After lunch on Christmas Day I took a bike ride down by the river and up along the frontage road of the new tollway to make a delivery to my friend Phil. The day before, Phil had left me a worn but tidily repaired Robert Parker paperback wrapped in two grits bags and tied in the vines outside our front gate, along with a very nice letter. I had been meaning to make a book drop for him since summer, but doing so is not as easy as with other friends with whom I exchange books and letters, because the postal service will not deliver packages to the abandoned building where Phil has made his home for a decade.