Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331)

by Costello, Brian

  The shift: Saturday, Game Day, 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 a.m.. The customers: collegiates and post-collegiates and families all about the gimme gimme pregame show slices, gimme gimme game day pizza, gimme gimme post-game party food. Gimme gimme this, gimme gimme that, as the late great Darby Crash once barked. To the suburban homes, moms with their seven year old sons, moms opening the doors, sons always yelling, “It’s the pizza dude!” and the moms smiling in that indulgent way moms smile, saying, “Hey, it is the pizza dude!” and Ronnie tries smiling at this heartwarming tableau as the mom next says, “Give the pizza dude the money, dear!” and the kid gives Ronnie the cash and Ronnie gives the kid the pizza and the mom says “What do you say, dear?” and the kid says, “Thanks pizza dude!” and everyone laughs and the mom gives a “Thanks for tolerating us” kind of nod with her head and Ronnie thinks of a) what he will invest in with his one dollar tip, and b) how they really train them young in Gainesville re: conducting the pizza transaction. There’s the suburban homes, and then there are the collegiate apartment complexes up and down Archer Road and Tower Road, nestled far away from the crime and crack and horror of real poverty lurking in the residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of the UF campus. Game day parties where the hosts and partygoers become increasingly generous with their food and beer as the day goes on. They answer their doors, “What’s up, pizza’s here!” and let Ronnie in, leading him through narrow hallways past fresh new all-off-white living rooms packed with orange and blue adorned football fans yelling at the TV screen or laughing at the commercials on the TV screen and Ronnie leaves the pizzas on the inevitable Kitchen Island as they try and talk to Ronnie about the “big game” and Ronnie tries pretending he isn't too, you know, like, punk rock to give a shit about it, takes the money and hustles out the door, and the tips are usually a little bit better than most places, especially as the day goes on. The tips from upperclassmen parties or recent graduates are always better than the underclassmen, who almost always want exact change. Game day: Some SEC bigdeal the people have been looking forward to all week, and as Ronnie walks through apartment complexes and courtyards, up and down these residential streets, he hears the cheering, the curses, the slow hand-claps for the good plays. Interspersed between the game day, calls not football-related: Pre-med students on study breaks—twenty pound anatomy textbooks, bleary eyes, gifted with an unfathomable (to Ronnie) drive and motivation; metal kids in black Megadeth t-shirts taking the pizza at the door, cumulonimbus marijuana clouds behind them, guitars wrapped around them; weekend mechanics emerging from underneath the hoods of their El Caminos, paying in oil-smudged money; bridal showers where the ladies drunkenly flirt and inform Ronnie that only one of them is getting married; senior citizen book clubs, day care centers full of kids who dash from their Twister and Chutes and Ladders and converge upon Ronnie. They all want pizza. Everybody wants pizza on Game Day Saturday.

  The cassette in Ronnie’s car: an endless loop of Bad Brains, Flipper, Spoke, Television, Sonic Youth, Thin Lizzy, Crime, Gary Numan, Guv’ner, Superchunk, Crowsdell, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Polvo, Urge Overkill, Naiomi’s Hair, Melvins, Unrest, Beat Happening, Fudge Tunnel, Tsunami, Bratmobile, The Scissor Girls, Spinout. Fourteen straight hours of nothing but, one side to the next, morning to afternoon to night to late night. Ronnie was on the older end of the spectrum of delivery drivers at General Lee’s. He had worked with older drivers. They were generally lost souls, struggling to make ends meet and/or lost in a permanent marijuana cloud that makes everything that’s just ok eternally tolerable. Alone with nothing but this mixtape for company, four hours in, Ronnie finds this an alien, alienating gig—he’s too old to do it, but too young to be good at anything else. Soon enough he’s started taking people up on offered beer.

  As the early afternoon progresses to mid-afternoon, it is clear from the general spirit of the parties he is delivering pizza to that the Gators are winning, and winning big. The tips from the apartment parties and backyard or courtyard barbeques are increasing. Everyone wants to be Ronnie’s—The Pizza Dude’s—buddy.

  “Hey man, sucks you gotta work today,” says some shirtless guy with short blond surfer hair and aviators, conveying the authority of the host who’s having this party outside in the back space between the clusters of apartments.

