She enjoyed the notion that New York was home, and that she missed it, but in fact the only thing she really missed was pizza. And not just any old pizza, but the sort of pizza they brought to your door if you phoned them up and asked them to. That was the only real pizza. Pizza that you had to go out and sit at a table staring at red paper napkins for wasn’t real pizza however much extra pepperoni and anchovy they put on it.
London was the place she liked living in most, apart, of course, from the pizza problem, which drove her crazy. Why would no one deliver pizza? Why did no one understand that it was fundamental to the whole nature of pizza that it amved at your front door in a hot cardboard box? That you slithered it out of greaseproof paper and ate it in folded slices in front of the TV? What was the fundamental flaw in the stupid, stuck-up, sluggardly English that they couldn’t grasp this simple principle? For some odd reason it was the one frustration she could never learn simply to live with and accept, and about once a month or so she would get very depressed, phone a pizza restaurant, order the biggest, most lavish pizza she could describe - pizza with an extra pizza on it, essentially - and then, sweetly, ask them to deliver it.
“To what?”
“Deliver. Let me give you the address - “
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you going to come and pick it up?”
“No. Aren’t you going to deliver? My address - “
“Er, we don’t do that, miss.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Er, deliver…”
“You don’t deliver? Am I hearing you correctly… ?”
The exchange would quickly degenerate into an ugly slanging match which would leave her feeling drained and shaky, but much, much better the following morning. In all other respects she was one of the most sweet-natured people you could hope to meet.
But today was testing her to the limit.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul