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“You never go out to lunch,” Ari said.
“There’s nothing good to eat around here.”
“No, I’m telling you, you’ll love this place,” Ari said, as she dragged Arthur from his cubicle. “They make the best pizza.”
“I don’t even like pizza.”
“Everyone likes pizza. Trust me, you’ll like this one.”
“But I’ve got the Anderson file to finish up,” he said.
“It’s a tax audit, Arthur. It’ll wait until after lunch.”
He muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Truth be told, it was unintelligible because it was more of a grumble than actual words—it was a bad habit and Ari always teased him about it. If he was a more ‘rugged’ type of guy (‘less of a twink,’ his brain unhelpfully supplied), would it be considered a growl? Probably not.
“What’d you say?” Ari said.
“Nothing.”
“You really don’t like pizza?” she asked incredulously.
“Pepperoni upsets my stomach, if you must know.”
“Oh, well that’s not going to be a problem here.”
“Huh?” he said, his face twisting in confusion. “Do they use turkey pepperoni or something?”
“You’ll see.” Then, with a salacious raise of her eyebrows, she added, “And you’ll probably thank me later.”
The pizza place was nothing special, a storefront in a strip mall a few miles away from the business park where they worked. “Anna’s” had the requisite green and red decorations in the entryway, a sun-faded map of Italy in a cheap frame. People crowded the small waiting area.
“It’ll be about twenty minutes,” the hostess said. “Sorry.”
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Arthur said. “I’ve got to get back.”
“No, c’mon. Trust me.” Then, turning to the hostess, she said. “Is he here today?”
She grinned. “Yeah, why do you think we’re so busy?”
“See,” she said to Arthur, “we have to stay. Play with your phone for twenty minutes. You won’t even notice.”
“But I’ve got work to do—”
“You can answer email on your phone, right?”
“You’re trying to ruin my career.”
“I’m trying to make sure you eat, Arthur. Your calorie intake is shockingly low.”
“I’m not sure I should take dietary advice from you.”
“What?” she said, looking down at herself and giving him a shrug. “Seems to work.”
“You eat like a starving person. That lasagna we ordered in the other night was meant for four people.”
“No one else wanted it,” she said. She crossed her arms and gave him a defiant look. “Trust me, you’ll like this. Now shut up and read your email.”
The hostess eventually seated them at a booth-style table. The formica top looked a bit worn, and the plastic water tumblers were filled with ice and tap water. Arthur checked: they didn’t have Perrier.
He surveyed the menu—a single laminated sheet of paper—with dismay. It was filled with exactly the sort of things you’d expect from any strip-mall pizza joint. Sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, bacon. Hell, Canadian bacon was looking like the most exotic thing on the menu, but he doubted it came from Canada. He wasn’t sure why he’d let her talk him into this.
He figured she’d dragged him here to see a cute waiter, but the last thing he wanted was his coworkers trying to set him up. He was almost relieved when a young waitress named Kathy came by with their drinks. But then, Ari started flirting with her. It was nearly as mortifying as that time he’d taken his younger sister to his local Starbucks and she’d started hitting on the barista. (Made even worse by the fact that Arthur had been very subtly hitting on him for months to no effect, and his sister got his phone number written on the bottom of her cup. So much for his pinpoint gaydar.)
As soon as she’d left with a cheery, “I’ll give you a couple more minutes,” he glared at Ari.
“What? She’s cute. God knows no one at work is my type.”
He had to concede that. The rest of the people in their small accounting firm were male, except for the very elderly, religious woman who did the secretarial work. And she was married.
“So if you weren’t bringing me to see some waiter, what gives?”
“You’ll see,” she said.
He leaned in and quietly said, “This menu isn’t exactly inspiring.”
“Let me order for you.”
“No, it’s fine. I think I’ll just do cheese.”
“I’m ordering for you.”
“I have a very delicate ecosystem thing going on with my stomach—”
“Hush.” She motioned to the waitress. “We’re ready over here.”
“Great, what can I get you?”
“I’ll have the sausage and pepperoni calzone, and he’ll have the pizza special.”
“Wait, what—? I didn’t see a—”
“Oh, perfect,” the waitress said, her face lighting up. “First time, huh?”
Arthur frowned. “What’s the special? I don’t want anything weird.”
“I’ll send him over,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.
