'I'll be perfectly honest with you, luv, I just can't see this one going in there.'
Ant had started to wonder about his delivery mate, Lenny. Surely there was sufficient scope for innuendo to be derived from that regular remark; he thought to himself while manoeuvring the customer's sofa on to the tail-lift of their truck. Indeed neither of the naturally lewd pair were slow to detect or deploy dodgy humour at the best of times.
Perhaps Lenny's poker-faced pessimism had been amplified on this occasion by the customer's stark sexiness - that rarest and most uplifting of delivery run treats! Ant and Lenny met their fair share of failed deliveries on any given run and sofas were a particular problem. Clumsy clobber, more often than not sold to smitten customers in high-street stores without a question asked by the sales staff about such distant concepts as the actual size of door openings. Every practical aspect of the merchandise reaching requisite rooms beyond the threshold of excited households, remained, presumably, indicative of resourcefulness on the part of the company's "dependable" delivery men.
Whereas, basic laws of physics and geometry could only be obeyed along the way; ideally, in an absence of undue acrobatics, scorched tempers, or the occasional sobbing customer to console ... in a fashion. Ant found it all the more intriguing that with so much daily grief to consider, Lenny's 'no-can-do' mantra should linger quite so awkwardly after countless utterances. Yet linger, it did lately:
"I just can't see this one going in there...."
Ant snuck a glance at the tall, thirty-something lady, as she stood vibrantly in the entrance of her elegant, semi-detached suburban home. He concealed his surge of euphoria at the sight of her delightfully short dressing-gown which declared much of her beguilingly bronze, mediterranean skin to their ever-perving eyes.
It had just gone noon, on an oppressively grey Tuesday, as the gruff, hefty and unshaven forty-six year old, Lenny, made his way back towards the truck from the customer's doorway.
'What a crashing contrast!' Ant could only think to himself, as he lowered the sofa mechanically and peered again, over Lenny's jaded shoulders while the lady ruffled her recently washed, long, brown hair whilst framed within her porch. She was around a decade older than the stylish, 22 year-old Ant, whose slim and attractive appearance almost seemed to tear through his work-wear. Whereas the smart, combat-style outfit worn by Lenny tended to mask their physical disparity and meld their mutual lack of zest.
'Okay Ant, let's start taking the cushions in,' Lenny muttered and then muted, 'I know it's not going to go round the corner, even if we get it past that poxy doorframe but best give it a go anyway.'
Ant had learnt to deafen himself to Lenny's defeatist prognosis of such scenarios within the first week of their two-year partnership. For the senior Lump n' Dump chump (to heedless onlookers) had been so wrong so often, that the weight of his words actually seemed to rise (and reach) the god of unenviably awkward tasks. Whether blessing would ensue and afford a slick delivery, or the whole day become cursed in a manner not entirely lacking in resemblance to that Laurel & Hardy sketch with the piano and umpteen flights of steps, remained, it so often seemed, a matter of outright fate.
As they tore their way through the packaging to remove several bulky cushions, Ant suppressed further Freudian notions about sexual substitutes for dressing gowns or feverish energy behind their efforts. The particular suite they were about to deliver was a corner unit which it would at least be possible to assemble in two separate sections within the living room.
However, the smaller portion bore a ruthlessly jutting arm-rest which threatened to wedge itself in the hallway. If the smaller part actually reached the intended destination, then the straight main section should theoretically follow without an unseemly fracas between man and upholstery.
'Okay, ready when you are Lenny?'
'Right,' the portly driver replied with a deep intake of breath, 'let's go for it then.'
As they grunted (gratuitously) while carrying the sofa section along the customer's driveway, she retreated into her hallway, perhaps to spare them the melodramatic effects. It was more Lenny's affectation anyway. Ant could hardly help but empathise with customers in their absence of optimism from having subscribed to his colleague's declaration of doom upon their arrival at the scene. Then again, should the desired sofa actually fly-in after five, rather than fifty minutes, there could only be elation all round ...
The first section of the furniture glided slowly but rather recklessly towards the doorway; like an aeroplane about to make an emergency landing. With each passing second, there seemed less and less prospect of such an unwieldy object ever entering the house, as its awkward shape began to overwhelm every edge of the shrinking space within the doorframe.
'Right, Ant, roll it over and we'll take your end in first,' Lenny instructed; and control of the situation seemed fully resumed for a few precious moments. Lenny had an eye like a snooker player for every last 'shot' which could be taken with each particular brand of merchandise. And with a nimble roll and a deft twist the unlikely lump of leather swept sweetly through the opening before it suddenly became stuck upon the newel post at the foot of the staircase!
'Oh ... I knew this would happen. We get this a lot with these type off houses,' Lenny moaned, as his stomach rumbled a crescendo of seemingly choreographed discord. It was beginning to look as though their ritual charade of having to perform every plausible manoeuvre purely to affirm to the customer that they weren't a pair of lazy sods was about to get underway. Those sandwich boxes would just have to wait patiently for the time being, back in the truck.
