It was a particularly dark evening. The cloud cover was thick and we were waiting for the last pizza to be done so I could go deliver it to the customer.
“Hey boss! I will be out the door in the next two to three minutes. Then we can get the rest of this clean up done.”
“Sounds good. Let me know when you get back so I can zero out your wallet.”
As I walked out the door, it was an ordinary night. My car was parked at the side of the building. It was kind of chilly outside and my heater barely worked. I set the pizza bag on the passenger seat. Made sure my flashlight still had a good charge and left the parking lot. Traffic was low so it didn’t take me long to navigate down to what we, the locals, called Little Mexico. The one thing that always sucked about Little Mexico was that it was a sketchy little part of town and nobody had porch lights on. So there I was, driving down the road looking like a cop, shining this bright LED flashlight out my window, just to make sure I didn’t pass the address. Its hard to navigate at night when you can’t see the houses. I finally found the address I was looking for and delivered the Pizza. I got a nice tip of about five bucks. On the drive back I noticed that there were headlights in my rearview mirror. I took a couple of turns then checked my rearview again and vehicle was still there. I turned off my headlights and drove into an alley after taking a few more turns and speeding up a little bit to gain some distance. I watched him drive past the alley behind me and in front of me before I pulled out of the alley. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad I had lost him when out of nowhere those same headlights reappeared behind me. I pulled into the liquor store parking lot and waited for the vehicle to pull in.
About a minute went by before I saw the headlights pull in. Blocking my only path for escape, since there was a three foot drop off, in front of me. The guy in the pickup signaled for me to get out of my car. Slowly I stepped out, with my pocket knife at the ready. I approached his truck and asked him if he needed something. As I got to his truck I noticed he had a pistol on his lap pointed at me
“Yeah. Why were you speeding thought the neighborhood?”
“I wasn’t speeding. I was going five over the limit. I work for Pizza Hut and was trying to find an address.” He didn’t believe me and I had to get the bag and the magnetic pizza topper as proof
“Well you need to start paying more attention. We have kids that are out playing, and they tend to have to cross the street. Or play .in it in general.”
I thought to myself, why are your kids out this late in the first place and why the hell do you let them play In the street.
Instead what I said was, “I will pay more attention in the future. Now I apologize, but I have to get back to work. Have a good night.”
I turned around and walked back to my car and waited for him to leave before I pulled out of the parking lot back to my job. I told my boss and he told me that I should have come back and let him handle the situation. The last thirty minutes of work passed without incident and I never heard from the man again.
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