I reach to my left and pull a box from the top of the stack. He nods and follows me in. We bring the boxes to the dining room. I’m tired after one trip, but there’s no stopping him, once he starts. He’s driven by packages, the need to move them around. He tells me his name is Tanner, but they call him Brown. “They own me,” he says. Besides his brown uniform with the short-shorts, he has brown socks and shoes, brown wavy hair, brown eyes. His cologne suggests cinnamon and leather. When my wife gets home, I know she won’t mind the boxes in the house, once she sees him. She has a thing for him, of course. I’ve seen her looking out the window at his retreating buns, which are like twin loaves of rye. I excuse myself to get dressed, and he hardly acknowledges, just keeps moving. I have plenty of new clothes in the boxes, unseen, but nothing in my drawers that is brown. I find some maroon sweat pants, a shirt that’s kind of brown-tinted with age. I brush my teeth with an old toothbrush (again, plenty new-fangled ones in the boxes), part my hair to show the striking white line of indoor living. In just that time he’s moved the boxes to the living room, arranged them in a semi-circle before which he sits cross-legged, giving a relaxed Boy Scout lecture. “I never had much for Christmas.” My lower lip trembles. “You want to open some?” He pulls a little box cutter from his shorts. It has the company logo. “Pick one,” he says. “With your eyes closed.” He winks, I blush. I find something medium sized with good weight, fit it in the space between his legs. He slices it delicately, like a surgeon. I hold my breath as he lifts the golden bottles—shower gel, shampoo, conditioner. I exhale the words: “That’s good stuff.” “I’d like to shower.” “Now?” He shakes his head and puts the bottles down. “What am I thinking? You need to open yours.” He gets up and paces. “But I can’t close my eyes. Company rules.” “I understand. I’ll close mine again.” I sit on the floor, hold my hands out, and in a moment am holding a long, flat box. He hands me the knife. It’s a purple robe with gold piping. It could belong to a king. My initials are embroidered. He takes it from me. “Colors,” he says. “I never had colors.” He frowns. “You can wear it after your shower, but it will be way too small.” He smiles, picks me another box. This one holds a white felt cowboy hat embedded with rhinestones. I’m thinking it’s for my wife, but it fits me perfectly. “That’s you,” he says, off to the shower. He’s humming away in there when my wife comes home. She’s wearing her smart beige suit and her realtor badge which says, “Sue.” She stares at me, like I’m some alien replacement for her husband. “The truck’s out there?” I just nod and point to the bathroom. “He’s in the shower.” She scans the room with open mouth. “He never had Christmas,” I say. “I got this.” I touch my hat. Her gray eyes pop. I know she’s thinking about her brown contacts. She says, “Did I just walk into one of your dreams, or what?” “Very funny.” We put our ears to the bathroom door. I notice the bounding pulse in her neck. “His name is Tanner,” I whisper. “But they make him go by ‘Brown.’ Can you believe it?” Both the water and his humming stop abruptly. “Hey, you have any new towels?” Sue elbows me viciously. “You didn’t give him a clean towel?” “There are towels. I think he means new as in from the box.” “Just a moment.” She sings it out, scrambles and sniffs through the boxes, rips one open with her bare hands, holds up a plush, oversized towel, plum colored. It goes with the king’s robe. She taps on the door, looks away as the strong arm appears. He pokes his head out, eyes her face and chest and nametag. “Why, thank you, Sue.” He closes the door. Sue jabs me again to make sure this isn’t my dream. Brown resumes humming, his deep voice warbling like he’s still riding rough in the truck seat. We stand and wait. This is it, the reason we were born. Finally he stands in the hall before us. His hair is lush, untamed, springing like a crown. My robe barely reaches his knees. His chest bursts forth like the sculpted tan plastic of a superhero. “Combs? Brushes? Blow-dryers?” He spreads his hands. “We have all of that,” Sue says, breathless, delving once more into boxes. She knows by the labels what holds what. She’s never wanted to open them before now. Her arms overflow with the many shapes and styles of grooming accessories. Cords trail behind. Brown flicks his head and leads her to the bathroom. I stay put. She doesn’t look back. I listen to the variable speeds and functions. I hear Sue giggle. Finally I have to look. She’s carefully brushing him, squirting in the Ojon stuff. I see his eyes closed and blurt, “He can’t close his eyes! Company policy!” Brown snaps out of it. He looks out the window, up and down the road. “He’s right.” Sue gives me a disgusted look, which melts to a pleading one. I knew it was coming. This kind of thing is inevitable. She’s been waiting so long. I figure we may as well get it over with, here and now. “Okay,” I tell her. “But make it quick.” I put in the earplugs I use sometimes when I try to sleep. I don’t get the blindfold on before I see her whispering into his ear, which has gone from brown to red with all the wattage. I sigh and sit on the sofa and pout. I know it can’t be me. I’m not gay. But still. I knew he’d be quick. In minutes Sue is pinching my arm, rather viciously. She’s wearing her robe now, her coiffed realtor hair puffed like an explosion. I almost feel sorry for her—all the buildup for this. But I smile when I see she’s