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Chapter Three - Slice of Sbarro



Thanksgiving morning, Lauren’s alarm clock went off at four in the morning. I groaned as I felt her moving, shifting, getting ready to get up. “No, Lolo, it’s too early,” I mumbled into the pillow I was face-down in.

“You can sleep,” she whispered, “I just gotta go get the turkey in.”

“At four in the morning?” I groaned.

She kissed my forehead, “Mhm. I gotta get all our things ready so I don’t have to think about it when I’m at the kitchen, remember? I gotta be there at ten.” She sat up, rolling her feet off the side of the bed and started putting her hair up.

I crawled GI Joe style across the bed and wrapped my arms around her waist from behind, my cheek pressed to her spine. “Don’t go,” I whined, “It’s a holiday, you ain’t supposed to be up this early. Spend the day with me. I miss you.” I clutched onto her.

Lauren laughed and rubbed my arms, “Aw, Nicky.” She shook her head, “I gotta do the soup kitchen. I already volunteered.”

“That’s right, you’re a volunteer, so just, like, un-volunteer and it’ll be all good, then you can be lazy with me.”

She wiggled out of my clutches and got up. “I can’t un-volunteer,” she said.

“Why nooot?” I asked, dropping onto my back and hugging a pillow onto my chest. I stared up at her as she got a shirt out of the closet.

“Because we don’t want the universe thinkin’ we have bad juju.” She made a face like that was the end-all argument.

“Bad juju?” I asked.

“Yeah, like… karma. Like maybe we don’t deserve certain things that we both want very much,” she added, eyeballing me.

“You mean like for the Buccs to win?” I joked.

Lauren smirked, rolling her eyes and reached for her sweatpants, which were at the foot of the bed.

“Lolo, pleaaaaaase,” I begged. “I can juju you.” I moved the pillow so it was straddling me, like it was riding me, and I thrust my hips up into it. “Uhh.. uh… uh…” I grunted

Lauren laughed, “That is not an approved baby making position, Mr. Carter,” she said, tugging the sweatpants up her legs and tucking her shirt into the waistband.

“Well Jordan says I need to have some less stressful sex ‘cos my wiener’s overthinking,” I said with a nod.

Lauren raised an eyebrow, “Oh is that what Jordan said?” she asked with a giggle, “And Jordan’s a licensed sex therapist since… when?” She put her hands on her hips.

“I dunno he’s smart. And he’s gotta dick, too, which is more than I can say for that Dr. Waldork dude. His penis prolly turned to dust and fell off centuries ago.” I dropped the pillow onto the bed and sat up as Lauren pulled her hair up into a high ponytail.

“His name is Dr. Walden,” she said, “And he helped Howie and Leigh when they were having problems after James.”

“Okay, I’ma stop you there, ‘cos I don’t wanna know no details about Howito and his wonky peepee.” I was on my knees on the bed by now. “But Lolo, I wanna have sex. Please? Non-baby makin’ sex?” I gave her the very best begging puppy eyes I could muster.

She sighed, “Don’t you wanna save it for when we could possibly be making a baby, though? All the sex we have off the schedule could be one less time we feel like it when we’re on schedule. And what if we do it and you waste the sperm that was meant to be our baby?” She looked genuinely worried, like she was imagining a poor lonely sperm crying because it couldn’t find an egg to become a baby in.

I pouted, “But Jordan says it’ll help.”

“Again, is Jordan a therapist?”

“No…”

“Well, maybe we should stick to what the therapist says, and just… improve our karma.” She turned toward the door, “Maybe you should do something nice for humanity sometime, something that has nothing to do with your fans. Bank some juju. The universe will give us a baby if we earn it.” She smiled and headed out the door.

I dropped back onto the bed and listened to her steps on the stairwell. I closed my eyes, frustrated. She didn’t understand what it was like to be a man and have a penis, a penis that was made to make babies and find out after years of thinking you had the most manly penis of all the penises that your penis is actually quite pointless. It couldn’t even do it’s one stupid actual function. I rolled onto the pillows, despondent as a kid having been sent to his room, and I stared at the clock on Lauren’s bedside table, grumpy.

I knew Lauren wasn’t trying to make it difficult for me, she wasn’t trying to make it frustrating. It’s just she was focused and really wanted to have a baby and I did, too. Which made it even worse that I was the reason we weren’t havin’ one yet. I felt guilty and I read more into the things she was saying than she was probably really putting into them.

