Chapter One: Celebrity Deliveries Tip Generously

Name’s Vic. 'Last scion of the gig economy.' Put that on a business card one time, back when people still printed out business cards. Two weeks shy of twenty-nine, fifty-four weeks away from officially being uncool. Recently traded out all trappings of a settled existence for an RV and a ruby red Vespa.

Spent the past year and a half zipping between coasts this way and that. Riding along like a ronin, only instead of selling my services to the local lord, I delivered things with the Vespa for tips. Not prestigious, but I could set my own schedule. Spent winters sheltering in the sunbelt. Wiled away summers… well, pretty much everywhere is scorching hot in the summer these days. I made a habit of zipping around more northern climes. Went to Alaska one summer, but that’s not important right now.

What is important to this story is my base of operations, one very eventful early spring. L.A , baby! Temperate weather most of the year, a populace accustomed to having their burritos delivered to them via private taxi, and a clientele rich enough to tip their delivery drivers gangbusters. Customers loved the Vespa. I was thinking it would be more popular in yellow, but the red sheen was quite the conversation piece. Also, it stood out and reflected lights well, so I was seldom at risk of getting bowled over by a minivan.

RV moved me long distance, Vespa was for delivery and errands. Could hop around and set up a ‘base of operations’ at various parts of the city and beyond, wherever the opportunities lay. Then I’d speed around in the Vespa to pick up gigs.

On this day, dear reader, the ravenous search for tips brought me to LAX. Mostly, this inhospitable ground was the purview of taxis and ride shares. This was my first time doing delivery work from the airport. Would never have thought to take a job here, but the service charge for drivers was so high it made my mouth water. This one drop-off would pay for dinner for a month. Well, maybe a week or two in this economy, got to account for the cost of living.

Anyway, I pulled up beside Terminal B, for international flights. A reminder that the red zone was for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only blared out over the veranda. Made the grave tactical mistake of pulling up too close to one of the speakers. By the third repetition, my right ear was beginning to ring. I stayed there anyway, as I was here to pick up a ‘passenger.’ If any airport personnel came out to bug me to move, they’d get a stern lecture about how they were stiffing the working man. Oh, what grave injustice, these uniformed professional were committing, by daring this poor beleaguered in-app micro-contractor to move his ruby red ride. I’d grown quite adept at stalling for time in these situations.

Out of nowhere, a flight attendant in spiffy and professional foreign pantsuit type thing came hustling out of the sliding doors. She held the package two-handed as if it were the most delicate thing in the world, wrapped up in a tight fabric encasing.

“VIP! VIP!” Said the flight attendant. She then said something in… Japanese, I think?

A secure basket sat right behind me on the Vespa. Had a clear plastic casing and everything to prevent any accidental spills and trap the flavorful smells in there with the meal. It was called a ‘Flavor Enhancing Concealment Case’ –that’s ‘F.E.C.C.’ Got it from a website one time. Raised my average score by half a star relative to a driver without this patented FECC. Took away from the aura of the Vespa, admittedly, but so did my dorky helmet. Safety first and all. Big enough to fit multiple stacks of pizzas, by far the most common delivery. This meal was no pizza. The distinct smell of salmon escaped the wrapped-up package as I moved to fasten the secure ‘cage’ around it.

Sushi. Maybe some rice too. Huh. I sniffed, the smell lingering for a bit after I shut the cage.

“VIP!” The flight attendant said again, and bowed.

Right. I was thinking that someone had just had a hankering for airport food with a forty percent upcharge, but that really didn’t make sense. This was something airlifted from the finest restaurants in Tokyo. That meant it was naturally expensive, not just airport food-expensive. The buyer must be someone truly wealthy.

