Pizza Dilemma

           “Where’s the meat?”

           “What do you mean?”

           “I mean,” said Sarah, looking at the array of pizzas lining the boardroom table, “where’s Ed’s barbeque chicken? He won’t be happy if we forgot.”

           Ross pushed up his glasses and did a double-take. There were eight pizzas. Two pepperoni, two cheese, two vegetarian. No, four vegetarian. Where were the two barbeque chicken?

           “That kid,” said Ross. “He messed up our order!”

           Ross knew he was going to get blamed for this. Sure, it was just a casual lunch for some clients. Who would make a big deal over pizza? Ed would. And it happened to come at a bad time.

           This would be another strike against him, Ross thought. His high-strung boss Ed had been getting annoyed with him lately. It started a couple weeks ago when Ross was thrown into doing a presentation in front of some corporate bigwigs from headquarters. He had done his best with only fifteen minutes notice, but it didn’t go great. Ed had not been pleased.

           “What are we going to do?” said Ross, looking out the window. A hard rain was coming down and the city looked dreary and gray.

           “Do you still have the number for the pizza place? You can trying calling them back,” said Sarah.

           “The lunch is in fifteen minutes,” said Ross. This situation was starting to sound all too familiar. “They won’t have it here in time.”

           “We can try?”

           Ross got out his cellphone and redialed.

           “Hello, no, I don’t want to make an order. I want you to fix my order. Your employee, who tracked in muddy footprints by the way, just delivered the wrong pizzas to me. I asked for barbeque chicken and I got a bunch of vegetarians!”

           “I’m sorry about that, sir,” said the employee on the other end of the phone. It sounded like another teenager. “Did you check the order before you paid?”

           “What does that have to do with anything?” Ross glared the way he would if he was having a face-to-face confrontation.

           “That’s our policy, sir. It’s the customer’s responsibility to verify that the order is correct before paying.”

           Ross’s temperature was rising. “Look kid, I don’t want to hear you reading off your policy to me. I’m a busy guy. I’m an employee of a major insurance broker, ok? I just want my pizzas.”

           He looked to Sarah for affirmation. She gave him a cautious thumb’s up.

           “Are you making a new order?”

           “My pizzas are sitting somewhere in your restaurant and I need them delivered five minutes ago. Is this your first service job? You’re going to learn quickly to make the customer happy.”

           There was a pause. “Did you want to speak to the manager?”

           Ross was fuming. But this pizza joint was his best option. “If that’s what it takes.”

           The employee put Ross on hold.

           “Maybe we should just make a new order,” offered Sarah. “That might be faster.”

           Ross ignored her. “If the pizzas are already made, this will be the fastest option.” He sighed a moment later. “What’s taking them so long?”

           Sarah shrugged. Their options were quickly diminishing.

           After a few moments the manager picked up.

           “Hello sir? Are you the fellow who made the order from Acro Insurance?”

           “Is this the manager?”

           “Yes sir. I understand there was some confusion about your order.”

           “Confusion on your part, that’s right. I’m missing two barbeque chicken pizzas.”

           “I heard, yes. Well, I just had the chance to listen to your original phone call.”

           “You what?”

           “We have our calls recorded for quality assurance, so I went back to check your order.”

           Ross nearly lost it. “You have time to do that, but you don’t have time to fix the problem?”

           “On the original call you said you wanted eight pizzas in total, and I quote, two pepperoni, two cheese, and the rest vegetarian. If you’d like to make another order sir—”

           Ross hung up.

           “Unbelievable. This is a waste of time.”

           Sarah agreed. Lunch started in ten minutes.

           “Well,” said Sarah laughing, “Ed smokes so much he probably wouldn’t taste the difference between vegetarian pizza and barbeque chicken.”

           “Maybe not,” said Ross, smiling too.

           “We could just not mention the mix-up. And if Ed asks, we’ll say we made a mistake. It’s not the end of the world.”

           But Ross was done with making mistakes. “I won’t give Ed the satisfaction of digging in to me again in front of everyone. Not even over pizza.”

           “Then what do you want to do?”

           Ross thought a moment. He was going to get Ed his barbeque chicken pizza, one way or another.

