Hot Sauce and Cigarettes

Georgie

Well we were locked in now--three mostly harmless nut jobs and two well-dressed females, parading down yet another street I didn't know the name of.

It was going to rain any second now. It was on my skin, settling in my nose, visible on everyone's breath. I shivered, Rose and I huddling instinctively together.

Crazy Abe, Riley, and Sid were far ahead, unaware, in some oddly strewn together formation. Even more odd was the fact that Abe was visibly a lackluster version of his usual self--almost crouching towards the sidewalk and barely moving his feet. His head was no longer bobbing up and about in every direction, it merely stayed weighted down on the scales of cobblestone teeth.

"Pizza Time PIzza Time!" Sid kept screeching on, whirling, just a bad radio song on loop.

"Remind me why we ditched two idiots for three idiots." Rose whispered in my ear.

"Come on, they're not that bad."

"HURRY UP YA FARTY SLAG-BAGS. We're almost there!"

It was in the nature of the universe to constantly prove me wrong, I suppose.

When we reached the shop, I had to blink in horror for a moment. The posters covering its windows were against all basic instinct of good advertising. A depraved circus of comic sans ms, word art, faded snapshots of food and presumed 80s porn stars holding slices and sodas instead of, well, you know.

I wrung my hands. What was that smell seeping out from the inside? French fries? Food marketing hell? Tomato sauce? Sweat? One couldn't be sure.

The sign above the double doors of the establishment flickered, "PizzaTime" on the face of a cartoon clock appeared to be in the height of a seizure.

"Oh so the place is actually called Pizza Time?" I mused aloud as Sid and Riley sped inside, "I assumed Sid just thought 'pizza time' was an actual measurement."

"Don't rule that out just yet." Rose tentatively inched into the place, wrinkling her nose and nodding thanks to Abe, who was holding the door open for us.

The whole interior smelt of cheese, cool dough, and stale cleaning supplies. The ghost scent of the 80s nail salon and body odor still haunted its walls also. Its decor was an attempt at 50s diner--proud red booth seats and steel surfaces were stubbornly trying to make anyone aware of that fact, though the exotic fake plants and poorly drawn renditions of ancient roman landmarks argued back.

"Well if it isn't Susie-Woo-Hoo."

"Don't call me that, Franz." Sid looked nervously behind him, as if his real identity had been shouted to a band of assassins.

"Let me make a joke, if I'm making you pizza."

The man behind the counter was tiny, red-haired with big, tired eyes. He looked as doughy as the ingredients lined up on his side of the long counter, but there was an honesty and quiet easiness to the way he carried himself that I could admire.

He slung an off-white rag over his shoulder, "What can I get you freaks and geeks?"

My eyes climbed upwards to a poorly hung overhead menu with a yellowed backlight. Part of the plastic looked burnt, and the pictures were about as appetizing as my grandmother's cigarette butts.

About the same color, too.

I turned for a second. Rose's face was transfixed in the same kind of mingling horror and indecision as my own.

Sid grew impatient, "Come on!" he moaned, "I ain't got all night and there's like six toppings. Clock's tickin!"

But if we were going by Pizza Time's very clock, did it matter? Because surely the logo was trying to illustrate that pizza time was all the time, right? Was I the only person who believed in the pizza clock? Did no one else have any faith in this alternate version of time and sp--

"George. Kid." Abe tapped me on the shoulder, "Sid's talking at you. And Riley's ... staring... "

No time to look back at a cute guy. I had to weigh the agonizing choice of pizza with mushrooms or pizza with cheese and extra cheese.

"I'll have--" Rose began.

But Sid's voice was ever-louder, "Just five of the regular, alright, Frankie?"

"Franz, Sue."

"Yeah yeah." Sid rolled his eyes angrily as he fiddled in his pockets, drawing out cash.

Rose and I exchanged a look, but didn't argue. Pizza was pizza. It couldn't be that bad.

