The Special

The back door had not closed true since the eighties, and Tony lifted it with his shoulder the way his shoulder knew, the shoulder that no longer asked him anything. The smell of the place was the smell of the place — yeast on the walls, a trace of oregano from yesterday, the faint metallic smell of the oven cooling overnight. He turned the lights on in the order he turned them on. Prep line, then front, then the switch for the red neon in the window, which read OPEN in red when he threw it and OPEN in darker glass when he threw it back.

It was six-forty. He had an hour and twenty minutes before he needed anyone else.

He put the coffee on. He wiped down the counter that did not need wiping down. He checked the walk-in and wrote the temperature on the health-code log taped to the door, forty-one, same as yesterday, same as the day before. The log went back to 2004. He had filled in every square. He did not look at the squares going backward. He filled in today's and closed the door.

The dough had proofed. He pulled the bins out and stacked them on the prep line and took the laminated menus out of the slot under the register and wiped them, one by one, with the blue cloth he kept for the menus. The menus did not get dirty. He wiped them anyway. It was Tuesday.

There were eleven pizzas on the menu. He knew the menu the way a man knows the palm of his own hand. The Margherita. The Sausage and Peppers. The White. The Giuseppe — sausage, onion, fresh basil (Giuseppe likes the crust thin). The Vegetarian. And so on down to The Special, which changed on Tuesdays and Fridays, and which he wrote on the whiteboard over the register in the handwriting his father had taught him. The words The Special did not change. His father had written them there in red dry-erase marker twenty years ago, and Tony had wiped around them ever since. The red had faded to a color that was not quite red anymore, though Tony would not have been able to say when.

He put the menus back in the slot.

At seven-thirty his nephew Dominic came in the back, late, which was on time for Dominic. Tony did not say anything about it. He had stopped saying anything about it in — he did not know what year. The boy tied his apron and went to the sink. Tony ran the slicer through the onions he had pulled from the walk-in and the onion smell came up and his eyes watered the way they had watered every morning for thirty-six years, and he did not notice it, and neither did Dominic, and the radio at the end of the prep line played the Tuesday station, which was the same station as Monday's station because Tony had stopped changing it years ago.

At eight he unlocked the front door. Anyone who came before eight waited. Anyone who came after eight tried the door and it opened. The system worked. The system had been working.

At eight-oh-six a woman he did not know came in with a boy. The boy was reading a book as he walked. The boy did not look up when the door chime sounded. The woman guided him by the shoulder toward the counter, gently, the way a mother guides a child who is reading.

Tony wiped his hands on his apron.

"What can I get you," he said.

The woman was maybe thirty-five. A canvas bag over her shoulder. A coffee in her free hand that she set on the counter as she came up, without looking at the counter, because she was still looking at her son. The boy kept reading. The book was something with a dragon on the cover, a library book in a clear plastic sleeve. His lips moved when he read.

"Morning," the woman said. She smiled at Tony the way people smile at strangers they are about to ask something of. "We're new to the neighborhood. I keep meaning to come in. Do you do pizza by the slice in the morning, or is that —"

"Slices at eleven," Tony said. "I can do you a breakfast sandwich before that. Egg, sausage, cheese, on a roll."

"Oh, perfect. Yes. One of those. And —" She looked down at the boy. "Marcus. Honey. Are you hungry."

The boy did not look up. His lips kept moving. He was finishing whatever line he was on — he had heard her, and was going to answer, just not yet. When his lips stopped moving, he looked up without surprise and said, "A plain slice."

"They don't do slices in the morning, baby."

"Oh." The boy considered this. He looked at the counter, at the whiteboard over the register, at the laminated menus propped between the napkin dispenser and the little rack of toothpicks. He pulled one out. He read it, or began to read it, with the seriousness of a nine-year-old with a new thing to read.

"A breakfast sandwich is fine," the mother said, to Tony. "Two of them. Thank you. And a chocolate milk for him if you have it."

"I got chocolate milk."

"Oh, you're saving me," the mother said, reaching down to slide a loose strap of Marcus's backpack back up onto his shoulder. The boy did not notice. She did not say anything.

Tony turned toward the prep line. He cracked two eggs into the pan and laid the sausage rounds next to them. The pan hissed. He heard the boy behind him, quietly, in the way children read when they have not yet learned to read silently.

