Burnt Novel

[mccutcheon]

Can we take down the Burnt Novel from the front page? The shit’s embarrassing. It’s like 3 years old. Here is the current beginning. And anyway it’s getting close to publishing time. Question, is it bad to have 2 similes in the first paragraph? Would you have noticed if I didn’t point it out?


For those interested here is a bit of the begining:

I’m alone and I’m numb like a novocaine injection. The temperature is below freezing. My windshield is frosted. Snow is sweeping out of the black winter sky. The flakes fall like crystallized fog. On the ground slush soaks all non-rubber shoes. I’m wearing leather Pumas. My feet are wet and cold. The holiday season is in full swing, students are home from school and the New Jersey radio stations are playing Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song.

It’s late Friday evening and been a long night. When most people get off work and start to celebrate the freedom of two days away from the time clock is when I’m busiest. I’ve been driving for hours. The conditions have been adverse to quick deliveries. I have two more stops to complete before I’m off. I’m a pizza guy. I drive around town in a beat up eggshell white pickup truck at fast speeds. A month ago I stopped wearing my seat belt.

Delivering pizza isn’t glamorous. It’s not the job you dream of as a little kid like Spaceman or Fireman. And it isn’t the job you think you’ll get after high school. The job is finance over function; if the tips are good I beat the minimum wage pay and am mostly left alone. Those few extra bucks can even make up for the way I'm treated by the people I feed. Tonight I’m driving one of the company’s best pickup trucks; it has bald tires, low lights, bad windshield wipers and only two radio stations. I can’t get any rock n roll.

I like the solitude of the road. It’s not an open road, mostly the suburbs, though no one bothers me. I dress how I want. I don’t wear a nametag or uniform. I don’t answer to anyone while I drive. It gives me freedom and time to think.

I would never tell my best friend Mike this but sometimes I fantasize that I’m Travis from Taxi Driver. I like that movie, and movies like it, Seventies flicks with the hard reality of New York City. My favorite films are ones about New York, where I was born. When I drive I can become anyone. It passes the hours.

It’s been busy, the weather keeping everybody inside and pizza is the food for all seasons. I can’t wait to get to the Blue Rose for a few shots of Jack Daniel’s and maybe score some cheap speed. Speed is a step up from Ephedrine, the drug preferred by most pizza guys. I try to live above basement levels, even if I do actually live in a basement. I have a house I share with my grandpa and Mike. I sleep in the basement to stay out of grandpa’s way and so the neighbors don’t complain about the music we play too loud after bar time.

I like amphetamines, the exuberantly intense rush of ingested speedy drugs. I don’t smoke pot. Everyone else does. Most people smoke marijuana to calm down. Anything you need to get through the day is okay by me. I tell people the reason I don’t get high is to keep my wits about me. I don’t like the feeling of the hideous hippie weed. I use pills and powders to tranquilize and explode my mind.

A guy has to have some pride. It helps to have opinions on things. The world is always getting fucked up and it all comes down to perspective. Who sees what which way? If you can follow your own path it helps when even the bullshit is bullshit.

I go to a two-year technical school. I take a few classes a semester. I’m not in it for the money, a suit and an hour commute. I attend school for the lost art of education, even if it isn’t a real college like Princeton or Columbia. For me it’s a chance at some new sort of start. I’m proud that I’ve done two years of higher education

After school I want to travel and maybe even live somewhere else like a foreign country. Lately my thoughts before I fall asleep at night have been about time. How my time is slipping away. It used to be I had more time than money so I was happy to fuck around. I’m working on a theory about time. How it is all we have.

Now that I’m getting older and my hangovers have gotten worse I’m trying to generate some money so I can have a future. I don’t have Wall Street investments or a way into the Real Estate game; two ways I have researched people get financially on their feet, at the moment I’m still saving my pennies. Literally, I have a piggy bank under my bed in that basement room I live in.

I’m still young. Life isn’t a fight against the clock but deep inside I know I have to take advantage of situations. It’s when the days seem long yet the years slip away that you get into trouble. I’ve seen lives swallowed at the Blue Rose. But my true insight comes from my parents both dying young when I was still little. My grandfather refuses to talk to me about my parents. He sits and stares out the window at the cemetery across our street. He is always dressed in ratty cardigan sweaters and sits on his couch counting gravestones.