Morale may have fled the scene but in much the same moment, cleavage appeared - and it certainly hadn't been in view a second or two ago!
'Is there any chance it would turn on its side with the flat part facing against the wall?' the damsel requested whilst sharing their sangfroid towards any sartorial lapse which may or may not have unfolded in their midst.
Of course the real answer was "NOT A CHANCE!" but Lenny had already replied, 'we'll certainly give it a go my dear,' which signalled a sprightly surge of activity that merely made matters worse.
The blokes' preferred pattern of logic would have dictated that the infernal dressing gown should really be flung off to enhance their chances of resolving the situation with the sofa. However, as cleavage could well have confounded their difficulties, a more practical strategy would just have to be devised - however unfortunate the departure from their remote form of speculative science.
'Oh, bloody hell - I really wanted this one too,' the woman wailed. 'It was the only settee in the store that matches the rest of my furniture.' As she clung to her hair with two loose fists, Ant shared her despondency with the disparate thought, 'there'll be no lap-dance here today, that's for sure.' Not that any such scenario had ever unfolded but the younger operative had yet to succumb to Lenny's absolute abandonment of hope before getting up in the mornings.
'Okay Ant, bring it back out and over the post, nice and steady,' Lenny said, as he began to mentally rehearse the precise wording of the parting apologia which would be conveyed the very instant he was able to wipe his brow in a convincing way. It was halfway through the procedure that Ant spotted it: that single, elusive angle from which the sofa would reach the living room and which Lenny's expert eye was simply unable to view from his own particular position.
'Just hold it there a second Lenny - if we twist it towards you and aim the top corner towards the floor it should get round the corridor.'
And it did.
'Phew! I tell you what though luv, I had visions of that bloody great thing being stuck there all night!' Lenny exclaimed - in a way that somehow served to consign all earlier suspicion of murky insinuation to a suitable sphere of mistaken manner.
'Oh thank God for that, my partner would have hit the roof!' she replied.
And alas, the since-concealed bosom could similarly rest in some sad realm of careless innocence! It would all be downhill from there, at every turn, regardless.
'I can't get you a cup of tea or anything, boys?' the lady's relieved voice rang across, as Ant and Lenny strolled back to their truck for the remainder of her merchandise.
'No thanks love, we've cans of pop in the van,' Lenny replied with rehearsed politeness and an eagerness to move along to the next potential hazard to their getting home at a decent time.
A few minutes later, the rest of the settee had sailed around every awkward obstacle that the more cumbersome initial section had failed to charm. All that remained was for signatures to confirm that the product had been placed in the correct property without occasioning a trail of low-scale wreckage in its wake!
'Aw, thanks ever so much lads. I hope the rest of your day goes a bit easier!'
'No problem at all, babes. Actually, we've two more of that type of settee on the truck and I'm really dreading the next address,' Lenny prophesised, with resolute despair derived from a particularly obscure postcode.
Ant waved, as he secured the tail-lift of the truck and experienced a brief feeling of gladness that something worthwhile had in some small way occurred within their relatively mundane realm of the world. Besides, apart from bonus-related blues, every failed delivery meant being stuck with extra bulk on the back of their truck for the rest of the day.
As they settled back into their cabin, Lenny relaxed and said, 'Right, I'll just sort out the Sat-Nav, if you make sure the next customer's out of bed, Anty-boy. Hey, I reckon that one would have been well up for it, partner or not - did you see the way she was wiggling her arse about the dirty slag?'
'Too right, mate - for a moment I thought she was going to ask you to test the padding with her while I filmed it but I guess it's just not one of those days,' Ant sighed.
That it never had been during Lenny's decade with the firm was somehow essential to the steamy supposition which made their days go quicker and the sofas seem a lot lighter. And lament their lot, as so often he did, Lenny would occasionally admit to having few real interests at his time of life, other than those demanded of him by the company between Monday and Friday.
Ant began to study the run-sheet before confirming their arrival with the next customer over the dashboard phone.
'What's this one having?' Lenny enquired, in the flattest of tones.
'Vancouver recliners ... and she sounded a right tart over the phone this morning,' Ant declared with apparent disgust, as they leered in synchronicity towards a pair of young mothers with pushchairs, just to the right of their vehicle.
'What like those two slappers there you mean? Ooh, I tell you what though: I'd do some overtime on that any day,' Lenny bellowed from the driver's seat with a vigorous change of gear and an equally intense mood-swing.
'Yeah ... yeah, like the one on the right with the hip tattoo, I reckon,' Ant affirmed, as ironic detachment sled swiftly back towards genuine expectation and the inevitable spectre of stark disappointment.
'Best get over there then, Ant.'
'Too right - peddle to floor my good man: can't keep those customers waiting, it just wouldn't be right!'
'Well, let's just hope we get a cup of tea in the next place,' Lenny growled.
And so the day wore on ...