A few minutes later, one of the bakers—still dressed in his well-worn white cotton apron and bearing a smudge of flour on one cheek—came over to the table. He was good-looking in all the ways Arthur loved, which was to say, he had a certain rough-around-the edges quality that made his twinky little heart run wild. “I heard you don’t want anything weird,” he said.
Arthur was too busy wondering if it was possible to get ‘stubble burn’ (and more importantly, scenarios which might result in that) and panicked when he realized he was supposed to be engaging in conversation. He rewound it in his head. Weird. Right. Nothing weird. “I’m sure it’s all good, I mean—”
“I’m a little weird,” the guy said. “Call me Eames.”
His heart tripped over itself. He was pretty sure Eames was flirting with him, but he had an English accent, and you could never be sure with Brits—ask some of them the time of day and they’d call you ‘love.’ He was probably just coming to tell him about the daily special.
“Hi, Eames. I’m Arthur.”
“Lovely to meet you, Arthur. I heard you’d like the special?”
“Um, well… yeah. I’m not sure what that means. She ordered for me.”
“Wise woman,” he said, flashing Ari a grin that hadn’t been subjected to the mandatory rigors of American orthodontics. Turning back to Arthur, he said, “Any allergies I should know about?”
“No…”
“Lovely!” he said, rubbing his hands together gleefully. “I can do my best work.”
“You have to understand—”
“—yes, I know. You don’t really like pizza. You also have an unhealthy obsession with your job, which you’re very good at.”
Arthur frowned, and very tentatively said, “Thanks… I think?” at the backhanded compliment. “How did you—? She must have told you. You must be in cahoots.”
“Cahoots? Really, Arthur? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that worked into a conversation before. And I’m offended that you think I’d try and trick you.”
“I’m still not sure what you’re doing—”
“—there’s no way, for instance, that she’d know about Francesco.”
“What?” He jolted forward and banged his knee on the table.
“Ooh, who’s Francesco?” Ari said gleefully.
“How could you know about him?” Arthur asked incredulously.
“Sorry, that might have been a bit too personal.”
“You’ve been holding out on me,” said Ari.
“He was my cat!” Arthur said, petulantly. “When I was five.”
Eames looked smug. “A brown tabby, right?”
Arthur shrank back into the booth, looking worried. “What the hell? This is some CIA-level shit here…”
“Sorry,” Eames said, and it really did sound like he meant it. “It’s my job.”
“You find out about people’s dead pets for a living? As well as make pizza?”
“No, just the pizza, I’m afraid. Although maybe I should consider branching out.”
“Now I’m really confused.”
Ari laughed. “He’s here to figure out what sort of pizza you like. It’s a thing he does. That’s the ‘special.’”
“So the cat thing—”
“—was me sticking my foot in it, sorry. I don’t normally pry beyond my pizza milieu.”
“You have a ‘milieu’?”
“Well, a professional speciality.”
“Yeah, digging up memories of dead cats isn’t very professional,” Arthur muttered. Then he added, also under his breath, “I can’t imagine dating you.”
“Really? That’s a shame.”
Ari, who’d just taken a sip of her water, nearly choked. She managed to swallow properly then started laughing. “Honestly Arthur, don’t be such a grump. Let the man do his job.”
“Yeah, or my pizzas will burn.”
“Okay, what do I do? Let you read my palm or something?”
“No, just look into my eyes for a bit.”
Arthur looked at him. He had really pretty eyes. After about ten seconds, he had to blink and started to feel really self-conscious. He was about to look away when Eames stopped him with a touch to his hand. It was warm and oddly soothing.
“Almost done. Just a few more seconds.”
He let himself enjoy the view while Eames did… whatever it was he was doing. It wasn’t often you got a chance to stare blatantly at someone with their approval.
“You didn’t stare at me when we did this,” Ari said, sounding put out.
“Quiet, you,” Eames said, and Arthur saw him grin before finally breaking eye contact.
“What else do you need to do?”
“That’s it. I’m ready to make you the pizza of your dreams.”
“You sound awfully confident about that,” Arthur said.
“It’s what I do.”
“Sound confident, or make pizza?”
“Both. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” And with that, he gave them both a little nod and headed back to the kitchen to rescue his pizzas from imminent charring.
“Well, that was… interesting,” Arthur said.
“Yeah, well, I guess that answers the ‘is he or isn’t he’ question pretty definitively,” she said, looking glum. “I was holding out a shred of hope there, until he started gazing into your eyes like that.”
