Weather Disturbance, Part Three
Apr 03 '04
The Bottom Line Copyright 2004 David Macdonald
Part Two was here: http://www.epinions.com/content_3851657348
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7.
Leon eventually returned to the pizza shop. It was close to 7 pm at this point. The pizza shops windows were lit up, yet the area was deserted. The lights were not enough to draw people in.
And yet here he was, expected to wait, to serve people who would never arrive to order.
“Rick!”, Leon bellowed, as he walked inside. He saw Rick, rapidly wandering in the back kitchen.
“I thought that you smashed your car up even worse than I!”, he slyly grinned.
Leon rolled his eyes. He felt that the was mere inches away from just disposing of this occupation. Even with the adjacent loss of income.
“No.... no, I didn't smash up anything.”, he said, carefully.
“Well, thanks a lot for helping me out tonight.”
“He didn’t pay.”, Leon stated dryly.
Rick’s expression soured, only minutely. He appeared to have expected something like this to happen.
“......ah well, he’ll order again. He always does. Besides, he had the right...... it was almost an hour before the pizza arrived to him anyway. What else would you expect? He certainly wasn’t going to pay you full price and give you a tip for being a half hour late........”
And was this what Leon was going to have to deal with for the entire night?
“.... well, kid, I wouldn’t get all wrapped over over that anyway. You might as well take off for the night.”, Rick said.
Leon was rather surprised. Now, after being permitted to leave after only one delivery, Leon felt upset for having wasted his time.
“Wow!”, Leon responded, his amused expression a mesh over his frustration. “That was quite a short shift this evening. One whole delivery. Almost not worth having driven out in the first place.”
Rick caught the superficial implications of that statement. However, he wasn’t appreciative of any hurt feelings, more than he was of the legal, ethical, or financial implications of doing business.
“Uh... yes, yes, sure, I understand totally.”, he responded, his voice a blending of evasiveness and stress. “I promise you. I’ll make that reflect on your paycheck.....”
Really?
“Besides, I know that you’re not supposed to have a shift smaller than three hours. So everything should be okay.”
Really? he thought to himself yet again.
“..... you’ll remember to do that up on my next paycheck, will you?”, he asked, shuffling his feet closer to the front door.
“.... yes, sir, yes, sir.”, he said. “Now be careful driving home, okay?”
*
The lean drifts of snow scurried across the street, a few at a time. Occasionally, the drifts became thick enough to impede Leon’s vision through the windshield. Fearful that Rick’s bad luck would rub off on him, Leon had been driving very slowly to begin with, and, with the obscuring drifts, he slowed his car almost to a halt as he waited for the path to be clear again.
The winds seem to have been getting worse. But he was close to where he was wanting to go.
By this time, the sky was completely black. If Leon had to deliver more pizzas, he would have had to drive through these streets for hours. And would have probably had to suffer with other angry customers who wanted their pizza under thirty minutes, even in the midst of a major snowfall event.
Leon felt frustrated. He had less time to exchange words with Erica. Less time to see her, for the very final visit..........
“Hey, Leon!”
Erica greeted her friend, after opening the front door. She made room for him to escape the bluster of the air, and into the calming of the indoors.
“I thought that you were going to be here for supper!”, she added, not rudely.
Another voice broke the dual dialogue. “Who’s that, Erica?”
“It’s Leon, Mom!”, she responded.
“You missed a good meal.”, the mother joked from afar.
Leon peeled his weighty boots from his feet. “Well, I had every intention of being here before supper..... but then my stupid boss.....”, he groaned, stopping himself with doubts of whether he really should have used that descriptive.
“Uh oh.”, she teased. “What happened?”
“He smashed his car at the intersection, up by St. Peter’s Road....... while he was delivering pizza.... so he expected me to finish the delivery. Of just one pizza! It was bad enough that he drug me out of the house on my day off. It was worse that he would send me home after just one delivery...... what a waste......”
“Ah well, at least you made a few bucks in this weather.”, she giggled.
“Ah, maybe I should have received danger pay for that!”, he joshed bitterly.
“Oh, don’t exaggerate!”, she scoffed, tapping him on the shoulder gently, as a message for him to stick to reality. “It’s not the worse that it could be, I’m sure......”
“Well... I’m glad not to worry about it for now.....”
“Hey, let’s go downstairs, okay.”, Erica proposed. “I’ll bring you some chips for us to snack on. Since obviously you missed the real meal! But don’t worry! Salt, oils, trans-fatty acids. You’re still going to get all the major food groups!”
*
*
*
The sofa was found one day on the sidewalk. Erica, Leon and another girl named Vicky decided that the couch was orphaned, and got Erica’s dad to haul it back home on his pickup truck.
The sofa found a spot in the basement, alongside the wall that divided the main room from Erica’s bedroom. The derelict piece of furniture was without cushions. Some cushions, torn and aging, were found in the garage, and became the substitutes for the authentic articles. They would have to do, even as they were a few inches to small to fit the jigsaw puzzle of the sofa.
