Chapter 1: Chapter 1.
Have you ever regretted something you pushed yourself so hard to do? In my case, I'm not so sure. All I know is that I didn't get what I wanted when I moved out here to Las Rosa. I aspired to be some great actor, be in the big pictures, become a celebrity. But that didn't happen. Now I'm just delivering pizzas making ends meet to help cover my half of the rent just outside the city proper. The only regret I have is that I didn't try hard enough. Or maybe I did and just didn't have the skills.
Sigh.
I did drop out of college to move out to the western United States. So I guess I have to make the best of it. I do miss home.
Beep. Beep.
…
Beep. Beep.
I slouched my hand over to the alarm clock on the nightstand near my bed. Where is this bloody thing? Ahh. Got it.
8:00 AM.
Oh yeah, it's Saturday. I told them I can come in early.
My name is Simon. Simon Moretto. A 20 year old college drop out. I work at a pizza parlor as a delivery boy while trying to find acting gigs. To be frank, I haven't found many of them. Too many aspiring actors and actresses flock here from around the world trying to be the next one and it's just hard. You might as well be a fish swimming with a school of sharks. Or whatever it is called when sharks move together. I was able to land a gig for a local tv store but it barely paid enough to last me a month. It's hard out here in Las Rosa. One of the most expensive cities in the world. But you know, it has its charm. There's a couple months, next to the ocean, nice trees, cool summer. I myself have never seen anything crazy. I have never been robbed but then again I live in a n okay part of town. At least I think so. Las Rosa is home of the movie industry, the gambiling industry and pretty much everything you can think of. So you can expect some sort of shady activity to go down. I was told Las Rosa was the gang capital of the United States but like I mentioned before I haven't seen anything shady like that.
I live with a roommate, a girl around my age who works at a waitress in Downtown. Our apartment is pretty small but it's big enough for two bedrooms so we get our space. We normally eat what she takes from her shifts and her boyfriend visits a lot as well. He's a swell guy. We live out in Lutea, about 15 miles or so north of Downtown. It's an okay neighborhood and I moved out here mainly for the cheap rent. We don't have a garage so my bicycle was parked just by the front door. I got up and got ready quickly and made my way down the stairs from the second floor with my bike.
My God. It's about 90 degrees out here. Good thing the pizza parlor is just down the block. I would go crazy if I had to ride my bike to make deliveries but thankfully our store has their own delivery cars.
I opened my phone to check the time. 8:14 AM. I should be able to get there around 8:30 just in time to help open the joint.
I began to ride through the streets of Lutea with the air blowing in my face. The palm trees are a nice change of pace from the evergreen on the East Coast. I have been here a little over a year and I still haven't been able to do all what this city has to offer. Granted, my dreams kind of went downhill when dropping out of acting school. I thought I had it made when I was offered a nice script for a big commercial. Which by the way, I was told that was the big stepping stone I needed to take. I'm not trusting another agent saying that anymore.
But now I'm stuck with this pizza delivery job until something good comes up. I'm trying to save enough to just go back to school and hopefully I can make it. Anyways, I'm glad our pizza parlor is just a nice view away from the mountains. Anyone can grab a slice and just look out towards the window and eat in peace. With all the news of gang activity in nearby areas, I'm surprised no one decided to ever rob my workplace. I mean, I heard places like these are the easiest to hit but if it had before I'm glad I wasn't around to witness it.
I brought the buje through the backdoor leading into the kitchen and used some sort of zip tie to tie the bike to one of the shelves in the back. Can't be too safe.
"Thanks for working early today Simon", a voice said coming from the front of the restaurant.
That was my boss, Sal Bruno. The pizza parlor was named after his father. Bruno's Pizza. So you can say he's part of the family pizza business.
"Yeah no problem Sal. You know I can always use the money" I said back
He laughs.
"I know one day you'll get on the big screen and get out of this place and when you do, don't forget about the little people. The people that help you grow" he laughs
"Man you know I won't do that. I told you I would eat here even when I'm famous"
Whenever I do get famous. One can hope.
We finished setting up the restaurant to open at 10:00 AM. We prepared the sauces, we sliced up the vegetables, and we always prepare enough dough in the morning to prepare about 15 pizzas. No one really calls early in the morning to get pizzas unless it's a special order but it's enough for us to be able to rest and after about the 8th pizza we keep pressing the dough.
Oddly enough, being very close to Everwood, we never get anyone famous coming here. Normally, it's just highschool kids, people coming to lunch from work, and many of them repeat customers. We also never had to deliver to anyone famous. Which is a bummer because I would love to connect and get numbers you know.
