Chapter 43
Dan went to the pizzeria early in the morning to make sure that everything had been done correctly the night before. The place was its usual sparkling clean and nothing was out of place. He felt a thousand times better after just one good night's sleep. He checked the sales figures and found that they had been good.
Dan started up his computer to enter his daily sales figures into it. He grumbled about the slowness of the machine as it started. He took the time to start a pot of coffee. Going back to the table, he started his business software and grumbled about how long it took to load. He went back to the pizza station and poured a cup of coffee.
After taking a long sip of hot coffee, Dan went to work with the bookkeeping aspect of his business. He entered the sales figure for the previous day and then brought up the sales record in a graph. The pizzeria was now averaging four hundred and seventy five dollars of business a day and the average was still climbing. He realized that within the first three months of business, he had passed his break even point and gone well beyond it. Considering that he wasn't even paying himself minimum wage, the books looked really good.
After looking at the numbers for a few minutes, Dan went into the back kitchen to fetch his pad in which he kept his business to-do list. He added an entry to call Mr. Harrison about his business. After adding the entry, he went to work making the pizza dough. It would take about half an hour to mix the ingredients and then he would have some extra time to get the rest of the store ready for opening.
Dan puttered around the pizzeria getting it ready to open. He took his time and enjoyed his work for a change. When he was finished, he went to the front of the store realizing that it was still twenty minutes to opening time. He stood at the front door and just took a moment to look at what he had created. Feeling good about what he had accomplished, he said, "It sure is a nice little place."
He went back to his computer and looked at the numbers. They were pretty good and he decided that he could afford to pay himself more than two hundred and fifty dollars a week. Idly, he brought up the calculator and punched in some values. When he hit the equals sign, he stared at the figure. Sitting back in his chair, he said, "I've been working ninety-one hours a week? No wonder I'm tired."
Shaking his head, he calculated how much he was earning an hour. Staring at the figure of $2.75 an hour, he said, "I definitely deserve a raise."
The bell over the door rang as Vicki entered the pizzeria to start her work day. She dropped her stuff off in the back kitchen and went out to set up for the morning. The coffee was already made, but she started another pot. The pizza station was already set up for business. That little task usually took ten minutes of her time. Vicki said, "You already got the ingredients out."
"Yes, I got here a little early this morning. There's not much for you to do," Dan said with a smile.
Thinking that he was working too hard, she looked over at Dan ready to tell him that he needed to cut back a little from work. He looked a lot better than he had the previous morning. She said, "You're looking better today."
"Thanks," Dan said. He wondered how bad he had looked if just one good night's sleep had such a remarkable impact on his appearance.
After looking around, Vicki didn't see anything that required her attention. Having nothing better to do, she said, "I guess I'll have a cup of coffee until we open."
"Go ahead," Dan said knowing that at ten there would be a sudden line of people at the pizza station. A lot of the people working at the other stores in the strip mall came over at opening time for coffee. It was a brisk little bit of business that had caught Dan completely by surprise. For a while there was no business in the morning until someone had discovered that he had coffee. The next day there was a line of people waiting for him to open. He added a note to his to-do list to see if there was some sort of morning snack that he could add to the store to complement the coffee sales.
He brought up the work schedule on the computer and looked over it. While Wednesdays had started out as the worst night of the week for pizza sales, the pizza and movie concept had allowed him to increase the sales that night. He gave away a bottle of soda with each pizza that night if the person showed a bag with a movie rental. The manager of the movie place had told him that it had increased his Wednesday night rentals as well.
The next two slowest nights of the week were Tuesday and Thursday. Those were the nights that he was going to start taking off. That would be pretty easy with Sandra and Kevin working those two nights. Summer was coming and that meant that Tom would be back in town. He was looking forward to spending a couple of evenings talking with his friend. He wondered if it would be possible to take a Sunday or two off that summer to make it to the lake.
