A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World (3 page)

Did Mr. Chaim have an answer for these weighty questions? Leonard wondered, and then the phone rang—or rather, it bleated feebly, like a sick lamb.

Leonard's training kicked in. He took a deep breath, centered himself in his body, and allowed compassion to well in his probably reincarnated though not necessarily any-the-wiser soul.

Neetsa Pizza, we make it neat, he said. How can I meet your Neetsa Pizza needs?

Isaac? a male voice said. I have been dreaming of you. You are blind, are you not?

A crank. Of course. But for once, Leonard didn't care. He referred to his screen for guidance. There he would find caller name, country of origin, previous history of pain, photo, justice record, ideological patterns (as represented by previous fast-food choices), and socioeconomic indicators, all routed through preapproved Listener algorithms, generating an optimal client-satisfaction strategy, as well as helpful tips, hints, pointers, and clues.

Only it didn't. Caller information instead spun about his screen, a caroming jumble of letters and numbers. Without his optimal client-satisfaction strategy, Leonard would have to wing it, something he didn't much like doing.

Neetsa Pizza, he said. Have you tried our mouthwatering isosceles sage pizza, loved by wise men the world over? What about our heavenly spherical pizza …

Pizza? the man asked. What's that?

Leonard hung up.

The man called back.

You are Isaac, perhaps? I see your caftan in my dreams. It tells me you are of the Hebrew faith, resident of the Languedoc region. Dead some fifty years, if I am not mistaken. What can I do for you, Messer Isaac?

A man with an accent. A mentally deficient man with a very strong accent (rather like an accent on an accent). A Client Very Much Not Like Me! This could be a Neetsa Pizza test, Leonard realized. His Mentor had told him about such things.

This is Leonard, he answered, taking special care with his enunciation. How can I meet your Neetsa Pizza needs?

You are not Isaac?

This is Leonard, Leonard said, pleased that he had made himself understood and sensing conversion opportunity in the man's hesitation. What is your name, good sir?

My Christian name is Marco, but friends call me Milione.

Where are you, Mill? May I send you a pizza coupon?

I am in prison, as the whole world knows. What is a coupon?

Leonard hung up.

The man called back.

Don't you have someone else to call? Leonard asked.

I have the feeling I am meant to communicate with someone named Isaac. Is he there?

Maybe you should check the number.

Number?

Click.

Mill called several times, always surprised to find Leonard. He was imprisoned in Genova, he said, which Leonard was fairly sure was in the Finger Lakes District.

Am I speaking with Messer Isaac? the man invariably asked.

It's me, Leonard, like last time. Don't you have something better to do?

Alas, no. I am in prison.

And innocent, of course—a man of stature and achievement, guilty of nothing more than love of country. For which “crime” he was forced to share a cell with braggarts and brigands. Did Leonard, perhaps, hold sway with the duke?

He did not.

Of one thing Leonard was certain: this man was not, as he said, a prisoner of war. More likely, a loco in a loony bin. With a phone scrambler that haywired Leonard's screen.

Understanding this, Leonard allowed compassion to surge and well.

I would like to help you, he said. Tell me how I can help you.

Who are you, esteemed friend? Mill asked. Whom have I reached on this mystical journey, if you are not to be my deliverer?

We don't deliver to prison, Leonard said.

You are sure you are not Isaac?

I am Leonard, of Neetsa Pizza? We talked earlier.

Leonardo of Pisa? Prince Leonardo of Pisa? Why didn't you say this? Your Grace, I have a message for your sister.

I am just Leonard. Would you like a coupon for our uniquely delicious “thick and thin” pizza, optimally designed for loved ones who stick by you? he suggested, congratulating himself on his innovative use of the Lateral Sales Strategy.

Loved ones? You mean my father and uncle? What use have they for gifts! They got the lion's share of the jewels, don't forget! Mill chuckled. I am well into my fifth decade, Messer Leonardo, but still they call me little Marco, tiny Marco, eensy-weensy Marco. Have you relatives such as these?

Leonard, please. A sister, Carol. She's older. And a grandfather, but he passed. And a nephew, Felix. I am an orphan, he added, remembering that the strategic sharing of Personal Information can create empathy bonds with callers in their fifth decade.