It's now 10:00 AM. We are officially opened. Unless we're doing some sort of seasonal special we normally won't see our first customer until about 10:30 AM. The restaurant isn't a very fancy one. We have a front counter with the kitchen in the back. The main area has about 8 tables just enough to fit a few families and to stay busy if we need to. So now we begin cooking up our first couple pizzas. We usually put them out in the front counter for anyone to order just a slice. We normally do pepperoni and a cheese pizza cause those are our most popular choices. Of course we do offer full size pizzas as well but I normally see them during dinner and separate slices are our big money maker.
Time went by and we just had a few customers coming in during lunch. I normally never work this early and I usually come in about 12 which coincidentally is always my first delivery as well. The first delivery for me is at 12:30 PM and usually when I arrive the order comes through and I'm usually the one delivering it.
While I'm not complaining about our repeat customer, it's just that I have never seen this person before. Normally you would have to pay when the pizza arrives or come pre-pay and have it delivered to you. But for this customer, it's already been done. The only customer in our books that happened to have their daily pizzas paid for who knows how long. All I know is that they prepaid enough to not have to worry about it. They do leave tips though. It's already included in the fees that they paid with. To be frank, I believe this customer is probably financing our restaurant. At least in a good way, they're paying my paychecks. So thank you, whoever you are.
The order came in. "Hatterfield Apartment 203 - Usual".
And that's what it says every time we receive it on our computers. To be honest, I think we are the only few restaurants in the area at least in Lutea to start using computers connected to the internet to make orders. It's actually pretty nifty. Makes everything much easier when it comes to calculating and placing orders.
The usual pizza is a large cheese pizza and a large cola. It sounds like it's enough for a couple people but I believe it's for one person.
"Don't forget the keys in the office" Sal yelled out when I was beginning to pack the pizza into the box. I grabbed the cola out of the fridge and made my way into our small office in the back of the kitchen to grab the keys for our delivery car.
Time to use the AC I said to myself. It's probably close to 100 degrees now but it's still pretty hot and glad I'm not riding the bike to the delivery. The Hatterfield Apartments is about 3 miles west so it's not that long of a drive especially since we're not in the city proper.
After about 10 minutes I arrived at the apartment complex and I parked. It's not one of those fancy apartments that many celebrities are living in but they look like a normal apartment complex to me. Maybe a little more fancier than mine. What this complex has is a swimming pool. I don't even have a swimming pool but then again I don't even swim.
I get out of the car and begin walking up the stairs to 203. Which is at the end of the complex once we reached the top. I guess I wasn't paying attention so when I reached the top I tripped and dropped the pizza. But it didn't fall too hard and it was still nice in the box. As for the cola, still in my head.
As I looked up I could see a tall man standing right in front of me. Long brown hair with a face of a movie star. He's also pretty dressed up and what appears to be a nice jet black suit with stripes on the corner of his jacket. Wait, is he wearing a jacket in this weather. This guy must be crazy.
"Tsk. Watch where you're going kid." He said out loud.
I apologized. He began to go down the stairs while I'm trying to pick up the pizza box.
"You'll always stay a delivery boy" I can hear him whisper as he goes down the stairs.
"Man. What a punk" I said to myself. I gathered myself together and made my way to the end of the complex. As I came close, the door was barely open.
My heart started beating. Am I about to witness something? Was the man that I bumped into responsible? My head was going all over the place. I have never witnessed anything like that but I knew people would talk about these kinds of things all the time and I would always think they were just joking or over-exaggerating. I opened the door slowly and called out to see if anyone was home.
Hello?
I opened the door much more and entered slowly. I'm in a long hallway and in the distance I can see a really bright light. I walked closer and for some reason I still have the pizza and cola in my hands. I don't know what to expect at the end but I'm already invested in this. I don't know what I'm still walking if the cops see me in here now I'm going to be a suspect for something I don't even know what's going on!
I reached the end. It looked to be a living room with just one large desk and a number of different computer screens. Not regular computer screens, not like the big ones we have at the restaurant but these are the new flat screen ones. I mean these are expensive and not just one but too many for me to count at the moment but they are mounted everywhere. Like what you see in one of those sci-fi movies.
At the front of the desk I can see a small-size girl sitting in front of her computer screens. She may look small but I feel like she's much older than her size can show. She had long purple hair and it looks like she's dressed in some doll-like clothes. Where am I?
"Umm.." I called out
"Your pizza delivery is here."
Is this our number one customer? A girl who would eat pizza daily?
She quickly turned around. Wow. She's cute.
"Che.." She said out to me
"Did my Goddamn brother leave the door open?
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