Slice Harvester

by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf

  The pizza itself, while not horrendous, was not good. The dough was permissible. It didn’t taste especially good or bad; it crunched, but not enough. In the end it neither added nor subtracted from the slice. The sauce, too, lacked any sort of presence, perhaps due to its sparse quantity. But what the slice lacked in sauce it made up for in cheese, which was plentiful, albeit disgusting. It’s not that the cheese didn’t have a taste so much as it had an antitaste. It tasted of lack of absence.

  It bears noting that at one point this slice tried to kill Cory. He took what should have been an innocuous bite of an otherwise innocuous slice, and, seemingly of its own accord, the cheese expanded, filling his mouth and clogging his throat. He’s a robust young man, so he was able to Heimlich himself back into well-being. If Toasties were an entity, I might think it was deliberately trying to harm us before we got outside and let everyone know how crappy their pizza is. Well, too bad, Toasties, we lived!

  Invigorated from having cheated death, we continued west on Forty-Eighth to a magical subterranean establishment called Pronto Pizza & Beer (PP&B). Upon entering PP&B, we descended down a long sloping ramp until we were below street level. “This Is How We Do It” was playing on the radio, and it smelled faintly like a homeless guy or a traveling punk, which is a smell I associate with dear friends and is comforting to me. There were mirror-lined walls trimmed with red-and-white-striped molding, which met a green lower half—a not-so-subtle nod to the Italian flag. Cory called it “1991, the pizzeria,” which seems apt, although I’m pretty sure he was born in 1987, so any knowledge he has of the early nineties is purely academic. I’ll put it like this: I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a NARC arcade game hanging out with an Addams Family pinball machine along one of the walls.

  The swarthy, hirsute pizza man interrupted a phone conversation he was having in the thickest New York–accented Spanish I have ever heard to level a harsh gaze at me, his eyes flitting briefly toward Nate and Cory, who were lurking a few feet behind me like goons.

  “One slice,” I told him as confidently as possible.

  He paused to adjust his backward Yankee hat and gestured to my crew with his impressive eyebrows. I could tell by the look on his face he knew what was coming. “What about them?” he asked.

  “We’re sharing,” I responded, moderately scared that he’d kick us out and I wouldn’t get to keep listening to Montell Jordan.

  He wordlessly turned away, disgusted, and picked up a slice on his spatula and thrust it into the heat of the oven with palpable malice.

  By the time he pulled it out, Cory and Nate had secured us a table, not that it was hard to do so. The place was cavernous. The clientele at PP&B were markedly younger and more diverse, in terms of both race and gender, than Toasties’s. Where the latter seemed to draw in mostly solitary white businessmen, Pronto was populated by teen couples skipping school, guys wearing dusty coveralls, women talking briskly on Bluetooth headsets while nibbling on slices, and a small coalition of Haggard Ancients.

  A funny thing, though: the atmosphere may have been better than that at Toasties, but the pizza wasn’t. It felt careless. The dough was too thick and tasted like oven cleaner. The sauce had no flavor, yet managed to add an unpleasant moistness to the slice. The cheese was too salty. Texturally, Nate described it as similar to “accidentally chewing on plastic.” The crust was an afterthought that practically fell off when I folded the slice, as if extra dough had been hastily added on after the pie’s initial foundation had already been laid.

  It’s a real shame, because a place that looks this good is hard to come by. It takes years of airborne grease and neglected hygienic practices to create an ambience that is so perfectly attuned to all of my aesthetic sensibilities. And the things that were wrong with this pizza were basically products of negligence. In other words, this pizza might not have been such a dick if it had any self-esteem.

