Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) (41 page)

He decides to give it one more round, to see how it goes, and if the tips are bad, if nothing's as good as that party, he will go home. Deep breath, look normal, look sober, now run back into the store.

“Finding your deliveries alright?” the manager asks, some husky nineteen-year-old-looking-guy, standing behind the counter, conveying an authority, but a lax, stoned authority Ronnie doesn't mind and doesn't hate.

“Totally,” Ronnie says, collects the stack of six pizzas next in the delivery queue, and hustles back to his car.

The city's grid is easy navigating. Streets run north/south, avenues east/west. And then, between, there are places and courts and terraces and circles, to say nothing of the winding depths of the serpentine apartment complexes. You kids today, with your GPS systems and cell phones. Pizza delivery has benefitted so much from 21st century technology. You would have to really try (or live in Boston) to get turned around and lost delivering pizza these days. But way back in the fall of 1996, the pizza delivery driver settles for maps pinned to the front of the store, with directions shouted by the dispatcher like a quarterback in a touch football game: “Ok, run straight, turn right there, go straight there, then turn left can't miss it.” And if you did miss it, there were payphones, if you could find them.

Ronnie figured it out easily enough. But then, he had a few drinks. He knew enough to not get so drunk, he'd wreck the car, get pulled over, hurt himself or others, but there was enough alcohol to impair his sense of direction. Halfway through the run, he'd confused his trails and lanes and so ends up at a payphone in front of the entrance to the Publix on University and 34th. Usually, what happens is, you calmly explain the situation, and the customer calmly gives you directions and everybody's happy.

“You're where?! Where's my pizza?!”

On the other end of the phone, this young, entitled college male voice. So demanding. So serious with the pizza.

“I'm at the Publix, on 34th Street . . . ”

“Wait a minute. You're all the way over there?! I want my pizza! Now!” (In later years, Ronnie will hear a similar tone from one George W. Bush.)

“You'll get it, dude. Give me directions and I'm there.”

“I'm not eating cold pizza—duuuude!” George—let's call him George—exaggerates the word “dude.” Ronnie has spent a lot of time thinking of the expression “The customer is always right,” and after years toiling in customer service, he has learned that the rest of that expression goes, “The customer is always right, but the customer is quite often a fucking asshole, regardless.”

“Are you stupid?” George continues. “I want my pizza! Now!”

“Well fuck you then,” says Ronnie's mouth, before his buzzed brain puts up any roadblocks.

Silence. Then: “What did you say to me?” A shrillness to match the entitlement. Shock. George wasn't expecting this.

Ronnie follows his instincts, which tell him to press forward and make no apologies. “Look dude: You're a pussy, and your pizza's still warm, so I'm going to eat it. No pizza for you.”

Ronnie hangs up, looks around. The salmon and teal-aproned bagboys push shopping carts into the store. Families waddle through the automatic doors. Blasts of air-conditioning. Smells of produce and bleachy mop water. A little girl in a pink dress bounces up and down the scale on the entryway to the store.

Ronnie wants to recall exactly where he is as he does this.

On the drive back to the Myrrh House, Ronnie removes the six pizzas in his car from the two insulators, places them in the front seat, tosses the two stars-and-bars clad red pizza insulators out the window. He has six pizzas, and while he feels sorry for the people on the route after George who wouldn't get their pizzas until they called the store to find out what happened, the anticipated pizza party that will soon happen, when Roger sees what he has, when Ronnie calls almost everyone he knows (except Maux and Portland Patty), trumps everything.

Ronnie is sobering up. He stops at the XYZ Liquor Lounge. Before entering, he takes one slice from George's pizza out of the box in the passenger seat. Not too hot. Not too cold. Delicious. Unconsciously, Ronnie knew that this was the only way to deal with fools. Not just in writing, but in person. It was a turning point, a good turning point, whether Ronnie was aware of it or not, and now he will go home and eat pizza with friends, chased with Old Hamtramck tallboys.

