On my way to Il Camino to pick up the pizza, all the things I wanted to say to Victoria Pellegrini floated around in my head until I landed on the perfect line. Never once did I intend to betray Marianne; I wouldn’t have done that. But still, I wanted to at least say something to her. And so, at some point, I planned to slip this into the conversation and act like it just occurred to me.
You have kind of a sunshine vibe.
Victoria’s uncle owned the Il Camino pizzeria in Woodbridge. She worked there with all her cousins, who ran around the place like a bunch of chickens, bickering, constantly pecking at each other. For years, every Saturday night Marianne and I ordered pizza from Il Camino. Without question, I ordered the diavola, and she ordered the melanzane. And without question, I’d pick them up on my way home from work, while Marianne waited at the condo. Victoria would always pour me a free shot of tequila, and chat with me until the pizzas were ready.
By the time I parked the car, I decided to scrap this pathetic little plan. I sat there for a while, looking out the window, feeling guilty for a sin I hadn’t committed. What did I hope to gain, anyway? Proof there was a spark? Proof she was my destiny? A cheap thrill? But I wasn’t going to cross the line; I only wanted to get so close that I could feel it vibrate beneath my feet. In my mind, this meant it wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t a betrayal, not even a tiny one. As I watched people circle around, trying to find a spot, all the different rationalizations I’d been telling myself for weeks were like voices shouting over each other, competing for my attention. I couldn’t help but put my face in my hands and laugh. They were all true, and all false, at the same time.
Marianne wouldn’t buy any of it. For sure, she’d think I was testing the waters, sprinkling a hint of sexuality into the conversation to see how Victoria would react. And what if she did react? What then? By the time I walked through the doors, I knew it would have to be a game-time decision. Let’s see what happens, I said to myself.
When I hopped on my favourite seat at the far corner of the bar, I propped my cell phone up on the counter, opened an article, and pretended to read. Soon, one of the bartenders plugged in my order. Then I locked my eyes on the screen to keep them from darting wildly around. Eventually, an unmistakable staccato laugh rose above the sea of voices coming from the busy restaurant. I held back a smile, but not before I caught the bartender, some young punk, staring at me. Quickly, I ran my finger across the screen, making it seem like I’d smiled because of something I read. He carried away a tray of drinks, and I rubbed my eyes, shaking my head – until I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Why, hello there.”
Victoria was standing behind me, her arms outstretched for a hug. I stood up and wrapped my arms around her, my hand grazing the skin on her back from an opening in her pink blouse. Right before we let go, she gave me one more tight squeeze. Then she looped around the counter, set two shot glasses down in front of me, and filled them with tequila.
“How’s Marianne?” she asked. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“She’s good,” I said, sliding my phone in my pocket.
We toasted, clinking our glasses together.
Spread out across the countertop, just to my left, were takeout orders ready for pickup. While we spoke, a man approached the bar. Victoria tapped my hand, told me she’d be one second, then pulled out the debit machine and cashed him out. When she came back, I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as I could so I could focus on finding the perfect moment to drop that line on her.
“You want to laugh?” she asked. “I’ll tell you an embarrassing story.”
“Absolutely.”
“Not sure why, but today I was thinking about something that happened to me in grade two. For some reason, it all just came back to me.” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “So, I was in class, and I had to go to washroom – bad. I really had to pee. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, grinning.
“Now my teacher – this witch – would just not let me go. No matter how many times I asked her, no matter how hard I begged, she wouldn’t budge.”
“That’s brutal.”
“Yes! And then, to top it off, she forced me to stand on a chair, right at the front of the class, and hold up a model of the solar system.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know, we must’ve been studying space at the time. Stars, galaxies, all that. Anyway, I’m standing in the position of the sun. All the planets are spinning around me. But by then, I’m dying. I’d been holding it in for so long, my bladder is about to burst. My legs were shaking. I bit my lip. And eventually, I couldn’t hold it anymore. I peed my pants, right there, in front of the whole class. It dripped down my legs and left a puddle on the chair.”
I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, planning to tell her she had a sunshine vibe, and she just told me a story in which she was the sun. The planets had aligned for me – so to speak. I could’ve easily said, well it makes sense that you were holding up the sun, because you have kind of a sunshine vibe. And it wouldn’t have seemed forced or rehearsed at all. It would’ve been so organic, so witty, so perfectly timed. I opened my mouth to drop the line.
But before I could say a word, my phone vibrated. “Oh my God,” I sputtered out, losing my train of thought. “That’s crazy. Poor kid.”
I took my phone out of my pocket and glanced at it below the counter. It was Marianne.
“Everybody started laughing at me,” she continued. “And they didn’t even let me go home for the day. My mother brought me a change of clothes, and I had to go back to class. And they made me sit on the pee chair.”
“Of course they did.”
Suddenly, the scent of hot pepper and mozzarella hit me. The waiter, a man with a scruffy beard and dark circles under his eyes, put two white boxes down beside me. He went back to the kitchen, and Victoria handed me the debit machine. I tapped my visa, then folded the receipt and tucked it into one of the boxes.
“You want hear another embarrassing story?” she asked.
I checked the time on my phone and slid it back in my pocket; I could only stay there for so long before Marianne started to worry.
“Go for it,” I said.
