THERE WAS SOMETHING AWFUL ABOUT HOW THE PHONE RANG. It spoiled the oven’s hum and the patience of gathering snow. The squeak of non-slip shoe on non-slip tile. There hadn’t been a call in over an hour, which meant they could close early. Giuliana and Ray both looked at the cordless with the same look of disgust. Sharing the same thought. We could ignore it, but each ring was trailed by another until she answered it out of breath for a reason she was unsure of, already stabbing at what would be on the other end.
“DeNiro’s.”
“Hi, can I place an order for pick-up? Can I order a large, a small Clams Casino?”
Giuliana scribbled a ‘CC’ on the pad. “Is there anything else. Wait what size was that?”
“Small. Sorry.” A woman’s voice.
“Alright, will there be anything else?” Silence. Maybe a palm muting the mouthpiece. Whispers in the background.
“No, that’ll do it.”
“It’ll be about 20 minutes.” Giuliana considered telling them it would be longer as to promote their safe travel, but her bitterness towards the stranger had taken precedent. Clams Casino was a dish hidden way down on the Entrees side of the menu. A run down neighborhood in the company of eggplant parmigiana and veal. It was usually widowers who ordered entrees, or something that was added to a stack of pizzas to be thrown on the table during large family gatherings. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ordered Clams Casino. It wasn’t even the real thing – just spaghetti, marinara sauce, bacon bits and clams from the can. It was served with a lemon wedge inside of a styrofoam container. Giuliana wasn’t sure Ray even knew how to make it.
It was usually widowers who ordered entrees, or something that was added to a stack of pizzas to be thrown on the table during large family gatherings.
Ray had an endless supply of charred dish towels that spouted from an endless supply of jeans made to look distressed or acid washed. His forehead gleamed with sweat. The heat of the ovens would get unbearable in the summer, even with their door open and horseflies pouring in. Now they barely had to touch the thermostat. Ray shoveled a medium hamburg and artichoke into the oven with a dish towel wrapped around his fist.
“Yes, yes.” He said he could make it just fine.
DeNiro’s was just up the road from Giuliana’s house on Jesuit Street and she needed the money to pay her college back. She told her grandmother before leaving that she was going down to part-time during the Spring semester.
“It didn’t use to be we had all this panic,” her Grandma said, pouring generic brand Pringles onto a plate. Eating them without looking down, but watching the game show unfold while she prayed out loud for the contestants. “It’s New England. It snows here.”
“That’s prerecorded Grandma.”
“Well I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t make too much noise getting back.”
Inside DeNiro’s were sepia photographs of people holding baskets overflowing with produce. They hung on the walls next to a hand-drawn sign for buffalo wings. Most of the photographs showed the same woman with dark circles under her eyes. Giuliana figured she was probably long dead. Her boss had bought the vintage photographs at a tag sale along with a trophy capped by a brass chef that he displayed on top of the soda cooler.
“I don’t think we have clams. I’m not seeing any,” Ray said.
“They’re there.” Giuliana stepped out into the snow, pursued by the parlor’s balmy innards. She couldn’t see the road from the parking lot, but she could see the tops of cars gliding past. A few of them fishtailed, almost touching one another.
Their plow guy was named Barry or Terry or something that sounded like ‘dairy.’ Giuliana could never remember it. Sometimes he would stop in and get a meatball grinder with American cheese and a soda to use as a mixer. Ray found the clams and opened them to years of pressure escaping under the can opener. Spirits of farm raised mollusks raced out to die in the overhead light. Even the convenience store two fronts down had closed early.
“Look at this. We’re totally left behind.”
Their plow guy was named Barry or Terry or something that sounded like ‘dairy.’
Ray learned to cook at a Cajun themed chain restaurant called Adelaid’s. His forearms were hairless and singed by scars that seemed to glow. Giuliana was wary of him because she heard he had titty fucked another girl that answered the phones at DeNiro’s. They both had the same name, except the other went by Julie. Julie was a germaphobe or religious or afraid of getting pregnant. She didn’t want to touch Ray’s boner, though she would pick fries out of other people’s orders and peel pepperonis off pizzas before they went out. On several occasions, Giuliana saw her scooping sour cream from the Tex-mex calzone with her index finger.
But Ray didn’t act interested in Giuliana. She thought maybe her’s were too small, but then they’d make him look bigger. It’s not my fault Julie’s birth control makes her boobs huge. On a slow night, it was the kind of place where people like Ray would test their deftness on people like Giuliana. Of one thing leading to another right before actually culminating in anything.
It had been thirty-five minutes, and then an hour. Ray was scrolling through Facebook on his phone. They had cleaned everything, even taking the time to wipe down the counters with the industrial strength stainless steel polisher that made their hands turn pink. A van approached but didn’t stop. Their cars were among the last two in the lot. His a Dodge Neon with its windshield wipers pointed at the storm. Shot up with rust by the wheel wells. Hers unrecognizable in a cocoon of snow.
