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Copyright © 2007 Matthew Babcock
All rights reserved, Wild Child Publishing.
Pizza Joint
1UP
It wasn't what she said. It was the way she said it. "I'd like to meet you."
"Who'ssis?" Mickey blurted into the phone, his voice dry and husky.
Her refrain bloomed like a sinister bouquet in his ear, "Jacqueline. Saturday. Lunch. Pizza Company."
She hung up and left him motionless in the basement. For a full minute, he stood there, not knowing what to say or think or do. The receiver dangled--a wilted daisy in his fist--her voice simmering a lunch special, warm and saucy, in his stomach.
The next day, he pedaled his rickety ten-speed bike down Avenue C with all the tenacity of the Tour de France gold jersey wearer. For speed, he stood on the pedals and heaved his handlebars from side to side, lunging his reckless mount into the warm September breeze. The wind cooled the wings of sweat between his shoulder blades. He raced for the finish, leaning for the tape. Still, something felt wrong. Something about his bike. It rattled. It clicked and squeaked and shook under the weight of his body. At any moment, he thought its cuckoo-clock framework would explode and scatter the intricate innards of his flimsy skeleton across the oblivion of the street. He pedaled harder to chase away the insecurity. He hurtled forward and caught snapshot visions of himself flung to the asphalt in a hail of gears and sprockets, a shower of aluminum confetti and twisted red and blue cables, rusted spokes, and fractured handbrakes, his soft unprotected body tumbling to the curb, skinned and bleeding.
His fear concerning his lousy bike drove a banner of yellow anxiety through his body. The girl. Had he imagined her? Had he imagined the way her voice sauteed his heart in a stew of syllables and herbal aphrodisiacs? Never, he braced himself. It had happened. He veered toward the intersection of Avenue C and Garfield. She had called him. She had said what she'd said the way she'd said it. It was real, he coached himself--leaning into and pedaling out of a turn--because in his mind she seemed so real, so there. The voice, her name. He tasted her savory recipe in the wind: "I'd like to meet you." And the rest: "Jacqueline. Saturday. Lunch. Pizza Company."
He barreled down Avenue C, and the wind of late summer streamlined her voice and fused it to his inner desires. Her voice, hardened and sweetened, clung to his tastebuds like carved blue sugar that refused to melt in the sweat of his hot mouth.
He shot past the L'Herrisons', the VanDerBruyns', and the Churchmans'. Ed Churchman stood on bowed, sunburned legs in his driveway, polishing his red '72 Mustang with a can of Turtle Wax and a white rag. He worked in a canary short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck, and cut-off jeans and sandals. In his right hand, he clutched a Budweiser. He didn't look up to see the cyclist that whizzed past in a flurry of barking cocker spaniels.
At the Garfield stop sign, Mickey banked hard to the right. He glanced over his left shoulder for oncoming traffic, didn't see any, and sailed into the turn with the platinum nerves of a veteran. He imagined his shoulder blades folded in a jet-pack on his back, ready to spring open glider wings and sail him to the sun. Easy, he thought. He eased his hunched body in a controlled tilt to the left, pulled out of the turn, and resumed his furious pedaling.
He ducked forward in the seat and channeled the wind over his aerofoil spine. Aerodynamics--that was the key. He pedaled past the Berrys', thinking of the cinnamon slipstream in the girl's voice, the way it erupted in a confetti of wintergreen love notes and slipped through the phone receiver, through his ear, into his soul. She'd divulged only her name. But the windless letters of her name lulled through her lips so smoothly that he'd tasted them in the back of his throat. Her name dropped the missing 3-D puzzle piece into his flabby heart and pumped it to the point of bursting. "Jacqueline" had aroused him with the rich and dangerous texture of its smoky seasoning.
Two houses from the Berrys', Principal Buttars, in railroad overalls and chocolate rubber boots, piloted a drop spreader over his lawn. Mr. Buttars paused, swathed a red bandana across his neck, and raised a stony hand in salutation as Mickey blazed past. At the end of the block, Mickey's furious pedaling leveled to a cruising rhythm. He had to pace himself, he realized, or else he would never make it to the finish.
At the bottom of Garfield, he coasted past the Spencers', Coach Lund's house, Bill Hart's. Hart, a local lawyer, stood on his driveway in a Christmas tree bathrobe and purple shower sandals. He watered his lawn with a garden hose and talked to Judge Burdick, who propped his hands on his hips in orange Tiger Pride sweat pants and goldenrod North Rim Canyon Fun Run T-shirt. Further along, Mickey passed Ed Prescott's quarter horse corrals. A mangled horse trailer with shattered bubble-glass windows rested at the curb opposite the Prescotts'. The Prescotts' bulky bronze mare gawked over the corral's top rail, black marble eyes rimmed with flies, a blond mustache of hay drooping below her pink nose. Mickey caught a glimpse of the mare--paunchy, stupid, lame--a vision of himself, he realized. He shook the depressing double image from his head. He shot beyond the corral, and the mare grunted and nickered. She tossed her head and flared her nostrils to avoid inhaling Mickey's obnoxious wind.
At the intersection of Airport Road and Main Street, Mickey skidded to a stop in a froth of gravel. Across the road, a dingy clot of faceless junk cars waited outside PDQ Tiger Stop Chicken 'N' Taters. Through emerald-tinted windows, PDQ's customers congregated at tables and scarfed chicken and deep-fried potato wedges, played Dig Dug and TRON, and lugged beer and dog food to the cash register. To the east, the high school parking lot remained empty except for a dented sea-green utility truck and two graffiti-smeared oil barrels. The sun cascaded a brilliant chrome blaze on the alfalfa fields, and the wind draped a dirty halo of yellow-brown dust around his world. He checked both ways, tried to ignore his heavy breathing, and urged his bike toward the town's far end where Jacqueline, the girl who wanted to meet him, waited with a Coke and a large pepperoni pizza at the smoky corner table of the rest of his life.