Please Ignore Vera Dietz(3)
Author: A.S. King

Dad still hits an AA meeting when he needs to. He says it’s a curse—alcoholism. Says I should never even try the stuff because the curse runs in our family. “My father was a drunk, and so was his father.”

Well, if it’s as easy as catching my future from a blood relative, then I guess I’m due to be a drunk, pregnant, dropout stripper any day now.

THURSDAY—FOUR TO CLOSE

Around 5:15 the dinner rush starts. Nothing we can’t handle. It begins with phone #2 ringing while Marie is taking an order on phone #1. Soon after, while Jill’s taking an order on #2, #3 rings. Running the store becomes a blur until about seven.

There are three drivers working, and we manage to time ourselves so that only one of us is in the shop at a time. Marie organizes the runs and has the next one waiting for us when we come in, and is able to remember which order gets Coke, which order gets Sprite, and which order gets a tub of coleslaw. For two hours, I am a driving, knocking, smiling, change-making machine. I am a natural at this. My Pagoda Phone never rings, because I never forget anything. Customers like me and give me tips, which I stuff into a crumpled, waxy Dunkin’ Donuts bag I keep on the floor behind my seat.

On my way home from my last run, Charlie makes me eject Dad’s Sam Cooke CD and turn on the radio. He makes me put on Hard Rock 102.4, where they’re playing a song I hate by AC/DC, but I listen to it anyway.

I take a left into the McDonald’s and line up for the drive-thru. I’m addicted to the new wraps they have on their good-for-you menu, with the grapes in them, but I always get a chocolate shake, so it’s not like I’m trying to be healthy or anything.

“Go to the first window.”

She’s waiting there with her hand out. Doesn’t she know that people need a minute to get their money ready? She rolls her eyes as I dig through my Dunkin’ Donuts bag for five singles. She doesn’t say thank you.

“Go to the second window.”

Rather than go back to Pagoda Pizza to eat, I circle the parking lot and find a darkened spot between floodlights. I leave the car running for the heater. It’s cold tonight. Second week of December and I’ve been using my ice scraper every morning this week. As I eat, a grape keeps jumping from my wrap onto my lap, where I’ve laid out a few napkins. I pick it up and pop it into my mouth, but it jumps out again, as if it’s being controlled by a string and not just fumbled by my slippery fingers.

“Cut it out, Charlie,” I laugh.

I pluck the grape from my lap, grip it tightly, and place it in my mouth.

I eat half the wrap and feel full, so I roll it in its wrapper and stuff it back in the bag, and I collect the napkins from my lap and stuff them in, too. There are four leftover napkins on the passenger’s seat, and I press the button to open the glove compartment, where there are at least a hundred napkins, and I layer in four more and close it.

Then I open it again, retrieve one, and grab a fine-point Sharpie marker from my purse. In the dim glow of McDonald’s parking lot floodlights, I write I miss you, Charlie on the corner, then fold it up and put it in my pocket. I imagine him watching me do this. I half feel his disappointment that I didn’t burn it or eat it or any of the other things he would do with his scribblings.

I circle around the back of the building toward the drive-up trash receptacle and see how many bags missed the mark, how many spills are down the front of it, how many drivers just left their crap there to blow away in the wind rather than open their door and try again. I drive up to it, toss in the bag, and then drive out onto the main strip, toward Pagoda Pizza. A block away, I retrieve the napkin from my pocket, rip off my message, and place it on my tongue. It sticks. I reach under my seat and grab the bottle. I take a gulp, breathe the heat out of my throat, and chase it with a big mouthful of chocolate shake.

Before I leave the car, I pull out my Vocab list for the week. Tomorrow is Friday—test day. This is one of the reasons I love Vocab class. Every week is the same. There are no deviations from the class schedule. List on Monday, sentences due Wednesday, test on Friday. Every student knows what to expect. I wish Mrs. Buchman ran the world so life would be as easy.

THURSDAY—FOUR TO CLOSE

It’s past nine. We’re down to the closing crew—two drivers, a pizza maker/prep cook, and Marie.

“Vera—are you doing the town run?”

I look around. I’m the only driver in. “I guess so.”

“Can you wait a second and drop this one off on your way?”

It’s Fred’s Bar, on the last corner before the bridge into town. I check the times on the other orders and do the math. Thirty minutes isn’t as long as you think. It takes about fifteen minutes to make the pizza, so I only have fifteen minutes to get it to the door. Stopping at Fred’s Bar will kill my whole town run.

“I’ll be late for the Cotton Street place.”

Marie whips the Fred’s Bar pizza out of the oven early (the crust isn’t quite brown), slaps it into a box, and cuts it into triangular slices. “The Cotton Street people can kiss my ass if they have a problem,” she says.

I pack the three town orders in separate hot bags, grab a six-pack of Coke and a six-pack of Sprite, and load up the car.

On my way out, James returns from his last run. I have a crush on James, but he’s twenty-three, so I shouldn’t. But I’m lonely since Charlie died, and James has that familiar smoker smell. And he’s cute and he likes to listen to the same kind of music as me. He calls it eclectic, which is better than what the ass**les at school call it.

I drive down the empty, sloped parking lot to the main strip and take the left into town. When I get to Fred’s Bar, I pull over, two tires on the curb, and stick my flashers on. I grab the red-and-black-checkered hot bag with their order and open the door to the smoky, dingy dive and Tammy Wynette singing “Stand by Your Man.” I probably deliver to Fred’s three nights a week, and two of those nights, Tammy Wynette is playing, and no matter how much good music I play afterward, the song sticks in my head.

But the real reasons I hate going into Fred’s Bar are: The regulars stare and give me the creeps. Ninety percent of the time, they forget to tip me. There are pinball machines in the back and it reminds me too much of the bar where very bad things happened to Jodie Foster’s character in The Accused.

I drive over the bridge into town. The whitest town on Earth—or, more accurately, once the whitest town on Earth until the Mexicans moved in. Once you get through the crowded old suburbs where the large Victorian homes sit on the hill and past the rows of cupola-topped row houses, it’s an ugly town—a mishmash of 1940s asphalt shingles, multicolored bricks, and gray concrete. There’s too much litter, and too many people look angry. Dad says it wasn’t always like this. He says it’s not the Mexicans’ fault that the city council would rather spend the city’s money on new arts initiatives and a big, flashy baseball stadium than more police on the streets. So now, while there’s wine, cheese, and doubleheaders downtown, poverty has taken over and crime is at an all-time high uptown. I lock my doors. It’s bad enough that my middle-class car (with the PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS bumper sticker) draws attention, let alone the suction-cup Pagoda Pizza flag on the roof.