The flash is like a
cartoon. Humorous at first, amusing even, increasingly grotesque as it goes
along. It’s the flash when a 25-year-old pizza delivery man, preparing to press
the doorbell for a delivery — pepperoni pizza piping hot in its warming
sleeve, baseball hat company logo cocked off to one side — sees his finger
moving to the button. | A light has been left burning beside the door: a faux
18th century suburban lantern light with electric bulb aglow. His 1987 Ford Mustang
is idling sporadically in the driveway, sputtering, wanting to die. His
girlfriend dumped him the night before — said he was boring — a strange
family left a light burning so he could bring them their dinner, he’s almost
out of pot and it seems like his friends are trying to hurt him inside. This is
his last delivery of the evening. | A REALITY FISSURE develops. Poised with
finger four millimeters from the doorbell, tip shaking gently in the cool night
breeze, staring straight ahead at the ground tile textures of the green front
door — the man freezes. Ideologies of younger years collide with those
developed over time. He remembers making fun of a pizza man, hanging loosely
out his parents’ front door when he was only 13 years old. It was very funny at
the time. He had laughed, believing it all. | He sees himself as an old man
doing something stupid… sitting in a chair… raking leaves… picking at a
corn… trying pitifully to look up young girls’ skirts, or worse, trying to
pinch their fine young haunches as they squeal away in horror and disgust.
Maybe he’d take his teeth out at them… wave them
around chomping and chattering. The girls are, of course, wearing cheerleader
uniforms at the time. | This was not how he pictured his life developing. There
is panic. A fear of the future.A
future even two seconds away when the man will be staring the family in the
face, making change, trying to remember how to act. He wants to drop the
pizza on the ground, turn tail and run. Leave the car, the hat, the tip, the everything. Get the hell out of there and try again
somewhere else. Another town, another job, another girl.
He has lost respect in himself; all that he does, thinks, and says. He is a
silly, stupid man doing mindless, pointless labor for jangling chunks of change
on a rainy Thursday evening in November. The man stands beside himself,
scrutinizing, measuring disgust. | As the fissure seals itself the situation
becomes less and less desperate. The man is zipped snugly back into his skin,
feet first, head last, and replaced to the front step, pie and all. Time
resumes, the rain is cold, he needs to put gas in the Mustang before going out
tonight. When his finger reaches the bell the flash is over. The pizza is
delivered and the man goes about his business as if nothing had happened. Nothing at all.
This article appears in May 11-17, 2005.