 

 

LOST, LOSING

 

In her kitchen, Portland Patty rolls the dough for the vegan pizza. A glass of red wine—Shiraz—to her left, a mixtape flipping from one side to the next, a mixtape she made then titled
oreGONE, xmas, '95
.
9

Waiting for Ronnie, the tape reminding her of home: Last Christmas, with the mixtape finished, she'd borrowed Mom's car and drove to Sauvie Island, lost in the once-familiar of the scenery, of summers between high school years with long-gone friends, driving out of the city, through the railyards and industry on one side and the mountains (mountains!), cliffs (cliffs!) and woods (Ok, Florida has that, but c'mon! It's not a foregone conclusion like it is back there . . . ) on the other, getting baked at the beach (on real weed, not this North-Florida skunky-dirt oregano), then floating in the Columbia River, the evergreen trees, the blue of the sky a blue you don't see anywhere else but in the Pacific Northwest, floating in the water, spinning in circles, Washington state right there on the other side, the Walton Beach crowds packed in in the mid-afternoon beach, the dune behind them, the Van Gogh farmland behind all that. Or at Collins Beach, drunk, stoned, horny, seventeen, “clothing optional” with a whole crew of friends, but with Miranda, they hold hands and conveniently drift away far enough from the pack to kiss, and to act on it for the first time, and why was that the only time? With Miranda, with women. She stopped off at both empty beaches last Christmas and wondered about this, among many other things, as people do when they go home for the holidays and get away from family and all the other obligations long enough to take stock of the distance in time between when you lived your life here and when you come back and see how you don't live your life here and the stupid places don't change in the same ways. She knew herself, even then, enough to know that when she wasn't drunk, stoned, and horny at a “clothing optional” gay and lesbian beach, it wasn't an honest feeling. It was kicks, in the moment. And they drifted apart—her and Miranda—her oldest friend, going back to fourth grade—because, as her friends told her in the drama of the days after, Miranda wanted so much more. And over time, through the transition to high school to college (and choosing to go as far away as possible, to start completely fresh, thinking you actually could start completely fresh, as if genetics and memory don't have something to say about your identity) to post-college, everybody goes their own ways, to the point where even at Christmas and New Year's, nobody gets together anymore. So at Christmas, it's too cold and there's been too much time passed to do much of anything but drive around Sauvie Island and listen to this tape and confront the sinking realization that Portland isn't home. Not anymore.

She's waiting for Ronnie to finally show up. Dinner, wine, this Cassavettes movie she rented. It's almost 8:30, and she'd been expecting him at 7:00.

She rolls the dough (the yeast lives, and the wine lives, but she sleeps at night just fine even if she's slaughtered bacteria . . . everyone has their limits, Portland Patty concluded, the first time she was confronted by one of the more fundamentalist members of the vegan sect about her role in the bacteria holocaust), cuts the green, red, and yellow peppers. Soy cheese. Tomato sauce. The important thing is to keep moving. Listen to the tape, think of someplace far away, like Oregon, last Christmas, alone in the car where nobody knows you and nobody sees you and you have no name, no nickname, no one to be and nothing matters and nothing hurts.

He's with Maux. Why? And why does Portland Patty care? What is she doing, anyway? To see the big picture, to think of the endless succession of losers she's dated in this town, who drink and play in bands and say a lot of nice things until she lets them into her bedroom. When it's done, they look like they want to take on the world and win—alone—and she's left in bed wondering why she went on the ride and why she can't just enjoy these fleeting moments for what they are. Older now, she's become how Miranda was, eight years ago, always wanting something more, behind the words, the faces. And just like with Ronnie, she always wants to know if they are different, and so far, they never have been different.

Sip the wine. Preheat the oven. To think about them—that bitch—who everyone in town knows is a total bitch—together—in any capacity—is enough to make her end it. Tonight. No. Not tonight. But the later he is, the more likely it
will
end tonight.

No calls. Not from Ronnie. Not from anyone. Evenings like these, if you're not careful, it's like vertigo, to be so far from home, and to know that home as you knew it no longer exists. In bed, it overwhelms you, almost asleep. It's a jolt that shakes your chest and legs. You're nowhere, and no one's around to make that go away.