  This slice was, like, the Anthony Kiedis of pizza. I’ve been reading that guy’s memoir, and it’s clear that he is not the best guy. Genuinely selfish and narcissistic, he doesn’t seem to have the capacity to empathize with women and talks about sleeping with teenagers well into his twenties in this blasé manner that I find totally disgusting. I could list his other negative qualities at length; they’re readily apparent. The other thing that is very apparent from his memoir, though, is that his childhood was clearly really fucked-up. But, like, even though that’s sad, and even though it’s possible Kiedo might be a better person if his life had been a little less sordid. I still think he’s a turd of a man. Do you see what I’m getting at about the pizza? Just because this slice might’ve been better if someone cared about it a little more doesn’t mean we didn’t have a fucking miserable experience eating it.

  I still had a long list of pizza parlors for us to hit that day, so we did our best to remain undaunted. It wasn’t easy. This was my moment of doubt. The seemingly rapid pace at which I had been going was beginning to dwindle, and I was losing focus. I was beginning to wonder if I even wanted to finish. I mean, what was the point, right? And what was I doing with my life, anyway? I lived in a shitty, crumbling old tenement in the neighborhood my father had grown up in and busted his ass to get out of. I drank till I blacked out every night, and didn’t really see any reason to stop. I needed some kind of inspiration, some reminder of why I had started in the first place, but the pizza I’d eaten so far on this particular day didn’t make me feel like any galvanizing moments were forthcoming.

  Of course, I didn’t have time to think too hard about my disappointing life or disappointing pizza, because our next stop was actually on the same block as Pronto Pizza & Beer. And get this—it was called Pronto Pizza as well! Perhaps they were related? Maybe they were rivals? Maybe they were once related, owned by brothers or cousins, but had become rivals after a familial spat? I couldn’t wait to find out, as I do love a good blood feud.

  Walking past the sixteen storefronts between the two Pronto Pizzas was like entering a weird science fiction future where nationalities were a thing of the past, their only remnants a bunch of ethnic fast-food chains. At the time of this Harvest, there was a Maki Sushi, Hing Won Express Noodle Shop, Indus Express, and a Pig ’n’ Whistle Irish Pub on that street, plus a dental office, a loan place, an off-track betting establishment, and a psychic. It was all of New York City in five hundred filthy feet. And just for good measure, a giant parking garage took up the entire north side of the block.

  Cory, Nate, and I soon learned that Pronto Pizza (henceforth referred to as PP) was like a bizarre, alternate-universe Pronto Pizza & Beer. The layout of the two restaurants is basically the same, though PP remains level with the street instead of sloping down toward Hades. The elevation is not the only difference; the two places are similarly laid out, but atmospherically they could not be any more divergent. I don’t think I would have noticed the similarities that did exist if these places hadn’t both been on the same block and had the same name.

  At PP&B, there was a counter to the left with a surly Italian-­American dude being a dick (in the best possible way) and a huge cooler full of beers. The space opened up into a bunch of seating in the back, and there were radio speakers playing New Jack Swing. The seats and tables were mismatched, and the walls were almost entirely mirrored save for that Italian-flag molding. At plain old PP (though it wasn’t actually sans B), there was a counter to the left with another damn cooler full of beers, but it was a little smaller than the cooler at PP&B. Behind the counter was a demure Middle Eastern gentleman, and he was super nice. The space opened up in the back, and there were all these tables and a bunch of weirdos hanging around; instead of a radio playing music there were multiple TVs showing a cable-access news channel, though the sound was only coming out of the TV located farthest in the back. The walls were orange instead of green, the tiles were brick-red instead of a neutral off-white, and the room was lined with many arched-window-shaped mirrors rather than one continuous mirror. Imagine taking PP&B and r
edecorating it to look like a Moroccan restaurant without changing the menu. One distinct commonality: there were destitute-looking men sleeping in the back of both places, though many of them seemed to be eating food from Indus Express.

  The real distinguishing factor between PP and PP&B was that PP had even worse pizza than its predecessor. How could that be possible? The slice had virtually no sauce. The cheese—bland, white, lacking any subtlety or flavor—was the Drew Carey of dairy products. And the dough was vaguely reminiscent of angel food cake. Nate characterized it as “like a shitty biscuit.”

