The Pizza Guy

I travel a bit for work and most of my clients are Indian casinos. Indian casinos are as you know, on Indian property which sometimes has a tendency to be a bit rural. Sometimes they are just plain in the middle of effen nowhere. This particular client was located in an itty bitty town called Mahnomen in Minnesota. The closest airport and lodging to Mahnomen was in Fargo, North Dakota. My partner in crime and career was Tracy. There will be more posts not only featuring Tracy, but certainly featuring Fargo and Tracy. This is a short and sweet story about the Fargo Holiday Inn.

The Fargo Holiday Inn, as far as I know, is the only chain hotel in Fargo. It’s where we always stayed when traveling there. Now being from Las Vegas, we had a tendency to assume that we would have at least some of the comforts of home, like food. Well that just isn’t the case at the Fargo Holiday Inn. Or surrounding areas for that matter. We had just flown in that afternoon and by the time we got situated it was late. By late in Fargo I mean 7pm. We got checked in to our shared two-standard-doubles room and needed showers but we were starving. We have no car, no room service and everything is closed anyway. After all, it’s 7:30 on a Wednesday in Fargo. The only option was to order pizza.

Trace got on the phone with the local pizza shack and ordered a pie and jumped in the shower first. Showered and squeaky clean, she informed me she was going to check out the stellar selection of TV entertainment while I showered and she waited for the pizza.

30 minutes later I emerged from the shower just as there was a knock. Pizza. Awesome. Before I could even adjust to the situation, I looked over and across the room Tracy approaches in her sleepwear, twenty dollar bill in her grasp.

Now let me stop you right here and explain something. Tracy is beautiful. I mean just gorgeous. She’s about five foot nine, long brown hair and blue eyes that are stunning. If you have ever been to Fargo, North Dakota you would know that they don’t make women like her there. I’m not saying that there are not pretty people in North Dakota; I’m saying this girl makes everyone look bad, but in Fargo, well she stuck out like she had Christmas lights hanging on her. The first time we walked the casino floor in Mahnomen men were physically dropping things. Money. Cocktails. Pull tab tickets. Wives. It was embarrassing.

So Tracy walks past me to the door….and I catch a good look at her, which I didn’t think to notice before. Her long hair is wet. She’s still shimmery drippy from the shower. She is wearing nothing but a white t-shirt that is so thin it only has one side to it. It barely covers everything of importance. BARELY. Let’s just say if she had to reach up for anything, someone’s gettin’ a show. Mind you, this was not intentional, we were both about to eat and turn in for the night. I mean in Vegas nobody would give two shits about an almost naked women opening a hotel room door…..But in Fargo….. ? She opens the door.

This kid could not have been but days over 16. He was skinny-scrawny, gangly and pimply. He wore glasses stronger than your seventh grade biology microscope and a trucker logoed baseball cap. One quick glance at Tracy and his bottom jaw was damn near resting on the cheap industrial carpet of the Holiday Inn hallway. There he was in all his glory - in shock, holding our medium mushroom and pepperoni.

“How much” Tracy blurts without batting an eye. She doesn’t even get it. I’m witnessing, astonished.

“Helllll oh-ho? How much?” She then looks over at me like “what’s his problem?” All I can do is grin.

The kid takes a shallow breath “Ba. Buh buh buh babababba. bah ba.”

“Darlin’” Tracy says “You have got to speak up. How much?”

“Buh buaa bu. Ba ba bub nun buh buh”

I shit you not, the kid could not speak. It was priceless. I am now fighting to keep from bursting into hysterics.

Tracy looks at me again with the “What the hell am I supposed to do with the mentally challenged pizza guy” and my only advice is. “Trace, give him the 20, take the pizza”

“But…” she starts to argue

The kid has not spoken. I think I see a string of drool. His eye is twitching. I’m afraid to look any lower than that.

“Give him the money Tracy, take the pizza”

The kid has no open hand, so Tracy pries the pizza from his hands bent at the elbow, the box at his chest. They stay intact, like claws. She forces the twenty into the kid’s paralyzed hand and shuts the door. He is completely frozen where he was the second we opened it, sans pizza.

“Well that was a weird little dude. There was no way that Pizza was 20 bucks” Tracy states, miss nonchalant. “Hungry?”

Unbelievable. She had no idea why the kid froze. I actually had to explain it to her. I am still convinced that to this day, the pizza kid is still telling the story. Let’s face it, shit like that does not happen in Fargo. My guess is that you can find it on his blog, right now.