Everything's Eventual

supermarket, and when I came back that night around the time it was getting dark, my pie was in the fridge with the rest of the week's groceries. Only it wasn't wrapped up, it was just sitting there on a blue plate. That's how I knew it was homemade. I was a little hesitant about eating it at first, not knowing where it came from and all, and then I decided I was being stupid. A person doesn't really know where supermarket food comes from, not really. I mean, we assume it's okay because it's wrapped up or in a can or 'double-sealed for your protection,' but anyone could have been handling it with dirty fingers before it was double-sealed, or sneezing great big whoops of boogerbreath on it, or even wiping their asses with it. I don't mean to gross you out, but it's true, isn't it? The world is full of strangers, and a lot of them are 'up to no good.' I have had personal experience of this, believe me.

   Anyway, I tried the pie and it was delicious. I ate half of it Friday night and the rest on Saturday morning, while I was running the numbers in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Most of Saturday night I spent on the toilet, shitting my guts out from all those apples, I guess, but I didn't care. The pie was worth it. 'Like mother used to make' is what people say, but it can't be my mother they say it about. My Ma couldn't fry Spam.

V

I never have to write down underwear on the DAYBOARD. Every five weeks or so the old drawers disappear and there are brand-new Hanes Jockey-shorts in my bureau, four three-packs still in their plastic bags. Double-sealed for my protection, ha-ha. Toilet-paper, laundry soap, dishwasher soap, I never have to write any of that shit down. It just appears.

Very eventual, don't you think?

VI

I have never seen the cleaners, any more than I have ever seen the guy (or maybe it's a gal) who delivers my seventy bucks every Thursday during As the World Turns. I never want to see them, either. I don't need to, for one thing. For another, yes, okay, I'm afraid of them. Just like I was afraid of Mr. Sharpton in his big gray Mercedes on the night I went out to meet him. So sue me.

   I don't eat lunch in my house on Fridays. I watch As the World Turns, then jump in my car and drive into town. I get a burger at Mickey D's, then go to a movie, then to the park if the weather is good. I like the park. It's a good place to think, and these days I've got an awful lot to think about.

   If the weather is bad, I go to the mall. Now that the days are beginning to shorten, I'm thinking about taking up bowling again. It'd be something to do on Friday afternoons, at least. I used to go now and then with Pug.

   I sort of miss Pug. I wish I could call him, just shoot the shit, tell him some of the stuff that's been going on. Like about that guy Neff, for instance.

   Oh, well, spit in the ocean and see if it comes back.

   While I'm away, the cleaners are doing my house from wall to wall and top to bottom—wash the dishes (although I'm pretty good about that myself), wash the floors, wash the dirty clothes, change the sheets, put out fresh towels, restock the fridge, get any of the incidentals that are written on the DAYBOARD

                                         . It's like living in a hotel with the world's most efficient (not to mention eventual) maid service.

  The one place they don't mess around with much is the study off the dining room. I keep that room fairly dark, the shades always pulled, and they have never raised them to let in so much as a crack of daylight, like they do in the rest of the house. It never smells of Lemon Pledge in there, either, although every other room just about reeks of it on Friday nights. Sometimes it's so bad I have these sneezing fits. It's not an allergy; more like a nasal protest-demonstration.

   Someone vacuums the floor in there, and they empty the wastepaper basket, but no one has ever moved any of the papers that I keep on the desk, no matter how cluttered-up and junky-looking they are. Once I put a little piece of tape over where the drawer above the kneehole opens, but it was still there, unbroken, when I got back home that night. I don't keep anything top secret in that drawer, you understand; I just wanted to know.

   Also, if the computer and modem are on when I leave, they're still on when I come back, the VDT showing one of the screen-saver programs (usually the one of the people doing stuff behind their blinds in this high-rise building, because that's my favorite). If my stuff was off when I left, it's off when I come back. They don't mess around in Dinky's study.

   Maybe the cleaners are a little afraid of me, too.

VII

I got the call that changed my life just when I thought the combination of Ma and delivering for Pizza Roma was going to drive me crazy. I know how melodramatic that sounds, but in this case, it's true. The call came on my night off. Ma was out with her girlfriends, playing Bingo at the Reservation, all of them smoking up a storm and no doubt laughing every time the caller pulled B-12 out of the hopper and said, 'All right, ladies, it's time to take your vitamins.' Me, I was watching a Clint Eastwood movie on TNT and wishing I was anywhere else on Planet Earth. Saskatchewan, even.

   The phone rings, and I think, oh good, it's Pug, gotta be, and so when I pick it up I say in my smoothest voice, 'You have reached the Church of Any Eventuality, Harkerville branch, Reverend Dink speaking.'

   'Hello, Mr. Earnshaw,' a voice says back. It was one I'd never heard before, but it didn't seem the least put-out or puzzled by my bullshit. I was mortified enough for both of us, though. Have you ever noticed that when you do something like that on the phone—try to be cool right from the pickup—it's never the person you expected on the other end? Once I heard about this girl who picked up the phone and said 'Hi, it's Helen, and I want you to fuck me raw' because she was sure it was her boyfriend, only it turned out to be her father. That story is probably made up, like the one about the alligators in the New York sewers (or the letters in Penthouse), but you get the point.

   'Oh, I'm sorry,' I say, too flustered to wonder how the owner of this strange voice knows that Reverend Dink is also Mr. Earnshaw, actual name Richard Ellery Earnshaw. 'I thought you were someone else.'

   'I am someone else,' the voice says, and although I didn't laugh then, I did later on. Mr. Sharpton was someone else, all right. Seriously, eventually someone else.

   'Can I help you?' I asked. 'If you wanted my mother, I'll have to take a message, because she's —'

   '—out playing Bingo, I know. In any case, I want you, Mr. Earnshaw. I want to offer you a job.'

   For a moment I was too surprised to say anything. Then it hit me—some sort of phone-scam. 'I got a job,' I go. 'Sorry.'

   'Delivering pizza?' he says, sounding amused. 'Well, I suppose. If you call that a job.'

   'Who are you, mister?' I ask.

   'My name is Sharpton. And now let me 'cut through the bullshit,' as you might say, Mr. Earnshaw. Dink? May I call you Dink?'

   'Sure,' I said. 'Can I call you Sharpie?'

   'Call me whatever you want, just listen.'

   'I'm listening.' I was, too. Why not? The movie on the tube was Coogan's Bluff, not one of Clint's better efforts.

   'I want to make you the best job-offer you've ever had, and the best one you probably ever will have. It's not just a job, Dink, it's an adventure.'

   'Gee, where have I heard that before?' I had a bowl of popcorn in my lap, and I tossed a handful into my