“Hey, are you gonna eat that?”
Charlie had two folded slices of pizza, cheese and oil dripping in a slimy mess onto the plate he’d had wedged under his chin. Three full pizza boxes sat in a small leaning tower on the coffee table, while a fourth box was open to the air, the very last of the steam from the delivery dissipating into the room.
The open box was now over half-empty, and Charlie was already eyeing the fresh slices it contained, practically leaping over in his mind the slices he was currently eating.
“Oh, what, this?” Charlie said, and poked at the top box with a dirty-socked toe.
David crossed over to where Charlie was nestled into his end of the reclining sofa-bed. His hair was a twisted mess, and his arm-flab hung out from the baggy sleeve of his Buffy the Vampire Slayer t-shirt. It was intended as a teenage girl’s nightgown, but David had appropriated it in an online bidding war.
“Yeah, that’s the stuff,” David said, and squeezed his girthful legs between the sofa and the table.
“That was the thought,” Charlie said through an enormous, half-chewed gob of cheesy, saucy dough.
“C’mon, man. I haven’t eaten since two AM. Just a couple slices,” David begged.
“And whose fault is that? Why don’t you order your own?” Charlie countered.
“Oh, I will!” David said with a mock-sneer. “I just need something to tide me over ’til then.”
“Fine. Two slices. But you owe me.”
“Awesome!” David slopped himself into his ass imprint on his end of the sofa, and leaned over toward the box, forcing a gusty wheeze from his chest.
“Hey! The steam-cleaner dude just got finished with the upholstery yesterday. A plate would be nice,” Charlie admonished. David looked forlornly at the great distance between him and the kitchen cabinets. He looked at Charlie.
“Whatever. Fine. But if you get pizza on it, the next time we clean it, it’ll come out of your pocket.”
“Heh-heh,” David gurgled triumphantly like he’d won a major battle. “Soun goo tuh meh”, he barked out through his early-afternoon breakfast. “By the way, I have an interviewer coming in at four o’clock to ask me about my gaming methods,” David said right before his next caloric inhale.
“What? Why does he have to come here?” A bit of panic was in Charlie’s voice. “Why can’t he just do it over the phone or the internet like usual?”
“He said he wanted to bring me some new modules to test for his company. What could I say? They’re free.” David rubbed the small spatter of oil that had dripped onto his chest into the fibers of Buffy’s head.
“I suppose you want me to go in the other room while you talk?” Charlie said resignedly.
“No, that’s cool. You can meet him, and then I’ll take him into the gaming room. We can do the interview there, plus I can try out some of the games.”
“Is gaming all you ever want to do?” Charlie asked as he began pizza number two.
David cocked his eye at his friend. “Hey, you know I have plenty of other interests. I watch T.V. I read books all the time. I surf the net. And my robots are my pride and joy. What more is there?” He deftly stole a new slice out from under Charlie’s nose. Charlie stared at the affront, and then shrugged to himself, and continued his own attack of the spicy, meat-lover’s deep-dish feast before him. David’s take was but the merest theft of a carrion bird, when the real heft of the prey goes to the lion.
“No, I mean, like as a job. Income, you know. And, yeah, maybe something a bit more meaningful.” He played with the initial roof-burn with his tongue. It’s always worth it. It’s practically an initiation into each pizza experience.
“Nope. That’s pretty much it. By the way, did you eat all of the ice cream?”
“There’s at least two cartons left. And Sid is coming by in about an hour, so sit tight, my friend, sit tight.” Charlie dropped the final crusts of the last two slices back into the box, scooped up the topping remnants, closed the lid, and pushed the box past the remaining two boxes. Crusts were for amateurs. Box three revealed its golden, Italian-esque treasure to Charlie’s wonder-filled eyes. This one was BBQ Ranch Deluxe: “Full of everything to make a cowboy shout, ‘Yee-haw!’”, went the commercial. I should get this kind more often, Charlie thought.
“Hey, we should get this kind more often,” David said, as he pilfered another slice. “I could’ve been a cowboy, I think, if they had BBQ Ranch Deluxe out on the range.”
“And how would you have gotten it out on the range?” Charlie inquired, having forgone any more challenges to David’s pizza theft. “I doubt they would’ve sent a delivery boy out into a wild desert full of hostile Indians, and where heat-stroke and death lurked around every mesa. Very doubtful.”
“The cookie would’ve been versed in all manner of foreign ‘grub’, being probably Chinese himself. He’d probably have been all around the world. Tried out countless styles of food and cooking disciplines,” David said thoughtfully.
“The cookie? The guy manning the chuck wagon would know how to make pizza?” Charlie countered.
“And why not?” David argued. “Would you want a cookie who didn’t know how to make all of the latest delicacies from across the oceans?”
“I guess not. But that’s not the point. The point is: how the hell is he gonna bake it? It’s not like he could whip up an oven on the spot. And that’s just one more thing to lug along through lands that weren’t the friendliest. That’s why the cookie was versed in all manner of stews and anything involving rabbit or squirrel or groundhog or whatever birds he could take down.”
“Okay, but my cookie would have made pacts with local tribes, so that he would sneak off during times when his cowboy bosses weren’t aware, and he’d bake his ‘pizza’, as he would dub it, in the adobe cooking ovens of the native tribes. He would bring back piping hot pies, and no one would question it, since he was that good.”
“But wait a minute,” Charlie said as pizza three made final approach into his tubby belly. “If it’s your cookie, and your cookie would be making all these private pacts with the tribes, then wouldn’t you be aware of his deals? You sound like you’d want to be.”
“Uhhh...yeah...” David said, rethinking his side of the story. “Well, sure, of course I would know. Definitely.”
“Okay, then. Now you tell me just how you don’t get your neck hung up on the nearest tree branch, or as it were, cactus branch.”
David furrowed his brow. “Why would that happen? My men love me. I’m a true leader.” “And yet you allow your cookie to make private pacts with unknown, potentially bloodthirsty tribes in exchange for the appreciation of your fellow cowboys, so they don’t have to eat canned beans and squirrel-meat soufflés every night. Buddy, when they find out that you had known all along, you’d be better off with the Indians.”
“Crap. I hadn’t thought that part out,” said David, genuinely depressed now.
“Obviously. Well, I hope that frontier pizza of yours would be worth it. Worth your neck in a noose.” Charlie smiled to himself over his win, as he began his fourth pizza, now cooled to morning-after temperature.
David stole another slice and settled back into his imprint. “You know wha’?” He muffled past his stuffed mouth.
“What?”
“I think it would’ve been,” David said dreamily.
“You know what I think?” Charlie mused.
“What?”
“I think you would’ve made a terrible cowboy.”
“But I would’ve been fed.”
“Fed but dead.”