“What? No. He wasn’t flirting with me.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
Eames came back, about twenty minutes later, bearing Ari’s calzone and an interesting-looking pizza for Arthur. It was topped with roast chicken, feta, and olives.
“Here you go,” he said, and put a slice onto Arthur’s plate. He didn’t show any signs of leaving.
“Are you going to watch me eat?”
“I… was hoping to get your opinion on the pizza.”
“Well, by definition, it’s going to be the pizza of my dreams, right?” After the words had left his mouth, Arthur realized they sounded a bit sarcastic.
Eames looked disappointed. “Well, let Kathy know if you like it. I try to keep track of my hit rate.”
As he headed back to the kitchen, Ari punched him in the arm, hard.
“You asshole,” she said. “I go out of my way to set you up with the hottest guy in a thirty mile radius, and you go and be rude to him. He’ll probably burn my calzone next time I’m here.”
“I wasn’t rude to him,” he said, pulling his arms off the table, because despite her size, she was fierce and her punches hurt. “I just don’t want people to watch me eat. It’s weird.”
“He just wanted to know if you liked it, you dick.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” He took a bite of the pizza. It was good. It was really, really good. It was possible—and admittedly he didn’t really like pizza so he didn’t have it very often—but it was possible it was the best pizza he’d ever had.
He loved chicken, but it was usually a disaster on pizza—too stringy and dried out—but this was moist and done to perfection. The feta and the olives gave it a Mediterranean taste he adored.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“Okay? Just okay?”
“I’m not really a pizza person,” he said with a shrug. Which was true. But he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of being right, not after she’d punched him on the arm. And he’d clearly already pissed off Eames with his other comment, so it didn’t really matter.
She glared at him. “Jesus, Arthur. Who fucking pissed in your Cheerios this morning? You try and do something nice for someone…”
She ate her calzone with a quiet aggression that had Arthur worried she’d cut right through the ceramic plate with her knife.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” he said, after finishing off his third slice of pizza. (It was really good pizza.) “I shouldn’t have been rude.”
“You need to apologize,” she said.
“I really don’t think that’s necessary.”
She glared at him.
“You’re right. Of course I’ll apologize.” He scanned the room until he made eye contact with their waitress. When she came over he said, “Would it be possible to talk to Eames if he gets a minute?”
“Sure thing,” she said.
He came over, his smile more guarded than it had been before. “So, what’d you think?”
“It was really good, thanks.”
“That’s… it? ‘Really good’?”
“Well, you know, I’m not really a pizza person so that’s pretty high praise.”
“No, Arthur. ‘Really good’ is the sort of thing you’d say about a nature documentary. I was going for ‘transcendent,’ or at least ‘amazing.’”
Eames’ gorgeous lips edged dangerously close to a pout. Not a bad look on him, but it made Arthur remember he was supposed to be apologizing. “No, it was an awesome combination. I really liked the chicken, and the whole Mediterranean thing. It was a really good guess—”
Ari kicked him.
“—I mean, choice. Thank you.”
“But it wasn’t transcendent.”
“Maybe you can try again?” Arthur replied, not at all sure what the correct answer was in this situation.
“He’s really sorry,” Ari said, kicking him again, this time hard enough to be heard.
“Yeah, I’m really sorry. It was great. Thanks.” He smiled, hoping it would suffice for whatever he was failing to say.
Eames smiled back, so he guessed it did. “Okay, well, see you next time then.”
When he left, Arthur slumped back in his seat with relief.
“God, it’s no wonder you never go out on any dates,” Ari said.
“Shut up.”
“Could that have been any more awkward?”
“Just shut up.”
When Kathy stopped by with their bill, she said, “You want a box for the rest of that?”
“Of course he does,” said Ari, before he had a chance to respond.
It made Arthur secretly glad that he didn’t have admit he wanted it for leftovers. It would have tarnished his reputation as someone who ‘didn’t like pizza.’
Ari stopped by his cube the next day at lunch. “You don’t deserve this, because you were rude yesterday, but I’m going to lunch. Wanna come?”
“Pizza?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah, I’m good. Gotta finish this file anyway.”
“Your loss,” she said.
“I think we already established that,” he replied.
He was halfway through the lunch hour, still not having made good on his promise to himself of a candy bar and a bag of chips from the snack machine, when he got a call from the front desk.
“Did you order a pizza?”
