Robbie’s Pizza was originally published in the Winter 2021 issue of This Wonderful World Magazine.
I’m in New York and everything’s blue. It’s sometime after golden hour, I’ve just landed here, and everything seems the same all over, remade in its own image—everything smells of bad news, of cheap herbs and cheese, of the madness of signs. But there’s a calm in the margins. It’s a different kind of desert here.
You’re only a little bit taller than me, and you always will be. I get off the train and you meet me where you said you would. You live here now, so you wear a black jacket with black boots, but otherwise you look the same as always—there’s just one more New Yorker in the world. You’re taller than me, you’re from New York, and you’re 20 years old. You could be anybody.
We walk back towards the dorm that you hang out in with our high school friends, and we laugh, sometimes at ourselves, though we don’t acknowledge it—how different we are, how we’re mostly friends now because we have been at some point. We share in the secret order of friendship, constantly wondering if we’re running somehow behind the other.
“When you see the guys,” you say as I put my phone, my wallet, my car keys into a bin for the metal detector, “it’s gonna be just like old times.”
The old Black man behind the glass waves us through and we get in the elevator, going up, up, up as though back in time. When I get out, it’s depressing—people live like this, and they want to. It’s called an investment: This, too, could be yours.
“It’s the one all the way in the back and to the right,” you say as we walk towards it, already halfway there, as though you’re restoring the contours of your own mind. You know that you do this from time to time. You’ve told me about it.
“Just wait,” you say. “Nothing’s changed.” Together, we stop in front of the door, but already something’s different. For one thing, you’ve seen what’s behind it, and I still belong fully to this side. You knock on it a second time already, and it cracks open on its own. It had been left unlatched. Did you do that when you left for the station?
“Come in,” a voice calls from inside. “We’re just finishing up.”
“What’d I tell you?” You laugh. “Just like old times.”
Denny’s a pop sensation now, an icon, a business major. He’s putting the final touches on a promotional project with Schraeder. There’s a dollar-store disco ball, some studio monitors, an old cup of ramen noodles. Schraeder smells like pot and looks like money, but none of us can see that yet. Denny opens up his gestures and smiles real wide.
“What’s up?” He asks both of us with a grin.
“Oh man, I’m so excited for this trip,” you laugh, rubbing your hands together. It’s cold outside, and you brought it in with you anyway.
“Yeah, I thought it’d be fun to just chill before everybody comes through tonight,” Denny says, rubbing his hands together now, too. It’s cold outside, it’s cold inside, the whole world a snapshot of New York.
“Who all’s coming?”
“TJ, Jonas, Robbie,” Denny started.
“Any girls?”
“Maybe,” Denny says. “I can see if Rebekah can bring some friends.”
Schraeder tears the headphones from his ears in the other room as though he’s had enough, he can’t stand anymore, but he’s just stoned.
“Yo, while I’m bouncing this I’m gonna run to the store.”
“Word,” you and Denny say, and then Denny says, “I’m gonna go smoke.”
“Ah, word,” you say again before we pile into the elevator. You, Denny, and I are squeezed together tightly, but Schraeder is big, takes up most of the tiny car. He’s oblivious. The world stops and starts, and sometimes he’s lucky enough to see it. He reeks of marijuana. It’s beautiful, in its way.
“You look like you found yourself,” Denny tells me as we reach the ground floor, and I hold my breath until the door slides open and we all squeeze out of it. I peer at myself in a small window that adorns a secret door as we walk outside. I look like I’m visiting New York. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
“Aight, I’ll be back in a few,” Schraeder says recklessly as he hoists the headphones back onto his ears and marches onward. The bodega run, that most blessed sacrament.
“Word,” Denny says. He takes a cigarette from the pristine pack he brought down with him and flips it into his mouth.
“Hey, can I get one of those?” You ask him excitedly. You’re fiending.
“Dude, how do you never have cigarettes?” Denny laughs. “You smoke more than I do.” It’s the same conversation every time I see you both in the same place. He fingers around the inside of the cardboard and lures one out, hands it off to you, and the two of you take turns fumbling with the lighter, your hands shaking. You’re both underdressed.