Erica was the only one seated on the sofa. Her body disinterestedly sank within the gaps of the narrow cushions. She deliberately exalted her bad posture, her ill-mannered position. She cared as much about it as the dulling colors of the sofa cared about its visual charm.
Leon placed himself on the chair opposite to her, and regarded her, but cautiously. He did not want to reveal with his eyes what lurked behind them.
He was aware of her physicality. Her face, the skin fresh and ivory-pure. If he could get closer to her face, he’d kiss it as if he were drinking something soft and milky.
Her breasts. Ample from beneath her orange shirt. Ample enough that, if he could touch them, touch her, they’d be too much for his grasp. But that would have been fine by him. If all women looked the way she did at this moment, Leon would never want to be anywhere but in the company of women.
But he didn’t want to consistently ponder on the fact that Erica - his friend, pal, buddy - was indeed blessed with a terrific chest. It approached something akin to a wrong. Especially on a night like this........
“..... what are you thinking about?”, Erica smiled.
Leon blinked, his eyes smarting from the dust of secret fantasies. “Oh... I’m just... thinking about that guy from the call center.” No, he wasn’t. But now he was.
Erica nodded. “Well, it was understandable. I’d be pretty frustrated too....”
“I could have gotten killed out there.”. It was an upsetting phrase, but Leon spoke it flippantly, like a punch line to a tepidly-performed joke.
“.... except that this was a storm, you’re right.”, she agreed, nodding her head. “There was nothing you could do.”
She left the subject hanging. Her eyes weren’t able to focus squarely on Leon’s face, just as he wasn’t able to keep his vision in line with Erica’s. It felt so odd. This would be the last time they would ever hang out. Yet they weren’t having a lot of fun. It was just too quiet. If this were a large group of people, the individuals could forget about the silences, the awkwardness. But this time, Erica and Leon were too conscious of the brokenness of the situation.
“H...How was it outside?”, Erica asked, finally.
“Breezy.”, he stated, plainly.
Erica nodded her head.
“Are you still in your car?”, Erica asked.
“Yea....”
“You can always leave your car here -- if you think it’s safer.”
Erica’s mouth bent in thought. “Maybe..... but I know how much your mother gets worried. It’s just like you told me... she was quite upset that you’d drive on these roads. If you walk home, then maybe she wouldn’t get so upset.”
“I only live less than a kilometer away from you.”, he laughed.
“... true, true.”,Erica concurred. “It was just a thought.....”
“Thanks...”, Leon said, pleasantly. “...for the thought.”
He looked down to the floor. So did Erica. Neither of them were all that anticipatory about anything at this moment.
“What time is is?”, Erica asked.
“About 11.....”
“Your mother’s going to worry about you, car or no car....”
“Geez, you’re almost as bad as my mother.”, he smirked. “I can’t be watched over all the time.”
His statement made Erica aware of her quirks this evening. This final evening, where all the silly, insignificant memories of the past were recalled with an almost otherworldly clarity. The visuals frightened her, much so that she needed to tease, to almost alienate her friend. Maybe then he wouldn’t care so much about her departure.........
“Sorry... I’ve been really picking on you tonight, haven’t I?” The apology was a crack in the armor.
“No, what do you mean? You sound just like you always do.”, he teased.
He obviously didn’t notice any difference. Good. “Yea... well, be grateful.”, she smirked. “God knows when I’ll be able to bug you again.....”
“Well, you’re not leaving until late morning. You can bug me before you leave!”
Erica then ascended from the frail sofa, to pace toward the window. She needed to peer over the lower edge of the glass, as the tiny basement window was situated very close to the ceiling.
The sky looked bleak, but the pale whiteness of the grains of snow, reflected from unseen street lamps, created an artificially starry landscape.
“It’s ugly.”, she said, sluggishly. “Every snowstorm looks so ugly to me -- like someone’s face after being pulled across a dirt road. Except the dirt is white.”
Leon turned to Erica as she spoke, her eyes flickering across the windowpane. Erica’s face, on the other hand, was unsullied by any scrap of ill will. Her face was the sun beneath the clouds.
“Ah, it’s not that bad -- “, Leon grinned, anxiously. “Two days from now, everybody will be skiing on it at the Brookvale Ski Park, or snowmobiling across empty fields. Nobody will call it ugly then. It would be a source of entertainment.”
“Oh, it’s ugly, all right .... just like this town, this province........”
Leon felt a wound within his chest. He was a part of that ugliness. Erica’s words were so direct, and her face so straightforward, untouched by any irony or qualification, that everything surrounding her was a potential suspect.
“So..... are you gonna miss me, you?”, she said, her eyes resting upon his. But then, her eyes weren’t so straightforward any longer.
