Pizza Man (First Published 21/4/05)

At Icelands you get some very strange people. People who smell, people who are rude and people who are just loud and very, very strange indeed. It is most entertaining when other members of the public are shouted at across the store or one of these loud people start a conversation about the rising cost of peas with them. They don’t know what to do. The loud people confuse them and in doing so make me laugh. What doesn’t make me laugh are when they talk to me. I’m busy and they try and talk to me. Once a woman shouted at me, when I was less than a foot away, “the only time a man should see a woman bleed is during childbirth.” While I completely agree, I don’t appreciate it being spat into my face by a elderly wench with halitosis. However this week I’m going to going to focus on one, probably the only one, customer I particularly like.

This man is ‘Pizza Man’.

He does not look like a pizza, as his name may lead you to believe. Neither does he sell nor make pizzas. In actuality, he buys them. Every Monday, at about half past five, he enters. He heads directly for the ‘twofortwopound’ pizza cabinet because that is, after all, what he has come in to buy. The ‘twofortwopoundpizza’ deal is exactly what it says it is, two pizzas for two pounds. Please note: It must be said exactly as I have written it. After collecting his pizzas he wanders to the till, occasionally diverting momentarily to pick up another item such as milk, only to return to the inevitable. He heads to my till.

He has been coming in and buying pizzas every week since I started working there. It is possible that he was buying them even before I started working there, as I found out recently that people do, in fact, have a life before they come into mine. Shocking. I used to avoid working on the checkout as much as possible because it meant coming into contact with the public. Now since my hours have been cut I have come to graciously accept my duty and can be found, bored out of my wits, sitting in Icelands on Monday and Wednesday, 4 ‘til 6.

Over the long and dull months both Pizza Man and I have found his buying of Italian delicacy increasingly amusing. Whenever he comes in and lays the pizza boxes down on the conveyor belt, we look at and greet each other in the traditional way. ‘Hi’. We look at each other and smile. It’s a friendly meeting. Our eyes make contact and, for a second, time stops. We are in a world filled only with twofortwopoundpizzas and friendly smiles. Then time starts up again with a beep of the checkout. “That’s two-” I begin to say, but he already knows and the two pound coins are in my hand. It was as if he read my mind. A special connection of the psyche where we are both the same person. I put the change in our till and hand him his receipt. We smile again, he packs his bag and leaves. Until next week.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if our relationship could go on further. To a new level. If he was more than a customer. A lot more. I imagine what it would be like if he invited me round one time. For dinner. What would we have? Something exotic? Something European? Something round and flat? I wonder to myself if he has many friends or even people, a woman, who’s more than a friend. A lot more. I have never seen him with a woman. I have only seen him with a man before. Somebody who looks like him but with black hair instead of ginger. Somebody who wears a similar shirt and tie. And trousers. Somebody who looks exactly his type.

But what if he is his type. What if they are each other’s type? What if he’s gay! And I’ve been staring lovingly into his eyes and smiling lovingly at him. I don’t want him to get any wrong ideas. I don’t want him to get any ideas, let alone wrong ones. I’d better be careful from now on.

But he’s gone again. Deep inside I know he’ll never invite me to share his pizzas. I’ll always be his checkout operator. And he’ll always be just another customer. Just another customer? No. He’ll be more than that.

A lot more.