"The Margherita. The Sausage and Peppers. The White. The — Mom, who's Juice-eppy."

"Joo-SEP-pay, baby. Italian."

"Juice-SEP-pay."

"Jooooo. Not juice. It's not a fruit name."

The boy considered this. "Juu-SEP-pay."

"Better."

"Juu-SEP-pay," he said, to himself, and then again, the way a child practices a word that has become interesting because it was hard. "Okay." There was a pause — the small pause of a child going back to the top of a line he has just earned the right to read — and then he tried the whole line at normal reading speed. "The Giuseppe. Sausage, onion, fresh basil. Giuseppe likes the crust thin."

He did not say it as though the sentence meant anything. He said it the way a child says a sentence he has just learned to say. He was pleased with himself. His mother, to his right, was also pleased, and was not letting on.

"Mom, who's Giuseppe."

"I don't know, honey. Ask him."

"Sir." The boy had raised his voice politely to reach Tony at the pan. "Who's Giuseppe. Is he the owner."

Tony did not turn. He did not turn because he did not yet know what his face was doing.

"That was my father," he said, to the pan.

"Oh," the boy said. Which was the whole of what the boy said about it. He turned back to the menu and moved on to The Vegetarian and the one after it, no longer asking questions.

Tony slid the eggs. He slid the sausage. He toasted the rolls. His hands did what his hands did. He heard his own voice saying that was my father and heard it at a distance, the way you hear yourself on a recording and think, that is not how I sound. But it was how he sounded. He had said it the way a man says the time.

He wrapped the sandwiches in wax paper. He poured the chocolate milk. He rang them up at the register beneath the whiteboard that said The Special in the red that was no longer red, and he did not look up at the whiteboard, because the whiteboard was something he did not look up at. He gave the mother her change. She thanked him twice, warmly, the way newcomers thank merchants they hope to be regulars of.

The boy had already turned away, walking toward the door, reading the menu as he walked. His mother, at the threshold, noticed. "Marcus. The menu, honey."

The boy turned around and walked back to the counter, menu in both hands, and held it up to Tony the way a child who has been taught manners hands a thing back. Tony took it.

"Your oven is loud," the boy said.

"Yeah," Tony said. "It's old."

"Okay," the boy said, and turned and went to the door. The chime sounded. The door shut.

Tony stood at the register for longer than he had stood at the register for any reason in twenty years.

He looked down at the menu in his hand.

The menu was slightly warm from the boy's hands.

He did not read it at the register. He did not trust himself at the register, where he could be seen from the back by Dominic or from the street by anyone who cupped their hand to the window. He walked with the menu to the two-top in the far corner, the table nobody ever sat at because it was next to the restroom, and he sat down at it with the menu flat on the table.

He read it from the top.

The Margherita. Fresh mozzarella, basil, tomato. That was the one the children ordered. That was the one the new-to-the-neighborhood mothers ordered for their children. That was a fine pizza.

The Sausage and Peppers. That was a fine pizza.

The White. Ricotta, garlic, olive oil. Cousin Vinnie had put that one on the menu in 1994 and Vinnie had not worked here since 1999 and Tony had left the pizza on the menu because the old-timers liked it. Vinnie was alive, somewhere in Jersey. He had a grandson now. Tony had heard about it at a wedding.

The Giuseppe. Sausage, onion, fresh basil. He read the parenthetical. (Giuseppe likes the crust thin.)

He read it again.

He read it the way the boy had read it, at reading speed, without emphasis. Giuseppe likes the crust thin. It was a sentence. It was a complete sentence. The subject was his father. The verb was present tense. The object was the crust of a pizza. The meaning of the sentence, taken as written, was that Giuseppe, who had been dead twenty years, currently had an opinion about how this pizza should be made.

Tony put his hand on the menu and did not move his hand.

He thought: I wrote that.

Then he thought: my father wrote that, and I kept it.

Then he thought: I don't know which.