  As the three of us went bite for bite finishing it off (you know, so as not to be wasteful), I could see a pall descending over my companions. To a normal person, a bad slice of pizza can be just as disheartening as a good slice is uplifting, but I had been eating bad pizza for so long that I had developed something of a psychic callus. I was worried about my friends, though. They looked miserable. I asked how the slice made them feel. Cory said it made him feel sad. Nate said he felt ashamed. Calloused or not, I was starting to feel the effect of their low morale. What was I doing eating all this pizza? What was the point? But then I looked down at my notebook for the next place and allowed myself to get a little excited.

  It was located around the corner and was listed in my notes as Mondo Pizza—the word “Mondo” being richly evocative of my childhood in the late eighties and early nineties. I imagined the place looking like the Peach Pit or the Max, all Day-Glo colors and checkerboard floors, with a kindly, avuncular dude behind the counter dishing out advice alongside the slices.

  “I bet the sign is gonna be, like, a black-and-white-­checkered ska pattern with neon letters on it in that font that looks like written lightning bolts,” I told the guys.

  “No way!” Cory interrupted. “There’s gonna be a dog wearing Oakleys and a backward hat scarfing a slice of pizza, and it’ll say ‘MONDO PIZZA’ in all caps underneath.”

  Nate said, “Not at all. It’s gonna be a plain white sign with ‘Mondo’ written in simple type, but the first O is gonna be a globe.” (As it happens, “mondo” is Italian for “world,” though I’m surprised Nate knew this.)

  As we neared the place, we could see the sign hanging perpendicular to the building farther down the sidewalk. Sure enough, there was a globe, with a partial ring attaching it to the M, and both Os were pizza pies—one pepperoni, one plain. Why didn’t we think of that?

  But then as we got closer, we realized that this beautiful sign seemed to be the only thing that remained of Mondo Pizza. Instead, the awning above the storefront said “Michelle’s Restaurant,” and though there were no customers in sight, we could see a pizza oven through the window, so it was with no small amount of trepidation that we walked inside.

  The restaurant had high ceilings and was brightly lit, like a Chinese Super Buffet, and the interior looked like mashed potatoes, all smudged white paint and light brown tabletops. The sole human presence was an old man sitting behind a folding table with a cash register perched on top of it. He wore a white shirt, a gold chain, and a white apron, and he had white hair and a small, wide face with kind if beleaguered eyes. In trying to remember his face, I keep seeing the wrinkled visage of the dwarf in the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. He stared at us like an aging basset hound, equal parts inquisitive, forlorn, and resigned as he watched us eye the steam trays full of pasta, meat, and dumplings that looked as ancient as their guardian. There was no music playing, but the proprietor’s quiet desperation was almost audible. Just as at Pizza Palace, stepping into Michelle’s Restaurant felt like stepping outside of time. Not all pizza parlors are magical spaces, but the frequency with which they exude this sense of mystical atemporality is far greater than that of any other type of businesses I’m aware of.

  Michelle’s didn’t have the same warmth as Pizza Palace, though. There was distrust hanging in the air. It felt as if we’d left Midtown and entered some Soviet-bloc village. A Soviet-bloc village with an ancient gas-fired pizza oven.

  The old man silently offered up our slice, and we sat down at one of the empty tables in his desolate restaurant, unable to avoid his persistent gaze. He seemed to be watching us simply because there was nothing else to do.

  But the slice . . . it was good! Maybe the best I had in that entire section of Midtown, an otherwise dead zone of disgusting pizza and sad business-attired automatons. This slice, while not the most incredible piece of pizza in the world, was expertly assembled. It contained a delicate balance of flavors—just enough salt in the dough, a hint of tang in the sauce. The texture of the crust was fantastic, the greasy, crunchy exterior giving way to soft, airy dough with each bite. It lacked that certain intangible something that makes a slice perfect; maybe there was no love in the food here, but otherwise it was as good as a slice can get. We took our time eating it, savoring every bite and dreading our return to the mean streets of Midtown.

