Roger stared straight ahead and tried not to hear the conversation going on behind him.
“He is so cute. I, like, hadn’t seen him in so long and he is so hot now. I saw him when I was with my boyfriend and he came up and said hi. He was totally flirting with me right in front of him and then he texted me later.”
“No…way!”
“I know, I was like, oh no! Drama! But I totally loved it too.”
Roger’s gaze went past the cashier, through the window into the kitchen, over the shoulders of the men preparing what he hoped were his pizzas and tried to burn a hole in the steel door at the rear of the restaurant so that Roger could see out to the alley. He pictured all these details and what it was he might see in the alley had he been able to make that hole in an attempt to distract himself from the high pitched voices of the teenage girls talking about their boyfriends.
It wasn’t working.
“Can I help you?” asked the cashier in a mumble Roger could barely understand.
“Pick up for Roger.”
The girls behind him squealed over something. Roger found it impossible to tell their voices apart. He actually pictured two identical gum-chomping young girls behind him each enjoying the conversation with their clone.
“That’s gonna be…” the cashier mumbled downward, into the register and then said an unintelligible number. Roger wasn’t sure if he had just been told a price or an estimated waiting time.
“I’m sorry?” said Roger.
“Huh?” replied the cashier as the teenage girls laughed behind Roger.
“I said I’m sorry,” Roger repeated above the girls, the ringing of the bell hung above the door and the loud laughing that accompanied the man on the cell phone who made the bell ring.
“Now way, dude! That’s awesome!”
“Sorry for what?” asked the cashier.
Roger sighed as he heard the new man tell his buddy on the phone what he would have done and the girls behind him scream at one another in a disagreement over which outfit each should wear to the party tomorrow night. Roger was having trouble remembering what he had said to confuse the cashier.
He stared blankly at the young man, who had a much blanker stare than Roger’s, for a moment and tried to remember what he was even doing there.
“I didn’t hear what you said,” Roger caught himself, “could you repeat it?”
“I said it’ll be…”
BAM! CLANG! CLATTER!
“…more minutes.”
Whatever was dropped in the kitchen kept Roger from hearing exactly how long he was to be trapped in the small, overheated waiting area of the pizza joint, but he knew he must wait all the same. He went to the plastic molded chair nearby and sat down heavily.
As Roger noted how flimsy the chair was, the door opened again with the ring of the bell above. In walked a mother and her small child. The woman, Roger took notice, was silent upon walking in. Her son, however, was singing a popular song, which Roger could not name but recognized due to how much it annoyed him, over and over.
Roger recalled what had brought him to his current location.
His children had been arguing constantly throughout the day, throughout the entire house while he had attempted to get some work done. Since his inability to concentrate while it sounded as if there was a herd of Rhinoceros playing tag through his house resulted in lost productivity, he had promised he would pick up pizza and let them watch a movie as they ate it. Maybe he could get something done in the evening then.
As he had left the house, his wife suddenly suggested the kids go with Roger. So, instead of a quiet drive while listening to sports radio, Roger listened to the repetitive soundtracks of his kids’ Nintendo DS games and their arguments.
“You had that game all day yesterday!”
“Nuh-uh! You did!”
Roger looked now out of the pizza place’s front window where his children sat in the back seat of his car, still playing their games and wasn’t sure he wanted to go back. Just then, the six year old that had come in with his mother stepped on his foot.
The teenage girls continued to talk loudly and shrilly about boys. The man on the phone was still on the phone and Roger guessed that one of them had a bad connection based on how loudly he insisted on speaking.
It seemed as if Roger’s entre day had been a gradual crescendo of noise leading up to this point. Every attempt he’d made at avoiding the din around him only lead him further into madness. His head pounded.
Roger put his elbows on his knees, his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. He feared that if he exposed himself to any more auditory stimulation, he would surely go mad. But after what he thought couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, he began to worry more about how he must look to everyone else, doubled over in a chair and covering his head.
Roger slowly opened his eyes to the filthy tile floor. He uncovered his ears and heard nothing. He raised his head slowly and saw that all of the other customers had left. The cashier had disappeared to the kitchen. He turned and saw his children’s faces lit lowly in his car by their DS screens, each absorbed in their own game.
This was the closest thing to silence that Roger had experienced all day.
“Your pizzas are ready now, sir,” the cashier came around the corner and announced.
Roger sighed and was about to stand up when he had a thought.
“How much longer for an order of breadsticks?”
The cashier looked into a heated case, finding nothing and said, “Ten minutes.”
“I’ll take an order of breadsticks then,” Roger answered, stretched out his legs and relaxed in the flimsy plastic seat.
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