Sal was a stout man with a fear of birds. His chin protruded from his skull, and had scattered blackheads with the occasional ingrown hair. He had very nice teeth, though, yellowed from the fountains drinks he’d trade for water. And on his head were a few seemingly infinitesimal wisps of hair desperate to cover the speckled sunspots.

He owned a pizza shop off a pit stop contiguous to a speedy road in forlorn Arizona. Entering the shop, you trade the smell of the sharp humidity for microwaved dough. Dry shrubs permeated the entrance and endowed the windows with a dusty residue. There weren’t many buildings off the road besides his, with the exception of a couple of Inns chipping away some miles down. His shop didn’t have a name or a trademark, just a flickering, gaudy green sign that read “Pizza.” His was the more arresting establishment among the others. Sal observed the customers, some regular, most new. All just truckers on their shift, breaking to grab a quick meal to wash down the Adderall.

Sal never got involved in the front of the store, usually just watching from the back kitchen where a sheer cloth covered a peephole. The only sign of him known to the front of the restaurant is when the peephole cloth would billow from the gust of the shop entrance. You’d catch sight of his beady eye staring back at you.

One regular is a girl with a bad knee who only orders cheeseless slices because “Nobody has better marinara sauce than Sal,” apparently. Of course, this wasn’t said to Sal but to Reggie, his cashier. She’d only known him by association with her favorite place to get her strange cravings for cakey marinara sauce and dough. Her regular appearance was an enigma to Sal since only motels and gas stations existed here. No real place to call home for miles. He had doubts that she would travel miles for microwaved pizza. She wasn’t attractive to Sal, but she had a nice smile. Toothy, yet, convivial enough for Sal to deem it as ‘lovely.’ From what he’s seen, the ugly girl had an awkward hair length and wore tacky printed sundresses with open-toed sandals. Even with her shoddy knee, she’d come in languidly bobbing up and down, extemporizing with the rhythm that played through her earbuds. She’d only take one bud out to speak to Reggie. Grabbing her dry pizza slice, she restores the earbud and hobbles out of the store, head still bobbing.

There was always a sports game playing on a small antenna tv box behind the counter. He didn’t care for sports but cheered whenever someone scored so he’d belong to a team no matter what. Behind the kitchen was where he slept. A room built a bit lower than the rest of the building, tucked into the Arizona sand. The only small window in the room kissed the ceiling and was built at the same level as the road. He would listen to the gravel crush beneath the wheels and the horns caterwauling from the trucks on the road, lulling him to sleep in familiarity. His bed was a moth-eaten sack of feathers. A stack of newspapers and books with broken spines towered on either side of his bed– a lousy counterfeit of a bedframe. The room had discarded trophies from his days as a swimmer. Picture frames of old flames and friends too. He didn’t like looking at it and didn’t keep it for nostalgia. He only used it for decoration. To prove there was a life lived before the Sundays he’d spend yelling at the birds that sat on the stoops of the boxy-looking Church across the road.

Business died in the summer. Greasy pizza didn’t mix with dry Arizona air. He had a nephew, Kelsey, come over each summer to work for a couple of bucks an hour. He’d sleep at an inn down the road since Sal didn’t offer any sort of hospitality. Kelsey was a tall, pale, know-it-all with a meretricious charm. He knew nothing of the real world. Invariably, his trust-fund-baby bubble burst every summer he’d aid Sal in his endeavors to clean out the rat traps outside. Kelsey was good at bitch work. He would organize his newspapers, reheat pizza, mop the floors, clean windows, and change the dates on the bottles of orange juice they sold in the front. Sal was cheap.

He had gotten himself together the last few summers since his acceptance letter arrived. His black, rakish curls and clean-shaven face complimented his anaemic complexion. Kelsey went on a streak in his late teens of rejecting the prosperous life he had. Claiming he didn’t redeem any of the nepotism from Sal’s sister-in-law– Kesley’s mother. He’d since then graduated from his time at Columbia. Cargo shorts were now business slacks and nice tennis shoes replaced his flappy track shoes. Now, he’d speak of his year in New York. Urging the neo-liberal lifestyle he’s undergone with his effeminate gestures, peremptorily flicking his wrist and dwelling on the importance of his studies.

He always referred to Sal as Sal, not Uncle. It didn’t matter that they’d shared each summer for 16 years. Since Kelsey was 8, Sal was the boss, not the uncle. But, it kept his spine straight and taught him a work ethic you couldn’t find at a Starbucks.

...

Out of a strange singularity– in a moment of hospitality, Sal invites Kelsey for a couple of sodas in his room behind the kitchen.