I too! Mill said. An orphan until the age of fifteen. Which is when my father returned. Can you imagine my astonishment? The auntie who raised me told me he was dead!

That must have made you very happy, Leonard essayed. (He would have been happy to see his father again at any age.)

My auntie taught me penmanship and Bible verses, she wanted me for the Church, but I yearned for manly things. To join my father on those dread seas, to discover new lands! I
yearned for adventure! My father, seeing that I was no longer a suckling babe, claimed me for his own and brought me to Acre. Have you been to Cathay?

I don't think so, said Leonard.

You'd know if you had. Other places of interest? The Levant, perhaps?

I haven't traveled, Leonard said. I'm only twenty-four.

Mill exploded in mirth; his laugh was low and wheezy.

By your age, good sir, I had crossed the whole flat earth! Find yourself a ship! Nothing compares with exploration: it enlivens the senses and broadens the mind—and the women! You have never seen such women!

Women? Leonard asked, despite himself.

Women! Mill said.

Tell me, Leonard said in a small voice.

Ah, the women! Mill said, evidently remembering the women.

Please? Leonard said.

You could never imagine there were so many types of women, Mill said. Truly! Brown women—did you know there were brown women?

Never mind, Leonard said.

The women of Tun and Kain, near the Solitary Tree—now, they are lovely, Mill said. The girls of Muhelet are perhaps the world's most beautiful; but the women of Kinsai—ah, the women of Kinsai!

It's okay, Leonard said. I don't need to hear any more.

The Golden King of Caichu is attended only by damsels—can you imagine? Damsels pull his chariot! The world is full of wonders, Leonardo; you must investigate!

I am not so good with women, Leonard said.

Not a problem! In the province of Kamul, men lend their wives to passing travelers. No need for pretty words: they go willingly! This is the practice in Kaindu as well, near the turquoise mountain. Now, in Tibet …

The line went dead.

Mill called back. In Tibet, he said, and again the phone went dead.

In a certain province the name of which I may not mention, he said when he called back, no honorable man may marry a virgin! To prove she is favored by the gods, she must dally with as many men as possible—only then may she marry. A perfect place for a quiet man like you. If that does not suit, there are twenty thousand women of the world living in the suburbs of Khan-balik; the Great Khan makes them available to all ambassadors. We could go there together—you as ambassador from the great land of Pisa, I representing my native Venice! I have seen a land, he whispered, where women of quality wear trousers.

Can we change the subject? Leonard asked.

It is exactly as I say! Mill said.

I'm kind of stuck here, Leonard said. I can't go anywhere.

I apologize, dear friend. Perhaps you also are in prison?

Feels like it sometimes.

Oh, dear! What had Leonard said? If NP were testing his skills with Clients Very Much Not Like Me, they didn't need to know that the White Room sometimes felt like a prison. They wouldn't understand that Leonard liked it that way.

I am most sorry, Mill said gravely. Who shares your cell, if I may inquire?

You mean, do I have a group plan? Are you selling minutes?

(Leonard's Brazen Head satellite-cell minutes came from Neetsa Pizza, but if he were to lose his job???)

What a quaint idea! Would that I could sell minutes, for I sense that time is running short. Forgive the poor translation: I am, as yet, inexpert in this form of communication. I am wondering what manner of man shares your temporary dungeon habitat.

Leonard explained that he lived and worked alone; Mill couldn't believe it.

This must be the greatest torment of all: to be always alone!

I like it, Leonard said. And he did: solving problems with a pizza coupon was as much people as Leonard generally wanted.

I, on the other hand, Mill said, am surrounded by prisoners of the lowest class! Riffraff, ruffians, and bowlegged bastards!

My! Leonard said.

And visitors. Mill had been in his “temporary dungeon habitat” less than one week, but already news of his incarceration had reached the noblest society. Fine ladies visited him, eager to hear his tales. Some brought sweetmeats or news from home, the prettiest promised him things with their eyes, all assured him they'd do what they could.

I'm sure they will, Leonard said, aware that he'd all but given up on conversion.

