You want anchovies on that?
Friday night is Pizza Night at my house. This ritual started six years ago when I moved to the coast. Just a quarter mile west, in the grocery strip mall skirting the freeway, is a small hole-in-the-wall pizza joint named after a spaceship. I don't understand the name. They don't deliver, and my town never gave birth to an astronaut. They make terrible pizza, all crispy crust from a mix and canned tomato sauce, but it's the cheapest pizza in town, and my kids don't know the difference.
Last night I phoned in our order of a large cheese and a small pepperoni and stuffed an Avon brochure in my purse and hit the road. The place doesn't have tables, just one long counter facing the window and Friday nights will find a small line at the register for pick-up, five or six young men at the counter, and the same chubby boy playing the dusty and aging Galaga arcade game behind the door.
I plunked down my eleven-fifty-three (told you it was cheap) and asked the boy taking orders if I could leave my brochure.
"Heh, heh, heh. Ya. I'll take it. My mom might want something." He grinned and grabbed the book, looking at my name and number under his trendy Von Dutch baseball cap. I figured he must be eighteen, maybe twenty, all covered in acne and the scent of cigarette smoke.
"Thanks!" I grabbed my boxes and left.
Sometime late in the night, after the kids were sleeping and I lay reading Vanity Fair in bed, my phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hi. Is this Birdie?"
"Yes?" I didn't recognize the voice, the nervous sounds of a young man.
"This is Eric. You know. The pizza guy." He cleared his throat and I heard fingernails tapping on a table.
"Oh! Hi! Can I help you?" Why the heck is he calling now, I wondered. An order already?
"Heh, heh. You know why you gave me your number."
I slammed down the receiver. Oh dear. This means the end of Pizza Night.
9:21:45 AM 
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