Mario's Pizzaria, Part I

She knew it would be her last opportunity to have him before he was taken away for an eight year stint upstate. Armed robbery. In truth he had been at the end of a 48 hour meth binge and rather out of sorts when one of the patrons at Mario's Pizzaria reached for a butter knife in lame effort to foil the unsteady and quite unplanned burglary that was going on before him. In a panic our man had grabbed a pizza slicer off of the closest table and held the circular blade to the hero's throat, demanding the night's earnings from the cash register and whatever change remained with the attempted hero after paying for his medium cheese pizza. His getaway was cut short, and he had only made it about two blocks before the police intercepted him staggering down the street, pizza slicer still in hand. She had called them while hiding with the bus boys in the kitchen.

And now it would be her last opportunity to have him. His lawyer had arranged a private room for their goodbye. The least his lawyer was able to do; though he had been able to lower the charges from hostage taking and assault with a deadly weapon to armed robbery, he had failed to take up the issue of his client's mental state before the jury, saying nothing of years of addiction or even mentioning the troubling results of initial psychoanalysis. Early schizophrenia.

These things all at once flew threw her head as she entered the small, windowless room at the back of the police station. His addiction and her own, his fragile mind soon to be rocked by prison, and of course her ultimate betrayal. She reasoned to herself that it would be for his own good, they would put him in a hospital, help him break his addiction and perhaps treat his developing mental illness. He knew she had made the call that would send him away for eight years. And still he had to have her.

No words were spoken as she advanced towards him. There was nothing to say. He grabbed her and threw her on to the interrogation table. She screamed. More of delight than pain, though pain is good she thought.