But that didn’t mean it hurt my feelings any less.

I laid in bed until I managed to talk myself out of thinking that Lauren hated me and my pointless penis, and finally got up and got dressed, headed down stairs, just praying that there wouldn’t be any spinach at the Thanksgiving table.




Later that night, I was laying on the couch, watching Black Friday ad after Black Friday ad parade across my TV. The most repeated one featured a big turkey running off the Thanksgiving table to get to some department store before the door busters were all “gobbled” up. I’d stopped glancing at the clock back when it was five and Lauren should’ve been home, and that was hours ago. I’d tried calling, but to no end, and now all there was to do was sit and wait and watch the ads go by.

This isn’t what it’s supposed to be like anymore, I thought to myself as the Target ad repeated itself for the nine millionth time this hour. It’s the first year together, we should be making memories and starting traditions and being, you know, together.

I sighed.

This was bad juju just as much as anything else, I thought sarcastically. If the universe is watching what it’s seeing is that we don’t value family. Why give more family to someone who doesn’t even value what they got?

Why didn’t I think of that argument hours and hours ago? I wondered.

My phone vibed.

Hey, I’m gonna be late. They were a volunteer short for the dinner service and I offered to stay a few extra hours. xo.

I stared at the text.

I tossed the phone onto the couch cushion without answering and turned my eyes back to the TV. I shouldn’t have felt as angry as I did. I knew it even as the heat boiled up in my neck and face. But I couldn’t help it. However irrational I was being, I felt like I was the toy being cast aside because my subpar sperm. I ran my hands into my hair, clutching my hair desperately. The Target ad was back again. “Fuck this,” I snapped, turning the TV off as I got to my feet.

It was after seven o’clock and a ton of stores were already open, according to their ads. I drove up Franklin Road to Cool Springs Galleria, running into traffic the closer I got. I didn’t really give a shit about any of the stuff that was on sale, I just needed to get the fricking hell out of that house. The walls had started to mock me there and the last thing I was gonna do was spend the entire night alone, staring at the ads talking about all the deals to be gobbled, feeling less and less like a man with every tick of the clock.

My knuckles curled around the steering wheel.

At the galleria, I found a parking spot pretty much as far away from the building entrance as possible and I walked through single-digit degree weather in just my sweatshirt, dodging cars with frustrated drivers who insisted they were gonna find a closer parking spot than what was available. “Happy fucking Thanksgiving,” I muttered as one car came frighteningly close to running me down.

As I walked through the doors to the Macy’s, surrounded by madly dashing old women that smelled like too much perfume, my mind wandered and somehow ended up recounting this old memory from one of the first years the Backstreet Boys had been together. We’d been in Germany for the holidays and we spent Thanksgiving in a dingy ass hotel outside of Berlin, where Lou had put all five of us up in one room while he had another room all to himself. We had soggy ass leftover pizza that wasn’t all that good because - well, it was fuckin’ Germany, I mean, c’mon - and Brian stopped us from digging right in (not that any of us was overly excited to anyway) to go around saying what all we were thankful for. “It’s tradition,” he’d insisted when we’d hesitated. And so we’d done it.

I’d planned to do that today with Lauren.

I’d pictured us saying we were thankful for our family, while running our hands over her stomach.

I’d had a lot of plans for the holidays for us. But the whole not-pregnant thing had fucked with a lot of them.

The mall was ridiculous, people everywhere, screaming and running every which way, scrambling for deals that they didn’t even particularly give a crap about. I stood in the middle and watched them fight all around me, running up escalators, pushing each other out of the way, cursing loudly, pulling on opposite ends of sweaters like some kind of polyester blend tug of war. I sat down on a bench near to the food court and closed my eyes, just listening to all the madness around me.

Maybe in some really screwed up way Jordan Knight was right. Maybe the answer was in Lauren and I adopting a baby from someone else’s family, someone who didn’t want their baby. Or maybe Lauren was right. Maybe it was all that karma shit. Maybe the universe knew I would be such a colossally bad parent that it didn’t wanna even give me the chance to fuck up.

I rubbed my forehead with the heels of my hands.

“Would I really be that terrible?” I whispered.

Suddenly, someone sat down next to me on the bench. I looked over. And honest to fuck it was Santa Claus. Obviously, it was just one of those mall guys, but it was weird ‘cos, like, that’s how it happens in the movies, right, like the anguished character asks the universe a question and the answer comes by, like, Santa or an angel or something showing up, right? He wasn’t even all that good of a Santa. You’d think a place like Cool Springs mall could get a better Santa.