“... sure... sure, I’d miss you.” After trying so hard not to let her know the lingering thoughts that he was having at this moment, he felt interrogated. He had to choose his words carefully.
“I’ll miss you too... you know. Just for all the stupid stuff we did, you understand.”
Erica’s face was emotionless. She had wiped the board clean. Either that or she didn’t want to reveal what she had written there.
“Me too. Just for all the stupid stuff.”
Leon had to play along.
8.
Flush!
Muffled blasts of water came from behind the door, sounding just like something out of a crazy sitcom. But this was real life that Christy was dealing with. She already went to the bathroom three times in the last couple of hours. And even if her body was sleepy enough to trip into slumber, she could not, as her bladder was urging her to listen to its disruptive monologues.
But she drank so much caffeine this evening, that all she could do was toss frantically over the mattress, with the bladder giving occasional punctuation to her lengthy silent monologues.
But this time, after nearly two hours of being in bed, Christy did not want to return to the hardening mattress. She left the washroom, and kept on walking, entering the expanse of the living room, now merely a darkened, obscure remnant of its former self.
She sensed her way along the floor, letting her toes harmlessly strike the objects -- the chair, the sofa -- until she understood to be close to the television stand. Then she had to fumble in the darkness for the power button. Her fingers poked the bottom of the television, until it casually flipped the proper button.
She had been too lazy to find the light switch for the living room. But the soft light of the television screen was a suitable alternative, once it was finally activated. It was going to be a long evening, propped upon the sofa, watching late night television. She would never be able to get enough sleep -- what was going to happen tomorrow when she was expected to go to school?
She played with the remote control. She passed through many channels. News, news, and more news -- then some sports -- then back to the news again. It was that time of night, one would suppose. Then, a bunch of strange movies -- some with words flickering across the bottom of the screen, while the people on screen spoke another language. Weird. Almost as weird as watching old TV shows. Who would watch that stuff, when there was great stuff like Survivor, and Simon Cowell’s smug jabs on American Idol?
With the higher channel numbers came some of the family-oriented networks. Ones that showed cartoons and other focused programming. She decided to leave it on one, and see if it was worth watching.
But she couldn’t quite determine the worth of the program, even as she found herself compelled by what occurred on screen........
She must have been getting tired after all. The cartoon seemed really strange. For one, the announcer followed the commercial by saying that the program was not suitable for children. But wasn’t this Teletoon? The animation station? The channel that aired cartoons? Weren’t cartoons for kids?
She was up far too late. That coffee really worked its magic on the brain.
This show had crudely drawn characters. Some of them were in wheelchairs. There was one character who was just a head -- nothing else -- a disembodied head sitting on a wagon, as it moved and spoke as if it were just a regular, full-bodied individual. All of the characters looked quite ugly.
The language was profane. The situations appeared strange. These things and more seemed so wrong in a cartoon.
“Wow, what am I watching?”, she whispered to herself.
Maybe she had fell asleep on that sofa. Maybe her dreams were invading her waking -- spinning webs that soon digressed from what she had originally tuned the TV on to see.......
... and now she was hearing footsteps behind her. The nightmare continued?
“Why aren’t you in bed?”.
The accusative voice startled Christy. She gasped airily, before swinging her body around to face the voice. But it was only Leon.
“I just didn’t feel like going to bed....that’s all!”, she boasted, whitewashing the truth of why she could not sleep.
“Does Mom know that you’re awake?”
“No!”, she hiccuped. “D... does it matter?”
“Not to me, it doesn’t. But I won’t be responsible for what happens to you tomorrow morning........”
Christy and Leon didn’t exactly have deep conversations. Chalk it up to the gulf between the ages, between a guy moving on into adulthood, and a kid at the age where older siblings of the opposing gender were seen as suspicious, or at least ridiculous.
Christy, in this case, just rolled her eyes. “So how were the pizzas?”
Did he have to be reminded of this? “Very cold.”
“Yuck-y!”, she slurred. “Your pizzas are gross, anyway..... I go to the other place.....”
“Yes.... that may be why I only delivered one pizza tonight......”
“One really gross pizza. Did they complain?
“Very much so.”, he grumbled.
“Did they complain about the toppings -- or about the crust? Or did they complain about the cheese?” Christy was surely trying to rub that salt further into the wounds, wasn’t she?
“...... oh, they complained about everything. They were never satisfied. I’m sure that they would have been as pleased to go somewhere else for pizza......”
“Oh, don’t pout.”, Christy mocked. “It’s only pizza.”
“Sure.... it’s only pizza.......”, Leon mumbled.
He walked over to the kitchen, and went to get a glass of water.
Nobody was happy tonight. Winters on the island assaulted people’s emotions. This was a unassailable fact. The winters could do that, because they knew that all people could do was helplessly react. Helplessly become upset. Or, in some cases, run away........
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CONCLUSION:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3851788420
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Member: David Macdonald
Location: Prince Edward Island
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About Me:
Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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