“Um—”
“—because this guy says he has a pizza for ‘Arthur’ for someone in your office, but he doesn’t have a last name, and you’re the only one I know.”
Thinking—hoping—it was from Eames (because really, that was the only thing that made sense), he said, “Um yeah, that was me. I’ll be right down, thanks.”
The delivery guy was from Anna’s, although unfortunately there was no message with the pizza. He gave him a hefty tip. As he left, Arthur cracked open the lid, and the pungent aroma of anchovies drifted out. He had to hand it to Eames: they were universally mocked as ‘the pizza topping everyone hates,’ but somehow he’d figured out Arthur loved them. There were some nice-looking roasted red peppers on it as well. “You want some?” he asked the receptionist, grinning.
The guy took one look at it and said, “I’m not big on anchovies, but thanks.” As he headed back toward the elevators the receptionist called after him. “Hey, that’s a big pizza. Are you telling me you’re not the only person up there who’ll eat anchovies?”
“We’re going to find out,” Arthur replied, leaving the guy in a confused silence.
As it turned out, no one in his office was a fan of anchovies, especially not Ari, who came back about a half hour later to find him eating it.
“What the hell? You ordered from Anna’s? You could have just come with me.” She peeled off one of the tiny fish and popped it in her mouth. Apparently it wasn’t the actual anchovies she had a problem with.
“I didn’t order it, it just appeared.”
“Oh, you have a pizza-granting magic lamp or something? Can I get one that brings me cake?”
“I’m serious, the delivery guy just showed up and said it was for Arthur. He didn’t even have my last name.”
“Huh. So you think Eames sent it?”
“Well… yeah. I mean, I can’t think of any other reason I’d get one. And I mean, normal people hate anchovies, so you’re not going to win any points—”
“—unless they know you actually like them,” she finished. “Yeah, and nothing personal, but if anyone in this office had a secret crush on you and was sending you covert food, I’d know about it.”
“Yeah, you probably would,” he agreed, resigned to the fact that Ari knew everything about everyone.
“So, you gonna go say thanks?”
The question caught him off-guard. Of course he should. He just hadn’t thought things that far ahead yet. “Um, sure. I might go over there after work or something.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said, half-rolling her eyes. “I swear it’s like you actively try to drive people away. Don’t say I didn’t try to help.”
He did go over after work, but it was right in the middle of the dinner rush, and the hostess said there’d be no way for Eames to come out and chat. Arthur left him a note that said, “Thanks for the pizza. It was delicious!”
The next day at work, he got another pizza. This one really stretched the limits of what he considered a pizza, and perhaps that was the point—thinking outside the pizza box, as it were. Instead of a tomato sauce, it had a light spicy Thai peanut sauce. On top of that, some mozzarella cheese topped with snow peas, water chestnuts, and chunks of chicken. Some freshly ground peanuts and diced green onions finished it off.
But what was even more interesting than the pizza was the note taped to the outside of the box, on a piece of paper folded once. It read, “Only ‘delicious,’ not ‘transcendent’? -E”
Only Eames could make ‘delicious’ sound like an insult. There was no mistaking this pizza though—it really was transcendent. It took everything he loved about his favorite Thai food and somehow turned it into a pizza.
After work, he went by the restaurant again—even busier this time because it was a Friday night. He left another note, this one reading, “This one transcended transcendence!” and then his phone number, and then “-Arthur,” just in case Eames was carrying on a note-and-pizza conversation with more than one person. He gave it to the hostess and bolted from the restaurant before he could second-guess (third-guess, really) the cheesiness of his comment (or the inclusion of his phone number) and back out of the whole thing.
His phone lit up with a text message around eight. He paused the tv, interrupting his Battlestar Galactica binge-watch.
‘hey. can’t talk but got ur note. liked it huh?’
‘Amazing,’ he texted back. He went into his contacts and changed ‘Unknown Number’ to ‘Eames.’ He didn’t know his last name. Or was Eames his last name? It didn’t really matter. It was a good name. If he had a name like that, he probably wouldn’t go by whatever other boring name he had, like ‘Arthur.’
‘u busy monday? it’s my night off.’
‘I’m never busy,’ he replied, then kicked himself after he sent the text. Nothing like sounding desperate to turn people off.
‘i get off at 11 tonight. stop by and we can go grab a bite at dicks if u want.’
