It began as a mistake.

It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I had this leather sack on my back and was hiking around at my leisure. What a job, I thought. Soft! They only gave you a block or 2 and if you managed to finish, the regular carrier would give you another block to carry, or maybe you’d go back in and the soup would give you another, but you just took your time and shoved those Xmas cards in the slots.

I think it was my second day as a Christmas temp that this big woman came out and walked around with me as I delivered letters. What I mean by big was that her ass was big and her tits were big and that she was big in all the right places. She seemed a bit crazy but I kept looking at her body and I didn’t care.

She talked and talked and talked. Then it came out. Her husband was an officer on an island far away and she got lonely, you know, and lived in this little house in back all by herself.

“What little house?” I asked.

She wrote the address on a piece of paper.

“I’m lonely too,” I said, “I’ll come by and we’ll talk tonight.”

I was shacked but the shack job was gone half the time, off somewhere, and I was lonely all right. I was lonely for that big ass standing beside me.

“All right,” she said, “see you tonight.”

She was a good one all right, she was a good lay but like all lays after the 3rd or 4th night I began to lose interest and didn’t go back.

But I couldn’t help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in their letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.