Oberlin Chronicles: Chapter 1
You know the drill by now:
The call came on a Monday night late in November. Richard Sattva, son of Dr. Vishanu Sattva, MD, and Dr. Niyathi Sattva, MD, PhD., didn’t hear it; he was in the break room of Belbo’s Pizzeria on Lear Road, making a token attempt to scan through his Chem textbook while missing his car. He really missed his car; he also sort of hated it, but it’s weird how being stuck on your own two feet can change your opinion on a vehicle, even it was a Nazi-designed plastic cheap piece of shit.
God, Richard really missed his car. It was a jet-black Volkswagen Jetta GLX sedan, complete with all the options. He had the dealership labels memorized: one-hundred-seventy-four horsepower V6 engine, leather seating, sun roof, CD player, and that remote control thing that came on the keychain. It was less than a year old and just about perfect as a car could be - with the sole exception, of course, that Richard currently didn’t have access to it.
It had happened two weeks before. Richard had still been hung over from the big party at Silverman’s on Halloween night, and the first snow of the winter had come and gone in the past twelve hours. To make a long story short, he’d rear-ended a guy he didn’t know named Chris on the way into his school’s parking lot at thirty miles per hour. Chris had a Ford Taurus which - while clearly receiving inferior gas mileage and awkward steering - did have a partial steel frame; the Jetta, on the other hand, turned out to be mostly plastic and crumple zones north of the windshield. Needless to say, the Taurus had won, and Richard had come out of the deal with a hood that looked like an accordion and total responsibility in the eyes of the law.
Five thousand dollars. That’s how much it was going to cost Richard to get the Jetta out of the shop. And naturally Vishanu had chosen that moment to go on one of his patented responsibility rants and refuse to pay for the damage, or even loan Richard the money for it - even if that meant Niyathi would have to drop Richard off at the high school every day since then, on top of everything else, which clearly wasn’t about to improve her mood. And honestly, the whole argument was patent bullshit to begin with, since Vishanu still owed Niyathi probably a hundred times that amount from med school.
But no. Of course Richard had to go and beg for his summer job, delivering pizza for a hole-in-the-wall, plastic-fork restaurant, the kind of place that was being wiped out by the Pizza Huts and Dominos of the world on a daily basis - even though applying for a pizza delivery job without having your own car was probably the third-most retarded idea in the world, just behind invading Russia in the wintertime and putting your dick in a wall socket.
It still kind of shocked Richard, in retrospect, that he’d gotten the job back. He and the manager, one Jim Bosco, had exchanged certain words close to the end of the summer, as well as certain gestures. After that, Richard had been sure that the only way he’d ever see the inside of Belbo’s again was at six o’clock in the morning, with a rock, some gasoline and a smile on his face. But Bosco had taken him back without saying a word - though Richard could tell from the particular way his neck folds had twitched that the manager hadn’t forgotten a thing.
And even Richard being carless had worked out. In the time since he’d last worked for Belbo’s, the franchise had picked up a company car for deliveries - an ancient, off-green Subaru that wasn’t just on its last legs, but probably its last ankles. The car was a pretty sweet deal, Richard had to admit. He picked up the keys from Bosco on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, exactly an hour and twenty minutes after school ended, and he didn’t give them back until twelve midnight. Anything that happened between those times was Richard’s business.
Except tonight. It had started that Sunday, when an instant message from Silverman had booted Richard out of a decent game of Starcraft:
“Friend” wasn’t a word Richard would use to describe Robert Silverman. “Useful asshole” was a better term. It wasn’t like clerks in this state carded you much, but every now and again it was useful to know someone who was eighteen but looked twenty-five. In return, Richard hung out down the street at Silverman’s place every now and again, when he wanted to get away from Niyathi, and let Silverman mock him in front of a mostly-stoned audience.
Richard had typed back:
Three full games of Minesweeper later, Silverman replied:
That was what Silverman liked to call Bosco’s Subaru. Richard found himself thinking about it. He asked how much. Silverman wrote back, eventually:
Richard immediately responded:
but he stopped short before sending it. On the one hand, while it wasn’t out of the question that Silverman might have access to that kind of money, it was practically impossible that he hadn’t already pissed it away on beer. On the other hand, though… Richard had a thousand dollars in savings. He’d made just over six hundred dollars working for Belbo’s in the past two weeks. He had exactly $3390 between him and the Jetta. On top of that, tomorrow was a Monday. Mondays were always dead, even during the summer. Richard would just have to show up and put in the time; so long as he got the car back from Silverman in time, Bosco would never know it was gone.
Really, Richard had only one problem with the idea: he didn’t trust Silverman worth shit.
But he’d let himself get talked into it anyway. So a few hours before he bothered opening the Chem book, he’d gone out back for a cigarette break and handed off the keys to Silverman. Then he’d gone back inside and sat in the break room for what felt like an eternity, waiting, like he always did on Mondays, for the orders that would never come.
A couple of hours later, he looked up from the textbook to see “R. SATTAV” printed on the computer screen hanging in the break room, underneath the column “ASSIGNED TO DELIVERY.”