It’s time I start heading down my path. I want to travel. At the Blue Rose I drink quality beer instead of the standard Bud light. Mike says life’s too short for bad beer. Mike and I like to go into the city when we can afford it. I haven’t been lately because I’m trying to save money. Mike used to model in the city. He was never on an Italian Vogue cover, mostly inside American men’s magazines like Maxum or Gear. It paid well and we got invited to some good parties at Next. I tried to talk Mike into doing it again for quick cash. Mike said it fucks his soul up. Mike has been a bit psychotic in the soul department the last few months.

I can’t argue with soul fucking, whatever the hell that means. I don’t know how working in a Newark construction yard can be any better for his emotional psyche. I can’t tell him what to do. I learned a long time ago that you don’t tell Mike anything he doesn’t want to hear. He is a stubborn son of a bitch for his age. I try to deal with him by using reverse psychology and it never works. He is usually too smart to be manipulated.

Mike and I have grown up together and treat each other like brothers. Even though I’m a few months older he acts like the elder. We don’t let each other get away with much; it’s like playing a one-on-one sport with the same person for fifteen years. We know each other’s moves by heart.

My headlights don’t give off much light through the snow. Fast food delivery is more perilous than you would think. I know of at least two other pizza drivers who had car wrecks.

All the house addresses are buried. I’m in an expensive neighborhood where they have other people shovel their sidewalks. I guess the right block and park the pizza pick up truck. I grab the two-liter bottle of diet Coke and run to the back ovens to get the pizza and garlic bread. I find the house and go up to the door. It’s a balancing act but I manage to ring the bell.

No one answers. A gust of cold air blows up my jacket giving me the chills deep into my bones. I ring the bell again. Fuck its cold. A girl's voice rings out from behind the door,

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming already.”

The thick wood door opens and the girl is standing with her arms crossed over her chest. She’s in her mid-twenties, with features so correct in angle they make her face too beautiful, nothing distracts creating an almost boring perfection. She looks like those actresses you see in the black and white films when women had classic beauty instead of big tits. I enjoy her physical appearance. She must be home from some real school for the holidays. Maybe I could work some charm and get a Christmas romance going.

She stands there leaving the frosted glass barrier between us. The girl is wearing a tight red sweater and black skirt. Her thin legs are covered in black nylon and her feet rest in big woolly socks. I instantly forget my chills and imagine how wonderful it would be to cuddle with her next to a fire. I would love to make her my special drink-espresso, hot mint chocolate, Bailey’s Irish Cream and a dash of whiskey. It’s my unique version of a cold winter night pick me up, my own bastardized version of the Irish coffee.

“It’s about time you fucking got here,” the girl says.

I quickly snap out of my warm reverie. The cold reality of her manner overpowers me. Her face is the same, but has taken on a generic frosty demeanor with no distinguishing marks to add character. It’s like seeing a beautiful Christmas tree in a living room window from the sidewalk but when you get a chance to sit next to it you realize it’s a fake plastic plant. I’m too old to believe in Santa Clause. It really is too bad people’s personalities have a way of ruining a moment. There is no way in hell we will all get along. Joy to the world, peace on fucking Earth. I want to do my job.

“It’s been more than a half hour. Do we get it free now?” Asks the ice queen glaring down at me.

“No. We don’t do that. That’s Domino’s I think.”

“How much?”

“Fourteen seventy-five.”

“Hang on. I got a coupon,” she says slamming the thick door.

I look at my brittle fingers holding the hot food. Steam is coming out the sides of the pizza box. I can see my breath in front of my face like I’m smoking a whole pack of cigarettes at once. Snow blows all around me. Fuck she’s got to me. I’m attracted to her and I don’t even like her. How can you want to make love to someone who treats you like shit? I should ask Mike; his heart is caught in the web of uncontrolled desire. He longs for a shallow callous beauty that ignores him.

The girl reproaches and grabs the food and soda. “I hope it’s not cold,” she says.