The door started ringing as people came in for cups of coffee. Most of them brought their own coffee cup. Dan looked up and went to the pizza station. As Vicki handled the purchases, he talked to the customers. It was a quick ten minutes of business, but it had added about twenty dollars to the day's sales. Once the line had disappeared, he went back to work on the pizza dough.
As he kneaded the dough, he thought about the morning rush. He felt that he could actually double the sales if he found something that people would buy to complement their coffee. He wondered if they would like blueberry muffins. He'd have to investigate that possibility.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon when Sue stopped by the pizzeria. Dan looked up from his mopping and said, "Hello, Sue. It's been a long time since I've seen you."
"Ann tells me that you haven't been taking care of yourself," Sue said dropping into a chair near where he was working.
Dan nodded his head and said, "I'm going to do a little better about that from now on."
"Somehow I don't believe that," Sue said with a smile. She remembered the night when he had worked despite being so sick that he couldn't see straight.
"I've scheduled two nights off a week," Dan said. He looked around the room and realized that he had only mopped half of the room. Deciding that the other half could wait, he put the mop aside and went over to the table where Sue was seated.
Sue shook her head and said, "So I guess that means you'll only be working a hundred hours a week instead of a hundred and ten."
Dan laughed at the comment about how many hours he was working. The truth was that he had been a little surprised by how much he had been working. He said, "No. It takes me down to seventy five hours a week."
"That's sick," Sue said with a sad shake of her head. Of course, she wasn't one to talk. When she was really into her art she would work that many hours in a week.
"Well, I'm trying," Dan said shrugging his shoulders.
Sue smiled at him and said, "Try harder."
"Okay," Dan said. It was actually good advice. He said, "I gave myself a raise."
"Oh, how much?"
"I doubled my salary," Dan answered. He figured that five hundred dollars a week wouldn't kill the pizzeria. It would still be profitable at the current sales level.
"Twice nothing is still nothing," Sue said thinking that her financial situation had changed significantly since she had met Dan. The demand for her artwork had skyrocketed and she was now selling paintings for twenty thousand dollars each. She still wasn't able to keep up with the demand.
"It's not that bad. So what brings you out this way?" Dan asked.
"Two things. I was worried about you and there's a little place not too far from here that I was thinking about buying," Sue answered. She was planning on moving out of her apartment into a house with a separate building in the back for a studio.
"You're moving?" Dan asked surprised.
"Well, my artwork is really selling and I have to do something with the money I'm making," Sue said. The taxes were about to kill her since she didn't have that many business expenses. She didn't have to pay for models.
"I'm glad to hear that things are going well for you," Dan said.
Sue shrugged her shoulders and said, "They are going well. It turns out that I'm very popular among the corporate crowd. They like to hang real portraits of themselves in the lobbies of their buildings."
"After your picture of Kim, I'd think that they'd be afraid that you'd show the avarice in their faces," Dan said.
Sue laughed and said, "Well, there have been one or two commissions that I turned down because I just didn't like the people. Most of the businessmen that I meet are actually pretty nice people."
"I thought you believed that big business was the root of all evil," Dan said.
Sue shrugged her shoulders and said, "There are a few sharks out there that that give the rest of the businessmen bad reputations. They leave a swath of destruction behind that takes good honest men years to correct."
"I imagine that you're right," Dan said. So far the most powerful businessmen that Dan had met were Mr. Derkins and Mr. Foreman. He thought that both of them were good men.
Sue shrugged her shoulders and asked, "So how is your business going? Will I be painting your portrait for an office lobby anytime soon?"
"The business is doing well, but I doubt that I'll ever be a corporate type," Dan answered.
"You never know," Sue said.
Dan said, "Ann's business has really picked up. She's done four murals since that article in the New York paper came out."
"Yes, she was telling me that," Sue said. Ann had gone from barely scraping by to actually earning a decent living almost overnight. She was charging fifty dollars a square foot for a mural. A ten foot section of a wall was four thousand dollars. It sounded rather expensive put that way, but it actually a bargain. She'd like to see someone purchase an eight foot by ten foot canvas painting for that price.
