The kid on my
doorstep held a steaming large with pepperoni, onions
and green peppers. He didn’t look more than 16 years
old, but he already had the air of a veteran pizza
jockey. You’ve seen their kind – a world-weary “nothing
you can put on your pie would surprise me” kind of
cockiness that wafted into the foyer with the smell of
tomato sauce and garlic.
“Eight bucks,” he said, sneering a challenge to mention
anything about his arriving in thirty-ONE minutes.
I knew what he really wanted. Not the $8 ransom he
demanded to relinquish the family dinner. That would
have been too simple, too direct for the twisted mind
that hid under the Radiohead cap placed so carefully
askew on his head. He had come for more, and I would
have to give it to him.
“Right. Eight plus tip.”
It was always at that point in the negotiations that
something could go terribly wrong. Too big a tip and
they had you pegged for a sucker. A cryptic mark would
be etched on the picket fence directing delivery men of
every stripe to your door to hit up the soft touch for
some hard cash. Don’t give enough and you’d be eating
cold pizza for the rest of your life, pies that had been
on the bottom of the pile and whose toppings were stuck
to the box like road kill on hot asphalt, a Sicilian
message whose meaning was all too apparent.
I reached into my back pocket for my wallet, careful not
to make any fast moves that might be interpreted as
hostile. The worn, brown leather felt comfortable in my
hands, and was bent in a graceful arc from the many
years residing against my firm left buttock. Many a
check-out girl at the supermarket had eyed that bend in
awe, imagining the flesh that had created such a
symmetrical curve.
I opened the wallet with one practiced flick of my
wrist. I reached in to pull out a ten spot, but what I
saw made my eyes bug out so fast my contact lenses were
last seen zipping over Baghdad. Eight Washingtons stared
out at me like a Mt. Rushmore gone condo. I tried to
think. Where had I spent $2? Bread? Milk? Another losing
lottery ticket? I couldn’t remember.
“Something wrong, mister?”
I had to cover. To show fear would have been fatal.
“No. Nothing is...wrong. I just have to go get
my...other wallet.”
I retreated to the back of the house where my wife and
two children were playing their favorite game: Guess
what kind of work Daddy’s out of? Charlie had just said
“Brain surgeon,” and they were all having a good laugh
about it.
“Quick! Does anyone have $2?”
My wife looked at me with eyes that said, “Again?”, a
frown that said, “I don’t like this,” and ears that
didn’t say anything but really wanted to.
“No. I didn’t get to the bank today. How much is the
pizza?”
“Eight bucks.”
“How much do you have?”
“Eight bucks.”
Her ears did some quick math and twitched but continued
to hold their peace.
“So what’s the problem?”
Some people live in their own little fantasy world.
“I don’t have enough for a tip!”
She sneered effortlessly. She had been practicing that
sneer in front of a mirror for weeks, and all her hard
work had finally paid off.
“You’re such a wuss. Just give him the $8. He’ll
understand.”
In a perfect world nations would disarm, all races would
embrace, and the pizza boy would understand. I lived in
the suburbs.
“We’re dead.”
I looked around for any cash that might have been left
lying around. Nothing, except for a penny the baby had
just coughed up. I briefly thought of shaking her by the
feet to see if she would disgorge something larger, but
then thought better of it. A child her age has too small
a gullet to hold any more than about forty cents and
some bus tokens.
Neurons fired deep within my brain. I had already
emptied the kids’ piggy banks in the incident we now
only refer to as “L’affaire Whopper du Fromage.” My only
hope was the couch.
I flung the three sagging cushions onto the floor and
surveyed carnage the likes of which I am sure met
Napoleon at Waterloo. Before me lay six mummified
peanuts, kernels of corn both popped and unpopped, three
pencils, shards of dried Playdough, half a chocolate
chip cookie (which I put in my pocket for dessert), most
of the four 50 lb. bags of dirt I had once emptied into
the backyard sandbox, an unwashed paintbrush, a scoop of
ice cream, the top hat from a Monopoly game, and eight
toy soldiers in horrifying poses of plastic death. I ran
my hands through the detritus of indoor living hoping to
hear the clink of coins that would save us from He Who
Waited Without Anchovies.
Nothing. I knew I would have to dig deeper, but my mind
rebelled at the prospect. I could see what I was
touching there on the epidermis, but to get to my goal I
would have to reach blindly into the sofa’s guts like
Ray Charles if he were a surgeon. Visions of primordial
terrors assaulted my imagination and I hesitated. My
resolve wavered and I started to replace the cushions.
“Hey, you in the house! You ain’t the only delivery I
got this month!”
The horror I knew was greater than the horrors I could
only imagine, and my hands plunged deep into the
crevices. My fingers touched and blindly tried to
identify what that upholstered black hole had sucked
into its inescapable gravitational pull: half a Mild Dud
with teeth marks still in evidence, a moldy piece of
bread, a knife encrusted with peanut butter, four
marbles, a “Try AOL Free!” CD-rom sticky with soft drink
stains from being used as a coaster, and an orange
highway warning cone. None of what I found was
negotiable currency so I pushed on.
Out came two pairs of sunglasses, a comic book, half a
dozen baseball cards, our cat that had been missing for
a week and the TV’s remote control. Next were a set of
jumper cables, a still lit cigar butt, and unpaid
telephone bill from 1991 and four pieces of cold pizza.
I cursed myself for ordering a new pie when I could have
reheated those slices and avoided the danger I was now
in.
It wasn’t until I had extricated a saxophone, a black
lace teddy (huh?) a football, two keys, an empty Coke
bottle, a fez from a Shriners Convention and an
artificial hip that I finally struck the small vein I
was sure would lead me to the mother lode. It was a
nickel. I was giddy as I pocketed my hard won treasure
and resumed the search with new hope. An open bottle of
Liquid Paper was followed by a dime, then another. Some
fools gold in the form of bottle caps was next, but then
I pried a quarter from a corner and a dime from nearby.
That was sixty cents. Holding it aloft, I exhorted my
family to action. “Quick!
Everyone! I’ve found sixty cents!”
My wife encouraged me with her tender words of love.
“What a wuss.”
Spurred to action we dove in. Books, paper clips, dog
biscuits, pipe cleaners, a hubcap from a ’63 Caddy, a
still inhabited ant farm and things I couldn’t identify
as being from our universe as we know it were pulled out
amid the occasional coins. Dime, shoe, quarter, chicken
leg, nickel, toe nail clippers. We searched, sifted and
stacked until in no time we had the remaining $1.40 I
needed. We were saved! Tears of joy streamed down my
cheeks and flower petals (also from the couch) were
strewn at my feet by my adoring children.
I rushed to the front door and made the exchange. I took
the pizza and handed the delivery boy my eight dollars
in paper. Grinning, I poured the coins into his hands
and proudly announced, “And this, my good man, is for
you!”
He looked at the crud-encrusted, sticky change and
slowly shook his head. When he looked into my eyes and
spoke there was no pity in his voice.
“Another couch diver. What a wuss.”
He walked back to his car and drove away, tires
squealing, while I proudly brought our dinner to the
table. I ate heartily, for I had come as close as a man
with a pizza could to the feeling of having hunted and
killed my family’s sustenance.
When dinner was over it took all evening to put
everything back into the couch. We wanted to preserve
the unique ecosystem for the enjoyment of future
generations.
That night I slept the sleep of the righteous, although
in my case the righteous slept with heartburn.
I made a note for next time not to get peppers.
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©2006 Paul Giles
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