“We keep it in ovens,” I tell her. To show that I’m human I have to say something to stick up for myself. But I’m a coward dwarfed by her beauty so under my breath I add, “if you would have let me in and didn’t keep me waiting it wouldn’t have been.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. It shouldn’t be cold.”

“Here’s a two dollar coupon.” The girl counts out twelve dollars and slams the door.

I look at that big heavy door. The division of wealth always went hand in fist with the lack of compassion when money came into view. But this isn’t some far away fairy tale where there are kings and princes and evil stepmothers that ruin people's lives. This is New Jersey and we only live thirty minutes apart. And this isn’t some old John Huges flick Mike and I once rented all the teenage John Hughes films one weekend for a laugh- we skipped the ones with that little brat Mccalky Cahulkin, who is probably about my age now, and stuck with the teen angst ones.

A lot of those films were about love from the wrong side of the tracks, a universal theme that will probably be a movie staring Brittany Spears someday. Anyway that was then, in supposed movies, and this is now. There should have been progress of humanity. It fucking shouldn’t come down to stiffing the pizza guy when we share the same zip code. Even if I’m coming from the other side of the tracks.

“Fucking bitch!” I turn to walk away and bump into a middle-aged couple. They smell of eggnog and pine needles. The man has a lush cashmere scarf wrapped around his fine black cashmere winter coat. The woman has an almost life-size broach of a writhe on her chest and candy cane lipstick on. The parents are home.

“What did you say?” the man asks.

“Nothing.”

“I think you called my daughter a bitch,” says the man.

“It was a fucking bitch, dear,” helps the man’s wife.

I walk away. There is only one more delivery left. I really want this night to end.

“Young man I want your name.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s not a very pleasant attitude now is it? Some people just don’t have the Christmas spirit,” the mom of the fucking bitch says.

“Your daughter ripped me off seventy-five cents, not even a tip,” I say walking back to the truck. “I love how you people can afford winter vacations in Florida and spend the summers at the beaches and not have enough to tip a dollar.”

I’m a foot from the pick-up when a snowball pelts me in the back of my head. It knocks my hat off and snow gets down the space between my coat and skin.

“You got The Grinch dear!” yells the woman.

I swing around and pick up a snowball. I fire it at the man but the couple escapes behind the thick wood door. I’m too slow. The snowball splatters against the outer glass. I was never good at sports. From the comfort of behind the curtain of the bay window the daughter gives me the finger.

“Fuck!"

Only one more delivery to go, then I’m done for the night.

I’m at my last drop off. I’m at a moderate middle class house that is only a few streets away from where I live. There is a plastic snowman in the front yard missing one of the glowing eyes. The white lights framing the door seem to have been put up shoddily as an after thought. I ring the bell and am surprised at how loud it resounds through the house.

‘DING-DONG!’

“Mom! Mom the pizza guy is here!” cries a high-pitched voice from inside the house.

I can hear the stampede of little feet running down the stairs.

“Mom! Mom hurry the pizza guy is here!”

The front door swings open and five greedy, pudgy faces beam at me. It’s a mob of hyper active munchkin elves. They seem to be starving.

“It’s my birthday. I’m seven. I get to stay up late because it’s my birthday. This is the second time we ordered pizza tonight but it wasn’t you that delivered it. We thought it might be the same pizza guy,” says the fattest kid in the hefty group. The kid holds out his hands.

“Happy birthday,” I say handing over the two large pepperonis.

“You know why it’s so neat to have a birthday so close to Christmas?”

“No.”

“Because just when you are getting sick of your birthday presents Christmas comes. And you don’t get sick of those presents for a while.”

“Oh.”

“That would have been weird, huh?” Says the cute little girl who looks like a postcard from Sweden, all fair and Nordic. She has crystal blue eyes and her blonde hair is in pigtails.

“What?” I ask confused. I haven’t talked to that many kids but the conversation is going the same way my late night talks with Mike go right before Mike mumbles about the girl he has been in love with for his whole life and then passes out.

“If you would have been the same pizza guy,” says the girl.

“Yeah I guess so,” I say. It’s the same answer I give Mike when asked if Bonnie will ever love him.

There is a moment of pause as the children look at me and I look back at them. Then the birthday boy looks at the pizzas he is holding and the whole group rushes back up the stairs leaving me standing in the open doorway by myself. Snow blows into the house.

