like trying to keep your eyes on the road at night when someone is driving at you with high-powered brights.
“You know, you could’ve said something…”
I look down at my feet and nod dumbly.
“Well, can I get you something? The ovens should be hot by now.”
I shake my head and look back up. She’s still smiling, hesitantly. Perfect teeth.
“Well, something to drink maybe?” Now the amusement seems to be transitioning to worry. Like maybe I was retarded or a criminal and had wandered in off the street, having just escaped from some sort of halfway house.
“The sign,” I finally say.
“The sign?” She mulls this over, like it was some sort of insider message, perhaps from someone outside the Matrix.
“Oh, that,” she finally says, pointing to the door. “Did I forget to turn on the neon again? I’m always forgetting that. Because I almost never open. Usually I work the late shift.”
She steps around the counter and then comes back, looking more puzzled than ever.
“It’s on,” she says.
I shake my head and stutter, “Not that sign.”
“Oh,” she says. “So this is some sort of guessing game? Do I get twenty questions?”
I’m completely flushed now and close to just racing out of the restaurant. “No, no. The other sign. About the job.”
“Oh,” she says with a sigh. “You want to apply for a job?’
I nod. She reaches under the counter and pulls out a sheet of paper and a pen. “Here you go. Fill this out, but the owner does all the interviews. He’ll be in after four. You can bring it back then. Best to come early before we get busy.”
I reach for the paper she’s holding. I really want to ask her if she goes to North, because maybe that’s where I’ve seen her.
As I take hold of it she points at my chest with her other hand.
“You go to Dakota State?”
I have to actually look down at my chest to realize I’m wearing one of the shirts Garrett brought back from school.
“That’s my brother’s,” I say.
“The shirt?” she says, her face lighting up again with that knowing smile.
“No, the school. Maybe both. I don’t know. I just grab whatever’s in the drawer.”
“Yeah?” She seems to getting more information out of this statement than I intended. “Well, good luck with the job thing. We could use some more help. Gets pretty crazy here Friday, Saturday nights.”
“Thanks,” I say, and make a beeline for the door, not looking back.
17.
I fill out the application when I get home. The rest of the afternoon I worry about going back to Saviano’s after making a fool of myself. I actually thumb through the North yearbook Mom bought over my protests. Looking at every picture until I’m not even sure what she looked like. So now I’m hoping she’s still there, so I can see her again.
When I get to the strip mall I look through the window before I go inside and see a guy I recognize from high school standing at the counter. I walk up and he sees the application in my hand.
“Hang on,” he says. “I’ll see if the old man is in the mood.”
I stand at the counter, taking in the smell of pizzas and glancing over at the only table occupied—a young family with a little girl in a high chair, another girl standing on her chair while her mom pulls at her shirt, telling her to sit.
“You’re in luck!”
I turn, startled.
“Follow me,” the guy says. As I walk around the corner he says, “You go to North, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you took Calc BC with a friend of mine. We saw you in the hall last year and he’s like, ‘Hey, there’s that little freshman who’s in my calc class.’ And I’m like, ‘Whoa, he’s not even Asian!’”
We walk down a little corridor lined with metal shelves filled with cans of tomato sauce and other ingredients. “I’ll introduce you to the old man.”
At the end of the hall is a metal door that looks like it leads outside. Halfway down we stop and my guide knocks on a battered door to the side.
“Yeah?” I hear someone call.
“It’s Kurt. Got the applicant for you.”
“Hang on.”
Kurt rolls his eyes and whispers to me, “Be patient.” He heads back to the front of the restaurant. It’s at least three minutes before the door opens. The man standing there is short and round and is wearing a worn-out and stained Kansas City Royals baseball hat. He’s not really that old, maybe my dad’s age. Behind him a small desk is stuck in a cluttered room no bigger than a closet.
He just stares at me like he has no idea why I’m there.
“Mr. Saviano?”
“Shit no,” he says. “Name’s O’Neill. Charlie O’Neill. But who the hell is going to buy a pizza from O’Neill’s? Would you?”
I don’t know whether I should say the obvious or if that would be an insult.
So I just shrug.
“Sit down and fill out this government shit storm of paper. Then copy your driver’s license and social security card on that Xerox machine to make sure you ain’t no undocumented alien.”
I’m guessing my driver’s permit will work. It looks pretty much like a license.
O’Neill shuffles through a pile of papers on his desk, like he’s lost something. Then he stops and looks up at me, staring right into my eyes.
“You ever work a cash register?” he asks.
I shake my head, then add, “But I’m good at math.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve got one for you. Steve can make a pizza in four minutes. Tom can make a pizza in six minutes. How long does it take them to do a pizza together?”
The formula just pops up in my head, the way a mental picture appears when someone says “elephant” or “tornado.” It’s 1/4 pizza/minute + 1/6 pizza/minute or (3/12 + 2/12) = 5/12 of a pizza in one minute, or 12/5 for one pizza, which equals 2.4 minutes.
“Well,” I say. “Assuming they don’t get in each other’s way, it would take two minutes and twenty-four seconds.”
O’Neill
