Going In Chapter 1

In response to the frustrated murmurs of the clientele of one Bernie’s Pizza, James Coezech sighed and placed hand, steady despite extreme irritation, onto his hip, bony fingers gripping into his flesh. While he held an appropriately displeased expression, you’d never know he was stirred enough for what ensued.

“If you all don’t shut your fat mouths, not one of you will get ONE damn slice of pizza, let alone a whole order!” he gritted his teeth and continued, “As I’ve already said, multiple times, we do not have any pineapples left for the Hawaiian pizza special. There’s nothing anyone can do about it unless one of you wants to drive to the supermarket and buy it for us, which I doubt very much, seeing as most of your clinically obese asses can’t even fit into the booths,” he eyed a particularly heavy man that had butted heads with him earlier in the evening and raised his eyebrow, inviting any challenge the man may have left in him.

At this point, Alice (another employee and James’ BFF), who had been attempting to stifle her laughter, forfeited her constraint with a series of strangely loud, barking giggles.

James sauntered away, leaving an extremely angry but dumbfounded crowd behind him. Alice assumed he went to go make the last order he’d taken, but when she thought reasonably about it (somewhat of a feasible task considering how fucking high she was right now—she and Jake and smoked up before she came into her shift), he was probably just going to the break room for a smoke. Shaking her head lightly and smiling to herself, she addressed her first customer. “What can I get you?” she asked pleasantly, despite the obviously hostile atmosphere.

         An hour and a half later, after the rush had quieted down and Bernie’s Pizza had died (figuratively, of course), and James had long since stopped arguing with everyone, Alice was significantly worse for the wear; she’d gone from easily amused and slow to anger, to downright sullen, impatient, and extremely unhappy with her current situation.

The fact that the place was an absolute wreck and there was a dreadful mess to do away with didn’t help. Pizza sauce smeared into the carpet where it had been trampled, hand prints on the windows, cigarette butts on the floor and on the window seals and pretty much everywhere, spilled ashtrays, the floors were sticky with fallen coke, and one of the soda fountains was stuck on run.

“Fuck me, my buzz wore off,” she grumbled, grabbing a broom from its designated supply closet. Her voice was dry and toneless, and her flaxen hair and fair skin was marred by obvious, unattractive dark circles under her eyes.

         “Good God Alice, look at your skin! Have you been moisturizing? Take a fucking nap—you look like death, straight from the fridge,” James said, but not in his usual antagonizing voice. It might have been concern, or perhaps it was just another opportunity to put his wit to good use. Whichever it was, Alice didn’t take kindly to it.

“What, we’ve got all this shit to do and you’re standing around trying to look pretty and sound clever!? Shut up and help me clean,” Alice said, slinging the broom roughly in his direction. Luckily, he managed to dodge it and it landed on the floor beside him instead of hitting him, A boy’s got to watch out for himself; that would have left one vicious bruise.

         James and Alice worked in a tense, but productive silence for a few minutes. Alice got angrier and angrier as she worked, scrubbing and roughly tossing things into the trash bags. James was far more stable, albeit far less productive. He was hesitant to touch things that were too dirty or get anything on his uniform, which also irritated Alice.

“Come on Al, don’t be like this! We’ve still got 4 hours to go,” James pleaded, unconsciously dusting off nonexistent debris from his shirt.

“Yeah yeah, don’t remind me!” Alice said, although she was a little calmer. Whether it was her violent cleaning methods or James’ plea is unapparent. “Come on James; let’s go sit our lazy asses down. We’ve already had to work far too hard thanks to those bastards. Hell, it certainly looks a lot better than it did!” Alice said, motioning to the dining room. It was fairly clean, the windows even gleamed a little and she spoke the truth, it was far cleaner than it had been.

“Right-o!” James said, making a beeline for the break room. Alice grabbed the supplies and followed him in.

The break room was shoddy place to some, but to the employees of Bernie’s Pizza, it was a haven of relaxation and a semblance of everything holy…that is: cannabis sativa L. (IE marijuana, weed, green, pot, Mary Jane, grass, trees), Marlboro Mental Lights, 2 different scents of air freshener (although it still reeked of weed and tobacco and some other stale odors—apple forest and citrus delight),  a 6 pack of coke, and a SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) that no one bothered to steal because everyone liked to play it—besides, it was cheap. Most of the games were sticky from one too many cokes being spilled on them, but they mostly worked.

Alice switched on the SNES and stuck in Super Mario, propping her feet on a pile of books some kid on first shift always brought in, the top one being Science Through the Ages: A Fundamental Guide to Science and its effects on Society. Alice also recognized the all-too-familiar coverless hardback version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the blue one, that’s how she knew) “Good lord, that kid is a fucking dork. What’s her name, Kendra?” Alice asked James. He gave her a dumbfounded look and obviously had no idea what she was talking about. Alice motioned towards to books, “Science through the ages? Who the hell reads that crap?” she demanded.

James shrugged and grabbed one of his precious menthol cigarettes and took a long, pleasurable draw. Her eyes lit up in amusement from the effeminate way he held his cigarette and thought to herself “What a fag, what faggy friend I have.”

“She’s still going to school…that one on Mancave Drive. Maybe that’s why she has it,” he said, his voice taking on the tone he has when explaining things to small, slow children or people that don’t speak English(around one third of the people that come into Bernie’s—or at least it seems like). On hearing this explanation, Alice burst into unrestrainedly laughter.

“Mancave!?” Alice continued to laugh hysterically as James gave her a reproachful, condescending look. “It isn’t Mancave Drive, it’s Marceave Drive! You’re such a queer, thinking it said Mancave,” she said, shaking her head in amusement.

James rolled is eyes, “It isn’t that funny,” he said without a hint of humor in his voice, crossing his arms in a pouty sort of way.

“Haha, y’know James, that’s technically the school we go to. I know we haven’t been, but we are actually enrolled,” Alice said, putting her hand to her chin, a gesture of seriousness for Alice. “Do you think we should go sometime?” she asked, uncertainty reaching her eyes and looking at him expectantly.

“Pfft, are you serious!? We’ve already missed two months. Besides, why the hell would we want to go back to high school? We DID decide to quit,” James said, crossing his arms and biting his inner cheek in a somewhat defensive tone.

“Yeah…I know. I don’t want to be here—“she motioned around her, “for the rest of my life, y’know?” she said, her voice fading out with the last “y’know’ and stretching her arm out behind her neck.