And so I work. No big deal. Just Friday. And by the end of the day, my callouses are back from the hundred pies I cut. I could have cut more...I used to joke that I kept count.
One old man walks out on me because I kept him waiting too long for four regulars, and it really must have been ten minutes, tops. But I watched him in the corner, standing, brooding...letting his pride take over his patience, letting it all swell into something personal, and I wondered about him after apologizing, somewhat profusely, "Really, sir, it's really my fault, just a few more minutes." Is this moment really happening? Am I the cause of this man's utter discontent?
What happened, exactly, you ask? Well, three people came in, one after the other, and ordered four slices each, and while attending to these ridiculous orders, the old man caught my attention for a moment and ordered another four...and pizzas only grow on trees in Mali...
Later, the men drink. They offer me tequila shots and I accept them. And it's just another Friday, except this time I'm limping around with a hematoma discoloring my right toe, and I'm thinking about the previous night, having slept over an apartment in the lower east-side with the two fantastic girls I'll be driving to Bonnaroo with. I woke up in the middle of the night confused, for only a second, disorientated by the lemonades and vodka, the homemade pizza with sauteed yellow peppers and onions...the night still, with a general calmness you can only find on a semi-rigid pullout.
On the drive home from work, after delivering slices to friends, I see a group of girls walking and I tap my horn a few times, as I normally do when passing a group of whoevers, and I hear one of them say, "can you give us a ride..." and their voices blend in with the wind, and I keep driving, thinking, if this was any other place, I would do it. And so I turn around, and I fit all three little girls in the car, after the serial killer test.
"I was just kidding before, you know, but if you really do need a ride, I'd be more than willing to help."
"No way, no way! You're not, like, some creepy guy that's gunna kidnap us, are you?"
"Haha, no, I assure you."
(I am, I am, you rotten little bags of skin. Hop in this car if you want to feel pain before death.)
And they hop in and I take them to where they NEED to go, so desperately in the night, the Mineola Pool, so they can dangle around little men, and I marvel at the idea of human trust, and murder, and general human kindness, if there is such a thing, since it's all obscured by societal conditioning and John Walsh's precautions.
Albert Fish used to write letters to the mothers of the children he had kidnapped, sodomized, tortured and eaten, and he would explain all of these things in horrific, mind-bending detail.