The call came on a Monday night late in November. Richard Sattva, son of Dr. Vishanu Sattva, MD, and Dr. Niyathi Sattva, MD, PhD., didn’t hear it; he was in the break room of Belbo’s Pizzeria on Lear Road, making a token attempt to scan through his Chem textbook while missing his car. He really missed his car; he also sort of hated it, but it’s weird how being stuck on your own two feet can change your opinion on a vehicle, even it was a Nazi-designed plastic cheap piece of shit.
God, Richard really missed his car. It was a jet-black Volkswagen Jetta GLX sedan, complete with all the options. He had the dealership labels memorized: one-hundred-seventy-four horsepower V6 engine, leather seating, sun roof, CD player, and that remote control thing that came on the keychain. It was less than a year old and just about perfect as a car could be - with the sole exception, of course, that Richard currently didn’t have access to it.
It had happened two weeks before. Richard had still been hung over from the big party at Silverman’s on Halloween night, and the first snow of the winter had come and gone in the past twelve hours. To make a long story short, he’d rear-ended a guy he didn’t know named Chris on the way into his school’s parking lot at thirty miles per hour. Chris had a Ford Taurus which - while clearly receiving inferior gas mileage and awkward steering - did have a partial steel frame; the Jetta, on the other hand, turned out to be mostly plastic and crumple zones north of the windshield. Needless to say, the Taurus had won, and Richard had come out of the deal with a hood that looked like an accordion and total responsibility in the eyes of the law.
Five thousand dollars. That’s how much it was going to cost Richard to get the Jetta out of the shop. And naturally Vishanu had chosen that moment to go on one of his patented responsibility rants and refuse to pay for the damage, or even loan Richard the money for it - even if that meant Niyathi would have to drop Richard off at the high school every day since then, on top of everything else, which clearly wasn’t about to improve her mood. And honestly, the whole argument was patent bullshit to begin with, since Vishanu still owed Niyathi probably a hundred times that amount from med school.
But no. Of course Richard had to go and beg for his summer job, delivering pizza for a hole-in-the-wall, plastic-fork restaurant, the kind of place that was being wiped out by the Pizza Huts and Dominos of the world on a daily basis - even though applying for a pizza delivery job without having your own car was probably the third-most retarded idea in the world, just behind invading Russia in the wintertime and putting your dick in a wall socket.
It still kind of shocked Richard, in retrospect, that he’d gotten the job back. He and the manager, one Jim Bosco, had exchanged certain words close to the end of the summer, as well as certain gestures. After that, Richard had been sure that the only way he’d ever see the inside of Belbo’s again was at six o’clock in the morning, with a rock, some gasoline and a smile on his face. But Bosco had taken him back without saying a word - though Richard could tell from the particular way his neck folds had twitched that the manager hadn’t forgotten a thing.
And even Richard being carless had worked out. In the time since he’d last worked for Belbo’s, the franchise had picked up a company car for deliveries - an ancient, off-green Subaru that wasn’t just on its last legs, but probably its last ankles. The car was a pretty sweet deal, Richard had to admit. He picked up the keys from Bosco on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, exactly an hour and twenty minutes after school ended, and he didn’t give them back until twelve midnight. Anything that happened between those times was Richard’s business.
Except tonight. It had started that Sunday, when an instant message from Silverman had booted Richard out of a decent game of Starcraft:
- hey dude i ned yur car
“Friend” wasn’t a word Richard would use to describe Robert Silverman. “Useful asshole” was a better term. It wasn’t like clerks in this state carded you much, but every now and again it was useful to know someone who was eighteen but looked twenty-five. In return, Richard hung out down the street at Silverman’s place every now and again, when he wanted to get away from Niyathi, and let Silverman mock him in front of a mostly-stoned audience.
Richard had typed back:
- dude i can’t. its in the shop remember?
Three full games of Minesweeper later, Silverman replied:
- dude i know i mean the other 1 the lesbomobile i can pay u
That was what Silverman liked to call Bosco’s Subaru. Richard found himself thinking about it. He asked how much. Silverman wrote back, eventually:
- $300
Richard immediately responded:
- the fuck you say
but he stopped short before sending it. On the one hand, while it wasn’t out of the question that Silverman might have access to that kind of money, it was practically impossible that he hadn’t already pissed it away on beer. On the other hand, though… Richard had a thousand dollars in savings. He’d made just over six hundred dollars working for Belbo’s in the past two weeks. He had exactly $3390 between him and the Jetta. On top of that, tomorrow was a Monday. Mondays were always dead, even during the summer. Richard would just have to show up and put in the time; so long as he got the car back from Silverman in time, Bosco would never know it was gone.
Really, Richard had only one problem with the idea: he didn’t trust Silverman worth shit.
But he’d let himself get talked into it anyway. So a few hours before he bothered opening the Chem book, he’d gone out back for a cigarette break and handed off the keys to Silverman. Then he’d gone back inside and sat in the break room for what felt like an eternity, waiting, like he always did on Mondays, for the orders that would never come.
A couple of hours later, he looked up from the textbook to see “R. SATTAV” printed on the computer screen hanging in the break room, underneath the column “ASSIGNED TO DELIVERY.”