Home delivery service

Yesterday, we bought a grill.

It was too big to fit in a cab, and since we don’t have a car, I figured I’d just have Home Depot deliver it to my house.

“Do you have home delivery service?” I asked the cashier. The word in Spanish is “flete.” I always think of “filete,” and then try not to call it that. Although, now that I think about it, servicio de filete would be awesome.

Anyway, the cashier said yes, but he was young and spoke too fast so I didn’t quite get everything he said. Something about outside.

Too embarrassed to ask further, I wandered outside and looked around, expecting to see some sort of storefront. Nothing. I went next door to Radio Shack and asked the workers there whether they knew anything about flete. They motioned to the parking lot.

The delivery service, it turned out, was a team of three men, a rickety truck and a hand-painted sign reading “Flete Express.” For 180 pesos — the equivalent of $13 — a skinny guy hoisted the grill into the truckbed and then drove me and the grill home. I gave him directions via the Circuito, one of the main highways here, but he ignored them. The truck couldn’t go faster than 10 miles per hour.

While taking note of the cracked passenger side mirror, the coughing engine, the mess of wires where the radio used to be, and the fact that I was seatbelt-less, having reaching for nothing but a frayed strap behind my seat, I tried to engage him in small talk. He looked around my age.

He asked what I was doing in Mexico. I told him my husband worked here, and that I was a housewife. He nodded. “That’s how it should be,” he said. He told me to be careful at stoplights, because men wait there and rob young, unsuspecting women in their cars. (Ok dude, whatever.)

Suddenly I realized we were in the far right lane, and he had to make the next left. The streets were packed; I didn’t think he was going to make it. But somehow, with the agility of a man in a Smart Car, he squeezed his way into the quilt of cars, managing to stay just inches behind everyone, without hitting them with his monstrous bumper. He arrived at the light and made the turn.

“You drive well,” I said.

He looked at me, confused. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, because you…” Cut across traffic. I didn’t know how to say that in Spanish, so I just trailed off.

A few minutes later, we arrived at my house and he unloaded the grill in the middle of the sidewalk, down the street from my house. He sped off while I wondered how to get it inside.

Overall, not too bad for $13.