From my porch with the light on, I watch the Dasher get out of the car filled with six other people. The Dasher looks all around. At first, I thought this was to detect passing cars but concluded it was because they hadn’t ever gotten out of the car to deliver to the door before. “This is the air,” I whispered to myself. What a nice night it was.
With my food – my pizza that I could have ordered from the restaurant’s website but chose to do it this way because I had eight more dollars than usual and didn’t really want the fries I ordered – the driver walks onto the porch of the house across the street. The light is not on over there so I don’t know why that happened.
I want to get the attention of the driver but I am stiff. I am still, weak from hunger. It’s like that one Dane Cook bit where he says something animated in one spot and then his brother steals all of his money.
The neighbor across the street opens the door and says something like, “No, I didn’t order anything from you. You don’t even know me. I hate you, get away from me.”
The Dasher is defeated and turned around. Where to go from here? they think. That was it; this was my chance to show my eighteen friends that we… that we out here.
A slow turmoil. A gaze at the red moon. What a nice night it is to be with friends.
The Dasher looks up and howls. “Seriously, get out of here,” says the neighbor.
My phone rings.
With wonder: “Hello?”
The Dasher asks, “I can’t see the numbers on the houses?”
“Yeah, I can tell. I watched you howl-”
“What?”
We are pretending that the Dasher did not go to the wrong house and did not howl.
“Nothing. I’ll flip my porchlight.”
The Dasher hangs up immediately after only breathing for a few seconds. I’m flipping the light on and off, because of my obsessions and compulsions. I’m thinking about the wording I used before I hung up. I don’t think I will use it again.
My arm is sore. I watch the only two doors on the 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis open up and twenty-five people emerge. They begin to dance and pour drinks on each other while the Dasher runs through them like a sprinkler, choreographed with joy. Dasher and the Dancers – HA! Wow, that’s funny; you should put that in your comedy show.
One starts to sing “That’s Amore” to the beat of a strobe light to the tune of “Old Town Road,” another is holding a phone and rapping out loud, one is legitimately in labor, four of them are playing a Nintendo Switch, another is throwing fries into the air on himself and his friends, eating the fries as they land – I’m sure that the fries were theirs.
I watch the 4.7-star Dasher pick up the fries on the ground and knock on my next door neighbor’s door. For real. Then my door.
“Here you go. They forgot the fries.” I know they did.
“Thank you, that’s okay,” I say. “I think I was supposed to get a drink, too.”
The Dasher is thinking now. The Dasher knows what happened: “I think they forgot the drinks.”
The Dasher looks down. I see a tear fall from his face. I grab a cup, quickly, from the coffee table and place it underneath the eyes, to fill it up with the tears. “That will do.” I pet the Dasher and drink the tears.
I take some of my food, which is all of it, and tip well. Off they all go, dashing through town, French fries on the ground, back in the 1998 Sunoco-stickered Saturn SL2, the fresh infant and the mother from before are now driving. Now that’s a delivery.
As I bite into my corned beef hoagie, I give a great review.
