What a Way to Make a Living
O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me. (Jeremiah 20.7)
I deliver pizzas.
I did it once before, the summer before med school, when I was holding down three jobs and saving up money to get married that winter. I didn’t think I’d be doing it again. It’s embarrassing.
“That’s $22.93, ma’am.”
I could smell the woman’s breath from down the hall. Beyond her, the room was dim, and little shapes flitted across it. “Birmingham’s #1 station for smooth R&B and classic soul” lumbered out of a stereo hidden in the kitchen.
“Keep the change.”
She was missing teeth. I got distracted by it while she handed me the money: twenty-three bucks.
“Thanks.”
You could have mistaken my voice for a sapioid’s. I listened to her flip flops through the metal door, folded up my bags, and stuffed the cash in my pocket.
I hate this place. It’s the worst on my whole route, some kind of government-assistance high rise. The elevators never work, and pools of stale urine collect on the landings in the stairwells. At least Southtown is interesting. This place never is. It’s a place where I help people die.
“Yes, Mr. I live alone sucking down oxygen through dirty plastic tubes, I do hope you enjoy your cinnastix and Mountain Dew. Don’t skimp on the icing.”
“Yes, Mrs. morbidly obese Joel Osteen watching grandma who hasn’t seen her kids in a decade, I think this XL butter-brushed meatlover’s is perfect for you.”
I held my breath and took the stairs.
I crossed into Southside and drove the long way back to Famished Freddie’s. I always take the long way back. It’s not because I’m lazy. I consider it a kind of patrol—one of the perks of this gig. I keep an eye on the spirit world for anything that looks janky.
And, just as I was crossing under 65, I hit jank paydirt: three goblins skeezing around the overpass.
They were fronting homeless, but I saw through it. I pulled into the lot across from the Maronite church, popped the trunk, and grabbed my sword. I didn’t clap into the spirit world when I walked toward them.
“Hey, man, you got a quarter or something? I gotta get outta Birmingham.”
I ignored that one. His front was an old black man in tattered plaids. The weakest was projing a white ‘Nam vet on crutches. I looked past him to the goblin fronting thug. He wore a Garnett jersey and had a 9 stuck in his waistband.
“Tell me one reason I shouldn’t drag you all to hell right now.”
The thug tipped his chin behind me. “Grignakh.”
See, normally, I’d scan for trolls under bridges. I was distracted. The thing unmelded from the concrete before I could blink. His shadow blacked out my car.
“You’re in over your head, Grease,” the thug said. He glanced at my car topper. “Why don’t you go back and, I don’t know, bring us a double pepperoni.”
“I’ll give you my employee discount,” I said, and that’s when I learned that trolls don’t appreciate sarcasm.
Grignakh grabbed my poor little Saturn and chucked it as hard as he could. The thing wrapped around the overpass support like a wet sock on a clothesline.
The gob fronting as an old man giggled; he swigged off a bottle Wild Irish Rose. “Looks like we’ll have to pick it up.”
I didn’t feel like fighting a troll in his own territory. I started walking. They let me go.
I sweated across twelve blocks and tried to come up with an explanation.
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