“Oh please come in and shut the door. I’m trying to find my purse,” calls a warm feminine voice. “You must be freezing.”

I do what I’m told and look around the room. In the corner five little snowsuits are scattered over tiny puddles. The winter snowsuits are all bundled together.

A young woman walks into my line of vision. She looks like my favorite actress Audery Hepurn, only with fine blonde hair. She hurries down the hallway wearing a baggy V-neck tee shirt and blue jeans. She is scrounging in her purse and drops a couple of quarters on the floor. When she bends over to pick them up I see she isn’t wearing a bra and I catch a glimpse of her small round breast and erect nipple. I start thinking about my hot drink special. Maybe loneliness increases as the temperature drops, but I’m just horny.

“You the babysitter for this birthday?” I ask trying to avoid a stupid Bill Cruise smile, while still light heartily flirting. All the real cool cats like Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen never smiled.

“No, no I’m the mother unfortunately,” says the woman. “They’ve been wild all day. In out, in out. I don’t know where they get the energy. I’d like to just sit by the fire with my feet up sipping an Irish coffee.”

“You know I make…”

“Hey honey we’re putting in the second Mighty Ducks movie,” booms a gruff voice from upstairs. So she isn’t a divorcee, too bad.

“Dad it’s called D2.” corrects the birthday boy. “Yeah mom and you’re missing all the pizza. Maybe we should order more.”

“That’s okay sweetheart, you can have my piece,” the lovely mother yells upstairs.

“It’s called a slice mom, boy you are sure stupid.”

“Don’t tip the guy more than a dollar,” orders dad.

The woman gives me a weak smile. “How much is it?”

“Thirty-four.”

The mom hands over a two twenties. “Keep it and stay warm,” she says.

“Thanks. You know they don’t appreciate what…”

A heavy hairy man wearing an extra, extra XXL Giants sweatshirt and gray sweatpants appears on top of the stairs. This can’t be the slob she sleeps with.

“Honey let’s go.”

I look up at his bulk. I can’t imagine him on top of her. She would be crushed. I hope she doesn’t suck his dick.

“Bye,” I say.

“Bye.”

“Yeah, bye,” says the man staring hard at me.

I walk out and shut the door. From behind the closed walls I can hear the man yelling.

“Jesus Rachael! Why don’t you just invite the pizza guy to sleep over?"

I kick over the plastic snowman on the way back to the truck. I have a cigarette and slowly take my time driving back. I’m finally done. I pull into the back of Dick’s Italian Delights. This is what we pizza guys call home base.

The guy I work for is a foreigner. He isn’t Italian. He’s from Colombia and his name is isn’t really Dick, its Ricardo. I answered the delivery ad in the paper. That was over two years ago. I was the first employee to see the sign go up in big neon lights.

‘Dick’s Italian Delights’

It was already paid for before I pointed out that maybe the restaurant would benefit from a more refined name. Mike was with me and we looked at the huge glowing pink sign and Mike said it was perfect. Mike and Ricardo have been great friends ever since. Ricardo told me he liked the way the phonics of American English sounded. Mike poured him a shot of whiskey and put his arm around Ricardo and said welcome to America as the pink neon glow added more rouge to the blushing Ricardo’s face. His son Richardo Junior sulked off down the street mumbling about how he would never get laid now.

For the first few months some people didn’t know if the meat came in casing or a condom. Then word got around that they served the best pizza in the Tri-State area and business started to boom. Now everybody loves Dick sausage.

There was also some trouble right after September eleventh. Being from Colombian, and having a dark complexion some ignorant people mistook Richardo as being from the Middle East. In the days following the tragedy there was even some nasty graffiti, until two things: Richardo’s cousin’s who have some unruly ties to gangsters stepped in for protection and people learned they couldn’t live without Dick’s perfect pepperoni pizza pies.