Knowing that Sally and Ann had been talking about moving into a house before Alison returned for the summer, Dan was interested in Sue's plans to move. He asked, "Where are you thinking of moving to?"
"There's a place about three miles from here that looks like it will be perfect. I'm going to go home and think about it before I make an offer," Sue said. It was a middle class residence in a typical middle class development, but she had liked the house. She had really liked the mother-in-law house that had been built in the back. It would make a perfect studio after a few modifications.
"Maybe I'll see you more often," Dan said.
Sue laughed thinking about how busy both of them had become since the beginning of the year. She said, "I understand that Sally and Ann are thinking of moving."
"Yes," Dan said, "They wanted to move before Alison came back from school, but I don't think it is going to happen that quickly. Alison is returning in a week."
Sue shook her head. She was still trying to figure out that relationship. She'd be able to understand it if Alison was bisexual, but she wasn't. What kind of relationship consisted of two bisexual women, a straight woman, and a straight man? She didn't know and figured that the relationship didn't stand much of a chance of succeeding. That was particularly true when the straight woman lived separate from the other three.
She said, "It takes a bit more than a week to move into a new house."
"I know," Dan said. He wasn't looking forward to moving. The effort of moving on top of the work running a business required a bit more energy than he had at the moment. He wasn't quite sure why Ann and Sally wanted to move before Alison returned from school. As far as he knew, there was no chance of her moving in with them.
The pair talked for almost an hour. Sue told him about how Pat and Sally were doing. She brought him up to date on Cathy and Jennifer. The time spent with Sue reminded Dan how much he missed visiting with his friends. After she left, he thought about how he was going to have to make time for Alison and Tom over the summer.
He didn't have much time to think about it. He had to get the pizzeria ready for the after school rush and he was behind in getting the pizza dough made for the evening. On top of that, he remembered that he was supposed to train Sandra on how to cook the pizzas.
Sandra had come into work ready to learn how to cook pizza. Having worked at the pizza station for months, she already had a good idea what was required. It didn't take her long to get into the rhythm of cooking and Dan was very pleased with her progress. It was hard to beat her enthusiasm.
Although she had intended to tell Dan that she wanted to learn how to cook pizzas, Diana had not yet mentioned it to him. It had been brought to her attention that he wasn't quite prepared to trust her to be there for him. Instead, she had decided that it was time to demonstrate that she could work regular hours regardless of what school activities were happening.
Between deliveries, she stood by watching as Dan taught Sandra how to cook. Her initial reaction had been to get jealous, but that was quickly replaced by shame when she remembered the discussions with Granny Parker and her father. The fact was that Sandra was a much better employee than she was. Sandra was motivated and had asked to be trained to cook.
Dan put a delivery order on the counter and said, "Diana, here's a delivery. The address is on it."
"Thanks," Diana said going over to the counter. She picked up the pizza warmer and glanced at the address. It was over in the apartment complex and would take her ten minutes to deliver it and get back. Although only a couple of blocks away, the traffic was pretty bad at that time of night. Despite that, most of the time would be spent taking the money for the order.
She left the pizzeria and drove over to the apartment complex swearing at the traffic. That was the one part of the job that she hated. The traffic in the area was particularly bad during rush hour. The street in front of the pizzeria was a major road between the highway into the city center and the residential area. Everyone traveled on that road. She knew that had been one of the factors that had convinced Dan to rent that particular space.
She pulled into the apartment complex and glanced over at the ticket. Having delivered a lot of pizzas there, it didn't take her long to find the apartment. It was right next to the tennis court and a couple of people were playing tennis. She waved to them thinking that it might not be a bad idea for delivery people to carry a couple of advertising sheets when they delivered pizzas there.
She knocked on the door of the apartment and waited until a woman answered it. Diana could hear two kids screaming in the background. Turning back into the apartment, the woman screamed, "Be quiet. I can't hear myself think!"
Diana said, "I've got your Parker's Perfect Pizza here for you."