“I just buy loosies,” you say between puffs, providing pauses for words to materialize themselves in. It’s a gamble, but you know the risks. “I’m trying to quit.” You pause again. “Oh yeah,” you finally turn to me, “if you take any pictures of me smoking, just don’t tag me. My mom doesn’t know.”
“Your mom’s friends with all of us on Facebook,” I laugh, now rubbing my hands together, too. I’ve bought into the ritual, 15 stories down—as above, so below.
“Yeah, just tell us not to take pictures,” Denny laughs, and then he shivers. He stands on his tiptoes atop the brick perimeter of the building’s bad shrubbery. He smokes, exhales, takes a deep breath. You do the same, like a race to the bottom, an endlessly addictive call-and-response. I don’t smoke. I’m 20 years old, I’m in New York, I’m a little bit shorter than both of you. My whole life’s ahead of me, the world my oyster.
“I’m so excited about this trip,” you repeat.
“I thought you quit,” someone suddenly says behind Denny.
“Robbie!” A grin breaks across my face like hot water boiling over. Finally, someone dressed for the weather. Robbie gives me a hug and asks, “Are you going to ask me if I got new glasses?” The joke is that I didn’t.
“We were taking a break from a song,” Denny says. He looks at the cigarette before casting it down. “I’m gonna quit after this project’s over.”
A wry smile begins to spread over Robbie’s face, slowly hijacking all of his features, until finally he’s in a full-blown smirk. “I don’t care if you smoke or not.” Robbie holds up a camera to take a picture of you without looking at you. It’s an old film camera, wrapped around his neck. I haven’t seen this one before. You look from Robbie to me, then back to Denny. There’s a permanent smile etched into your face. You were smiling when God made you.
Schraeder returns to the dorm after us and disappears into his room with an Arizona iced tea and a hot sandwich that smells like vomit.
“They sell those everywhere here,” Denny says. He cuts through the group, lowering his eyes on me, as though he’s letting me in on a magnanimous secret, as though this information belongs to me alone.
“They have those at home, too,” I say about the tea. Denny was talking about the sandwich.
“Man, how’ve you been?” You ask Robbie. “I think it’s been as long since I’ve seen Robbie as you.” You look at me with a goofy grin, then you look back at him. This world is so big, we might never grow into it.
“I’ve been good,” Robbie says in his mellow way. “Working on music,” he says, and he means it. Asking anything more of Robbie feels like a shakedown. He’s a natural presence. It becomes too easy to forget he doesn’t even live here—every time you see him, he’s always just gotten off a four-hour train ride from Boston. He’s got a life there, a real job, a girlfriend.
Suddenly the door flings open and people spill across its threshold in an intoxicated jumble—a short, lanky blond man wearing a secondhand peacoat carries a tall, ruby-lipped young woman in one arm and leads a lace-ruffled young woman in the other. One laughs, then another one, and then finally another one, so that the entire spectacle is doing its best just to keep up with itself.
“What’s up, K,” Denny murmurs beneath the racket. He shoots a glance to those of us who don’t know what’s going on—all of us, we realize at the same time—and then nods, as if to say, Give it a second. Denny lets us all in at once. K and the girls stumble into one of the bedrooms attached to the foyer, and the door slams shut. When one opens, one closes.
“He doesn’t really speak English,” Denny says. Denny pulls the cork from a half-empty bottle of wine and takes a sip, then offers it to Robbie and me. You take it from him and guzzle down at least a glass like you’re doing shots. There’s a YouTube video playing on somebody’s laptop.
“Well he smells like shit,” you say, and then you croak. You’re drunk already—it doesn’t take much—but you’re right. The distinct smell of body odor lingers in the air behind him.
“We don’t know much yet,” Denny says. “He just showed up this semester.” We all look into K’s bedroom through the gap in the door frame, but we can’t see inside. We think about getting closer when suddenly it swings open and the women burst into the foyer. They look back into K’s room as he struts out of it. You, me, Denny, and Robbie all look at each other. The three of them speak French for a little bit.
