by Adam Cesare
ALSO BY ADAM CESARE
Tribesmen
Bound By Jade
Video Night
The Summer Job
The First One You Expect
Exponential
Mercy House
The Con Season
COLLECTIONS
Bone Meal Broth
COLLABORATIONS
All-Night Terror
(with Matt Serafini)
Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical: A Novel
(with Shane McKenzie and Cameron Pierce)
Jackpot
(with Shane McKenzie, David Bernstein and Kristopher Rufty)
Bottom Feeders
(with Cameron Pierce)
New York • Pennsylvania
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Frank Walls
Digital layout by K. Allen Wood
Black T-Shirt Books logo by Chris Enterline
Digital Edition Copyright © 2017 by Adam Cesare
www.adamcesare.com
Printed in the United States of America.
To my love, Jen.
Also, to my friend Scott and anyone else who’s helped make Philly my new home.
And to you, for reading this.
PROLOGUE
1989
In the minutes before the horrific accident that would end his unspectacular life, Robby Asaro was engaged in one of his favorite activities. He was making a pizza.
The frozen dough arrived shrink-wrapped, looking like a big pale Frisbee. There were twenty to a case, ten in each stack, packed double-wide and weighing about fifty pounds. Inside the plastic wrap was a pre-portioned bag of cheese and another of sauce.
To aid in pizza-preparation, a set of instructions came stapled to the inside of every lid. Robby went through the boxes and tossed the directions in the trash before loading the pizzas into the walk-in cooler.
The company wanted to make you think prep was idiot-proof, but there was still an art to making a Funcave pizza edible, something that you couldn’t be told via step-by-step instructions.
Robby Asaro went beyond making them edible: he had elevated these pizzas to an art.
He liked to tell people that it was his Italian heritage, his grandmother’s kitchen voodoo filtering down through the bloodline, but it was really just a decade of trial and error.
Robby had been in the pizza-thawing business since 1980, a year after Funcave had opened its doors. Over the last decade he’d learned nothing about women through a marriage and a divorce, but at least he’d learned when to ignore the instructions and when to trust the oven.
Eddie Harmon, the owner of Funcave and Robby’s boss, liked to describe the oven as “automated” but Robby had never seen Mr. Harmon try to work the thing.
The appliance was big enough that it took up half the kitchen. A piece of machinery that huge was never simple.
Robby washed his hands, toweled off, and then dusted his palms with a bit of flour while still damp. He set aside the sauce and cheese and gave the dough a layer of flour, too. The instructions didn’t call for flour. That was all Robby.
The tomato sauce was best applied with a spoon, the contours of the utensil allowing for organic peaks and valleys in sauce distribution. Robby only used three-quarters of a bag, any more than that and you’d have a soggy pizza.
Robby sprinkled the cheese, tossing in a bit of parmesan powder for flavor. That didn’t come in the box, he had to order it separately and bill it as something else so Eddie wouldn’t catch him. Paying more for the pizzas than the owner deemed necessary was a one-way ticket to a patented Mr. Harmon chew-out.
The oven was built like a long conveyor belt. It looked like it would be more at home in a quarry, rocks and sand moving across it, than a video arcade. But here it was.
The belt’s tread was made of a fine metal grating that moved the pizza under the heating coils. The metal of the tread itself heated up, giving each pizza a crispy bottom during its trip through the oven. By the end of a rotation, the grating was well over four hundred degrees.
Simple, the machine wasn’t. There were separate settings for each of the three heating coils, the speed of the belt, and the coils could even be lowered closer to the track.
After years of tinkering, Robby had the oven just the way he liked it, but that didn’t stop the day-shift assholes from tampering with it.
From outside the kitchen, the sounds of the arcade floor entered through the order window. Robby put the finishing touches on the pizza while listening to the constant clatter of skeeballs being dropped into their troughs. When there was a lull in the radio, from farther away Robby could hear the electronic beeps and simplistic music of Galaga ’88 and Spy Hunter.
Robby Asaro smiled to himself, content with his place in life, feeling at one with the Zen of the arcade. He lifted up the cold dough with two hands until it was at eye-level. Dressed in sauce and cheese, it was a thing of beauty.
For most of his thirty-eight years, Robby had worked with his hands. Road crew, landscaping, even a brief stint as a field hand. None of those jobs were as tough on his mitts as prepping pizzas at the Funcave. The backs of Robby’s hands were crisscrossed with scars, the patterns matching the cross-hatching of the conveyor belt.
Careful, this time, to keep his fingers away from the hot belt, he dropped the pizza on and watched as it started to slowly roll away, the hot orange glow of the heating coils stinging his eyes.
The assemblage of dough, sauce and cheese began its journey, by the time it reached its final station stop, it would no longer be an assemblage of distinct elements, but would instead be united as a pizza. A Funcave pizza.
“Hey, Rob,” Seth yelled from the order window. Robby only half-listened to him, his eyes still fixed on the pizza as it inched down the conveyor belt, into the orange maw of the oven. “Now they say they want sausage and peppers on that. Don’t throw it on yet.”
