Page 2 of Locked Down In Watch Hill
“I’ll add that in. I assume it’s local?”
“Right around the corner, on Hilltop. One of those apartment complexes near the library.”
Nodding, I turned back to the trays of uncooked dough and bowl of signature tomato sauce in front of me. Normally it took four employees to handle the orders and walk-in business, but the pandemic forced me to cut back the staff once we shut down the small dining room and placed our emphasis on takeout orders and delivery. Now, Tyler and I held down the place most nights, and I was glad I’d stumbled on the college freshman a few weeks after he graduated from high school. Good workers were hard to find, but Tyler told me many times he was grateful just to have the job he did.
Besides, the clientele that frequented Watch Hill Pizza tended to tip rather well.
“Why don’t you man the store for a while and I’ll get these out,” I told Tyler once we’d finished up the latest round of orders. We had ten in the immediate area that needed delivery. “I could use the fresh air.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind driving.”
“I know, but you’ve also wanted to train on how to manage this place, and that starts by being here when I’m not.” I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “So, tonight is the night. Think you can handle things while I’m gone?”
“I think so.” He glanced at the large clock near the cash register and shook his head. “It usually slows down around now, anyway.”
I slid the last pizza into the warming case that would soon go in my trunk. “When I get back, we can talk about how you did. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Soon enough, I sat behind the wheel of my SUV, yacht rock on the radio, the aroma of fresh pizza and calzones wafting through the cab. It was just a little after six and only a few cars were on the street, another symptom of months of lockdown restrictions focused on slowing the spread of the virus. A year or so earlier, Watch Hill would have been busy, with friends and neighbors gathering at Sam’s Deli, stopping at Already Perked for coffee, or passing through town on their way to a night out in downtown Cincinnati.
But not anymore. Not since the virus. Not since...
I shook my head and turned up the music, reminding myself to not dwell on the bizarre nature of how much life had changed in the last few months. If I lived in the past instead of the present, I’d go crazy, and I knew it. I still had my health, and I hadn’t lost any friends or family to the disease. That made me lucky, and I needed to remember that. To get through this, I needed to keep my nose to the grindstone, and focus on the task ahead. At the moment, that meant delivering pizzas.
I set about dropping off order after order until the final one remained, a lonely order of one pepperoni pizza and garlic balls destined for the apartment complex near the library. I pulled the car into a parking spot on the street and took the receipt from the top off the box to double-check the address.
Ashley Stevens, read the name on the order.
I frowned.Ashley Stevens?
Common enough name. I knew that. How many women named Ashley had I met over the years? Too many to count; Ashley was one of those names that parents in the 1980s and 1990s loved to bestow on their children, sometimes with variations of spelling designed to show they weren’t part of the collective path, even though they weren’t fooling anyone. AndStevenshad been around for as long as the country itself.
Still, one Ashley Stevens stood out to me.
One I’d met in the before—before COVID-19—just weeks before the virus began. The New Year’s Eve party I attended to ring in the year, the one I’d paid too much money to get into at The Frosted Heart, a basement nightclub in downtown Cincinnati run by Seth Sampson. Seth, who wanted to bring Las Vegas style nightclubs to the area and transform this conservative Midwestern city. Seth, who’d lost everything when The Frosted Heart had to shut down at the start of the pandemic. And Seth, who had also recently called me, begging to pick up hours delivering pizza. I’d wanted to hire him, but I hadn’t been able to make it work.
Like many now, you either had employment or you didn’t. And not by choice. Damn virus.
Ashley had been there that night too, ordering vodka sodas and dancing with a gaggle of women I knew from the city’s miniscule social scene. Go to enough parties and events around Cincinnati, and you tended to see the same people over and over. It was only natural to find yourself talking to them once you met eyes enough times.
Ashley, with the long honey-blonde hair, glittering brown eyes, thick eyebrows, and small dimple on her left cheek when she smiled.
I put the receipt back in the cupholder. This order probably wasn’t for the same Ashley Stevens. Women like her didn’t live in Watch Hill, they tended to live closer to downtown, usually in renovated lofts with fancy names and views of the Ohio River.
No, this wasn’t the same Ashley Stevens at all. I punch go to destination on the car GPS, turned up the radio, and proceeded with the delivery.
Time to earn that money.
