HIM WATCHED the man behind the counter spreading red paste onto the dough.
"More sauce, please,” Him said, as the pie-maker reached for the mozzarella. Him wanted to keep watching the food-blood being spread. It didn’t make the pizza taste any better, it was just his favorite part of the making process. He stood beside the counter, admiring every swirl before the cheese went on. When the dough was saturated to his satisfaction, he zig-zagged tables to one in the corner of the shop, to wait for his dinner.
The brass bell affixed to the parlor door jingled. A woman that reminded Him of Dr. Whitfield strolled in. She had the same complexion and similar green eyes, but the forehead, nose, and hair were wrong. The forehead was flatter, the nose broader, and the hair was in braids, snaked across her scalp.
Him missed Dr. Whitfield, and the chocolate bars she gave. The store on the corner sold chocolate bars. It wasn't the same. Whitfield's bars tasted better. Hilliard tried to give chocolate bars. Him did not want them. Hilliard bars were not Whitfield bars. Nobody's bars were Whitfield bars. Too bad she was dead. It would be better to be with her than Hilliard. Whitfield never changed his medication. Whitfield never made him work. Whitfield was prettier.
That is why when Hilliard said to get a doll, he picked one that looked as close to Dr. Whitfield as possible. But even though the doll looked like her, Whitfield was not the one in his thoughts when he was cutting it. His mother, Marlene, was.
Marlene was in his thoughts anytime there was cutting. It was her fault Him did not think right. It was her fault Him was in the cage. It was her fault Him had no friends. It might even be her fault Whitfield was dead.
“Want something to drink with your order?” The pie-maker called from the front of the shop.
Him looked past the fake Whitfield, to the assortment of beverages in the cooler.
“Hawaiian Punch, the big one.”
Him took his pie and drink and left the pizza shop. He stepped off the curb cradling his bounty, and was nearly hit by a fast moving SUV.
"What the—you see that idiot?” Reuben said.
"Takes all kinds, brother, takes all kinds. Hey, he just came from Grampa Tony’s. I could go for a pie. You?"
"No can do, compadre. Gloria has my favorite waiting, homemade spaghetti and meatballs. Spanish style. We can swing by for you, though."
"Nah,” Reg said, and spied for a place to pull over, “I’ll get out and double back."
"How are you getting home?"
"Do you want to see your wife and kids and Spanish style meatballs, or worry about a Bay City officer, armed with a gun, making his way home?"
Reg slid the CRV into a vacant corner space on the next block, and got out. Reuben clamored his 6’2 mass into the driver’s seat.
"Manana, player, and remember, Saturday night, eight o’clock.”
"As if you would let me forget.”
"One love, baby," Reuben said, as the CRV reentered traffic, "One love."
A pie, a bus, and a brown bag stop later, Reg was tucked in his apartment for the night. He locked his glock and badge in the bedside nightstand, before stripping down for a shower. The symbols of his profession had made his wife nervous. Keeping to the ritual of locking them away every night, even though she was gone, was his way of keeping hope alive.
As the pelting waterfall assaulted his body, Reg smiled grateful at Carol talking him into the Deluxe Massage shower head.
“Waste of money,” he’d told her, “a shower is a shower.”
He ate those words with every soothing droplet which bored into his skin. In the midst of his meal, and steam rising all around him, the bane of his mental existence returned. Is Carol gone forever?
The train of thought led him onto the tracks of their last argument. Though the accidental shooting had been a month behind them, it reinforced his wife’s prejudice against police work. His increased drinking habits in those thirty days did nothing to assuage her fears. An inevitable showdown, ever since the incident with Ruben, when she thought he was dead, boiled over the rim of the pot that night.
“It’s rough right now,” he tried to reassure her, “but things will get better. We discussed that you would have these feelings, and agreed to—”
“I didn’t agree to have a family, and for my kids to grow up without a father. It’s not fair, Reginald. Not to mention I would be without you, too. There are other jobs besides being a cop.”
It went on like that for the whole evening. He finally snapped and went out for a drink to clear his head. When he returned after midnight she was asleep. The next morning he slipped out without rousing her. She was gone when he got home from work late that night.
Reg quit reminiscing and palmed the Dove bar from the soap tray. He couldn’t let Carol continue to dominate his thoughts. Reuben was wrong, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right. Certain needs were building, and dating was dating, not marriage. He would let this Abigail know he wasn’t looking for anything serious. He wouldn’t let on, however, that he would drop her faster than Usain Bolt could run, if his wife came back to him. Revealing that little fact would put a damper on his horizontal aspirations.
He flipped off the spigots, whooshed the shower curtain aside, and pat himself dry with the towel draped over the bathroom sink.
None of it really mattered. He wouldn't like Abigail anyway. She wasn't Carol.