not smiling. Is it possible he couldn’t deliver? He’s already at the picture window, looking back and forth, checking his watch. I rub my hands together. “Let’s open everything!” I like the confident tone of my voice. I’m happy Sue is not wearing her Christmas morning face. Brown has no expression either way. He could be a droid. When he sits on the sofa his dick appears between the robe flaps, a shrunken turtle head, two-toned tan, and tiny. “Everything!” I declare. I almost feel like saying, “God bless us, every one.” Brown works his box cutter like Scissorhands, while Sue uses her fingernails angrily, ripping greedily, so unlike her. I just watch them. In no time the room looks like the Consumer Reports testing center. “Do you think we can do it?” He looks at his watch again. It has a big face with many dials. “We have to,” Sue says. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for.” We start with burgers on the Foreman grill. Then we process carrots, cucumbers, potatoes into a hundred shapes. We deep fry and steam whatever we have in the fridge, then magically seal it in plastic bags. Out come the blenders and Magic Bullets. Milkshakes and slushies, Piña Coladas. We make perfect omelets in the new pans. Brown makes a crepe in the shape of a question mark, drops it into his mouth. “We have to work it off,” he declares, assembling exercise equipment. He’s so quick. “I used to work in a gym,” he says. We do stepping for a few minutes, and already I’m puffing, dripping sweat from my pointy nose. I ride just a mile on the stationary bike, going nowhere as usual. I row listlessly, a man in thick soup, while they’re on fire, Brown a machine and Sue working her frustrations. We bounce on tiny trampolines and Brown inflates the big exercise balls. We kangaroo around the house, slamming into each other. I start to laugh, taking a dive at Brown to knock him off, but I end up just lying in his arms. I arch my back. He kicks my ball away and bounces with me over to Sue. He tries handing me to her, but she just lets me drop and then bounces on me a couple times. But there’s this spark in her eye, one I haven’t seen in quite some time. It means that later, after all this is done, she will be asking something of me. It will be dangerous, a new step in our lives. We soak our feet in heated whirlpools. We dump in little fragrance beads. Sue lights candles of every description on every surface. She finds the massage oils, does Brown’s shoulders. He smells like a big coconut. We put some white mud on our faces, which dries immediately, squeezing and molding our skin. Sue says it’s supposed to glow in the dark, so we bunch into the hall closet. Sure enough. We can’t tell our faces apart. It’s like one face tripled by the dressing room mirror. We try to make the same faces together—happiness, sadness, terror—but Brown rams the door and stands in the hall, gasping. He says it feels like being in one of those boxes, never opened. We rinse our faces, disappointed, I think, to see who we really are. Sue opens the last of the boxes—super-whitening toothpaste, electric toothbrushes, water-piks. Brown and I are side by side at the double sink. When we’re done he turns and plants a fresh smacker right on my lips. “I… I have Sue.” “Of course,” he says. He laughs. “Just messing around. I’ve never been able to be crazy, you know?” “But you could stay here.” “That would put you both in grave danger, I’m afraid.” He speaks through his teeth, sounding all Bond-ish, studying himself in the mirror. He slaps on the new David Beckham fragrance. “They’re tracking the truck, you see. They’ll see it hasn’t moved. They’ll be here soon.” I follow him out of the bathroom, on his heels like a trusty sidekick. “What can we do?” He stops abruptly and turns. I run into his chest. He lifts me by the armpits so my eyes are level with his. He looks suddenly desperate. “Can I take your car?” “Anything.” He picks through the spoils, finds a blonde wig and oversized housedress. He nods firmly and heads off to change. Sue wanders through the empty boxes. “I don’t want any of this stuff.” “Look,” I say. “Give me a hand, and let’s be quick about it.” When he comes out, turning to give us a show, we’ve loaded the car with as much as it can hold. I hand him a paper with the name and number of a guy that can buy the stuff, give him money for a fresh start. He hugs us, hair tickling our faces. He’s barefoot. We watch him drive away and then scoot into the house, noticing in the hall mirror how flushed and alive our faces are. I find his uniform on our bed and put it on, even the shoes. Sue laughs at me. I look like a kid playing dress-up with his father’s clothes. My feet go flop, flop. “You know what they say about big feet,” says Sue. “Not!” I shake my head and say, “Women.” She slaps my non-existent ass through the shorts. She locks an arm in mine as we head for the truck. We slide the big door open and closed a few times—that familiar, soothing sound. I start the engine, stare at the big stick shift. I place my hand on the knob and she squeezes my arm. When I adjust the side mirror I see the smaller brown van behind us, which has come from nowhere. I try to count the heads inside. At least four, and maybe the barrel of a gun. My shoes are caught between the gas and brake and clutch. The motor roars, we jerk forward and stall. The door slides open and Sue is swinging with it. We’re both laughing and trying to breathe. I start up again, squeal into the street, and reach for her hand.
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