I park the truck and fire up a Marlboro Light. I open the glove compartment and get my tickets in order. I find the orders that didn’t use a discount and pull out coupons to match those tickets. It’s easy math. Let’s say someone orders two large cheese and sausage; that’s sixteen bucks. If they don’t use a coupon and I match a two-dollar off with the order it’s an extra two bucks in my pocket. Grandpa is my coupon cutter. He loves looking in the papers for Dick ads. Mike once asked if I ever felt like a white-collar criminal. I looked at my sauce stained tee shirt and told him I don’t wear collars. I’m not hurting Ricardo’s business. He has enough money. I need a few extra bucks. It’s isn’t like stealing.

I turn off the ovens and go inside to get paid. Ricardo Junior is in the hallway wrapped in telephone cord talking to some chick. He makes a rude comment in the direction of the girl on the other end of the connection. Looking at Ricardo Junior it’s easy to see why I hate him. He has money and gets good cocaine from his uncles. Everything you need to attract the girls. Besides Mike he is probably one of the best looking guys this side of Manhattan. They are the kind of guys so good looking even New York City girls stop and stare.

Everything is so easy for Ricardo Junior that it pisses me off to even be around him. He always has a date and never works, even when he bothers to show up. He comes in to bust my balls. I walk through the kitchen and find Ricardo in the back doing the dishes. I learned the pride of work and the importance of quality from him. He leads by example, an example that is lost on his son.

“Ah! Trevor my boy how are the roads?” he asks drying his hands on his apron.

“Not bad Richardo, I got my slips ready for check out.”

“Oh! Sorry Trevor but Richardo Junior took an order after we closed. Would you please do this one more? All the others have left. I’ll give you ten bucks and you can keep the truck over night.”

“Shit, yeah all right.”

“Thank you. You are a good boy.”

I really want the night to end but an extra ten bucks is an extra ten bucks, plus if they don't use a coupon that’ll be two more bills coming my way. I pull out my tickets and Richardo Junior comes running up. “How many coupons you have tonight?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you just mind your own business?”

“This is my business. No fucking way you have a coupon for every delivery.”

Ricardo breaks it up. “Boys please no fighting. This is a family business, yes but don’t fight like brothers.”

“Dad will you fucking learn to speak English.”

“Okay, I go home to do that right now. You can stay to finish up the dishes.”

“Ah, fuck!” Ricardo Junior heads back to the kitchen. He talks a lot of shit but when his old man tells him to do something he does it. It must be some South American respect for father and family. Richardo leaves and I go to get the pizza out of the ovens. On the way down the hallway I see Ricardo Junior scalding his pampered hands.

“Have fun Rico Suave. Make sure you get all the sauce off.”

“Sorry about that last delivery Trev. It’s to that freaky lesbian drug addict that lived out in L.A. for awhile.” He gives me a grin that melts female hearts.

“My pleasure Ricardo Junior. Your dad gave me ten bucks for it.”

“What?”

“Yeah. And I get to keep the truck over night. It works out great; otherwise I would have walked home in this shit.”

“You bastard motherfucker!”

“Why don’t you learn to speak English? A bastard has no mother.”

The smile is gone and I can see in his eyes that he is playing back what I said. He is only as smart as he has to be which isn’t very bright. I walk out with my last delivery of the night. I wonder whom I’m taking this pizza to. There aren’t many lesbian drug addicts around here- not that I know about, anyway.


I ring the bell and I’m disappointed when a girl from my film class opens the door. I was hoping to see a lesbian drug addict from Los Angles. This girl always sits in the back and doesn’t talk. I heard one guy say she’s not even in the class but comes anyway. She probably comes for the free movies.

I never looked at her, never at her face. She always seemed dumpy and plain. Looking at her now, up close I see her eyes are alive. The most stunning eyes I’ve ever seen, sympathetic and sexy, full of both caring and mischief. Her eyes are orbs of bluish green, like magical marbles accentuated by pale complexion and shoulder length jet-black greasy hair. The thing about green eyes is that they are so rare that when you do get to look into a pair so darkly jade, it is like finding a treasure.

Her face also has at least sixteen moles of varying shape and seizes. There are two little birthmarks under her left eye, a bigger one on her right cheek, and other moles scattered across her left cheek and one above her lip. I find all these quite engaging. Her face is like a relief map of beauty marks.

I’d like to make my Irish coffee for her. She doesn’t look stuck up like that last bitch and besides, she might be a lesbian drug addict from Los Angeles but she is not fat, wearing too much make-up or has big hair. Where I live a girl who doesn’t have big spray can problem hair is a reason to date her.