           “Did you bring tofu again for your lunch today?” Ross asked.

           Sarah looked a little worried. “Yes. Why?”

           “Bring it. And grab the bottle of barbeque sauce in the fridge while you’re there. We need to get to work.”

*         *         *

           “This is silly,” said Sarah. “Nobody is going to believe this is barbeque chicken. Have you even had tofu before?”

           “Hopefully Ed hasn’t,” said Ross.

           He was just putting on the finishing touches. They had sliced up Sarah’s tofu into irregular chicken-shaped pieces and soaked them in barbeque sauce. A lot of barbeque sauce. The tofu had quickly gained a nice brown color. Next they had scattered it over two of the four vegetarian pizzas. From a distance they looked good. The taste, on the other hand—

           “Just like chicken,” said Ross, proud of his work. “And perfect timing. Less than two minutes to go.”

           Sarah said nothing.

           “And if Ed doesn’t like it, he can blame the pizza place,” said Ross.

           “Or me,” Sarah said. “I chose the pizza place, remember?”

           “You did, didn’t you?” Ross smiled. “Well, I guess we’re in this mess together, comrade.”

           Employees began filtering in, escorting clients with them. Some picked up their pizza and left, while others stayed to mingle. Three pepperoni pieces so far, one cheese, one vegetarian. Ross and Sarah stood by the table awkwardly, looking as if they had committed some terrible crime against the culinary arts.

           “Oh God,” whispered Sarah.

           “What?” said Ross. He was looking straight ahead and avoided making eye contact with her.

           “I invited some clients to this thing. What if they taste the pizza?”

           “Hopefully they don’t like barbeque chicken.”

           “They won’t after this.”

           Terry and Wanda Jamison were greeted with a wave from Sarah and were quickly ushered towards the pepperoni pizza. They were delighted by the spread. Sarah looked on as Terry wavered in front of the faux barbeque chicken for a horrifying moment, before settling on vegetarian.

           “Better for your kidneys,” said his wife Wanda. Sarah agreed.

           Sarah and the Jamisons went off to chat, leaving Ross to guard the pizzas.

           Still no sign of Ed. Ross surveyed the pizzas once again. No one had been brave enough to try his and Sarah’s creation. It looked appetizing enough. Though the tofu pieces did stand out a bit on the surface of the pizza.

           Still, Ross wondered if he should try a piece. See how it turned out. Besides, he didn’t want to make it look like those pizzas hadn’t been touched. He grabbed a plate and tossed on two slices of the barbeque chicken.

           He brought a slice towards his mouth. He was immediately hit by the strong smell of barbeque sauce. So far so good. He took a bite.

           It tasted fine. They had probably put on too much sauce. Still it was all right, as far as delivery pizzas go.

           But the tofu texture. Too soft for chicken. Ross felt he was going to gag.

           “Hello, Ross!”

           It was his boss Ed. Of course it was. Ross swallowed hard, getting rid of the mouthful of pizza and tofu, before turning to greet Ed with a nod.

           Ed was wearing his annoyingly bright red tie and Ross immediately caught a whiff of his cologne. But Ross quickly turned his attention to the woman at Ed’s side in the white fur coat. Arden Greeves. She was one of the company’s biggest clients. Ross talked to her the other week about insuring her latest luxury yacht. And he’d forgotten that he invited her.

           “I found Arden waiting out in the hall,” said Ed with a glare. “She was wondering where you were.”

           “I’m so sorry, Ms. Greeves,” said Ross. He smiled weakly. “I hope your trip along the California coast went well.”

           “Thank you,” said Arden, “it did. And it was so good to get away. The sunsets there on the open ocean are just gorgeous.”

           “I imagine they are,” said Ross.

           “Quite the spread, Ross,” chuckled Ed as he looked towards the food. “When you said pizza I was expecting something a little more, I don’t know, artisan.”

           Ross took a deep breath and tried to be pleasant. “I was going for a more casual feel today. Some authentic food from the street. Comfort food on a rainy day like today.”

           Ed didn’t respond, like he was searching for a comeback.

           “It looks very nice,” Arden said. “What kinds are there?”