It took him a moment to decode the words, and he was upset when he did.
Fucking kids, Robby thought. Grow a pair, Seth. They should have to pay for two pizzas if they’ve already ordered. That was what he thought, but he was not that kind of guy, so he shoved both hands into the conveyer belt to remove the pizza.
“Got it!” he yelled back.
Robby was two fingers deep into the rapidly-congealing dough. He gripped at the outer edges, the not-yet-crust of the pizza, and yanked it up from the metal grate. Amazingly, he had not burned himself, but he could feel the heat on his forearms through his chef’s whites.
The last thought to cross Robby Asaro’s mind that wasn’t tinged with abject terror was how much he was going to sweat into his shirt and how he would have to do laundry later.
That was right before his sleeve snagged on the belt.
§
Seth rounded the corner of the kitchen doorway, responding to Robby’s cries just in time to watch the older man’s Reebok’s disappear into the mouth of the oven. The sneakers made a sizzling sound with each crash against the metal grating, plastic vaporizing on contact.
Stepping inside the room, the smell of burning rubber mingled with burning hair so that it was impossible for Seth to tell which was which.
Or which was worse.
Located on a sparsely populated stretch of commercial road in Ashville, New Hampshire, Funcave was ten minutes from the closest EMT dispatch station. This is also about the same amount of time that it takes for a pizza to complete its roll through the oven.
By the time the paramedics arrived on the scene, most o
f Robby’s clothes had burned away and his skin had taken on rosy hue. Even though the flesh was the color and texture of expertly prepared pepperoni, Robby Asaro was not around to appreciate it.
CHAPTER 1
2014
It was hard to concentrate on your game of Ms. Pac-Man when five feet away someone was calling you a “chink” under their breath.
Tiffany Park knuckled down, leaned into the machine and let her fist fuse with the joystick until plastic and flesh were indistinguishable.
The orange ghost was giving her trouble, had been the whole game. There was an unpredictability to Ms. Pac-Man that many classic games didn’t possess. In this particular session, the orange ghost, Sue, was the embodiment of that randomness.
The decision to go for the warp tunnel proved fatal for Tiffany. Ms. Pac-Man spun onto her back in her death throes. It was less graphic than the death of Mr. Pac-Man—splitting at the middle and disappearing into himself—but not by much. The sight of Ms. Pac-Man on her ass, her ruby lips and beauty mark pointed to the sky, was beyond sad.
“No kill screen that time, Tiffany,” Chris said, walking up behind her. “You would dishonor your family like that?” he added in a Mr. Miyagi accent.
Chris Murphy liked his metal nu and his stereotypes broad.
Tiffany had never achieved a kill screen in Ms. Pac-Man, not yet. Chris would never, but guys like Chris didn’t care about shit like that.
Chris probably only knew the term kill screen because it included the word “kill” in it. The kid fit into the category of “hateful suburban white-boy” so snuggly that it may as well have been his race, ethnicity, and religion, too.
He took a step closer, reached a hand over so that he almost touched hers. She pulled her fingers back from the cabinet and he flicked the joystick.
“I’ve got next,” he said. “Don’t you see the token?”
There was no token, at least not pressed against the screen where it was supposed to be. It was pinched between two of Chris’s dirty fingernails as he waved it in her face.
Chris was not fat or excessively tall, but he towered over Tiffany. He edged his way in front of the machine, the mass of his body pushing her out of the way without ever touching her, the mysterious force like the wrong end of a magnet.
From this close, Chris smelled like cigarette smoke and grease. At least she hoped it was cigarette smoke. Back in elementary school, Chris would boast to the other boys about spending his weekends torching stray cats.
“Let a man show you how it’s done, China Girl.”
It was hard for Tiffany to tell whether she was being bullied or hit on. There may have been some overlap between Chris’s definitions of both terms.
Was she supposed to stay and watch him play Ms. Pac-man? The idea disgusted her. She looked down both ends of the aisle. They were alone. The classic gameroom wasn’t very popular, so it was quite possible that they were the only two people on the second floor of Funcave.
From downstairs she could hear the infrequent crash of pins from the bowling alley. It was a Tuesday afternoon. The local kids only swamped the place on weekends and the old-timers that spent their nights trying to one-up each other’s scores in Tempest and Marble Madness were not yet out of their minimum wage nine-to-fives.
Chris yanked the joystick. His wasn’t the tight, professional grip that Tiffany tried to maintain, but the insane throttle of a man trying to break Ms. Pac-Man into submission.
The grip wouldn’t work for the later levels, was real amateur-hour stuff, but he was competent enough to get through the first two stages without dying. He missed the first set of cherries, though.
Violent as his play-style was, fixating on the game, his strategy, was enough to quiet Tiffany’s original fears about being alone with the Murphy boy. It was possible that he was one of those bullies whose rage stemmed from a desire to be befriended, so maybe this was his way of reaching out to someone, anyone.
