Page 6 of Love By the Slice

Also, Greg had heard there was a literary term for that kind of phrase, something like contrastive focus reduplication, where repeating the word changed its meaning. For example, “When you kissed me on New Year’s, was that a kiss, or was that akiss-kiss?”

College had taught him all sorts of fun details. If only Greg could remember them all.

The thing was, you didn’t really need to know literary terminology or the reasons for the Battle of Hastings when you handled accounts receivable at a machine shop or when you slung pizzas. He liked working here okay—Dad owned the place, and it had gotten Greg and his brother through college—but it wasn’t more than a job. Loveless only offered part time hours, but it also offered contact with lots of people. Dad didn’t let Greg work directly with the customers, but at Loveless, he’d begun working directly with customers on the first day.

On his very first shift, in fact, a customer had asked him to substitute two personal sized nine-inch pizzas for an eighteen inch pizza, and Greg had to refuse on two grounds. First, that they didn’t sell personal pizzas, and secondly, because two nine inchers wouldn’t be the same size as one eighteen incher. He’d had to explain it while rummaging in his head to remember circumference and area and so on. Greg’s reward for that had been the customer realizing what Greg was driving at, then getting mad that a pizzeria across town had done that substitution once, then asking for three personal sized pizzas instead. To which Greg had replied, see point one.

Shelly was doing college, but not math. She said she really enjoyed her journalism classes, but she wanted to go into public policy. She got passionate about it.

On a slow night, he’d said, “If you could pass one law, what would it be?”

Without hesitating, she’d fired back, “Mandatory paternity testing and child support garnishment from birth.”

Greg only said, “What?” but he hadn’t needed to because Shelly was already continuing, “If paternity testing were mandatory, then nobody would get upset when the hospital did it. They’re doing two dozen other blood tests right after birth, so they might as well get a saliva sample from the father and verify the baby is his, and then by the time the baby goes home, the father’s already got an account in the child support portal, all ready to go if he skips town.”

Greg juggled this thought for a moment, but before he could respond, Shelly was already talking about childhood poverty statistics and educational outcomes. Greg didn’t manage to get out more than, “Wow,” before a large order came in, and he set about making the pizzas.

It was until that night he’d gotten a chance to ask, “Your dad was like that?”

Her reply was flat. “I didn’t have a dad.”

Greg figured she was trying to fix her own childhood. But he also knew enough from things Ezra had muttered that their mother had some kind of psychological situation going on, and had never gotten it treated, and that’s how Ezra had ended up first homeless, and second, here.

That was a lot to discuss over a pizza, something Greg had always thought of as the kind of food you ate during a football game. “The ref totally missed that call” was a different order of magnitude than, “The only thing the SATs accurately measure is childhood food insecurity.”

Later, he said, “You’d be a great social worker.”

She’d replied, “Social workers get paid dirt wages, and they’re treated with nothing but disrespect. I’m not dealing with that.”

Greg had never seen social workers treated with disrespect, but he also hadn’t dealt with any social workers, so he didn’t object.

Between projects, Greg checked his phone. A respectable amount of time had passed, so he texted Shelly, “Is Rowan back?”

“No.” It came quick enough that she must not have been making a delivery. Then, while Greg was trying to figure out a way to keep the conversation going, she added, “I feel bad for the kid.”

That was an opening. Greg replied, “It’s not like we can do anything.”

“Are you kidding? We could do so many things.”

She was definitely sitting in the shop, on one of the stools where she could lean with her elbows on the counter, her brown hair draping down alongside the phone while she worked rapidly with both thumbs at the keyboard. She’d have one foot hooked around a leg of the stool. He’d only been on that side to see it a couple of times, but when he had, she was coiled around it like a vine around a tree trunk as it climbed toward the light.

Greg replied, “Name one.”

“Get the kid hooked up with food services. Talk to the school guidance counselor about doing a wellness check. For that matter, calling in a wellness check ourselves.”

Greg replied, “That’s three.”

She sent, “Very funny.”

Greg replied, “Are you thinking child neglect, or just there’s no money at all?”

As a kid, he’d heard his parents arguing about finances, but the understood priorities were always paying the rent, getting food, paying the utilities, and keeping everyone clothed. His mother had used the same winter coat for sixteen years running. She did the same with winter boots, but my goodness, the fight when Dad tried to do the same with his work boots? For that, she’d insisted he get high quality steel-toed boots that kept him safe on the machine shop floor.

Non-slip shoes, for the record, didn’t work in a pizzeria. Unlike in most commercial kitchens, flour got right into the grooves, ending the non-slip effect in a hurry. So Greg wore his steel toed boots to Loveless, too.

Shelly’s reply came: “I don’t know which. We’d have to ask.”

How would you even do that?“Hey, Rowan? Assuming that’s not a fake name you gave us in case we called the cops…? Are your parents poor, or just poor parents?”

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