He’d lived in Seattle long enough to know that Dick’s was a 50s-era drive-in, not some weird sexual proposition. Not that he’d have minded. ‘Yeah. That sounds great!’ he texted back, making sure he hid any panic at the possibility of a social interaction—or, let’s face it, a date.
‘great. meet me at work. gotta go.’
Well, as far as dates go, it could be worse. Dick’s had been around forever—well, since the 50s—and served cheap grease-bomb burgers, excellent fries, and real milkshakes. They stayed open ’til two in the morning, and it was usually packed at all hours.
Arthur debated what to wear for fifteen minutes before he decided he was overthinking it. He put on a sweatshirt and jeans, then decided he ‘wasn’t thinking about it enough,’ and changed into a casual button-down instead. Then he put his sweatshirt back on, because if he got burger grease on his other shirt, he was really going to regret it.
He sat back down to watch Battlestar Galactica, but now his nerves were on edge, and the Cylons threatening destruction of the human race wasn’t helping, so he mainlined a few episodes of The Great British Bake-Off instead.
Later on, he waited in the parking lot of the restaurant, a few minutes early and unsure of what to do. Should he go in? They officially closed at ten, and patrons were slowly leaving. It would be weird to show up and say “I’m here to see Eames,” so he sat in the car and waited until he saw him come out. As Arthur opened his door, Eames headed towards him in the nearly empty parking lot.
“Hey,” Eames said. “Thanks for coming. I know it’s… well, it’s kind of an odd…” he scratched the back of his neck and trailed off.
“Date?” Arthur offered.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. Could you say that?”
“You could say that.”
“Great! Date it is, then.” He glanced down at his clothes, and brushed some flour from his jeans. “Sorry I’m a bit of a mess.”
“Last time I checked, Dick’s didn’t have a dress code,” Arthur said, grinning hard enough that his dimples probably showed, but he didn’t care.
“Whose car should we take?” Eames said.
There was no place to sit at Dick’s. It was an old-school drive-in (not to be confused with a drive-thru), just a big glassed-in kitchen. You ate in your car in the parking lot, so you generally wanted to take the comfiest car. Taking two cars was like going to a restaurant and getting separate tables.
Before Arthur could answer, Eames said, “Would it be okay if we took yours? It’s… better.”
“Sure.”
Eames got in. “Wow, very nice. Leather, huh?”
The leather seats had been his one concession to luxury. (They would last longer, he’d reasoned.) Other than that, his Camry wasn’t very sexy. Ari constantly gave him crap for how boring it was and how only an accountant would buy one. “Yeah. They’re comfy.”
“Yeah, I could get used to this. The thing I drive is falling apart.”
Arthur wasn’t sure how to respond. “Um… sorry?”
Eames laughed. “No worries, mate. S’just that making pizzas isn’t very lucrative.”
“So why do you do it?”
“I enjoy it. Why do you… what is it an accountant does? Account?”
Arthur paused for a second, puzzled. “You know, I’m not sure there’s a verb for it?”
“But you enjoy it, yeah?”
“Sure. I like working with numbers,” Arthur said.
“Yeah, well, I like making pizzas.”
“But you can tell the future, right? I mean, that’d be way more lucrative.”
“How so?”
“You could predict the lottery.”
“It doesn’t really work like that. I get an intuitive feel for things, not headlines from tomorrow’s newspaper. And anyway, it’s really the past, not the future. No one can predict that.”
“What about the places you see advertising as psychics?” Arthur said. “They must be doing something right or they wouldn’t stay in business.”
“You ever notice how most of them are paired with a tattoo parlor?”
“Huh,” Arthur said, brow furrowed.
“I’m guessing that’s the more lucrative side of things. Besides,” said Eames, “whether they’re authentic or not, people don’t go to a psychic because they’re happy with their lives. Can you imagine how depressing that would be as a job?”
“Yeah. I guess so,” Arthur said.
“Have you ever seen someone depressed while eating a pizza?”
Arthur opened his mouth to reply, and Eames interrupted him.
“—at a pizza place, not at home out of a delivery box in front of Netflix.”
“Ah, then no,” Arthur said, and grinned.
“Trust me, it’s worth having a shitty car to have a job that makes people happy.”
Arthur nodded. “It made me pretty happy this week. Thanks.”
Eames paused for a second before he said, with a smile in his voice, “I gotta tell you though, it’s the first time it’s ever got me a date.”
Arthur glanced over and grinned at him as they pulled into the Dick’s parking lot. “If you play your cards right, it might get you a second one.”