“Can somebody take our picture?” K suddenly asks in a thick accent, sticks out his phone.
“I’ll take your picture.” I take the phone—they’ve got better cameras up here—and K kisses the first girl on the lips, then the second. Laughter is a messy thing. They both run out the door, as though they’d been waiting for this moment all night, and all of us watch as K finally pulls a chair from beneath the table and collapses into it, his hair a tousled field of straw, a stupid grin lathered on both of his cheeks like it’s made out of butter.
“French girls.”
Denny shoots another glance in our direction. This is Denny’s language, language which speaks of language. It’s only real when he lets you know it is, or else if he doesn’t.
K asks if he might have some of the wine. Denny passes the bottle. I’m not drinking, Robbie’s not drinking, you’re already close to the edge.
“We’re gonna have to go get more,” Denny says to K. He looks at Robbie and me.
“I’ll drink if you do,” Robbie tells me, bracing his camera with both hands. He looks down into it as though he’s just used it to take a mental image. “It’s a special occasion.”
“We can get that halal I was telling you about, too,” Denny tells us, then pivots, “How’s the wine, K?”
“Do you want my real opinion?” K mutters back hazily, resting the bottle on the table. K cocks a grin, looks at me, mouths, “Utter shit.” He’s pulled one over on everybody.
“Did you text Rebekah?” You ask Denny. Your hair is messy from running your hands through it, your eyes are glassy, your face is flushed—you’re warming up.
“She said she got drunk at brunch,” Denny laughs. The conversation’s over now, he makes it that way. “We going?”
It’s even colder outside now. First Denny has to get money from the ATM, and we all pile into the little glass booth with him. We’re doing the same thing that homeless people do, but they won’t kick us out. You, me, Robbie, Denny, and K. Schraeder came with us this time, too.
“Weak ass crew!” somebody yells as they go past. They bang on the glass. You laugh. You always laugh first. You laughed at God when he was making you. We all look at ourselves with the same critical eye, thinking how different we are from one another, and then we laugh. We laugh loud in the little glass booth, and then we laugh loud outside of it. We’re not even a crew.
We walk towards the liquor store in a line—it’s easier that way—and K tells Robbie and me that he’s 27, a French language student, just here for the semester. He looks like David Spade from “Just Shoot Me,” except in a fedora, and Robbie tells him that. You wouldn’t think that K cared, except that he knows exactly what Robbie’s talking about. He gives us a dazed grin. He’s drunk. I would be, too, if it were my third degree.
You walk up ahead of us with Denny and Schraeder. “I love this city,” you say over and over again. We finally get to the liquor store, but through the window it looks like it’s being held up. Some people inside peer at us with terror in their eyes as they motion for us to go away.
“I think we should go to another one,” Denny says. “I know another one.”
“Can we get some food?” You ask.
“We’re gonna get halal, dude,” Denny says candidly. We’re all wondering whether it was a robbery.
“Is that Marcel?” I shout suddenly as Marcel walks past us in the opposite direction. Everybody looks at me, even the people on the other side of the street. None of you know Marcel, but you all seem excited for me as he takes out one of his earphones. I’m smiling at Marcel, and Marcel smiles at me. “How long are you in the city?” He asks me.
We stop and get dollar pizza. You don’t want to wait in front of one of the gyro carts with an empty stomach, and you drop a slice of it on the sidewalk. You pick it up and eat it. “If I’m gonna do it, I’d rather do it while I’m drunk,” you say, as though if you don’t do it now, someone might make you later. We all stand around and watch you, like we’re watching something at the zoo, like we’re watching one another watch you.
The pizzeria sign is a big full moon cut into 8 slices like a pizza pie. In the middle, all it says is “Robbie’s Pizza.”
“You think you can get a picture of me in front of this sign?” Robbie asks, giving me the camera. I look through the viewfinder. Robbie smiles subtly as I take the picture and the flash goes off. People walk in and out of it. The film rolls itself back. Somewhere in the world, there’s a picture of Robbie in front of a sign that says “Robbie’s Pizza” where there wasn’t before.
“Two Brothers is better,” you say. The madness of signs.