She grabbed the bottle of tequila and refilled my glass. Then my phone vibrated again. I slipped my hand down, and silenced it, pressing the button through my jeans. Before Victoria could tell her story, a waitress came up and whispered something to her. There was a problem at one of the tables, and she’d have to step away for a moment. The two of them hurried off. I pulled out my phone: it was past seven. Marianne would expect me to be on the road by then. But I still hadn’t dropped the line, and I’d just lost my best chance to do it.
When Victoria came back, she unfolded a small stepladder behind the bar and sat down across from me.
“This one is unbelievable,” she said, picking up her glass. “But it’s not about me this time. It happened to Joey, the guy who just brought the pizzas here. He told me this the other day.”
My phone vibrated again. How long have I been there now? How much longer could I stay?
“A few weeks ago, he was a pallbearer at his grandfather’s funeral,” she went on.
“Oh boy.”
My pocket buzzed again. My heart pounded.
“The night before the funeral, he parties – pretty severely, let’s just say. The next day, as you can imagine, he’s an absolute mess. Hung over. Sick to his stomach. You name it.”
My phone rang again. The vibrations ran up my throat.
“At the funeral, they were carrying the coffin to the hearse, and he starts to feel weak and dizzy.”
“No…” I said.
“He loses his grip and, I swear to God, drops the coffin.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. No pun intended. Can you believe that? In front of his whole family. Talk about having a bad day.”
At first, I shook my head, as if struggling to process the story. Then I looked off into the distance, my mind tracing the series of events that led to this point. My thoughts began to swirl and spiral. And then, in that moment, everything came together. I looked right at her.
“Well,” I said. “At least he didn’t pee himself.”
For a second, she stared at me, dazed. I kept a satisfied look on my face, nodding as if it was the most obvious conclusion in the world. Raising my eyebrows with a smirk, I invited her to agree. Then, almost in slow motion, I watched it dawn on her that I was joking. And I smiled only after she smiled first. Then we burst into laughter.
“You’re terrible,” she said.
On the way home, my head was spinning. How perfectly did I land that joke? Brilliant. And the story of the sun – what were the odds of that? When I walked through the door, Marianne yanked the pizzas from me.
“What the hell took you so long?” she asked.
“It was packed in there,” I said, kicking off my shoes.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“What, did she bat her eyelashes at you?” she asked.
“Okay, relax.”
She slid the pizzas on two separate trays and popped them into the oven. We always broiled them for about a minute and watched through the glass until we saw the cheese bubble. Marianne gave me a sharp look.
“What’s with the smirk?” she shot at me.
At least he didn’t pee himself.
“Mar’, you’re burning the pizza!” I said, pointing to the oven. “Come on! What’s wrong with you?”
I snapped at her for that jab, then instantly regretted it. But then I got angry again a second later. Aside from hanging out at the bar a little longer than I should have, I didn’t really do anything wrong. Should I be punished for a tiny white lie? But the way everything fell so perfectly in place; the way I’d gone in scheming to tell her she was sunshine, and the way she told me she was the sun; the way she told story of the man who dropped his grandfather’s coffin – all of it unfolded as if to lay out the red carpet for my joke. How could it have been wrong?
After dinner, we curled up on the couch and Marianne scrolled through Amazon Prime. And I still couldn’t get that joke out of my head.
“What do you want to watch?” she asked.
“Anything, anything” I said. “It’s up to you.”
She finally put on a horror movie called It Follows. When she pressed play, before the movie started, the name of the studio appeared on screen: Filmrise. It was obviously a play on the word “sunrise.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The movie was about an entity that follows its victims wherever they go, hunting them down, and killing them. The only way to escape it was to have sex with someone. It would then follow, hunt down, and kill the person you slept with.
We turned off the lights and watched it until we dozed off. I woke up somewhere in the middle of the movie. I lay there, listening to it, curled up behind Marianne, who was out cold. White light from the TV flashed on us. Even with my eyes closed I could still see it, and I pulled a blanket over my face to block it out.
Soon, deep menacing drums pounded from the speakers, getting louder and louder, the bass reverberating throughout my body. I tightened my eyelids and made another fold in the blanket. The music kept getting louder and more intense. Something big was about to happen. Eventually, I pushed the blanket away, lifted myself up, and rested my chin on Marianne’s shoulder so I could see the screen. My eyes were blurry, and I had to squint.
A woman in a white nightgown took one slow step at a time, towards the camera. The music blared. Then she stopped, facing me, a look of agonized terror on her face. Her arms dangled at her sides, like she’d been hung from a rope. And then, as the music reached a crescendo, the camera cut to her feet. Liquid ran down her leg, leaving a puddle on the floor. She peed herself. I gasped and bolted upright, waking Marianne. She groaned and asked me if I was okay. I let out a deep breath and put my arm around her. Without opening her eyes, she grabbed my hand and pulled it towards her chest, and we cuddled until we fell back asleep.
Daniel Scarcello has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Currently, he works for Vaughan Public Libraries where he hosts writing workshops for adults. His first book, I By Fire, about an author who writes a novel by letting coincidences determine the plot and begins to question his reality, is in search of a publisher. His blog, “A Collection of Coincidences,” is available on Substack. Daniel lives in Woodbridge, Ontario.