Humph, said Mill. Tell me about your temporary dungeon habitat. Is it dank, does water drip down the rough-hewn stone?

Actually, it's white. Everything is white. I paint it every year.

No past inmate has scratched poems on the mortar?

Leonard laughed, then remembered the strange, unreadable scrawls his grandfather had left on his walls, before the room became White. His grandfather had asked, each year on Leonard's birthday, whether Leonard could read what he'd written there; each year Leonard was not up to the task.

No poems, he said.

Do you have a window? Mill persisted. Can you hear the children playing?

It's night. The children are all in bed.

Night? Mill said. My good friend, it's well past dawn.

I do the midnight shift, Leonard said. It's definitely night.

I implore you, do not let your mind slip! I am looking out the window and plainly it is day: ships are active, gulls fly, wenches lift their skirts for sailors.

Sometimes you have to let a client have the last word.

If it were day and I could see out the window, Leonard said, I'd see buildings just like this one.

What a benighted land! Mill murmured. So many prisons! We face the port, of course. This is how my captors torment me! I thought I saw Uncle Maffeo on a boat much like the one the Great Khan gave us to escort the Princess Kokachin to Arghun of the Levant.

Mill was silent a moment.

It was just a vision, Mill concluded in a sad voice, of the sort I have frequently had since crossing the Desert of Lop. You've met them, I assume? The Tibetans?

The line went dead.

Over the next few nights, Mill was Leonard's only caller. Leonard grew accustomed to the phone's gentle bleating and Mill's jovial but strangely distant, overly accented voice. Reassured that this was not an NP test, Leonard reinstalled his true-ray blocker, unfiltered his screen, and left bannocks by the cat-chimney.

How long have you been in your temporary dungeon habitat? Mill asked. Perhaps you too have just arrived?

Three years.

My friend! How is it that you have not gone mad! Have you a beard down to your belly? I am glad to have found you—do not despair! I shall relate stories to you, wonders such as you have never known! The days will fly!

Okay, Leonard said.

And so he began. Mostly Mill's tales were not so wondrous. He had much to say about the availability in dull-sounding countries of water, food, and game. He spoke of climate and wind and pasturage for beasts. Of cloth and carpets and dates. Of deserts and steeds and falcons and asses. Leonard couldn't share Mill's enthusiasm for the particulars of what he called Custom and Commerce. He also couldn't follow Mill's specious geography, for he could find no Lesser Armenia on the map he'd printed and illegally affixed to his white wall, no Persia, no Levant—certainly no Desert of Lop! But still Leonard listened, because compassion welled, and because his screen hissed whenever he turned it on, and because occasionally Mill described something of interest, like mountains of salt, or a lake that produced fish only during Lent (whatever that was), or a caliph who starved to death in a tower of gold. A shoemaker who gouged out his eye because he had taken too great a pleasure in one lady's foot. Date wine that loosened the bowels, three kings who threw a magic stone into a well, a hot wind that stifled armies, professional mourners who never ceased lamenting.

Adventures too: Mill was pursued once by a renegade khan, narrowly escaping capture; many of his companions were not so lucky. He spoke of fierce Saracens, of whom any evil might be expected; also, marauding Tartars and his friends, the Tibetans.

Tell me, Mill said, once he'd called back, does this not sound like the life for you? Every night a new bed, every day something you never imagined?

No! Leonard said. How do you stand it? Don't new things frighten you? Wouldn't you rather be safe at home?

I have no home! My home is where I am, wherever that may be. That is freedom, that is happiness!

Leonard pondered the world outside his White Room, outside his sister's house, beyond the corners of Boise and Degas. His stomach became distinctly unsettled.

I think you're very brave, Leonard said.

What you call bravery is easier than the alternative.

Which is?

Fear. And isolation from one's fellows. But truly, one is brave only if one pursues what one fears, and I do not fear the unknown.

What do you fear? Leonard asked.

…

Mill? Leonard asked.

I suppose this place, Mill said softly. The sameness of it, the smallness. It does not resemble the desert I have mentioned, yet it shares many of its qualities; at night I tremble, much as I trembled there, before I met them. It is the emptiness I fear, emptiness and being alone. Here is where I must be brave.