Making pizza would never be the same.

Punching her balled fists into the thick lump of dough, Gina’s tears mixed with flour flying in her eyes, marking her cheeks with white streaks that reminded her of Apache war paint in the old Western movies she liked as a teenager.

Losing her sister, Betsy, and now her mother in the span of a few days was too much. One day Eleanor lamented the loss of a daughter, listened to Dean Martin CDs and pounded down shots of amaretto. The next day she stretched out face-down on the kitchen floor with her head in a puddle of tomato sauce she knocked off the stove when she dropped with a COVID-related blood clot.

Gina still toiled, working her stubby fingers to the cuticles to provide take-out for all these bossy suburban types and their pampered kids too stupid to know how to cook or too lazy to learn.

With no eat-in dining, everybody clamored for take-out.

Everybody wanted pizza.

But with Wynne the Pizza King and his local franchises squeezing all the independent parlors out of business, making a living was getting harder every day.

Now this.

Vic showing up yesterday looking more unhinged than ever with a shaved head and an Italian army uniform was just too much. Gina liked him better wearing the homemade mask when he at least tried to do the right thing. But he nose-dived fast after the prison guard zapped him with the stun gun in the supermarket.

Vic never liked to work.

Now, he even refused to deliver pizzas.

No way, he said.

If you don’t drive we don’t make money, she said.

I’m laid off, he said.

You’re nuts, she said.

No, you laid me off, he said.

Vic winked.

I can collect more in unemployment than I was making in tips.

We’re a mom and pop operation, Gina said. I’m mom and you’re pop. Just us. And we’re doing better than ever because of the sickness.

You said it, Gina. Just us. Justice is bigger than any pizza pie.

Justice?

The movement.

What movement?

The boogaloo war against injustice by the deep state shadow government stealing our freedoms.

Vic, you’re not in any movement. You did better as a wannabe mobster. This paramilitary nonsense isn’t helping anybody. Look at you.

Running his hand over his smooth head, Vic flashed capped teeth, put a polished black boot on a chair, folded his hands and leaned his elbows on his knee like a poster boy for fascism.

Il Duce would understand, he said.

Goddammit, Victor, if Benito Mussolini was around ordering you to keep your social distance he’d hang you from a meat hook if you refused. My mother isn’t dead and in the urn a week and you’re already making my life harder.

Our lives would be a lot easier if you took the Pizza King’s offer and sold the business to him, Vic said.

Our lives would be easier without you getting obsessed with this stupid Godstock rally that’s sponsored by that sleazy radio host and Wynne the Pizza King who wants to put us out of business. We built this business together. If you don’t get in the car right now and deliver those pies getting cold on the counter don’t come home tonight.

If that’s the way you want it, Gina.

Turning to leave, Vic took a coughing fit, got dizzy, lost his balance, spun out of control and collapsed, knocking the pizza pile on the floor.

At the same time the pizza parlor door opened.

A smiling Sal “Muscles” Marinara, Betsy’s first husband, waltzed into the parlor. Musclebound and clean-shaven, with wavy coal black hair, tight black slacks, black loafers with no socks, a black tank top and double gold chains including a cross and an Italian horn around his neck, Sal stopped mid-step.

With Vic writhing on the floor, Sal changed his good-natured expression to one of grave concern.

Hey, baldy, he said, you choking on a meatball or what?