To his surprise, Kelsey saunters in drunk. Struggling, but eventually sitting beside Sal’s newspapers and dust bunnies. He thought he was just grabbing two soft drinks from the side machine in the front. He shoves the cup in Sal’s face. It sloshes a bit. Kelsey’s cup smelled of vinous soda.

“Don’t worry, yours is clean. Just orange soda.” Sal was hesitant.

Kelsey was invited, but Sal felt he was invading and wondered if this was a mistake. Blood or not, this was new territory, and Kelsey wasn’t even truly there. Sal enjoyed his filth. Dried ketchup and chipped floorboards. Dust in places truly indiscernible to the human eye. The leaky concrete ceiling and the cracked china he tried to save in bubble wrap with the occasional fruit fly on his shelf. His bathroom too. Covered by a plaid curtain, revealing a lidless toilet with the lever to flush attached to the ceiling. Though everything seemed disarray, the unabridged chaos was meditative to Sal’s routine and peace of mind. He didn’t need Kelsey to make an unfair judgment on him. He wanted to be left alone.

Sal grabs the drink.

Kelsey rummages in a pile of dirty shirts then teases a loose thread from one of Sal’s flannels beside his cot. He tightly overwound the thread around his finger until it turned purple. He puts it right between his eyes and laughs in amusement.

“Sal, this place is a cash cow waiting to be sliced open!” He was wasted and drinking from one of the foggy, plastic restaurant cups. Sal’s tone was contemptuous in regard to that, “What do you mean?”

“Y’know, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” his point made with his drunk, bulging eyes.

Sal didn’t see an issue with his place. It ran right and sold fast. Sal gave him tactless grunts as he continued spouting the “possibilities” the future held. Sal leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, leaving the surplus of his round belly to squeeze between his thighs. He listens to Kelsey explain.

High off his marketing degree, he was approached by a man who exhausted the revenue of an ‘investment club’–a plan that could make him millions. You would think after four years at Columbia; he could smell a Ponzi. Kelsey then considered utilizing their family-owned, dried-up shack off the side of a desolate road in Arizona. He’d turn it into a Fortune 500 restaurant chain, expanding into his capitalist desires. Unfortunately, Kelsey was dumber than he thought. Though he’d grown to hate indulging in a capitalist society, Sal was a businessman at heart. So he knew the moment he connected the misfortune of almost being scammed to building a pizza empire he was good for nothing but changing the dates on bottles.

He finished his story with a tight, eager smile, and his hands stretched open with laudable expectations. “It’s a dump in here,” Kelsey says, looking around. “You haven’t even fixed that picture frame hanging in the front.”

He was right. A crooked picture frame on its last limbs hung in the front, picturing a young Sal opening shop in 1992. Kelsey spat into his cup. The glob of mucus buoyed above the sweet liquor. Sal didn’t feel inclined to pacify Kelsey’s feelings. At that moment, Kelsey needed to be gone and out. Sal felt anything but magnanimous to Kelsey’s antics. It wasn’t about him teaching him a lesson, either. His place wasn’t his to touch.

And so, Kelsey walks home on the side of the portentous roadway. Arizona’s night was buzzing with cicadas. His footing was lethargic as he swayed, befuddled. The headlights of passing trucks accentuated his drunk silhouette.

Sal sat there. Sitting with the thoughts Kelsey had practically handed him to think about. He got up and grabbed his toolbox. Sal was a stubborn man who couldn’t let his 24-year-old nephew win.

Face to face with the crooked frame, his hand stretched back. He was conscientious to hit the nail right on its head. In one swift motion, he misses and hits his hand. Beneath the head of the hammer, he could feel two snaps. Grunting and groaning, his hand throbs, and clutches it to his chest as he bends in agony. The ugly girl walks in.

...

Sal loved hospitals. The only place he loved besides his own. He loved the smell of surgery and the pudding cups they gave out. The feeling of being tended to, people ensuring he’s kept alive throughout the night. He loved the nurses. Someone who was required to care for and talk to him, to ask how he was feeling, even if it was on a pain scale. Not worrying about anything–Not wondering if his nephew made it home alive. Ignoring the unutterable scenes that would pass through urgent care doors or the despairing figures next to him divided by a paper curtain. The seniles that fortuitously lingered in the hallway, IV drip attached without a clue.

Sal sees by his side the ugly girl with a lovely smile. The one she gave feebly as she ushered him to her car and the one she mustered as the doctor wrapped his hand. The insides of his stomach were stinging from the lack of food, the only noise being the soft ambiance of a baseball game. The doctor continued to tend his hand, and a home run was hit. Sal jumps. Throwing his hands above his head, away from the doctor, in excitement. He cheers.

The lovely, ugly girl turned to him. “I didn’t know you were a fan.”

His eyes were still on the screen as he again dropped his broken hand to the doctor’s care. He smiles almost imperceptibly, “I’m not.”