Story a Day

I heard this story from the valedictorian of my high school class. I’ve never met a more upstanding or trustworthy guy. In high school, he never drank or did any drugs, he never seemed competitive but he was good at everything he tried, and he did a lot of volunteer work. Our senior year, he even starred in the school musical. I thought he was cute and funny, but I never had romantic feelings about him, and at lunchtime I would ask him for advice about guys. After high school, he did very well in political science at a state university, and then he did some entry-level politcal work, eventually making his way to the city council. He’s been on the city council ever since, although sometimes he also teaches history as a substitute.

All in all, he’s not the type to make up stories just to mess with people. He’s well-informed and rarely wrong. There aren’t very many people that I will just believe, hands-down, on any subject, but he’s one person who just exudes truthfulness and accuracy.

This friend of mine enjoys the occasional beer, and by occasional beer I mean occasional single beer; after the first round he always switches to sparkling water or cranberry juice. He and I ran into each other at the library one day and went out for a drink afterwards to catch up. Sometimes when you get a drink with old friends, you realize too much has changed for the friendship to be anything consequential. But he and I had such a great time that day that we make a fairly regular thing of it, meeting one day a month or so to catch up on each other’s lives.

On the day we ran into each other at the library, after we paid our tab, my friend took out a datebook. “Are you by any chance free,” he said, “around this time on the twentieth of next month?”

I also carry around a datebook, and I use it religiously. It’s one habit I try to instill in my students that I’ve always kept to myself.

“Sure,” I said.

“Want to meet here again, for another drink?”

“That sounds great.” We both scribbled in our books with ballpoint pens.

That was three years ago, and ever since we’ve been meeting for beers. At the end of our dates, we always take out the appointment books and schedule the next meeting. The appointment-making makes it all feel a bit like being at the dentist or the therapist, but it just suits both of our organized natures to do things that way.

One day, when I had just gotten my second beer and he had been served a large glass of pineapple juice, he told me this story.

“It’s funny,” he said. “Pineapple juice always reminds me of the pizza place I worked for in college.”

“Oh, the place where your roommate got you the job?”

“That’s right. He worked in the kitchen, but he quit soon after I started. He got me a job as a delivery driver. It was a pretty relaxing job, driving through the little college town on mild summer nights. I only needed a job for the summer, so I was just there three or four months.

“That place wasn’t what you’d expect from a college town pizzeria. There was a spacious dining room, but it was dark, completely undecorated, and usually empty. We did all our business in deliveries. And taking care of those deliveries, there was just me and one other driver.

“The other driver was the owner’s brother, a man in his fifties with a long, wispy mustache. His name was Ozzy. He never said much, but whenever his car rolled into the lot the speakers were blasting classical music. I saw a lot of books in the backseat, too. I like both those things myself, so I always felt fond of him, even though we never said much to each other.

“For the most part, I took the deliveries on the south side of town, and Ozzy took the north. Of course, if one of us was out on a long delivery, the other one would cover his territory. But there was one house where I wasn’t allowed to deliver pizza: only Ozzy could go there. We called it the Cop House.

My friend took a sip of his pineapple juice and frowned, trying to remember. “Every night, the people who lived in that house ordered the same bizarre pizza: a large pie with fried chicken, octopus, and pineapple. In the kitchen, they called that the C.O.P.—Chicken, Octopus, Pineapple. Of course, we wouldn’t have carried fried chicken or octopus if there wasn’t a demand, but this one house ordered enough Cop Pizza to justify having the ingredients on hand. Sometimes, college kids would order the octopus and fried chicken from the menu as a novelty, but no one ordered them as much as this one customer. Ozzy took a large chicken, octopus, and pineapple there every night, seven nights a week, and I was never allowed to go. I just chalked it up to him being the owner’s brother, and the Cop House being some fancy mansion that gave 20-dollar tips.

“Then, one day, just after I had clocked on, the phone rang. It was Ozzy, and he sounded terrible. He said, ‘I can’t come in today, man.’ ‘What about the Cop House?’ I asked him. ‘You’ll just have to make the delivery,’ he said. Then he actually started vomiting, or at least that’s what it sounded like. I hung up the phone and set about making the night’s deliveries.

“I was having a busy night, but making double tips, which made me very happy. Then, sure enough, the nightly Cop Pizza showed up in the queue. I threw the Cop Pizza, along with a couple other deliveries for the northern half of town, into the back seat of my car. The Cop Pizza smelled great, like a combination of Kentucky Fried Chicken and seafood tempura. Not something I’d order myself, but I could see the appeal. I started visualizing the C.O.P. customer in my mind. Was it a house full of stoners, perhaps? Or an eccentric immigrant from who-knows-where?

“The Cop House was actually only three-quarters of a mile from the restaurant, so I stopped there first. It was in a middle-class neighborhood, where the streets were lined with well-pruned maple trees. The Cop House itself was small and unassuming, but obviously neat and tidy. I rang the doorbell and waited.

“I waited on the stoop for a minute or so. Then I rang the doorbell again. Two or three minutes later, I heard a shuffling noise, and a very low voice said, ‘Leave the box on the stoop.’

“‘Sure thing,’ I said, ‘but I need to collect the bill.’

“That’s when the door opened, and a huge, hairy, clawed paw offered me a twenty. ‘Keep the change,’ the voice said. That made it about a forty-cent tip. But I couldn’t speak to complain, because I was so shocked by what I saw.

“It was a bear. A huge, brown-furred bear, at least seven feet tall.”

Me friend shook his head, looking into his last inch or two of pineapple juice. “I just gave him the pizza and walked away. I’ve never told that to anyone before. It just sounds so crazy.”

“Well, if there’s anyone I’d believe that story from,” I said, “it’s you.”

He smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “So, are you free on the fifteenth?”

image: KellyK on flickr