He had typed up the menu himself — he didn't remember when. He had taken the paper menu, the one his father had written out in blue ballpoint on the back of an invoice in 1981, and he had typed it into the computer at some point in the 1990s, and he had printed it, and had the printed copies laminated at the place on Sixty-Third, and had been handing out some version of that same laminated menu for twenty-five or thirty years. He had updated the prices. He had added The Vegetarian when it became necessary. He had not revised Giuseppe likes the crust thin because he had never gotten to Giuseppe likes the crust thin. He had stopped reading it thirty years ago.

The sentence had been in the menu the entire time.

The sentence had been in his father's ballpoint on the back of the invoice.

He had typed it into the computer, character by character, and had not heard what he was typing.

He got up from the table. He did not know where he was going. He walked toward the register and then past it, and he stood in front of the whiteboard.

The Special today was prosciutto and fig. He had written it that morning. Above it, in the red that was not red anymore, the words The Special stood in his father's hand, which was now also Tony's hand, and had been his hand for forty years. He reached up and touched the faded letters with two fingers. The marker came off, the way old dry-erase does, in a fine dust. A little of The Special came away on his fingertips. He looked at it. He wiped his fingers on his apron.

He went back behind the counter.

He walked to the switch for the neon and stood in front of it. It was on. The word OPEN was in red light. He reached up and threw the switch and the red went out and the word OPEN stood in the window in its darker glass, legible, unchanged. He threw the switch again and the red came back. He stood there and threw the switch four or five times, watching the word say OPEN in two different ways.

From the back, Dominic called, "Tony. The oven's at temp."

"Yeah," Tony said.

He did not move. The neon was on. He left it on. He walked back to the prep line with his hand still a little red-dusted and his face doing whatever his face was doing, and Dominic, who was not watching, did not see it, and Tony slid the tray into the oven for the first lunch pizza of the day, and the oven closed on it, and Tony stood in front of the oven with his hand on the door handle for a moment longer than he needed to, feeling the heat through his palm.

· · ·

That night, at nine-thirty, he told Dominic to go.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Go."

Dominic looked at him a second longer than he usually looked at him, and then shrugged, and untied his apron, and washed his hands, and picked up his jacket from the hook, and said, "Night, Tone," and went out the back. The back door did not close true, and Dominic lifted it with his shoulder without thinking about it. He had learned the door from Tony. He had not noticed learning it. The door thunked into its frame the way it thunked into its frame and the bolt slid home on its own and Tony was alone in the shop.

He did the closing. He wiped down the prep line. He broke down the slicer and washed the pieces and set them on the towel to dry. He turned off the oven. The oven made the sound it made when it was turning off, the faint tick of metal cooling, which he had heard twenty thousand times and which was, tonight, just the sound of metal cooling. He put the cash from the register into the zip bag and put the zip bag in the safe in the office and did not count it, because he would count it tomorrow, because the system worked.

Tony came back out to the front.

He stood at the register. He looked at the whiteboard. The Special, in the red that was not red anymore, stood where it had stood since 2004. He did not touch it. He had touched it once today. That had been enough. Tomorrow it would still be there, faded, and he would wipe around it, and his hand would wipe around it the way his hand had wiped around it for twenty years, and tomorrow he would know what his hand was doing. That was the difference. That was all the difference there was going to be.

He turned off the fluorescents in the back. He turned off the lights over the prep line. He turned off the lights over the counter. The shop darkened in the order it darkened.

He walked to the front. He stood at the switch for the neon.

The word OPEN was in red light.

He reached up and threw the switch.

The red went out. The tubes went dark, and the word OPEN stood in the window in its own glass, lit from the streetlight outside, legible to anyone who walked past.

He stood and looked at it.

Outside, someone walked past on the sidewalk. A woman in a coat, with a dog. The dog stopped at the window and looked in at the dark shop and the word OPEN and then moved on, pulled by the leash. The woman did not look in. She had her own things to think about.

Tony picked up his keys from the hook by the door.

He turned around once in the middle of the shop and looked at all of it — the tables, the counter, the whiteboard, the menus in their slot, the pan on the stove that was already clean, and the chair by the back door where his father used to sit and smoke before the smoking laws. His father's chair was still there, empty, and Tony had not moved it in twenty years and had not thought about not moving it — and then he walked to the front door and let himself out and locked it behind him.

From the sidewalk he looked up at the window once.

The word OPEN was in the window.

He walked home.