Please Ignore Vera Dietz(14)
Author: A.S. King

“You two would make a cute couple,” she says as she passes by with a full dough tray in her arms. I don’t know why she says it. We aren’t doing anything but folding boxes with the other drivers and telling dirty jokes.

But we would.

We would make a cute couple.

First run of the night is in the rich part of town—Potter Farms, where the houses are huge and geometrically pleasing to the eye, but the tips are not. Three stops, six bucks, and once I get back to the shop, the night becomes a blur of pizzas, garlic bread, six-packs of Coke, doorbells, kids in pajamas, adults tipping more than they should, leftover glowing tacky Christmas shit, drunk people in party hats, and confetti. Every time I come back to the store, Marie has a new stack of orders to go out. She may have crazy-looking teeth, but man, can that woman run a pizza delivery store. Holy shit. I don’t think there’s one backup all night, which has to be a miracle on New Year’s Eve.

Around 11:45, a customer at 362 Lancaster Road asks me when I get off work.

“We’re having a small party, as you can see,” he says. Yeah. All six of you. Playing Monopoly. Excellent. I decline.

At midnight, I ding-dong while a house on McMann Avenue erupts with cheers and party horns and “Auld Lang Syne.” I ring again a minute later and a tall kid I used to know answers the door. He’s swaying, and his eyes are bloodshot.

“Don’t I know you?” he asks as he hands me the money.

“I don’t think so,” I lie. We had film class together when I was a sophomore and he was a senior.

“You look familiar, though.”

“Have a nice night,” I say, turning back toward my car.

“You should come back later! When you get off work!”

“I’ll think about it,” I say. And I do. For about three seconds, and then I drive to the next house. On the way, I whisper “Happy New Year” to Charlie.

At 12:10 I knock on the big green door of 21 Thirty-fourth Street. Two kids from my school answer it. Math geeks. They give me exact change and don’t say thank you.

Last stop. 12:17. A loud party at the apartment complex where Jill lives. They are unprepared. I hand them their six pizzas and they take a drunken collection for cash, but can’t count it. I help them. They are a dollar short.

“Come on! Pete! Pete! Where’s that cheap son of a bitch?” People look around for Pete.

“I already chipped in, you ass**le!”

“Who has an extra dollar? We’re a buck short!”

I say, “And a tip. You’re a buck and a tip short.”

I watch them all dig deep into jeans pockets and shrug at each other.

“Shit, man. I’ll have to spill out the penny jar,” the guy says. Behind him, two girls pass a smoking bong between them. Someone yells “Happy New Year!”

I hold up my hand. “It’s cool, man. Don’t worry about it.”

He stops searching his pockets for the third time and smiles at me.

“Hold on. I have your tip, though,” he says, and he runs into the kitchen and returns with a four-pack of vodka coolers. “Something for when you get off work tonight,” he says.

“Thanks, I—” I know I should give them back, but I don’t. Instead, I pop the trunk and secure them between my gym bag and the cardboard box for groceries (one of a hundred Ken Dietz practical ideas—never have jars of mayonnaise rolling around the trunk again!) and cover them with the sleeping bag I keep in there in case of emergency. I think of my mom. Is this how it started with her? Are there baby steps toward complete loserdom, and if so, how many are there to go?

It’s 12:25. As I wait for the traffic light on Bear Hill to turn green, I can’t stop myself from reaching for the bottle that’s under my seat. I’ve gone all night without a sip, but it’s not about being addicted. It’s about being told what to do my whole life and doing it and then losing everything anyway. Let me explain.

The night of Charlie’s funeral, I took two shots of chilled vodka that someone had left at their table. I don’t know what possessed me, but something did. (Probably Charlie.) The glasses were sitting there, I was walking by on my way to the bathroom, and no one was looking. So I picked one up in each hand and knocked them back one after the other. I had no idea how much it would hurt my throat, but loved the way it made me feel a minute later as I sat on the toilet, pondering the tiled floor. Warm. Happy. Safe. Now, on Bear Hill, I take the last shot left in my bottle, I think of my father’s lifelong alcoholism warnings, and I say, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” (Abraham Lincoln said that.)

1:02. Another trip to Potter Farms and a teenage party with chaperones who look vacant and are dressed in neutral, catalog-bought clothing. I have to walk across a bridge that spans an indoor koi pond. The father is foreign and very nice, and escorts me over the bridge. The mother is clapping a lot to get the kids to come to the kitchen. They intentionally tip me ten bucks, which is my biggest intentional tip of the night. When we’re halfway back over the bridge toward the door, the father says, “Want to toss in a penny?” and sticks a penny in my hand.

I turn to the pond and eye a bright pink fish the size of my forearm shimmering his way from shadow to shadow, and I toss in the penny and make a wish. I wish for world peace, because it’s about as likely to occur as anything else I can wish for.

•   •   •

At two, the phones stop ringing and Marie cashes the part-time drivers out. All the store help are gone but Jill, who’s doing prep, and a girl I know from school named Helen, who needs a ride home. There are three or four runs left, and James says if I wait a few minutes I can take Helen home and drop off a big order at the same time, so I wait.

Halfway to her house, she says, “How are you doing? I mean”—she sighs—“uh, since Charlie died?”

“I’m okay.”

“It must be hard. I mean, I’m sad about it and I didn’t really know him.”

“Yeah. It’s sad.”

“Did you know about the animals?”

It’s weird. Nobody really talks about the animals. The minute she mentions them, my heart pounds and the images come rolling back behind my eyes. Damn brain.

“No,” I lie.

“I just couldn’t believe that, you know? That such a nice kid would do that to innocent animals.”

I think of what Charlie had seen. How his father beat his mother. How he pulled her hair out sometimes. I think about what it must be like to want to stop a thing that you can’t stop.