"Anchovies?" Rose couldn't hide the indignation in her voice from the far corner of the circular red-seated booth we were seated in a few moments later, "your regular is anchovies?!"

"Uh. Yeah. Problem?" Sid's mouth was already full of the dastardly stuff, spitting bits of cheese everywhere.

Rose had feebly begun picking the salty, black shapes off her slice like scabs. I hadn't even eyed my own slice, grabbing instead for the napkins and pulling out a pen.

Everything sort of seemed faraway when I got to this point. As if my head was a movie reel, and it was rewinding sharp, quick, to a point--setting back a clock. Scenes and people and dialogue would just tumble out, positive or negative. My hand raced and twitched in an attempt to keep up. I vaguely knew I was describing this night--my unsatisfactory "date", Sid and Riley sitting next to Rose in the booth, Crazy Abe scooting over, a bit separate from all of us.

I thought that was odd, so I focused on him for a bit. My eyes snapped up, caught a lonely man across the room drooling and wearing a shirt that read "I eat ketchup with my ketchup".

Hadn't I seen that shirt before? Was I going insane?

My freckled nose nearly touched the paper--er, napkin--when Sid made the bold move of sliding it out, causing the pen to gash it violently.

"Hey! Give it back!" I heard myself shout as I was drawn out of my strange, shameful ritual.

Both Sid and I stood in the tiny booth--me clawing to get my ink-addled napkins back, him leaning back casually, pizza dangling in the other hand as the rest watched with mild curiousity. It was when Sid actually managed to get a booted foot up on the table in our struggle that Franz yelled,

"Woah woah the tables aren't built for that kind of thing, kids! I'd expect this from the drunks but you guys, Jesus!"

Rose tugged on my scarf and I sank promptly, temperature rising from the embarrassment. The distraction proved Sid the victor, as he still refused to sit with a final cry of, "Stuff it, Frank!"

I buried my face in my hands. No one, aside from Rose and a few faceless people who'd browsed the bowels of fanfiction websites, had ever seen my unfortunate writings up to this point.

Sid smacked away, "Can't even be bothered to read half of this junk.. your handwriting's worse than mine... Riley you try."

Oh god oh god oh god. Spontaneous combustion, I prayed, why did you only happen in freak cases and 90s action films?

Abe was tapping at a scratched, dirtied section of table near me as if to get my attention, whistling 'we all live in a yellow submarine' again, but I was too sunken in my own embarrassment to realize what it meant.

"Uh..." Riley squinted, "Mostly harmless nut jobs? Dusty losers, overcompensating with their sense of fashion and silly hair? Georgie, I'm kind of surprised you had those insults in you."

Sid made an ugly face, "What? You think I'm a loser? Rose do you agree with that?"

Rose reached over and snatched the napkin away, putting it down on the table. But this didn't alleviate anything. Even worse so, Crazy Abe took it up, holding it to the dim yellow light, reaching in his purse for something.

"I didn't mean anything." I could hear myself stammering defensively, "I-I just write whatever comes up and then I clean it up.. it's just.."

"Bollocks." Sid finished, moping his way back to a sitting position in the booth, "Yeah sure."

Silence draped itself over the booth, making my stomach move like a snake. I pulled at my shaking fingers nervously.

Abe had donned small, square spectacles.

"I didn't know you wore glasses." Rose commented.

"Oh," Abe replied absentmindedly, "I don't."

Everyone at the table exchanged looks, but Abe didn't seem to notice. His eyes were narrowed up at the sad little napkin. I'd never seen him read something so carefully, and it made me even more insecure.

To my horror, his throat cleared, his lips parted, and he read aloud:

"But the King of All Losers--more likely to rustle your jimmies than cut off your fingers--was now the one lagging behind. How could someone who usually seemed to have no purpose be so weighted down? Poet and prophet to the strangely mundane, something now was heavy and distracting. Alienation and confusion. Like he was always dreaming, and needed to be woken up. No more potatoes."