She is nubile and wearing a tight little tee shirt. The worn faded fabric is pulled taunt over ravishing tits that are anything but worn or faded. In film class she always wears big baggy sweaters. I wonder why she doesn’t choose to always show off such a blouse-full of bountiful breasts. If I had a physical trait so extraordinarily alluring I would walk around naked. I notice what her tee shirt says because from the moment that she opened the door I haven’t taken my eyes off her chest.

The tee shirt reads- ‘I don’t date boys who read Bukowski’

“Are you going to hand me my pizza or just stare at my tits?” The girl asks.

“I wasn’t…I was just reading the tee shirt.”

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Do you read Bukowski?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know Bukowski.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t you like Bukowski?”

“I love Bukowski.”

“But I thought…”

“I like his writing. I don’t like drunken boys who don’t understand the tenderness. The separation of art from artist.”

“Oh.”

“Come in,” she says.

I reluctantly follow her in. I have no choice because she didn’t pay me. The house is small, and has a distinct smell that isn’t exactly bad, but it sure isn’t pleasant either. I can’t figure out what it reminds me of.

The house has no holiday decorations up, no Christmas lights or a tree. Maybe they are Jewish. Everything is old and run down except for the corner of the living room where an expensive looking computer and stereo are set up. I follow her into the kitchen and put the pizza on the table. Down a hall a black and white television is on. The girl looks at me looking down the hallway.

“That’s my mom. She’s an alcoholic and doesn’t leave the room. She won’t bother us.”

“Us?”

“Yeah.”

The girl puts the pizza into the refrigerator and pulls out two bottles of Samuel Adams. She walks back into the living room. She hasn’t paid me so I follow her. She puts on the stereo and sits down cross-legged on the threadbare carpet. The music is slow and bass heavy.

“Sit down,” she says.

I sit down and take a beer.

“You’re in the film class.”

“Yes,” I take a long drink from the beer. The girl looks at me.

“You know I wasn’t looking at your tits. I hate it when girls wear tight tee shirts with writing on them over their breasts and then expect nobody to look.”

“That’s okay I guess, I’m sensitive of people staring at my boobs.”

She smiles at me and I smile back making sure my eyes meet hers. We both drink out of our bottles.

“Aren’t you going to eat the pizza?”

“No not now. I love cold pizza in the mornings so I eat it for breakfast. Besides when I was little I would eat it so fast I would burn my mouth. Now I try not to devour everything to do with pleasure, only to get burnt later on. ”

“Oh. Are you going to pay me?”

“Oh yeah, sorry,” she says getting up.

“Hey?”

“What?”

“What’s you name?”

“Janis, named after fucking Janis Joplin.”

“I’m Trevor.”

“I know.”

Janis leaves the room. I look around. Under the computer table are numerous books stacked up into piles. I look at a few of them and open on by Charles Bukowski. The title of the book is Women. It’s a subject I might enjoy. I turn to the first page and read the first sentence. Mike always told me to read the first page of a book before I take one out of the library or steal it from a bookstore to make sure I will like it and it’s worth the trouble. He said you could understand a lot from the first page of a novel.

“I was 50 years old and hadn’t been to bed with a woman for four years.”

It didn’t seem Bukowski understood his subject. I read a little more. He has a simple structure to his verse. It would be something I could read through easily and still gain a lot of insight too. I like that the writing wasn’t at all pretentious.

“Like it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Here,” she hands me the money, I notice a twenty, and another beer. I finish the first beer in two big swallows. I start to make change.

“Keep it.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s your favorite film?”

"I don’t like films, people who say films are so pretentious” I try to sound cool. “I like movies. Steve McQueen and Marlon Brando flicks.”

“Whatever.”

“Taxi Driver.”

“You know that part where he is at the rally and an undercover cop asks where he is from?”

“Yeah.”

“Fair Lawn, New Jersey!” We say in unison. We both drink. I like this girl.

“I have to meet my friend at this bar. You want to come? I can drive us in the pizza truck.”

“Sure."

[Sloth]

I like the old one better... but you are the author so okay.