6834 Miller. 6834 Miller. I spent the seven-minute drive to my location wondering why the address was familiar. I definitely had not delivered a pizza there yet, but it stuck in my brain for some reason.
Oh God, I hoped it wasn’t a party. Parties were the worst. Not only did the larger number of people raise the likelihood of me getting recognized, I had already delivered to a few parties of old friends who didn’t even know I was back in town yet. Didn’t know the depressing story they had to catch up on in the doorway of the home they purchased with a real job as they stood beside the spouse they obtained by living a normal life that didn’t include acting classes and sad headshots. At least the tips were usually pretty good. The pizza delivery equivalent of pity fucks in the form of crumpled tens and fives.
6834 Miller Avenue was very much not home to a party. The familiar site of the retirement home on the edge of town greeted me when I pulled into its expansive parking lot. I remember they made us visit the place once a year in middle school and high school as if seeing a bunch of teenagers with bad attitudes and sagging pants was exactly what was going to cheer up a bunch of members of the Greatest Generation.
I remembered the stale, stinging smell of disinfectant that seemed to radiate in and out of the place when I walked up to the front desk, unable to see past the stack of six pizzas resting in my arms.
“HEY!” A powerful voice shook me as I approached.
I jumped in fright, the tower of boxes wobbled in my arms. I fell to one knee like a boxer on the verge of defeat.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“Who is Jesus?” I crackly voice shot out from behind the pizza boxes in front of my face.
I set the boxes down for a moment to catch myself. Almost jumped when I saw what was in front of me – a small, bearded lady. I’m not describing her in that way to be mean. Even if her unnecessary shout caused me to nearly drop six scalding-hot pizzas onto my face. She was literally just a lady with a beard. Her other features included, a rather small hatchet-shaped head topped with the same bowl-cut hairstyle I rocked in second grade and small, dark eyes, which were far too close to each other. The beard actually quickly kind of became an afterthought.
“Hi.. I started in, trying to not have my eyes on linger upon the long, curly hairs growing out of the bottom of her chin which danced up and down her jawline. “I…”
“Why are you here?” She barked in my face before I could get another word out.
I held in the most-tempting of comments about how it couldn’t have been more clear why I was there since I was wearing a bright red Frontier Pizza polo shirt and carrying a handful of pizzas. Just answered back super-condescendingly.
“Delivering pizzas. Suite seven.”
“HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT,” the woman shot back into my face, a tickle of loose saliva grazing my nose.
“Uhhhhhhh.”
“That is it. Take it to him,” the woman screamed in my face, stuck a sharp-nailed finger in the direction of a dark hallway.
I couldn’t have been happier to be rid of the lady before I realized she was tailing me into the hallway, always remaining about five yards behind me while I combed the nearly-dark hallways scanning the doors for the number seven.
I shook off the perpetual vision of her slinking around in the corner of my eye and focused on the numbers… 1-2-3-4. Besides, the sights I was taking in through the open doors of the rooms were far worse than that of the tiny woman and her chin strap beard.
In my journey to the hallway, I received two full frontals – one male, one female – don’t know which one was worse – a view of a bedpan being filled and soiled sheets drifting in the breeze of one doorway.