Abe cocked his head, "...And then it goes off into scribbles about Ed Gein and the people sitting near us...hm.... no more potatoes."

Sid sipped the last of his soda up through his straw, making a gurgling noise, "I don't get it. But it sounds stupid."

"I didn't mean it. I really--"

"Of course you did," Crazy Abe smiled ruefully, depositing his glasses (which he apparently didn't need) back into the maw of his purple purse, "All good art is honesty. And it was good. I liked it."

He paused for a very long time, his eyes snapping far away. An incredible wave of regret and pity washed over me. He'd tried to fix my bike, I cussed him out. He helped me get out of a terrible date, and now I let all that... crap.. slip out.

"Abe, really." I attempted to make a start at explaining myself, but it was too late.

"Uh, it's been fun guys."

He got up abruptly, his voice stumbling strangely as he swung his purse strap over his head and let it slingt across his poorly postured shoulders. He'd pocketed the napkins, and I felt it would've been rude to ask for them back. After all, every Thompsons employee's dream was to find one of his notes around the store before Demeter confiscated it.

"Oi man. You didn't finish your slice." Sid pointed insistently at the lonely pizza in Abe's now spot.

We weren't sure if it was his obvious inclination to leave or just his mode of operations, but he just picked up the greasy paper plate--pizza with anchovies and all--and slid it into the purse.

Rose coughed up some of her soda, sputtering for a moment before she recovered.

"Bye, Goonies!" Abe called, kicking the door to Pizza Time backwards with one foot and slamming it open.

Franz shouted after him, but Abe was long gone by that point.

"Good job, George." Sid frowned, "Now I won't find out what the hell the Wilkes guy is up to."

"Wilkes?"

"Some guy at The Dubliner he was fighting with. Gave Wilkes the ol' thumb flick off the head and got a pint poured down his overalls. And thanks to your dumb big words I won't find out why."

Rose started arguing with him, something about how he shouldn't have been acting like a nosy child, but I wasn't really listening.

Wilkes. Wilkes Mason. He'd been through my register before. He was the one who'd asked about Abe's whereabouts and gave me his business card. But why.

I already knew not to bring up the fact that I still had the business card Wilkes' had given me in my smock. I definitely wasn't going to contact him, and I knew Sid would be frantic to--probably to play a prank or sing and then promptly hang up.

Perhaps I could find out about him. That alone could atone for this night's major fuax pas.

Universe, grant me that. I sighed.

The night ended with Sid eating all the pizza, complaining of a stomach ache, Riley dragging him out by the arm, and Franz yelling at us for pulling the door instead of pushing it. No one said anything more of the napkin incident, just like hardly anyone said anything of the tuna fish fiasco anymore. But there was still something that hung in the air--a big balloon bouncing in a room filled with tacks--spelling out doom.

"Something wrong, Georgie?"

"Huh? Oh, it's nothing. Just overthinking, as usual."

Rose and I were already in the car, driving slowly through the narrow, unevenly paved streets of the village. Rain pattered lightly on the windows, the windshield wipers keeping a tired, steady pace. I squinted, trying to catch sight of the road signs--not that I would have understood, anyways.

"Don't. They'll forget all about it tomorrow anyways." She smiled, "Besides, I'm sure your little day out with Demeter will cheer you up."

I groaned.

"I still don't see why you wouldn't cancel on her," Rose frowned thinly, "I could never hang out with someone I worked with, especially not my boss."

"Believe me, I tried. She's insistent, for some reason. Besides, Demeter seems like she could be nice. Underneath the barking tone and heavy perfume."

Rose chuckled.

"Remember what they told us in high school? About how overseas study programs allowed you to visit historical, scenic places? And now all we do is work our little part time jobs and go to class and end up going to shitty pizza parlors with idiots."

"Well, the people do have a history." Rose replied.

That was one more thing our polar opposite personalities could agree on. And the very next day, I'd start exploring it.