The Pilot

This guy comes in and sits at the bar and asks for a menu. He says I heard your pizza is good is that true. I say yes that’s true. He says alright is a 16 inch enough for two people, I gotta bring some home for the wife. Yeah for sure. Ok can I get a large sausage, onion, green pepper, and jalapenos. Sounds good I’ll put that in for you right now. Thanks, he says, and lemme get a salad too, lemme get that first. He closes the menu and hands it back. The salad comes out. Eventually the pizza comes. He starts eating it. After a piece, he says, this is pretty good, is there sausage on there tho, I don’t see any sausage. I hope so, I say, looking at the pizza as well. I don’t think there is, he says. Maybe it’s at the bottom he says, doing sort of a rhetorical cheese lift. I stand there for a second looking at the pizza with him. Not knowing what to do. Do I lift some of the cheese too, I don’t fucking know. Lemme go check, I say. I walk back to the kitchen and ask the cook if he put sausage on the pizza. Yeah I put sausage on it. Did he not want sausage. No he wanted sausage, he’s saying there isn’t any. Yeah I put sausage on there. I put a fuck-ton of sausage on there, he says. Ok I say, I’m just checking. Yeah man, he says, tell him there’s sausage on there. Alright thanks man. I go back out. Yeah he says there’s sausage on there. There is? Ok, no problem. It’s not a big deal, It doesn’t seem like there is any. I don’t respond, start drying a glass. I go and serve some other people. Then I check on the pizza guy again. There’s no sausage on there man, he says. I checked with the cook, I say, and he said there was, but lemme double check. So I go back to the kitchen. He says there’s no sausage, I say. The cook is closing the door on the dishwashing machine. What? Bro there’s sausage on there, he says, closing his eyes a little when he says it. I put it on there myself. He’s saying there isn’t, I say. Tell him we can pull tape he says. I laugh and imagine us three sitting in front of small screen watching the surveillance footage. What am I supposed to fucking do, man, I say. I don’t know man, but there’s sausage on there, I promise you. Alright I say, and turn to leave. Out the swinging door. I mean what do I do tho really. The fuck is all this. Do I go out and yell where is the sausage. Rummage around the room, appearing from different places, asking is the sausage here!? Where is it!? My head coming out upside down from drop ceiling, maybe it’s up here!? Maybe the sausage is nowhere. Maybe it’s everywhere, I don’t know. Are we ever guaranteed sausage? When I get back behind the bar, I tell the guy that the cook insists there’s sausage. It’s no problem, says the guy, getting out his wallet, but he’s yanking your chain, there’s no sausage on there. I just stare at the pizza. But it’s fine, says the guy. I do agree tho, at least in quiet, that there does appear to be some chain yanking here, one way or another. Someone’s chain is definitely getting yanked. I ask if he wants me to beat the cook up. He laughs through his nose and asks for a box and the tab. After he pays, he starts putting the pizza in a to-go box. A couple on their way out says ooooh that pizza looks good, was it good. The man says it was good. What’s on it, they ask. The guy says what’s on it and says there was supposed to be sausage but there wasn’t. That still sounds good, I’d like it better that way, says the wife in the couple. They all laugh. My wife will like it better this way too, says the man. Because there’s no sausage on it. The couple leaves and the man starts gathering his stuff and I tell him to have a good night. He says yeah. Leaves. When I grab his receipt, I see he has tipped me ten dollars. I pull the tip out of the drawer and place it in my tip jar. I look outside through the window by the register and see someone cutting through the baseball field behind the bar. The sky is gray. I’m spacing out thinking about sausage. Where is the sausage. Fuckin A. I just don’t know. And then, everything goes cold and dark and I’m vacuumed back into consciousness in a ship hurtling through space, dashboard beeping and alarming, cold air in through the broken windshield, glass all over me, smoke in my face as I go into the deep, some planet in the rearview, disappearing, and the next one so far in the distance it might as well not be there.