“You should’ve asked for their number. That’s why you ask for the number,” Ray said not looking away from his phone.
“We’ll wait another 20 minutes at the most, then we’re locking the door,” Giuliana said.
“She’s probably driving real slow. She’s going to come all this way and we’ll be closed. That’s not right.”
Giuliana reshuffled the business cards, thinking of her grandmother probably shoveling the driveway. Pulling in to see a mound with a big purple mitten sticking out. Pringle crumbs clinging to her chin hair.
“Jesus christ what’s taking her so long.”
“She’ll be here, she’ll be here.”
“She’s getting cold clams,” Giuliana said regarding the lone plastic bag with its handles knotted.
A wind started up and herded the snow into a million different directions. The ovens had finally gone cold and she considered putting her jacket on. Ray was messaging Religious Julie on Facebook now. She could see her profile picture from a mile away. An old prom photo with everyone else cropped out. Slim Senior year jaw line.
“Wait, are you guys dating?”
“Pretty much,” he said.
“But she’s like.”
“What?”
Giuliana felt suddenly odd knowing her and Religious Julie wore the exact same waterproof Northface jacket in TNF black. Both Sicilian granddaughters who had their 12th birthday at the same Laser Quest. Imagined some hidden personality, some redeeming qualities that weren’t immediately apparent. Her boss said that Julie made Ray wear a condom, even just for putting it between her boobs.
Their plow guy forced snow across the lot, into big piles under the streetlights. Bringing his scoop down reckless and loose. He left the engine on while throwing salt on their sidewalk as if seed to geese.
“Who cares what that stupid titty-fucker thinks,” Giuliana said under her breath while she organized the sodas in the cooler. Share a Coke with Elias. One day some weirdo named Elias will buy this Coke, she thought, or someone with a completely different name drinking someone else’s Coke. The door chimed to her back, but she turned to see it was just Harry/Gary.
“You guys are still here?”
“Still here.”
“It’s getting bad, you should think of calling it a night.”
“What can I get you? Nice meatball sub?”
“My wife packed me a sandwich, so I’m set but I’ll grab a soda.”
He paid with a freezing cold five dollar bill. “Really though, it’s not going to be getting any easier as time goes on.”
She organized the sodas in the cooler. Share a Coke with Elias. One day some weirdo named Elias will buy this Coke, she thought, or someone with a completely different name drinking someone else’s Coke.
As his truck pulled out, she saw the ashiness on the sidewalk had turned full on pink. “He’s right, we better get going.” But it was then that a PT Cruiser festooned in wood paneling eased up to the sidewalk. Out of it stepped a woman who was wearing a coat down to her boots, which were capped by fur.
“I’m so sorry,” she said rushing up to the counter. Her voice came out gradually and stretched like how it was over the phone. It matched the parentheses around her mouth. She removed a mitten to wipe off the chip on her card. Giuliana became struck with guilt, trading her the bag of Clams Casino that she knew was cold. The woman did not make any small talk about weather, which Giuliana appreciated. She was a new kind of comfort. The time it had taken her to arrive started to seem like an absurd worry.
“Can I warm it up for you fast?” Even after the threshold of the exchange. Ray was pretending to sweep, brushing an immaculate floor. He turned off a light in the back, which the woman did not seem to notice or be put-off by.
“No, no that’s fine. Thank you,” she said.
She left and that was when Giuliana saw it. The enormous head of a man filling the front seat of her running PT Cruiser. But it was only his head, disembodied and living on its own accord. The features of his face a minor territory on an enormous peach boulder. When the women opened her door, the light showed on his hairless skin which was coursed by veins. Ray shuffled from somewhere in the back. The head looked tired but without any real worry. Did not react to the women getting in and reaching to place the bag on the floor. It simply stared ahead through the grazing of windshield wipers. Her car glided forward, jostling him into the seatbelt as if he were a buoyant child. Then the break-lights, turn signal and the car was gone.
“Did you see that?”
Ray returned with his coat on. They were standing in almost total darkness. Pizza box tucked under his arm.
“I’m going to go. It’s going to take me 45 minutes to get to Julie’s.”
“I just saw something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, it was-” Ray watched her impatiently. “I don’t know what it was.”
“Seen that before.”
Before locking the door they flicked off the neon By the Slice sign. The Miller Light sign.
“You need help cleaning off your car?” Ray said, solvent escaping off the both of them.
“No, no I’ll see you. Be safe.”
In the great belt of the parking lot, Giuliana audited the tire tracks as if they were prints of some animal. They would be erased eventually or stiffen into a fossil by morning. She found her ice scraper in the backseat and set to work.
Travis Dahlke is a writer from Connecticut. He has had stories in Structo, Noble/Gas Qtrly, The Head & The Hand Press, Sporklet and The Longleaf Review, among other places. His debut novella, Hollow as Legs, is available from Otherwhere Publishing. Find his work at deffbridges.com.
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