Pie
“I need pie. Like right now.”
“Pie?”
“Pie. Right now.”
“You’re aware that it’s like three in the morning, right?”
“You think I can’t get pie at three in the morning?”
“Well, I guess you could go to that twenty four hour Macdonald’s—“
“That little pocket of deep fried goo is not pie. Don’t insult pie by lumping that thing in the same category as pie.”
“Fair enough. Problem is, there isn’t a grocery store open right now, and no restaurant close enough to walk to.”
Damn. Rick has me stumped there. But I refuse to give in.
“I don’t care. I have a need, and needs must be met.”
“Are you sure that this isn’t a desire being dressed up as a need, one that could in all reality wait until morning?”
“Did I say I desire pie? Are you accusing me of unnecessary hyperbole?”
“You? Never. Of all the people who ever existed on this or any other planet, you are the last one who would ever use hyperbole without due cause.”
“Damn right. I’d rather jump off a tall building and land on a bag of kittens than use hyperbole without it being completely called for.”
“Yes, indeed, clear and appropriate expression has always been a priority for you.”
“Precisely, and now that that’s established, we can conclude that this is a genuine need, correct?”
“I suppose so.”
“So are you coming?”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, wherever there’s pie.”
Rick doesn’t have anything to do, and I know he’s coming. After all, what kind of friend would he be if he didn’t join me on this, the latest in a long line of our small adventures?
“Come on, get your shoes, and let’s begin our quest.”
“A quest for pie.”
“Of course.”
“Why do we have to call it a quest?”
“Because if it’s a quest, the adventure’s built right in. Every quest ever undertaken by man, woman, child or other has included some sort of adventure or another. If it hadn’t been a quest, they would’ve just been, you know, doing stuff.”
“I see. All right, well, as you said, let’s begin our quest. Lock the door.”
“Done and done.”
And now we’re on the street, walking toward the main road where the shops and a few smaller diners are. Hopefully, there’s a twenty-four hour joint there, though how such a thing may have occurred without us knowing is beyond me. We reach the end of our block and turn the corner, and there’s a ragged looking man walking towards us.
“Hey, you guys got any spare change?”
He’s standing right in front of us now, blocking our path.
“No, sorry,” we say, and move to go around him.
He sidesteps, again blocking our way.
“You sure? I really need the money, man.”
Again we say no, but this time he pulls out a knife.
This is a mistake, because this poor soul is completely unprepared for how quickly Rick and I work together. He has no way of knowing that as Rick grabs his wrist, I’m going to go low and kick his legs out from under him, while with his free hand Rick will put two quick hard jabs into the man’s nose as he falls, blood spurting from his face.
Of course, neither Rick nor myself have the slightest clue how to actually do any of that stuff, so the guy doesn’t really have to worry about it.
Instead, what happens is Rick screams at the top his lungs, which makes the man jump back, startled, and gives us the chance to run away at full speed, which we do. We don’t stop until we’re a few blocks away, and we’re pretty sure we’ve lost him. Breathing hard, I look at Rick, panting just as hard as I am, and we start laughing.
“Screaming like a girl, eh? Interesting choice, but good plan all the same.”
“Yeah, well, it would have been, if I’d thought about it, as opposed to just having my body instinctively know that shitting myself would make it harder to run.”
“I see. Darwinism at it’s finest.”
“Sure. Survival of the least shitty, so to speak.”
Then, with the universal wisdom of every smoker who has just made serious use of his damaged lungs, we both reach into our pockets for cigarettes and lighters. As Rick leans his head back for his first drag, he sees the glowing red sign of an all night pharmacy down the street.
“Hey, let’s walk down there.”
“They don’t sell pie there.”
“No, but they sell drinks, and I’m pretty thirsty, and they might know where we can go to get pie.”
“Fair enough. Let’s go have a look see.”
The store’s still a little way off, so I think up a conversation topic.
“It’s pretty dark out here. Quiet, too.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of peaceful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
I gesture over to two buildings on our right, locked up, lifeless, pieless, and utterly uninteresting.