  “I think I’m getting serious with a girl,” I told my friends, mouth full of food, as I passed the slice to Cory.

  Nate arched his eyebrows. Cory was excited for me. “That lady with the shaved head you were with at the bar the other night?” he said. “Total babe.”

  “Right? I really like her. I think she might be the coolest person I know.”

  “So is she, like, your girlfriend?” Nate asked.

  “I don’t know. I mean, we haven’t talked about it yet, and I don’t even know how I feel about that stuff, but hopefully maybe she will be one day!”

  “Yeah, dude. She’s awesome.” Cory shook his head ruminatively, chewing. “Does she have any friends?”

  It seemed fitting that the slice at Michelle’s would bring up happy thoughts—thoughts of Christina, her lovely stubbled head, and, perhaps, my future as her boyfriend. Maybe this day—and my life—was about to take a turn for the better. After our leisurely slice at Michelle’s, we headed south to Forty-Fifth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, a block that purported to contain four pizza parlors, the most of any block I had walked to date. It was a period of abundance. It was spring. We were feeling rejuvenated.

  We had no idea how difficult it would be to make it from one end of that block to the other.

  If, in the future, after Godzilla returns to rightfully reclaim the earth and humans are driven underground, where they live for centuries, slowly losing track of their history and humanity like in that one movie about dragons with Matthew McConaughey, but then eventually the dinosaurs all die from smoking too much weed and humans start to venture out and try to cobble civilization back together from the ruins and the only things that remain from the past are a few charred and frayed copies of Slice Harvester magazine and I am heralded as some kind of prophet or god figure, Nate Stark will be exalted as a saint.

  When Nate, Cory, and I turned the corner onto Forty-Fifth Street from Fifth Avenue we were immediately confronted by Ambrosia, a horrid-looking cafeteria with the word “PIZZA” blinking deviously in neon through the window like the sign for a brothel in a Bolaño novel or a cat’s eyes at night.

  “Let’s skip this place,” was my suggestion.

  “Yeah, fuck it.” Cory was in.

  Nate tried to interject, “No, guys, let’s go. We gotta do it!”

  Cory and I had already begun to stroll on. We literally could not stomach the idea of another sad, unremarkable Midtown slice after the brief reprieve we had just enjoyed at Michelle’s. That was when the universe decided to fuck with us.

  The next place we passed, two storefronts down, was called Milk N’ Honey and was a Kosher pizza parlor. Across the street we noticed Metro Market Deli, another not-pizza place with another huge neon pizza sign. We had entered the little-known Tenth Circle of Hell. I suggested to everyone that we just skip this block and I would return to do it next week on my own as penance for all those Dylan Thomas poems I read to Christina’s voice mail last week. But Nate was steadfast in his commitment to Harvesting. He just turned around and walked into Ambrosia muttering, “Well, I�
�m gonna get a slice.” Cory and I followed obediently. Nate had inadvertently become our Virgil.

  If the storefronts that line the Pronto Pizza block of West Forty-Eighth Street were evocative of a dystopian future city, then the inside of Ambrosia was like the food court on the space shuttle the rich people will be on when they evacuate Earth. The walls are lined with labeled ethnic food stalls—Pizza, Sushi, Mexican Food, Bagels—each festively decorated and displaying their mediocre foodstuffs as enticingly as possible. I have mentally labeled the center of the room Fancy Snack Island, a tiered construction offering up various confections as well as an assortment of healthy future-food bars containing special nutrients designed specifically for women, teens, or the elderly.

  On the day we arrived there seemed to be delegations of tourists from a selection of church groups, all wearing matching T-shirts and talking excitedly and too loudly over the K-Pop on the radio. The pizza was being slung at the far back, so we had to walk an extra thirty feet just to get this terrible slice. It was overcooked and so dry that there may as well have been tumbleweeds rolling down my tongue when I bit into it. The dough was too thick, the sauce had no personality, and the cheese was the texture of semisoft plastic. “Ambrosia” means “food of the gods,” which this slice was not. And it was just the beginning.