Chapter Text
JOHN: hello! you've reached papa john's, and this is john!
DAVE: order for delivery 217 gerome st apt 15c
JOHN: okay, what can i do ya for?
DAVE: 4 large pizzas one sausage one vegetable and two pineapple
JOHN: okay, that's gonna be fourty-two oh-seven!
DAVE: k ill have it ready at the door love you bye
JOHN: ...
DAVE: oh my gog did i just say love you
JOHN: well gee i'm flattered,
DAVE: goddamn it
JOHN: but i sure hope you don't think your declaration of love will get you free pizza!
Your name is John Egbert, and you deliver pizza. Not, like, all the time. During the school year, you go to college at University of Washington and live with your Dad out of convenience. But eventually it gets to be a little too much—the cake, the pranks, the Betty Crocker, the cake, the notes, the cake, the Coddlebrand strifing—and did you mention the overabundance of baked goods? So currently, you're spending the summer away from the pipe-brandishing street jester-slash-boring businessman you call a guardian.
You're not quite sure how you ended up in Texas, of all places. Your father mentioned in passing a distant relation that had a spare room in Houston, and you jumped on the opportunity. What followed after was a bit of a blur. You're still finding stern fatherly notes taped to various personal effects.
And now you’re here, delivering pizza in Houston, Texas. Sometimes it's hard to keep your oversized chompers out of the merchandise. The buckteeth have a mind of their own, you swear. But you just think about how sad the poor people who ordered the pizza would be if they found it all eaten up. It's a pretty vanilla motivation, but it usually works. Besides, you need the money. Boy’s gotta eat.
There's this one apartment you get a lot of orders from. Apartment 15C, 217 Gerome St. You have mixed feelings about the residents of this particular abode. On one hand, they always tip well and sometimes give you a bag of half-eaten Cheetos as a "bonus prize." But on the other hand, they sometimes make you deliver to the roof of the building and there's no elevator all the way up there. Stairs, bro. Shoulda warned you about them.
Also, they have an alarming number of creepy-ass puppets. There's this one doll in particular that the older of the two strange inhabitants (brothers, perhaps? A father/son duo like your father and yourself? Who knows!) often flashsteps around quickly to make it seem as though the puppet is paying for and accepting the pizza. It's the most bizarre sight you've ever seen and easily one of the most terrifying. You'd happily admit (and have, on many occasions) that you're scared to all shit's end of what you're constantly reminded is named Li'l Cal, not 'freaky chattering dude with a dumb hat.' Get your shit together, pizza man.
These two intrigue you nonetheless. There's one that seems to be around your age and one that's probably in his late twenties or early thirties. They both have these triangular anime shades and often they wield some piece of shit Japanese swords (They're called katanas, dumbass). The younger one has a record logo on his shirt (to represent my ill beats) and the older one always wears this cheesy giant hat.
You don't get them at all. Often they rap at you or throw "smuppets" at you as you exit. They claim to be "masters of irony," which you think is pretty lame. But each to his own, you guess? Even if their own includes puppet Mr. T's and giant busts of Snoop Dogg.
Not to mention, you got off to a strange start. Towards the beginning of summer, you got a call from them for delivery, and as you were signing off, the orderer offered you a quick "love you!" He assured you that it was an accident, and that he didnt even know how that happened, i never say i love you to bro or talk on the phone much at all for that matter. You understand, of course (you also think that if this dude was Liv Tyler or something, it'd be a typical start to a Dane Cook rom-com. You don't really like the genre all that much, though. And besides, no homo).
Today is one such time when you have to deliver to these two. They've ordered 10 large pizzas. You've stopped being surprised by them at this point, but you still wonder where they put it all. They certainly can't eat all of that, can they? Upon delivery, you pose this question to the younger one.
DAVE: we feed it to the smuppets
DAVE: even a plush rumps gotta eat
You secretly think that he'd look better with aviators than those pointy anime shades he's wearing now. Apparently not so secretly, actually, since you tell him this as well.
DAVE: what like the ones ben stillers got in that one movie
DAVE: fuck yeah id rock those
DAVE: ironically obviously
He gives you a crumpled hundred dollar bill (keep the change) in exchange for the pizza, popped straight out of your sylladex. One hundred is, of course, about the amount due, but you didn't expect to ever actually see a bill that big. As your baby blues widen at the sight of it, he snaps his fingers like he's just remembered something.
DAVE: wait heres your tip
He tosses an unopened bag of Cheetos. Before you can shoot him a dirty look, he tells you to just trust me so you just sort of leave in befuddlement.
Once you reach the van with the Papa John's logo emblazoned on the side, you pop open the Cheetos bag. You really hope they haven't stuffed a smuppet in there. It wouldn't be the first time you'd been pranked by them, which you think is a little out of line; after all, you're the pranking master! But this time you don't find another soft, bulbous bottom kind of jutting out and impudent or whatever. Good thing too, because you think you'd have done a fucking acrobatic pirouette off the handle.
No, what you find instead is a bunch of wadded up dollar bills of varying values. There's roughly a shitton of them. Upon closer examination, they appear to all be 50- and 100-dollar bills. Geez, how much money is this?!!, you think. You find one single Cheeto at the bottom of the bag, surrounded by cash. You look up at the apartment building above you, and you spot a gleam winking at you from a pair of scalene triangles. Ah, yes.
You think immediately that you have to go up and return the money. You can't accept that much of a tip! But just as the thought crosses your mind, a smuppet flies down (attached to a mini parachute, no less. Where do they find these things?) to where you stand with a note tacked on. "Take the goddamn cash, Egbert," it reads. You suppose you don't have much of a choice but to take the goddamn cash. You feel guilty, but you're pretty sure they're fuckin’ loaded. So you just. Sort of reach in. And. And take the money. You captchalogue the smuppet while you're at it. It could be useful in a prank, eventually. Your gambit's been getting a little low, and that needs to be remedied.
It's not until later that you wonder how they know your last name.