"Order up!"
Garrett was stumbling through the delivery boy exit when he heard his uncle’s harsh voice over the counter. It was Saturday night, which meant the perennial pizza boy had to tackle the busiest shift of the week all on his own for a few slices of cold, leftover pizza at the end.
"8 extra, extra large ham and pineapple pizzas!" Uncle Christopher pushed the yellow and red trays oozing with greasy cheese and sauce over to him. The stench in the Pizza Wagon is going to be unbearable tonight, Garret thought. He was someone who firmly in the "pineapples and pizza" don't mix camp. Or mushrooms. Or anchovies. Or anything that wasn't red meat really. Stumbling out of Christophini’s pizza parlour, he felt like he was the one leaning on a tower of Pisa too. Garrett was the the only child of drunken louts who'd been killed in a car crash, and he’d spent most of his formative years since running around Hopesville as a pizza delivery boy under the guidance of his watchful uncle, often bestowing with him the novelty of being the employee of the month from time to tim.e
All those awards and trophies began to wear thin as he approached his teenage years however, as there was a sudden desire to do more than follow the pipeline from delivery boy to delivery man. He'd left for college for a few years in neighbouring New York, but it surprised no one to learn that a NYU degree in Fine Art wouldn’t be enough to sustain himself in a sleepy rural town like Hopesville. Still, pizza business had always provided a steady source of pocket money and employment for him as he moved to pay off his tuition fees and a platform to find a way out of this rural madness. There had to be something else out there, something that could take him out of this predestined life where he seemed to be heading to be as pizza parlour chef. His own mind was artistically driven, but he realised that he might have to clamour down and get stuck into all that tech geek work to even have a chance of uprooting himself elsewhere.
He started the Pizza Wagon, a reconverted old police van from the 1920s which had once been used to transport hardened criminals. Garrett found it a bit humorous then at times it also helped to move hardened crusts to unsuspecting customers too. He felt for the delivery address that was taped on top, and discovered it was 22 Boulevard Fresh Street. Garrett was someone who usually strayed out of the pizza parlour gossip that made up the moments of respite from his fellow delivery guys and gals, but, if he remembered correctly, this address belonged to the Crazy Karate Lady. A strange myth had begun to take shape around her, recorded in the pizzeria annals alongside other legends such as Freddy Forehead and Chinstrap the Meatball Muncher. She was a pineapples on Pizza fanatic, and always came dressed in her Karate uniform to answer the door, and would make dismal small talk in the hopes that they might join her new martial arts gym that had been set up deep in the downtown where most Hopesville denizens didn't dare stray. If the stories were true, he felt a strange allure at the prospect of meeting this woman. Should things get dicey, well, he had his own repertoire of martial arts to defend himself with, largely derived from watching too many Steven Seagal action movies on AMC.
Pulling outside her house, he realised that she was likely Jewish too. On the porch, a large Israeli flag stood proudly above a dismally placed American one, which cowered beneath as the two of them flopped in the cold distant air. Somehow, he was able to wriggle out the Wagon with the pizza boxes in his hand, and with the tip of his tongue he gently pressed the doorbell, which began to emanate a ring of harsh, guttural Hebrew.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Semitic languages like that always unsettled him. He could not place his finger on why, perhaps it seemed so unattainable to learn, and so out of place in this American town he lived. Buckles and doorknobs and hatches were soon uplifted from other side and soon he was in the company of the living legend herself.
"Pizza Delivery!" The line came canned as usual from Garrett.
"Shalom!" She said, in a thick Hebrew voice. This was the first time he’d been greeted in a foreign language.
"Shalom?" Garrett answered, uncertain on what came next in proper Hebrew discourse
"Shalom!" She responded more excitedly, smelling the strong aroma of soft Caribbean spices and New Hampshire sauces drifting through her doorstep.
"This is a whole lot of pizza for one woman." He remarked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, I've been working out all afternoon, and I'm very very hungry." She replied.
"Working out? You mean doing kara-" Garrett stopped and reigned in his deductive powers, "I mean, doing athletics?"
"No," she answered as she lifted the first few trays of pizza boxes off of him, "I'm a BJJ instructor, I opened up my own dojo here a few months back."
"New to the area?" Garrett asked curiously. He didn't have to strain his neck to see her now, and Crazy Karate Lady didn't seem to resemble any Jewish woman he'd ever met.
She was blonde and she was considerably tall, only a few inches shorter than Garrett's lean 6 foot frame of 175 pounds. She didn't seem particularly youthful, but her face was full of life and vigour and enthusiasm for herself and for the life that she'd carved out. And she was wearing that karate thing as his coworkers had remarked, a sombre blue jacket and pants like the dashing colour of her eyes that Garrett was incredibly lost in.
"Mhmm, Still there?" She asked, breaking him out of his self induced. She'd already begun chomping on a delicious slice of Christophini's homemade pizza.
"I am, I am." He began to panic amidst the sweltering heat of the Massachusetts sun, "That'll be 250 dollars plus a tip."
"What's your name?" Crazy Karate Lady asked as she searched her wallet.
"It's Garrett." He answered, "Umm, what is BJJ?"
"It's a Martial Art, a lot like wrestling or grappling."
He couldn’t recall Seagal, his own martial arts hero, ever speaking about BJJ. He was more fond of touting the importance of graceful skills like Aikido, Shito-Ryu and Bullshido.
“Are you kept busy with it?”
“I am,” She smiled, “You’re welcome to come down and try it out if you’d like.”
She held out the hefty sum of money for being the harbinger of such greasy food, and he took it into his hands.
He considered asking her for more, about her past and for her name and whether or not she really was Israeli or Jewish or if there was any trace of Semitic blood within her, but felt it was best kept until the proper introductions at Jiu-Jitsu academy.
"Thanks for the tip." He replied, "I'll consider the Jiu-Jitsu thing anyway."
"No problem." She added, and she gently closed the door behind as he trudged back down the Pizza Wagon. It was his first stop in an afternoon of pizza deliveries still to go, but the thought of him starting a new sport always seemed to keep crossing his mind.
Him? A grappler? He chalked it up to misfortune that Crazy Karate- err, Crazy Jiu-Jitsu Lady was only fucking with him intentionally for a cheap laugh. Perhaps she saw his slightly pudgy physique and decided he might make a good punching bag for some young up and comer training in her gym. At 24 years old he didn’t expect to suddenly turn into an athletic powerhouse.
That’s my negativity talking, Garrett thought.
He shook his head, and let the thoughts about it recess somewhere in his mind as he pushed on for the rest of the day.