Ms. Pac-Man found herself boxed into a corner without a power pellet and the ghosts descended upon her.
“Fuck! Stupid whore didn’t go left.” Chris screamed and Tiffany felt angry at herself for trying to humanize him. The circumstances didn’t much matter: Chris Murphy was ugly, inside and out.
“There was a wall there.” Tiffany said.
“Don’t you think I know that? I wasn’t yelling at you, was I? I’m mad at myself more than anything. We can’t all be naturals. Americans don’t come hardwired for this shit, not like the Japanese.”
“Korean.”
“What?” Chris said, onto his second life, going back to the top corner with no power pellet, getting ready to repeat his mistake.
“I’m Korean, not Japanese, and you should head through the tunnel.”
“Don’t backseat drive! We both know how good you people are at driving.” He dropped the insult too quickly, wasn’t that quick-witted, it was apparent that he’d been saving that gem in his back pocket for when she gave him advice.
“Okay, fuck this,” Tiffany said. She bent to pick up her purse from under the machine, intending to grab it and walk away. Chris moved his boot so it pressed down on both straps, pinning the bag to the floor.
“Hey, while you’re down there.” He thrust forward with his crotch, almost hitting her in the head with his knee.
“Move your foot, Chris!” She stood to look him in the eye, but his gaze was fixed on the game. He was still slamming the joystick, but at least now he was going in the right direction.
“You know my name, that’s good,” he said. They’d gone to the same elementary school and their high school class of 2015 had less than sixty kids in it. Not knowing his name would have been more impressive.
“Just stay and help me with this game,” he said. “Then I’ll go.”
Chris Murphy was the worst at making friends. When she realized this, Tiffany felt encouraged by the knowledge that she would never hold this dubious title. She was second-worst material, tops.
“You’re doing okay, but you need to make sure that you get the fruit in every level, too. That way if you have enough points later in the game, you’ll have lives to spare. Everything from the peach onward is a must-get.”
“You’ve really thought about this. That’s weird.”
“That’s the game, if you want to be any good at it, you’ve got to know it a little.”
He didn’t respond well to her lessons, but he also wasn’t raging against the machine anymore. Ms. Pac-Man ate it again and he changed the subject. “I’m more of a Call of Duty guy, myself.”
She didn’t want to point out that that was blazingly apparent. He had one more life yet and she still needed her purse back.
“Okay last life,” she said. Please make it a good one, I don’t need you raging out and giving me a wedgie or swirly or some shit, she thought.
He was six levels deep into the game and the ghosts were out of the box much faster now. All four were out on the field before he had even cleared a quarter of the dots.
“Don’t waste a pellet when you can’t eat all four ghosts. There.” She touched the glass showing him where to turn and when to do it. He was pretty good when he had direction, clearing that stage while collecting most of the available points.
“Put your finger away, I can’t see,” he said and swatted her hand. His skin was damp and even paler than hers. The win had made him cocky, one level done correctly and now he was reverting back to his tough guy act.
Don’t fuck up. Despite herself, she was now invested in this game, rooting for Chris Murphy, a desire beyond just wanting to get her purse back and run away from the large, creepy kid in the Slipknot sweatshirt.
Tiffany stared down at her Vans, too nervous to watch. Appraising herself, the fact that she was wearing her Bullet for my Valentine shirt, she realized something. To the other students in their senior class, she and Chris Murphy had probably belonged to the same breed of pissed-off mallrat, shared a genus. The thought depressed her.
W
hen she glanced back up, Chris was dead, he just didn’t know it yet.
He’d eaten all the pellets and the ghosts were blinking back from blue. There was still about a third of the stage to clear of dots. Even a good player would have trouble with that, and Chris was mediocre.
Looking at the arrangement it was clear how he’d gotten so screwed so quickly. He was spooked by how fast his enemies were moving, running from corner to corner without trying to clear the dots, just stay alive.
“Uh oh,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t.
“Come on, you slut! Move!” Chris was back to his old self.
If this was what he yelled in public while trying to impress a girl, she tried to imagine what he yelled while he was playing Call of Duty with his friends. His online friends, the ones that didn’t live in New Hampshire, had names like Smokemaster420.
“Calm down, it’s just a game,” Tiffany pleaded, seeing that the Game Over screen was seconds away.
Chris grunted something that could have sounded like slope, but maybe Tiffany’s ears were too quick to hear slurs today.
Just as Ms. Pac-Man was about to slam into Sue (that damn pink bitch, again), a pixilated tremor passed over the screen and Ms. Pac-Man appeared on the opposite side of the ghost, unharmed.
“Whoa,” Chris said. Childlike wonderment replacing his seething nerd-rage vitriol, “Did you see that?”
“Weird glitch.”
“Glitch? Try mad skills, sugartits.”
“Yeah, sure, great job.” There was no skill involved. Ms. Pac-Man’s magical teleportation had been a brain-fart of a thirty year old circuit board. She’d seen games wonk out at Funcave before. It happened rarely, but it was nice when the glitches sometimes resulted at a second chance or extra life.