I cleared my throat.

Santa looked at me, his beard on a little crooked. He shimmied it off so it hung around his neck like a big white tie. “This seat taken?” he asked.

“Alls I want for Christmas is to knock up my wife,” I blurted out.

Santa stared at me. “Okay…” he said slowly. “You know, I think my break’s over actually. You have a, uh, Merry Christmas.” He got up and hurried back through the crowds.

I’m such a dumbass, I thought. Scaring off Santa. That’s definitely not good juju. I sighed.

“HEY!....KID!.... You gotta pay for that! Get back here!”

I looked up just in time to see a teenager, clutching a tray of Sbarro pizza, run through the crowded hallway right past me, a wild look in his eyes. He dodged through the holiday shoppers like he was the little spaceship in the Asteroid. The guy workin’ the Sbarro counter was running after him, several people stopping to watch. I dunno what made me do it. I guess like the thoughts of the juju. I stood up, pulling out my wallet and cut the Sbarro dude off before he could follow the pizza thief any further. “Hey I’m sorry about my kid there,” I said, reaching into my wallet. “He’s probably trying to find me, I told him I’d be right there with the money…” I handed the guy a twenty. “Keep the change. I gotta go catch up with my son. He’s probably scared to death, all alone in a crowd like this… Merry Christmas.” And before the guy could respond, I rushed off into the crowd, too.

I ducked through a gaggle of old women fascinated by a blown glass kiosk and past a line waiting at Game Stop. I figured I’d walk just far enough that Mr. Sbarro would think I’d gone after the kid for real. Maybe I’d even just go home, but I wasn’t positive I was ready to yet. I was still upset. I was still ducking and dodging my way through everything when I realized someone was watching me.

You know that feeling you get when someone’s staring at you?

Normally, I wouldn’t think anything of it. There usually are people staring at me. I mean I’m me. But this felt different than that somehow. So I stopped walking and looked around. And that’s when I spotted him. He was standing on the other side of the kiosk to my left, peeking around it, like he’d been following me, ducking kiosk to kiosk to stare at me. It was the kid with the pizza, his floppy brown hair all messy and in his face. When I looked at him, he stood up and tossed a couple pizza crusts into the trash bin in the center of the aisle then tried to rush on through the traffic of shoppers.

I dodged around the kiosk and trash bin, past a young middle eastern girl asking me if I wanted to try a dead sea salt hand scrub, and caught up to the kid. “Hey,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.

He stopped and turned to face me. People jostled by us.

He stared at me. He had these big doe looking eyes and this really recognizable jawline, like some sort of modern James Dean meets Elvis Presley. Only, like, a teenage version of that. But he was messy as fuck. He had on this super old, worn brown leather bomber jacket and jeans torn at the knee and striped with grease and dirt. His hair was floppy but kinda dirty and he had either a fading bruise or dirt on his cheek bone. I couldn’t tell which in the light of the mall.

“What’cha stealin’ pizza from Sbarro for? They ain’t even good,” I said.

He shrugged.

“Well… I paid for it… Merry Christmas.” I said.

He blinked up at me like he didn’t know what to say.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Fifteen,” he answered, like that was an achievement.

“What’s your name? Where’s your mom?” I looked around the mall.

“I ain’t here with my mom,” he said with disdain.

“Your father?”

“I gotta go. Thanks for the slice.” He turned and walked away.

I sighed as he disappeared into the crowd. “Whatever,” I mumbled and I headed on toward Macy’s. I was tired. Lauren was surely home by now, though she hadn’t texted, and alls I wanted was to go home, get undressed, try to get my wife to have sex with me, and forget that Thanksgiving even existed because as far as I was concerned there wasn’t much to be thankful for ‘cos the universe was a bitch.

Fuck good juju, I thought.

Outside, it was even colder than when I went inside and I was walking across the lot to my car, rubbing my hands together, regretting the choice to park so damn far away from the building. I was almost to my car when I saw the kid walking past the line of cars. Curious, I jogged to my car and got in, then followed him.

I only followed him for a couple blocks, though, before he stepped off the road and walked across a Starbucks parking lot, disappearing into the woods behind the trees.

I drove home, wondering where he’d been going and why he’d followed me halfway across the mall only to be so rude when I’d talked to him.

Lauren’s car still wasn’t in the driveway when I got home.

It was after ten.

I fell asleep on the couch.