post 244. another piece of a play.

Scene one.

Time. Present.
Place. A spotlight dawns on our hero. The pizza delivery man. He is in his uniform and lifts a pizza aloft with his hand. He looks serious and his outfit is as meticulously put together as it can be.

SPENCER. Not to be too self…self-bigging, or anything, but I’m a pretty darn good delivery driver. I know that might not mean much to you, but there’s not too much else I’m good at. I never could read too well. Hate math. Except pizza math. That’s what I call it: pizza math. Someone calls, and if I take it, I can figure out how much your order is. It’s because I see the same figures all the time. So it’s not like I’m really doing math, I guess. It’s just remembering things. And that’s something I do well. I remember things. Very well. So I’m gonna tell you about something that happened here. Here in Ellensburg. It’s not gonna make sense, maybe, but it happened. [At this point, someone painfully, quietly, and very very slowly, begins to crawl from O.R. It’s a woman, and she’s been bloodied and seems as if she’s making the last moves of her life. She continues to crawl while SPENCER talks, but he makes no mention of her or even acts as if he notices. She crawls towards SPENCER and will arrive to him as the monologue ends.] Little Big Stan’s Pizza and Subs is the best in the county. And I’m not just saying that because I work for him. Every single pizza place that’s come since Little Big Stan’s opened up has gone under. There was the Pizza Shack. They were the first. There was Main Street Pizza. They had a special running once, like, two-for-one pizzas on Saturdays. Didn’t matter. Even Domino’s tried coming in, and that didn’t work one bit. So you might say, “well, the town must be really traditional and hate newcomers and, like, throw rocks at Starbucks.” But it’s not like that. Little Big Stan’s is just the best. New York-style pizza, real thin crust. The sauce has a little bit of a kick to it without being too much. Stan gets the mozzarella from a local guy, which adds to the specialness. No. Unity of it. That’s…not it. What’s that word? The…something of it. It’s… [Shrugs.] There’s a Pizza Hut the next town over, in North Bend. But all the waitresses are old, because none of the kids make any money there. They just sit around and smoke cigarettes and eat the lunch buffet, and the sun comes in through those dusty red curtains and gives the place this, like, seventies look. Really depressing. We deliver to North Bend. I started delivering Little Big Stan’s Pizza five years ago. Don’t go to college. Don’t do much, really, so working here, with it being the best pizza in the county, well, it’s a good job. Pays the rent. Gets me stuff. And, I live above Little Big Stan’s. So. You know, it works out. But. I never thought that I’d see stuff like I saw that night. I mean, it’s a small town. Ellensburg. Who’d’a thought things like that could happen here, right? And the thing about it – with all the killing and the stuff in the woods and the lacrosse team no one knew we had – it all had to do with Little Big Stan and a ball point pen. [At this point the GIRL has reached SPENCER and has reached up to offer him the pen. Blackout.]