The flier in the mail came from Amazon: $10 off a restaurant meal, delivered right to our house! I've never had anything delivered that wasn't circular and cut into triangles, because I suspected that it would arrive lukewarm. You wouldn't go a restaurant where the waiter said, "Your food's out, but I'm going to drive it around for 20 minutes, OK?"
But Amazon getting into the game — that's different, somehow. Because we had a few people over and the clock had struck the Hunger Hour, I ordered some food from one of those Malaysian-Canadian Fusion joints, because sometimes you just want Malaysian-Canadian and nothing else will do.
Half an hour later, the phone buzzed like a bee that got stung by another bee: The driver was on his way. He was a blue dot, moving from Lake Street to our house. Godspeed, valiant provisioner!
When he was about 10 blocks away, I got out some plates and napkins and cutlery, wondering if he would just leave it on the stoop like other Amazon deliveries, and I could open the door and clap my hands in wonder because the Curry Fairies had favored us tonight.
Then the blue dot on the map on my phone vanished. Huh. Had he arrived? I stood outside, looking for a car driving slowly up and down the street, bearing cubes of lamb. After a few minutes I called the restaurant.
"That order was canceled," said the harried restaurant phone-answering person. (They're always harried. People answering the phones in an emergency room during a plague outbreak sound less stressed than restaurant people answering the phone.)
"But I didn't cancel it," I said.
The phone-answering person wasn't impressed: "It says it was canceled."