  “What can you do?” Ronnie shrugs, hands the dude the pizzas.

  “Well the Gators won. Ya want a beer?”

  “Sure.” Maybe it will make him feel better.

  “Hold on, dude!” the guy says. “Set the pizzas on the picnic table.” To his friends, he announces, “I’m gettin’ the pizza dude a beer!”

  Everyone cheers at this. This is Ronnie’s last delivery before going back to the store for the next round. Why not? He sets the pizzas on the picnic table. This beautiful blonde—so so so Floridian with her tan and fluorescent green bikini, not like beautiful in some California centerfold polyethylene kind of way, but in a natural, not even trying, not even caring kind of way—turns to Ronnie, holds out a thermos. “Hey,” she slurs. “Pizza dude. You want some FloCo?”

  Floridian Comfort. Ronnie takes the thermos, unscrews it, takes a healthy swig.

  “Sucks you gotta work,” she says.

  Ronnie says, “Yeah,” and before he can even start to think he has a chance, the host shows up with the inevitable blue Solo cup of foamy beer, hands it to Ronnie, leans in, kisses the blonde. Blond on Blonde. The pinnacle of Floridian beach culture.

  “Yeah, I used to deliver at General Lee’s,” the surfer host tells Ronnie. “The Game Days were the worst. And you don’t even make any money.”

  “What?” Ronnie had already made twenty something deliveries and the day wasn’t halfway through. He was eagerly anticipating returning to the Myrrh House with a small fortune.

  “No, you get tips, and what, seventy-five cents a run?”

  “Right,” Ronnie says.

  “Yeah. Fuck that. Between what you pay in gas, and the wear and tear on your car, you’ll be coming home tonight with less than minimum wage.”

  Ronnie says nothing.

  “Which is fine, if the tips are good, and the deliveries aren’t a long way to go, and you got a new car. Then maybe you’ll make money. But this is Gainesville.”

  Ronnie says nothing.

  “Looks like you could use more beer,” the surfer host says, and his girlfriend laughs, holds out the thermos of FloCo, adds, “This too.”

  Ronnie takes the thermos, extends his emptied blue Solo cup.

  “Yeah man, it’s tough to make a living here,” the host says, returning with the filled cup.

  “No shit,” Ronnie says, and he’s never meant it more. “What do y’all do?”

  “School,” the host says, and his girlfriend nods and says, “Yup.”

  “I’m really a musician,” Ronnie says. “And I write. I have parties. We have a big house in the student ghetto. Y’all should come by.” He holds out his cup. “And give me one more. For the road.”

  “You got it,” the host says, taking his cup.

  The party is clusters of surfer types talking about the usual party topics. Ronnie wishes he could stay. “Give me some more of that,” Ronnie says, pointing at the blonde’s FloCo thermos.

  “You sure you’ll be alright to drive?” Her concern breaks his heart.

  “Totally,” Ronnie says. He smiles. “I’m fine.”

  “Well. Ok.” Ronnie grabs the thermos, sips again, feels that rush. “Whoooo!” he says.

  “Here ya go, brah,” the host says returning with the newly filled blue Solo cup.

  Ronnie takes it. “Yeah, dude, I live in the Myrrh House. It’s on NW 4th Lane. Look for fliers, ok?”

  “You got it dude,” the host says. “Later. Thanks for the pizza. Good luck with it.”

  Ronnie shrugs, walks back to his car. The sharp-dull numb from the beer and FloCo leaves him in a giddy eternal-now focus. The host gave him a ten dollar tip. Ronnie takes note of that in the car, as the mi
xtape returns to life. Ronnie honks as he pulls away, one last sight of that blonde, there on the picnic table. The party waves back. As Ronnie leaves, he bites his fist like Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley, one last tribute to that girl he knows he’ll never see again.

  Ronnie drives back to General Lee’s to pick up another round of pizzas, muttering about “No money? Fourteen and a half hours for less than minimum wage? Fuuuuuuuck that, man. Fuck that.” He sneaks sips of the beer as the car moves, keeps it hidden at stop lights, wedged between his sweaty thighs.

  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 . . . ”