She slides the dough into the oven when the doorbell rings. Finally. She shuts the oven, walks to the front door.

The fucker smiles as she opens the door, and he immediately waddle-bumbles inside. A smile, a squeezeless hug, and it's “Hey lady, can I come in?” even as he's five steps in the door. “Sorry I'm late,” he says, “I was at the Drunken Mick getting berated by Neal and Paul. They won't shut up about . . . ”

“Who?” Portland Patty interrupts, shuts the door, walks towards him, “oreGONE xmas ‘95” continuing behind her.

“Nothing.” Ronnie stumbles to the couch. “No one. Maux. But . . . ”

“What about her, Ronnie?”

Ronnie falls backwards, lands on the couch, leans back, puts his hands behind his head with fingers clasped, smiles the smile of the overserved. “Aw, you know, they think we're dating. But we're not dating. We're friends. That's all. Fffffffffffriends!” He laughs, he smiles, he unclasps his fingers, extends his arms into an embrace and says, “I like you. They like you. Isn't that nice? Isn't it? Nice? Right?”

Portland Patty has to smile. Beneath the attempts at charm, the rumpled yet almost “punk” clothing, there was a lush—a great big comical lush—like the kind they used to draw in caricature in the 1930s—with red clown noses and floppy holey shoes and a stick with a knotted handkerchief holding his meager possessions. Portland Patty recalls a song from when she was a kid, a song from the kids' show
The Electric Company
—“I'm just a clow-wow-wowwwwn / who's feeling dow-wow-wowwwwn / since my baby left tow-wowwwwwn.” They were teaching kids about the “ow” sound in words, but maybe it was about Ronnie, or Portland Patty, or everyone in Gainesville flopping around doing nothing all the time. Ronnie the Lush. She promises that, no matter how annoyed and angry she gets with Ronnie, to keep that nickname to herself. She doesn't want to saddle him with it, as someone with a faraway, long ago, hardly remembered hometown in front of her name.

“Well. The pizza's almost ready if you want some.”

“Hell yeah, brah.”

Ronnie picks up the VHS cover of the movie Portland Patty rented.
Opening Night
is the title. He flips to the back, closes one eye so he can focus on the words, laughing in perceived recognition as he reads:

“. . . The master narrative of all of Cassavetes' films is to force characters to shed their own skins . . . the discovery of who we really are can begin only when our routines are disrupted . . . we must be forced out of our places of comfort . . . not to break down, to maintain your old routines at all costs, to hold onto an established definition of yourself with a death grip . . . is to be truly damned.”

Portland Patty removes the pizza stone holding the newly formed crust from the oven, sets them on the kitchen counter. She spreads the tomato sauce, sprinkles the soy cheese, plops the peppers, puts it back in, as
oreGONE, xmas '95
plays “24” by Red House Painters and the lyric
and I thought at 15 I'd / have it down by 16 / and 24 keeps breathing in my face / like a manhole / and 24 keeps pounding at my door . . . 
And now, she's twenty-five. Years of never having it down, years of fleeting thrills and nothing substantive.

When it's cooked, removed, cooled, she cuts the pizza into slices, divides it between two plates. She carries the plates into the living room. Ronnie's head is tilted back. He smiles as he snores, mouth agape. It is too ridiculous to be angry. She sets the plates down, goes into the kitchen, stops “oreGONE xmas '95,” carries the bottle of Shiraz into the living room, turns on the TV, the VCR, starts the movie, cranks the sound to drown out Ronnie's snores, eats, drinks, drinks, drinks, tries to enjoy this fleeting man and this fleeting moment, so far from home, so far from home.

 

•

 

Yes, at the bar, Paul and Neal were trying to give Ronnie all kinds of shit about Maux and Portland Patty. It was the primary topic of conversation during the Drunken Mick's all-you-can-drink Happy Hour from 5:00-8:00 p.m.