Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Garlic and Pizza


This is a continuation of "The Salesman."
Garlic and Pizza
I rose and padded to the window. The sun was pouring through its old-fashioned panes and splashing light in a hopscotch pattern across the floor. I didn’t remembered going to bed last night, or at least not clearly. A doctor had come in a long black coat, carrying a battered bag. Standing by this very window he had muttered and mixed and peered at the strange bubbly concoction in the glass. He had insisted I drink the golden colored liquid. Its taste I couldn’t describe—bitter yet sweet, cold yet followed by a strange warmth. I must have fallen into a deep slumber after the draught for I couldn’t remember the night passing.
It was, without a doubt, morning now. The sun was high overhead, illuminating the overgrown garden below. Roses climbed a shattered trellis, their blooms blood red against the green leaves and peeling white paint. Tall purple flowers escaped from beds and spilled into the dandelion filled grass and threatened to drown out the privet hedges. A fountain of an unrecognizable goddess stood surrounded by a crumbling stone path, water trickling from only one side, vines with great shiny leaves impinging on the other and mixing into the carved hair reminiscent of Medusa and the snakes.
I rubbed my eyes. It must have been the blow to the head that had sent my imagination off into such flights of fancy. It was a garden that needed a lawn man, not some mythical nightmare with hideous statues ready to spring to life. Real life, I told myself as I searched for my watch on the nightstand amongst the white doilies and framed photos of rigid men in dark suits and women with pensive looks in long dresses and holding parasols. It was already ten. I was hours late for work, and I hadn’t sold any vacuum cleaners. The Master had promised to buy one, but I wasn't waiting around for my money. 
What work? I was sure to be fired after yesterday’s performance and today’s non arrival. I grabbed my clothes from the dresser and hurried toward the small attached bathroom. I could at least return the case and the display model. With enough groveling, maybe I could even convince the ogre, better known as the manager, to give me another week. It wasn’t as if they were losing anything. I was paid on commission, and I wasn’t exactly raking in the sales.
Showered and dressed, I made my way down the long corridor to a grand staircase. A crystal chandelier high over my head splattered light onto the marble steps and illuminated the three paneled tapestry of knights and dragons in a ghostly splatter of dimness despite the brightness I had seen outside from my bedroom window. Descending the steps, I tried the front door. The door refused to budge, a deadbolt firmly in place with no key. 
I turned back; most houses had secondary doors in the back or even in the cellar. I passed the door to the study; it was closed. I knocked, the rap of my knuckles echoing in the empty hall. The door handle turned. The room stood empty with only a few glowing embers in the grate. I stepped back and jerked the door closed. Something about that room made my heart hammer in my chest and a cold sweat appear on my brow. It was a study, decorated in a ponderous out of date masculine style, but still a study. Never mind I wasn't looking in again. Even my quick glance had proven that escape through that room was impossible.
I continued down the hall, trying not to notice the somber portraits where the eyes seemed to follow my motions. It must have been the knock on the head; I must still be confused. I rubbed my temples, fingering the small knot. I winced as my fingers probed harder. It was sore, but hallucinating inducing?
"Stop it!" I shouted at the paintings. 
God! I raked my fingers through my short hair. I was losing it--talking to paintings. I hurried down the remainder of the hall, not looking at the paintings in their gilded frames. I wasn't much of a mansion expert; I grew up in a small suburban ranch house, but the kitchen should be in the back.
The kitchen was in the back, overlooking a kitchen garden now full of leaves and downed limbs from a gnarled apple tree. It had real windows, without bars, set over the kitchen sink. I opened the window and drank in the air from outside, filling my lungs with the smell of nature instead of the ancient must of the house. A door of heavy wood and oversized brass locks stood next to the massive black range. I tried the door, knowing the absurdity of it before my hand pulled on the knob. It was locked, and the windows were too small for my torso. I circled the kitchen again and then frantically tore from room to room.
No outside doors and the windows were either small or covered with heavy iron grates. I ran up the stairs, hoping I could climb onto the roof and shimmy down a drainpipe. Here I was thwarted at every corner by rusted bars or locked doors. The house was vast and richly decorated with antiquities, but I hurried past the suits of armor and fearsome weaponry on the walls as well as delicate pottery vases and the grand piano with the sheets of handwritten music propped on the music stand.
Everything was locked up tight. I wrestled with the kitchen door; it looked marginally more fragile than the front door. I kicked it, jerked on the handle' and bashed my shoulder into the wood. On cop shows, the door always swung open, not here. My shoulder ached from ramming speed, but the door stayed stubbornly and firmly closed.
Phone. I could call for help. A phone hung on the wall, black and simple with a rotary dial. I started to dial 911, but paused before the second one. I was locked inside a house; the dispatcher would think this was a cruel joke. Who was locked in? This wasn't even my house; I didn't know the owner. I would probably be arrested for trespassing. I aborted the call and stood listening to the comforting buzz of an outside line. I was still inside the walls of civilization. I had a phone.
I dialed a number I knew from memory, not my mother or my girlfriend, but my favorite pizzeria. Truth be told I was currently on the downward slope in the girlfriend department, and Mom and I talked in stiff sentences at the required holidays.
"Can I help you?" a breathless teenager asked. They were always breathless; the pizzeria was hotter than Hades from the ovens, and they were flipping dough and chopping pepperoni at light speed.
"Yeah, uh yeah," I mumbled. "I'd like an order of garlic bread and a pizza with garlic sauce and extra garlic--lots of garlic."
"Anything else?"
"No, just plenty of garlic. Could I get a head of garlic?"
"Whatever you say, sir," the teenager said, the struggle between boredom and a strange fascination with my order vying for supremacy in his tone.
"I like garlic." The explanation wasn't needed, but I couldn't stop myself. It was a crazy idea. Demons and vampires didn't exist. Garlic, yeah, right. I'd watched too much bad TV.
The pizza arrived in thirty minutes exactly as promised in the guarantee. I'd warned the order taker that the driver would have to go around back, and she shoved the pizza box through the open window with a look of disbelief on her face. I made some feeble excuse about broken locks and a locksmith, but I know she thought I was certifiably insane.
"Whatever, sir," she said, snatching the large tip and scrambling quickly back over the overgrown stone path.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her to call the police, but the entire story was insane: strangely locking doors, pictures with moving eyes, serpents crawling up the desk in the study. I wouldn't be believed; I would be institutionalized.
I ate the pizza; after all it was the best pizza in the city. The garlic cloves had been included, three large heads. With a quick search of the kitchen, I discovered a mortar and pestle. I ground each clove of garlic. I didn't have a true plan, but it felt right to use that ancient tool to make my weapon. I spread the crushed garlic in front of the two doors and down the hall to the kitchen and on the stair landing. Defenses fortified, I waited.


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