Sunday, June 18, 2006
The Anti-Bridal Shower
This scene is better set through the eyes of the pizza delivery man. True story. Except for the made-up parts.
He has three long boxes to deliver to some little street in the middle of College. Something nags at him. Something about College. But he’s running few minutes late so he shrugs it off and starts his car.
It hits him about 10 minutes later when he is stuck in the crush of traffic at the head of College. The Taste of Little Italy festival. “Oh fuck!” he says (only he says it in Spanish).
Half an hour later, he’s finally doing the messy 12-point turn it takes to get out of there. The pizzas are going to be a little late. Not if I can help it, he thinks to himself
He pulls over and digs out the battered copy of the Toronto guide he keeps stashed under the passenger seat. The page he wants has a fruit punch stain on it. “Fucking kids,” he says, but immediately regrets it because he loves his kids and this situation isn’t their fault. Beatrice, Beatrice. There it is. But wait, it’s a one-way. It can only be accessed by… College.
When he regains his composure, he checks his watch and pulls sharply back into traffic, causing a cabbie to lean on the horn. The pizzas are going to be a lot late, now. That means they’ll be free to the customer. Which means he’ll probably get fired this time. But it’s not his fault, right? God damned Taste of God damned Little Italy. Well, he’ll work it out with the boss when he gets back to the shop but for now he has a more immediate concern - what to say to the customer.
He has a lot of time to think about it. It’s a 10-minute hike on foot up Beatrice carrying the now heavy pizza travel case. Sweat pours down his face. It’s muggy, the hottest it’s been this year. People are lounging on their porches holding what are presumably cold beverages and he wishes he could set the pizzas down on the roof of a car and join them, just for one drink. Maybe they’d feel sorry for him and offer him two. A cold beer is what he wants. Several cabs pull past him, driving the wrong way up the one-way. He curses that he doesn’t have the guts or luck to drive like they do.
He checks the slip, compares it to the houses. There it is. “Around back,” it says on the slip, and it says the same thing on scrap paper taped to the walls of the house. So he follows the stone path. He comes to a gate. He opens the gate. And then almost drops the pizzas.
The backyard is full of beautiful women, all in their late 20s or 30s and many of them are in various stages of undress. An athletic blond is just sliding tight fitting jeans up over her hips. A slim woman with thick, long brown hair slips a shirt down over herself. He’s only just missed a full reveal. “No one leaves the party without something!” a cute, smiling Asian girl dances around the yard throwing articles of clothing at people. A blond in turquoise satin sucks on a cigarette.
Blushing furiously, he averts his eyes to look at anything else but it’s difficult. There are clothes strewn all over the backyard, draped over bushes, on chairs, over the fence. There’s a table piled high with travel sized toiletries. “Pizza,” he says and steps forward onto an errant high-heeled shoe, catching himself just in time. The Asian girl is a bit wobbly and he notices the bottles of wine and beer. She catches sight of him and announces joyfully, “The pizza’s here!”
“That’s $83.65,” he croaks. As a curvy girl in tall, black heels fishes for the money, he gazes around. They are ignoring him anyway. He’s just the pizza guy. Suddenly, he catches the eye of a girl with freckles, sitting on the edge of the low deck, knees tucked up, Corona raised to her lips. She’s grinning at him like she’s caught him. He blushes again, takes the money without even counting it and leaves the yard, starting the long, hot hike back to his minivan.
posted by Working From Home Today
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