After I left college not knowing what to do next, and just before going back to college because I didn’t know what to do next, I delivered pizzas. You know the gig: someone orders the pizza, someone makes the pizza, someone drops the pizza, someone remakes the pizza, then you deliver the pizza.
The only difference was I worked for Ethereal Pizza.
Phillipa recommended me for the job. We had spent a glorious year deciding that flatbread, utilitarianism, and us being together were the greatest ideas known to humanity. We then spent a nice year deciding that streaming an entire TV series in one night, having food delivered from anywhere at any time, and us sharing the same space were ideas that we were not unhappy with. We then spent an uncomfortable year deciding that communicating though passing grunts and nods, arguing in silence about ambition and the lack or overwhelming abundance thereof, and flatbread being probably a little overrated, were realities we simply had to face.
We split up.
I think she eventually married an accountant from Amarillo, or perhaps it was a baker from Buffalo, or maybe a surveyor from Sacramento.
Anyway, she knew the manager at Ethereal Pizza. He was a friend from her old High School I think, but it’s hard to remember details when you don’t really listen properly. I like to think Phillipa put in a good word because she still cared. I like to think maybe she could see that I was somewhat lost in life after our breakup and in dire need of something inspirational and new. I try not to think about the fact that she must have known that the average time for an Ethereal Pizza delivery driver to have a full mental breakdown is around three months.
And I know what you want to ask, and I get it, but I don’t have to time to run through them all so here’s just a few: Zeus is a ham and pineapple man, The Easter Bunny goes for a meat feast and mozzarella sticks but strangely no marinara, the Loch Ness Monster is the best tipper, Bigfoot gets six liters of Diet Dew which is just too much for anyone really, and The Grim Reaper themselves will get the thin crust veggie when what they really want is the stuffed crust supreme but they’re far too self-conscious to order it.
The last delivery I ever made was to The Watcher.
I slipped my rusty, blue Camry into seventh gear. Yes, there is a seventh gear. It sits between first and second. When you hear that crunching sound, like the clutch is about to rip itself and realms of the unknown universe apart, just keep holding it there and eventually you’ll zip off into another plane of existence—but be sure to signal first, ours is the only pocket of reality where no one cares if you use your indicators.
It was the first time I’d delivered to The Watcher. She sat on a throne that looked to be half-made from a gentle, drizzling Sunday afternoon and half from an old Barcalounger covered in the most amazing, frayed paisley design. The throne was up a small flight of stairs, five or six, so she was perched up a little higher than the rest of the room. Not that it really mattered, because the rest of the room was empty save for a mini fridge.
And the air was fresh. But not nature fresh. It was motel air-conditioning fresh, the type that was a mix of cooled air and lavender scented disinfecting spray. Not unpleasant at all.
The room had a floor. I knew that because I was standing on it. And it had walls. I knew that because the mini fridge was plugged in. And there was a ceiling. I could tell because there was a fan with a broken pull-cord hanging from it. But the floor, the walls, the ceiling, they all seemed to be made from some opaque, sapphire-blue mass, speckled with billions of tiny dots so small they barely registered. The walls, the floor, the ceiling looked like they should be moving, like life flowed in and through them. But they were still. I swear they were still.
And it was a little chilly. I remember because I’d left my hoodie in the car. It was the one Phillipa had bought me for my birthday last year, the one I pretended to like, the one that had a positive message about being kind or finding hope or hoping for sunshine or something on the front, the one with the big pouch, the red one, the one with string that got stuck in the lining of the hood. But the cold didn’t bother me. I was thinking about Phillipa. She would have gently suggested I put my hoodie on before I got out of the car. And I would have said no, just to prove absolutely nothing to absolutely no one.
I stood for what seemed like an age, pizza in hand, grease seeping into the cardboard box and inching ever closer to making a break for it down my arms. I was trying desperately not to do that rude little cough people do when they want someone’s attention. She was just staring at the wall, as if something beautiful, magnificent, transcendent was happening somewhere and maybe, just maybe she would see it if she just dared not to look away.
Either that, or she’d gone entirely insane and had just picked a favorite little dot to stare at.
So, I waited and watched her. It was like watching time drag itself slowly up hill, like watching a glacier melt, like watching someone in front of you at the grocery store write a check.
“You can just put it on top of the fridge,” she finally said, limply.
Her sweatpants and hoody were both grey, but slightly different shades of grey as if from different matching sets, and she spoke from behind a pair of sunglasses that looked deliberately designed to aid in the treatment of hangovers.
“Nice place,” I said for no known reason.
“It’s not,” she replied matter-of-factly as she began staring at a slightly different part of the wall.
“I dunno,” I continued, trying to be nice, “a lamp here, a picture there, you could spruce this place up in no time.”
“Souls,” she stated, as if stating it meant that I would understand.
“Yes, quite,” I replied as I tried to balance her order on top of the mini-fridge, “I see your point.”
“No, you don’t,” she grumbled to herself, “got to watch the souls.”
“Ah,” I answered as I looked around the mini fridge to see if she’d left any cash to pay for the pizza, “that’s what you watch, is it, you watch souls.”
“Yep,” she mumbled discontentedly, “every single one, in order, over and over.”
“Well, that sounds like it could be fun sometimes,” I bantered in hope of a decent tip.
“No, it’s not. Not allowed to throw thunderbolts or deliver chocolate eggs or do anything cool. Just watch they say. You’re The Watcher. Just watch.”
“Sounds important to me.”
“Well, it’s not,” she declared staring into another corner, “all I ever get to do is watch.”
She clearly marched to the beat of her own drum. She also, just as clearly, seemed to lack any kind of natural rhythm.
“Well, you can’t just watch though, can you,” I said casually without thinking, staring up at the broken ceiling fan.
“What do you mean?” She asked as she turned her stare to me.
“Oh, nothing” I said trying to back down, “I think its Eighteen Fifty for the pizza.”
“No,” she said, intrigued, leaning a little forward in her weird throne, “you know something, and you’re going to tell me.”
“It’s nothing, honestly, I’ll just……”
“No, I’ve been here forever, literally forever, and this is the first interesting thing that’s happened in millennia.”
“Well, it’s just,” I squirmed, “that you can’t ever really just watch something. Just by observing something you change it. Or, at least I think that’s right. I didn’t go to that many lectures in college.”
She pondered for a moment, and pulled out something that looked a bit like a cellphone from her pocket.
“Calling someone?” I asked out of not knowing what on earth to say next.
“No,” she replied, “just ordering a lamp, maybe a rug.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“Yes, you see,” she said, suddenly a little too chipper for my nervous disposition, “I never thought of it like that. Just by observing I change everything. And you, well, you, you’ve changed my entire existence, and by association changed the existence of every soul I’ll ever watch.”
It was a mind-blowing moment. It was a monumental change in the composition of the universe. It was the paradigm shifting epicenter of an epiphanous earthquake that rippled far reaching consequences across time, space, and dimensions.
And I said, “this might a good time to mention that I forgot your garlic bread.”
And about four hours later I went mad as a hatter.
Or at least I think I did.
It’s very hard to tell these days.