           “Well,” said Ross, adjusting his glasses, “there’s vegetarian, pepperoni, and—others.”

           “I’d love to try some,” she said, stepping forward to approach the table.

           Ross and Ed followed.

           Arden picked up a plate and hesitated. “It all looks so good.”

           Ross caught sight of Sarah looking his way from across the room. There was little either of them could do.

           “I’ve heard the pepperoni is pretty good,” said Ross.

           Arden simply stood there, taking it all in and prolonging the tension. “I just can’t decide. What do you think, Ed?”

           “I’m not the biggest fan of pizza myself,” said Ed. He took one last look at the pizza lineup. “Wait, is that barbeque chicken I see?”

           Before Ross could stop him Ed went straight up to the unfortunate experimental creation and tossed a slice on his plate.

           Ross made eye contact with Sarah. Her look said, What did you think was going to happen?

           “Oh, that looks good,” said Arden helping herself. “I’ll try some too.”

           The pizza had not become any more appetizing. The barbeque sauce had begun pooling underneath each piece of tofu and in some cases there were now conspicuous streaks of sauce running across the surface of the cheese. It was looking more like abstract art than lunch.

           Ed took a bite first. A big bite. Ross wanted to look away but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had to watch. It wasn’t pretty.

           After about two chews Ed puckered up his lips like he had just bitten into a lemon. This pizza was not what he expected. Ed held his mouth open like he needed air and his face turned a reddish color. A glob of barbeque sauce-soaked tofu clung to his lip. His eyes widened.

           Ross looked on with agony at first. His boss would never let this go. But very quickly another emotion took hold. It was kind of funny, watching Ed so confused about what was happening. Bitter sweet. And more sweet than bitter. Ed looked back at the slice of pizza in his hand and blinked, like he couldn’t believe what he was tasting. Ross cracked a grin and tried to keep himself from laughing.

           Maybe he would get reprimanded. Maybe Ed would give him a hard time for a few weeks over this. But to Ross this moment made it all worth it. And he realized all at once that he didn’t care what Ed would say anyways. Ross had this moment. A small victory that would carry him through. Nobody could take that away from him.

           Arden didn’t seem to notice Ed’s reaction unfortunately and the next instant she took a bite of pizza herself. Ross saw it out of the corner of his eye and his face fell. He had forgotten about Arden. His bliss was cut short. It happened so fast he didn’t have time to think. Only one quiet thought came into his mind—he hoped she wouldn’t spit out barbeque sauce on her fur coat.

           Before Ross could say something, anything to apologize for what he’d done, something very odd happened. Arden took a second bite.

           What was she doing? Hadn’t she tasted the monstrosity Ross and Sarah had created? Hadn’t she felt those chunks of faux chicken invade her mouth with a vengeance?

           Arden took a third bite.

           “This pizza,” she said, pondering it for a moment. “They usually make the chicken so dry. But this is wonderful.”

           Ross and Ed took a second to register what Arden had just said. When they finally did, both their mouths hung open in disbelief.

           Arden had a fabulous time at the pizza lunch. So did Ross, it turned out. Sarah saw the whole thing from a distance and couldn’t help but laugh. Now that Arden was on their side, there was nothing Ed could say against them. They had done it. They had done the impossible.

           Ed was thrown into a daze. As Ross gave Arden the grand tour of their offices, Ed merely followed along, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other. Arden said how lovely it was to see everything, and Ross said how lovely it was to have her there. Ed simply nodded and said nothing. He stood there absentmindedly, finishing off a third slice of the barbeque chicken pizza, still as confused as ever. Now that it had Arden’s stamp of approval, maybe the pizza wasn’t so bad after all.

           At some point Ed drifted over into the corner and stood there for a while, still saying nothing to anyone. When Arden left, Ed came alive and pounded straight over to Ross like he was about to demand an explanation. Ross was expecting an avalanche of accusations, maybe even an official reprimand written up in ink. But when Ed got there and opened his mouth, nothing came out. The man just stood there speechless, as if he still couldn’t wrap his mind around what had happened.

           “Enjoy your lunch?” asked Ross.