“What would you do if, right from in between those two buildings, a big horde of zombies came staggering out after us?”
“Probably the same thing I did with the knife guy, only this time I'd shit myself.”
"Instead of screaming?"
"I'd be too busy, what with the shitting and the running."
“What about Darwinism?”
“Dude, they’re zombies. All rules are off when you’re dealing with zombies.”
“Well, I have to admit I agree with you there. Not exactly the bravest of souls, are we?”
“No, but at least we’re honest about it.”
“And that has to count for something, right?”
“Sure. I mean, if we walked around acting like we were all tough and brave, knowing full well that we’re anything but, we’d be—hey, what the hell is that?”
We’ve reached the middle of the parking lot by now, just in time to see a big white pick up truck screech into a parking space a few feet away from us. Given our recent experience, I think for a second that they’re going to rob the place, but instead a young blonde woman opens the door and stumbles out, smelling like she’d spent all night in a bar, and was planning on bringing some of it home with her.
She puts her head back inside and screams, “You shut up! I have had enough of this drunk bitches!”
Grammatically that is incorrect, but I figure it’s not worth pointing out. Plus, with the slurring in her speech, it kind of makes more sense that way.
The girl sitting in the passenger seat starts to slur something of her own, but we can’t hear it because the driver slams her door. She turns to us and throws me her keys.
“Take my keys away. I’m not driving this drunk bitch around anymore. First, she starts a fight with Theresa, then Jackie, and the nexsht thing I know, I’m sitting at this fuckin’ table, with all these drunk bitches fighting with each other, so take my keys, ‘cause I have had enough, you know?”
No, we don’t know, and I’m not really sure what to say to all this, so I kind of just stare at her before I reply, “Um, I don’t really want your keys. I just want some pie.”
For whatever reason, she actually considers this for a moment.
“Do they sell pie here?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
She makes a weird face at me, and then looks at Rick.
“Will you take my keys?”
“No. I have my own set already.”
She starts to say something, but the passenger side door opens and slams shut. We all look over and see the other girl striding away. The driver girl starts screaming at her.
“Good! Get out of here! I didn’t wanna drive your drunk ass around anyway! I hope you get arrested and they take you to jail and beat you, drunk bitch!”
Then she walks over to me, grabs her keys from my hand, gets in the truck muttering about drunk bitches, and drives off. Rick and I look at each other for a second, and then he shrugs his shoulders and says, “Sure,” and we walk inside.
We say hello to the two guys sitting behind the counter reading magazines, and one of them looks up and asks us what was going on outside.
“Oh, this drunk bitch started a fight with Theresa—“
“And Jackie” Rick interjects.
“Right, and Jackie, and so the other girl doesn’t want to drive her around anymore, but that’s okay, because she got out and walked off, which is good for me, because I didn’t want her keys.”
The guy says “Oh, ok,” and they go back to their magazines. Apparently they’re used to this kind of thing.
Rick and I walk to the coolers and he grabs a bottle of water. I realize I could use a drink myself and grab a bigger bottle of water, because I figure if I’m going to get duped into paying for something I should be able to get for free, I might as well go all in. We go up to the counter and the guy puts his magazine down and comes over to ring me up.
He scans my bottle of water, taps the screen a couple of times and says, “One eighty six.”
I hand him a five, and he gives me my change.
I step aside and let Rick make his purchase, thinking quietly to myself.
When we get outside, I hold the change in my hand for Rick to see.
“Check it out. Three fourteen. That’s three point one four. I got my pie.”
Rick rolls his eyes at me and says, “That’s ‘pi’ with no ‘e’.”
“So what you’re saying is you’d rather keep looking than consider this quest accomplished?”
“Well, when you put it like that, I have to congratulate you on your—”
“Hey!” someone yells from behind us, and we turn to see the knife guy jogging toward us.
And as we run off into the night like the Darwinian cowards that we are, some part of me notices that this time, Rick didn’t scream. He's probably too busy.
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