"I think he saw me," I said, ducking behind my desk.
A few minutes later the back door thundered. Like a zombie attack, Jeff was not to be denied. I went to answer the door.
"Jeff? We open in a few minutes, so..."
"Hey! I've got the pizza for you."
"Pizza? Is it from Cuba?"
"No, no, I haven't gone yet. I leave for Cuba in a few hours. But I had time to get this fabulous pizza," he said with unmistakable Bob Sacamano flair. "It's unbelievable. The best pizza in Duluth!"
I couldn't recall requesting pizza. Jeff was probably mixing me up with Jonah or Todd or Elijah. He slammed down the triangular pizza cartons like triangular trump cards.
"Heuurrgh! Hffff!" he said, expanding his tough-guy chest. "Can you smell that? A woman from North Pakistan makes these pizzas at the King Soopers near my apartment!"
He reverently opened one of the cartons, as if the lid on Ali Baba's treasure chest. Out came a genie of steam and inside was a flap o' pizza weighted down with sedimentary layers of veggies, flank meats and stuff that looked like the genitals of the Wicker Man.
I stared at it. "So the best pizza in the world comes from your local King Soopers?"
"Yeah! It's unbelievable! And this garlic? Kroger's has the best in the galaxy, in the universe, in the MULTIVERSE!! Okay, I'm off."
I showed him out and then stored the transcendent 'za in the refrigerator. It was time to open. Today was our chess club event and it seemed like every customer who filtered in was like a piece on a giant chessboard--especially since the carpet was in squares. First came Meryl Strepthrot, moving as a knight does with her cart pulled behind her. (You see, if played properly, knights pull carts in chess.)
"Guess what?" she said in her breathy singsong voice. Her toothless mouth gaped and tendrils of dried seaweed stuck out of her cap. "They're doing an investigation of me! Can you believe that? But the joke's on them, I'll be dead soon! Ha, ha, ha, har!"
"Yeah," I said, not wanting to get forked.
She loaded herself on the elevator and went up. I only hoped she wouldn't start snoring up there. I'd have to, uh, put her into stalemate.
Then came Cindy Scone, skeletally gliding to my desk in a diagonal manner. In her hand she had a staff rec, The Seven Basic Plots, and told me that there were actually only two plots in the world. One was The Stranger Comes to Town. The other was the tired old plot of Girlfriend Keeps Her Boyfriend's Skull Fragment in Her Purse.
I castled to get away from her, only to find myself blockaded by Perry Heistmann's mug. He hobbled over like an isolated pawn and appreciated me loading all of his many Mongolian Horse Poetry books onto a cart. Perry was visiting more often since he was being investigated for sexcriming one of his students. He had the face of a soft, confused turtle, spittle dotting his lower lip as he appreciated what you did.
On Jonah's desk was a fun book on Lacan. Perry eagerly reached for it like the Wicked Witch reaching for ruby slippers. "Oh, can I see that?"
"Nope!" Jonah snatched the book away and put it safely behind the desk. "That won't be happening."
"Oh! I just wanted to look at it." Turtle gape.
"I know you did."
"Okay. I understand completely! I understand, that's your book. I understand! I appreciate what you do, Jonah. I understand that's your book! And I appreciate it!"
Perry got his cart of books and trundled to the elevator so he could make copies upstairs of all the books he never checked out, and then stored the copies in his five filing cabinets so the sex crimes unit would have plenty of evidence.
"Barf," Todd said, coming over. "What a tool." He scowled as he watched Perry trundle away, one square at a time. "He's probably looking for little girls to rape."
"Probably," I said, nodding. "But first he'll have to turn down his hearing aid so he can't hear their screams. Ha, ha."
Todd turned his beardic scowl to me. "That Meryl woman has her shoes off upstairs. And the smell is hor-rif-fic. I can't go back up there. What should I do?"
"Tell her to put her shoes back on?"
"Make Jonah do it."
Using the en passant rule, Stephanie Barker came over. "You should say in your closing announcement to have a good night," she said, extremely unsolicited. "Not just good night."
I smiled. "Please go away."
"And you didn't lock the basement door last night."
"Won't you die?"
I gazed past her Winnie-the-Pooh ensemble as customers moved about the library, some checkmating the displays, others getting captured by the self-check machines.
At last, we were setting up the boards for the chess club when a young man with his hands stuffed in his denim jacket came over. He was short and small, and his hair was shaved in patches, looking like... wait for it... turrets on a rook. Most of all, he seemed... off. He glanced at the chess games with disinterest, and then glared at me with a lobotomial light. He asked where the best sushi was.
"Sushi?" I said. "Ah, I think there's a place nearby."
"Is it good sushi? Is it expensive?"
"Maybe a little expensive, I guess, but..."
"There's a lot of gay men around this area, aren't there?"
"Ah... uh... I'm not sure."
He wandered off. I sat down across from my opponent, the pieces all set up for some great chess action. Just as I was opening with my rook pawn, Justkidding bellowed that the library was closed.
I turned over my king with a sigh. "The library wins again."
(For those astute readers wondering where the queen hides in this tedious parable, it's me. I'm a queen. *snaps fingers*)
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