The motion-detector lights outside the house snapped on bright, illuminating the foyer just seconds before the doorbell chimed. Mavis had been waiting in the dark. Rising from the couch, her bones creaking under her weight, she rewrapped the silk robe over her shower-fresh skin and cinched the sash tighter to nip her waist.
The doorbell chimed again, and the owner of a lackluster male voice called, “Pizza!”
Mavis sashayed barefoot out to the foyer. One of the automatic lights was beaming straight through the half-moon window over the front door, striking the hall mirror so that Mavis had to squint to check her reflection and de-clump her mascara and tuck a stray silver wisp back up into her twist. Fine, she looked fine, but it was twice now that she’d asked Earl the handyman to tweak the angle of that light.
Outside, the rap of knuckles. “Uh, hello? Did someone, like, order a pizza?”
Mavis opened the door on a thrilling shock of cold. “Zair you are,” she said in her fake French accent to the delivery guy, he of the earring, goatee, and shaved head. A souped-up hatchback idled in the driveway. Mavis huffed. “Must eet always take so long?”
The kid was gawking at her nipples under the silk, his eyebrows slithering up and staying up as if fixed by clothespins. “Sorry, lady, but you’re outside our delivery zone.”
“Ah, oui?” Mavis leaned against the doorjamb, amused at the lie. Pizza Pizzicato was just eight blocks away on Clement Street. “Outside zee zone?”
“Especially for just a small double-cheese with mushrooms.”
“Mais, je-ne-sais-quoi,” said Mavis, exhausting her French vocabulary. She shifted her leg so that the robe parted over her thigh.
“Um, that’ll be twenty-six fifty,” said Pizzicato, offering her the box, which Mavis did not take.
“Eez zat all I get for twenty-six feefty?”
“It is our extra-thick cornmeal crust.”
“And I do like extras.” Mavis ladled a smile over the boy. “With zee receipt.”
“Receipt?” Pizzicato blinked at her, and then, blushing, juggled the box and patted at his pockets. “Darn, I had it just a minute ago.”
“How can you be so sure, zen, of zee amount?” Mavis loosened her sash—it really was too tight—and felt a caress of chill across her midriff.
Pizzicato looked anywhere but there. “Uh, that does seem high. Let’s call it ten even.”
“I’ll pay full price and teep you well,” said Mavis, coaxing the robe off her shoulders; the silk slipped, and Mavis caught it just above her bosom. “But I demand a leetle service.”
“In fact, tell you what. The pizza’s on us.” Pizzicato set the box down on the step. “’Night, now,” he said, and turned and strolled, whistling, back to his car. The instant he got there, he dove behind the wheel and gunned the engine and screeched out of the driveway in reverse.
Mavis watched him zoom off down the street. What she wouldn’t do for free pizza.
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