Turning back to Diana, the woman said, "Thank God you guys are quick. The kids are hungry, the baby sitter is running late, and I've got a date with a first nice man I've met in years. He's going to show up in ten minutes, the kids are cranky, and I've still got to get dressed."
Diana said, "Sounds like you've had a bad time of it today."
"If you want my advice, don't marry a jerk. If you do, don't have kids thinking it will change him into the perfect father. You'll end up with him gone, working to support two kids, and dating men interested in only one thing and it isn't marrying into an instant family," the woman said. She ran a hand through her hair wondering how she had ever let herself get into that situation.
Diana said, "Yes, ma'am."
The woman pulled out a twenty, handed it to Diana, and grabbed the box of pizza. She said, "Keep the change."
"Thanks," Diana said as the woman closed the door. It was a pretty good tip for such a short trip.
Diana stepped away from the door thinking about the facts of life. It seemed pretty obvious to her that the woman had learned the hard way that it was impossible to change the character of another person. She walked to her car thinking about it.
When she reached her car, she paused for a minute thinking about her situation. She didn't think that her life was too far out of control yet, but she could see that happening if she didn't get her act together. Dan thought she was not dependable, Granny Smith thought she was selfish, and Steve had broken up with her.
She hadn't come up with a personal definition of happiness and it was time to correct that situation. The school year was coming to an end and the teachers were basically reviewing the material covered over the year. Having come to a decision, she said, "Tomorrow, I am skipping school."
Satisfied with her decision, she returned to work. Once there, she handed the twenty dollar bill to Dan and received the change. She stuffed it into her pocket and went to wait for the next delivery. At this time of night, she didn't expect to have to wait long.
Dan returned home from work feeling tired. It wasn't as bad as in the past, but he was still tired. Ann and Sally had a hot meal waiting for him. As they sat at the table, Sally said, "Ellen called today."
"Oh, what's going on with her?" Dan asked. He had known that she was back in town, but hadn't had a chance to talk with her. He was definitely going to have to start taking some time off of work to regain some of his social network.
"She's moving in with James Vic," Sally answered. She looked over at Ann and the pair of women smiled.
"That's good. I like him. I think they make a nice couple," Dan said. He was pretty sure that Tom would be unhappy about that, but he wouldn't complain. From the few e-mails he had exchanged with Tom, it sounded like he was making progress with a woman who was majoring in biology. There had been a few references in his e-mails about a woman who was majoring in business. Tom hadn't been all that forthcoming with details, but it sounded to Dan that it was a lot like his situation.
Ann said, "Yes, they do."
"I'm happy for her," Dan said. He also realized that it would be up to James to take care of her house when she was out of town. That would be a nice little errand to drop from his busy schedule.
"Well, she suggested that we move into her house until we find one of our own," Sally said with a broad grin. The rent would be a little more than they were paying now, but the house came with a workout room and a swimming pool. That was more than could be said about the apartment.
"Oh," Dan said thinking about how much work it would be to move. It had taken them almost half a day to move him from his parent's house to the apartment. He wondered if moving the three of them would require three times as much time. It dawned on him that there would only be the three of them working on the move this time and it would require even more work.
"We moved the first load over this evening," Ann said. She had packed all of the little decorative items around the house and taken them over first. There were a dozen boxes of stuff stored in the garage of the new house already. She knew that they would be the last things to be unpacked.
"Oh," Dan replied. There were times when the pair of women moved so fast that it made his head spin.
"Yes," Sally said.
Ann said, "I'm free tomorrow and already hired three guys to help move us."
"Oh," Dan said with a frown. There was no way that he could drop everything at work to help with the move.
"We'll be able to move in this weekend," Sally said excited by the prospect.
"Oh," Dan said thinking that he should come up with more to say about the matter. He didn't understand the rush to get moved.
"Alison will be home soon," Ann said with a smile. They were going to get into the house in time for Alison to move in with them.