I stealthily checked the delivery service app. The address was in the 90210-zip code. Hollywood! Well, Beverly Hills if you want to quibble, but it was in the proverbial neighborhood. Only, that was like forty-five minutes away in ideal traffic. With a reverse-pinching motion, I zoomed the map out. Traffic was less than ideal! Nay, it was Carmageddon out there. You see more cautious driving at a monster truck rally. It was your average day of L.A. traffic. What did anyone expect?

The ‘estimated time to delivery’ counter, that sacred marker of customer expectations, was set to thirty-two minutes and counting.

My mouth went dry. There’s always a catch! No time to consult the driver’s manual or road safety handbooks. Silently, I prayed that this Vespa was freeway-legal and gunned it.

+++

What happened next, dear reader, was a delivery driver door-dashing story for the ages. A flight the length of the San Fernando Valley, zipping between minivans and pickup trucks like my motor scooter was built for racing. A ride so visceral and lacking in risk aversion that I’m almost tempted to describe it in eye-blistering present tense. Alas, you are being relayed this tale via webnovel format, so there’s no reasonable description vivid enough to trick you into believing that what is happening on page is happening right now in the present moment.

Statistically, it was already too late to get this delivery to its destination within the allotted time when I received it. No matter. It wasn’t like this app was run by organized crime syndicates or anything. There was no ‘delivered in thirty minutes or the driver is shot’ guarantee like out of some gonzo cyberpunk novel—the mafia does get involved in the story later on, but that’s wholly unrelated to this delivery, please stay tuned—but what was at risk was a one-star review. My reputation as a delivery driver could be tarnished forever! So, I drove with maximum abandon up the 504, flew down the exit to take I-10 aways, then performed another risky maneuver between two very boxy and chrome electric vehicles. At once I was on track, five minutes behind schedule when by all laws of traffic and greater Los Angeles’s natural gridlock indicated I ought to be fifteen minutes behind. I sped along an off-ramp, through three intersections and just like that, I was in a land of palatial estates. Homes for the rich and famous.

Why would someone have a meal delivered all the way from Tokyo? What kind of person had the money and peculiar taste buds to do so? The question lingered in my mind as I rolled through a gated community. The gate guards were well-acquainted with random DoorDash-types coming to deliver groceries to the reclusive residents of this walled-off and sheltered abode. They had a system arranged and everything—I’m reasonably certain they took a pic of my license plate, lest I linger.

Why would anyone drive through multiple layers of security theater just to head from their driveway to street-level roads? Well, this was not simply a case of ‘how the other half lived.’ Nay, this was not even a lifestyle common to even your run-of-the-mill rich and famous. Indeed, this street contained the lavish mansions of the absolute most sought-after celebrities in the country. The gate guards were there to ensure paparazzi didn’t go snooping, and to ensure I was not one of these camera-toting vultures myself.

Guards had nothing to fear on that front. Though admittedly, if there were some kind of app that paid for layman’s photographs, the possibility would be mildly tempting. My nomadic lifestyle hardly paid for itself.

Anyway, the house was the fifth one down a long boulevard following a right turn, then a left. Roads here were so wide you could fit three cars on the two wide lanes with plenty of room to spare. My glorified motor scooter was positively dwarfed by these overlarge environs, like a paltry human walking through the grand halls of Mount Olympus. Still, there were no other cars on the road. The scene was eerily desolate.

So, I pulled up to the listed address to find a lavish mansion. Most yards here were lush and covered in green grass in defiance of local water conservation ordinances. Not so at this palatial estate. The landscaping was immaculately designed to mesh seamlessly with the natural environment of SoCal. Plants were hardy enough to survive the region’s many droughts and even fire-resistant. A fine layer of weedless sand and gravel covered the yard, aside from the plain chalk-colored driveway.

I hauled the package full of airport food up to the door. These driveways were huge, so it was quite the journey just to walk to the patio. The package maintained a slight warmth, probably a good sign. My F.E.C.C. had done its job. The kind of person who owned this place likely had extremely specific tastes. This was going to have to go perfectly if I was going to preserve my five-star rating as a delivery driver.

