Thursday, February 01, 2007

Uncle Enzo, Coda

Uncle Enzo sat in the study of his well-protected mansion. He hated that he was mostly immobile, but the stab wounds were healing "better than expected." The study was once used for book reading, but now Uncle Enzo just came to focus on the portrait of his father.


Uncle Enzo's father, Tony, was a second generation American, back when the U.S. existed. Tony's father was a meat packer, and he came home from work everyday dog-tired. Tony vowed that he would never work so much that it would take him away from his family. So, he started a pizza business in Little Italy, New York, New York.


It was a simple business of making pizza based on his mother's recipes, and they became quite popular. He emulated the Asians over in Little China and hired delivery boys to run it over to whomever ordered the pizza. Rather than pay upon delivery, many customers would come in the next day to pay for last night's meal, and for Tony that was just fine.


Uncle Enzo's favorite thing about his father's old business, one that had grown into the pizza place in North America under Uncle Enzo's guidance, was the promise of a hot pizza in half an hour. Of course, when you are only delivering to people you personally know in Little Italy it was a little simpler. If one of Tony's pizzas came after half an hour, Tony invited the customer over to his house for a personally prepared full Italian meal.


Now it was different. The fucking customers won a veritable lottery if a pizza was delivered over half an hour, and then people had to be fired, accounts had to be re-evaluated, and the media ate up the story like starving dogs. But that was the price to pay for destroying all the other pizza companies. Uncle Enzo finished his drink with a salute to the painting, and left the study to go read the daily report on North American pizza delivery times.

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