"Yes," Dan said thinking it was amazing that Alison and Tom were halfway through their Bachelor degrees.
It seemed to Sally that Dan wasn't all that excited about moving. She and Ann had been bursting at the seams with excitement at the prospect. Uncertain, she said, "You don't seem all that excited."
"It is just that it is rather sudden," Dan said. He couldn't say that they hadn't discussed the matter with him in the past. There had been many discussions about moving.
"Don't you want Alison to move in with us?" Ann asked feeling a little worried about his lackluster reaction to the good news. She thought he'd be overjoyed at having Alison move in with them.
Rather surprised by the question, Dan asked, "She's moving in with us?"
"Of course, that's why we want to move. This place is too small for the four of us," Sally said staring at Dan. She looked over at Ann and realized that they had again surprised Dan with their plans.
"Oh," Dan said. He was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Does she know?"
"Of course she does. We've been talking to her about it ever since the grand opening," Ann said. Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized that they had taken him by surprise. Of course, it was hard to keep him up to date with things because of the hours that he worked.
"She's happy with it?" Dan asked.
"Yes," Sally said.
"That's good," Dan said. He sat back and thought about it. Ellen's house was large and it would give all of them plenty of room. He'd enjoy coming home after work and taking a dip in the swimming pool. It was true that having Alison living with them would simplify his life tremendously. While the decision was taking place a lot faster than he considered reasonable, nothing struck him as too risky. He said, "It sounds like a real good idea."
"We're going to be so happy," Ann said with a smile. Things were working out just like she wanted.
"You can say that again," Sally said nodding her head.
Dan nodded his head thinking that he must have missed something important. Their reaction was way beyond what he thought it should have been. He asked, "Why do you say that?"
Ann answered, "Our personal definitions of happiness mesh perfectly."
"Huh?"
Sally smiled and said, "I want to go back to school and become a Nurse Practitioner. I'm going to be busy for the next couple of years. I'm not going to be able to do the housewife kind of stuff once I return to school."
Ann said, "I want to make a go of the mural painting business. I'm going to be busy for the next few years. Besides, I'm not much of a housewife."
"You're going to be busy making the pizzeria one of the largest pizza chains in the country. You're already busy," Sally said.
Ann said, "Alison wants to be a housewife, mother, and teacher. She's overjoyed at the idea that she's going to get to set up a house and take care of us."
Dan had listened to the pair of women completing each other's argument. It seemed to him that they had all of this planned out. The weird thing of it was that it all made sense to him. He had known from the very beginning of his relationship with Alison that she had selected teaching just so that she could be home for her kids once she had them. He said, "It sounds like you've thought about this for quite a while."
Ann said, "I'm pretty sure that we talked about this on a few occasions."
Dan thought about it and realized that she was right. They had mentioned bits and pieces of it in conversations over the past few months. He had just never put all of the pieces together to get the bigger picture. He said, "You're right. I guess I just didn't realize it."
"Okay," Sally said. She looked over at Ann thinking that they were going to have to start communicating better with Dan.
"What about Tom?" Dan asked.
His question took Ann and Sally by surprise. Sally asked, "What about Tom?"
"Well, Ellen has moved in with James Vic. Alison will be moving in with us. What is Tom going to be doing over the summer?" Dan asked. He wondered if he'd have any time to spend with Tom.
Ann and Sally looked at each other. Neither one of them had given any thought to Tom. They had just assumed that he was off making his own plans. Ann recovered first and said, "I imagine that the two of you will be doing stuff together when you break away from work."
Dan nodded his head and said, "Good. He's my best friend."
Ann and Sally shared a look. They both realized that they were going to have to adjust their plans a little to include Tom. Sally looked at the plate in front of Dan and realized that he hadn't been eating. She said, "We had better start eating before our food freezes over."
The three of them started to eat. Each was lost in their thoughts and barely noticed the food. Dan was going to have to think about the full implications of the move although he suspected that it was actually going to be an improvement over his current situation.
Lazlo Zalezac