And so, dear reader, I pressed the intercom and waited for my patron.

+++

“Stay on the welcome mat,” came a curt voice from the intercom.

“Oh?” I looked around, then shuffled over to plant my feet on the requisite mat.

This landing pad was nondescript. Didn’t even say ‘Welcome,’ just contained a modernist tableau of colors, really. A place to kick snow off your boots, if we weren’t in Southern California, that is. The veranda was covered in a wide stucco awning, the better to keep the sun off the necks of any visitors. I was keenly aware that the intercom’s camera was watching me. Who was this mysterious benefactor, and would they tip generously?

A wide double-door awaited. Twin-pane windows were heavily opaque. Open enough to let the light in but veiled enough so that people on the awning couldn’t snoop within the house. I neither saw nor heard anyone approach. Until…

The door swung open curtly. I had scarce time to react.

“You’ve got the goods?”

A striking lady with a dark complexion and blonde hair. Dressed like an extra-fashionable secret service lady in a tight pantsuit type-thing built for mobility. ‘Fit black lady in her mid-thirties’ was a little blunt. The hair was interesting—it wasn’t a wig but was surely dyed.

“Do you have the package?” she asked with one of those been-all-over accents.

What an interesting person, I decided. Definitely a striking silhouette. I averted my eyes on instinct before redoubling my efforts to stick to her deep hazel eyes.

“Uh, here it is,” I said, hefting the package up.

Foolishly, I noticed only now that in my haste to deliver the goods, I hadn’t even looked at the recipient’s name. I quickly stole a glance at my app.

“It’s for… ‘Miyu’, it says?”

This woman didn’t look like a ‘Miyu.’ She had a delayed flicker of recognition at that name. Some kind of alias? It wasn’t unheard of when dealing with celebrity deliveries.

“That’s us,” she said with the faintest hint of a regional accent. It would take a bit more exposure to actually place it.

This woman in the fancy suit held her hand out, expecting the package. I handed it over. She took an instinctual sniff of the goods.

“It’s still warm,” she said, sniffing again. “Excellent. I was worried a cross-continental delivery wouldn’t work.”

“I’d assume they prep it on the flight somehow?” I offered. “I wouldn’t know; just picked it up outside the terminal. Maybe they have an extra fancy hot-cold bag, like the kind that you deliver pizzas in? Why, I delivered pizzas right out of college—”

Again, this woman checked the app. “Vic, right? Your services are appreciated.”

“Uh… thanks?” I said.

Just then, a third voice echoed from deep in the spacious mansion.

“Oh, Janae~” an unseen customer said with a sing-song voice. “Is my tofu here?”

“Straight from Sushitopia, Miss Yuki ☆,” said the woman at the door.

Janae, eh. Must be the lady in the suit’s name. She looked like a Janae. I could see it.

“We’ll tell the guards to open the gate to let you out,” said Janae, already swinging the door shut gently. “You shouldn’t even have to stop. Thanks again.”

“Uh, enjoy your meal?” I told them awkwardly.

As the door shut, I spied only the faintest silhouette of the mysterious benefactor within.

I took off back to my Vespa.

“Yuki, eh?” I wondered to myself. “How did she get that ☆ in her voice?”

What an interesting delivery. But that alone wasn’t what cemented the memory in my mind. No, by the time I walked back to my ride, I received a notification. I checked the app, then saw the size and scale of the tip I’d just received remotely.

‘A steady delivery well ahead of schedule – J.C’ said a note. J must be Janae, C must be her last name.

If my pupils could’ve bulged out of my eyes while warping into dollar signs, they would’ve done so. This covered my expenses for a month and a half! Two if I ration things out.

I’m going to have to be on the lookout for more airport deliveries in the future, I realized. Mentally, I committed Janae and this mysterious Yuki benefactor’s names and address to memory as I flipped the Vespa’s kickstand up and prepared to leave this fancy-pants neighborhood.