A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World Read online

  Advance praise for

  A HIGHLY UNLIKELY SCENARIO

  “Part Italo Calvino, part Ray Bradbury. In this extraordinary novel, Rachel Cantor explores questions of self-knowledge, true love, and family, all while saving the world—and winning readers—in the past, present, and future.”

  —HANNAH TINTI, AUTHOR OF THE GOOD THIEF

  “A sharp, witty, and immensely entertaining debut.”

  —EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL, AUTHOR OF THE LOLA QUARTET

  “Cosmic and comic, full of philosophy, mysticism, and celestial whimsy. A story of listening, of souls and bodies, that is at once both profoundly wild and wildly profound.”

  —CHARLES YU, AUTHOR OF HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE

  “I didn’t know I needed a mystical Jewish Douglas Adams in my life, but Rachel Cantor is it. Buy this book, bubeleh! It will surprise you in ways large and small, and it will fill you with delight.” —EMILY BARTON, AUTHOR OF BROOKLAND

  A HIGHLY UNLIKELY SCENARIO

  OR, A NEETSA PIZZA EMPLOYEE’S

  GUIDE TO SAVING THE WORLD

  Copyright © 2013 by Rachel Cantor

  First Melville House printing: January 2014

  The author gratefully acknolwedges the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Hall Farm Center for their generous support during the writing of this book.

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201 and 8 Blackstock Mews

  Islington

  London N4 2BT

  mhpbooks.com facebook.com/mhpbooks @melvillehouse

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition of this book as follows:

  Cantor, Rachel.

  A highly unlikely scenario, or, a Neetsa Pizza employee’s guide to saving the world : a novel / Rachel Cantor.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-61219-264-2

  I. Title.

  PS3603.A5877H54 2014

  813’.6—dc23

  2013024566

  ISBN: 978-1-61219-265-9 (ebook)

  v3.1

  For Leah, Josh, Elena, and Cole, with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: The White Room

  Part Two: The Brazen Head

  Part Three: The Sizzling Aleph

  Afterword

  An Interview with the Author

  Reading Group Guide

  PART ONE

  THE WHITE ROOM

  The missing complaints

  Leonard’s usual complaint volume was twelve calls per hour, his average dispatch time two-point-five minutes, but for three nights running, Leonard had received no complaints whatsoever. No cranks, no callers saying they’d ordered super not supernal, not even a wrong number.

  Leonard wasn’t worried, not at first—satellites blew up all the time, Neetsa Pizza always worked it out. He took time to catch up on the online antics of Sue & Susheela. And to ask questions of the Brazen Head:

  Q: Are Sue & Susheela really twins? With each other, I mean.

  A: They entered this world more or less at the same time and for the same purpose. Over and out!

  By night two, Leonard would have welcomed even a crank. He was not always optimally compassionate with cranks, though on this matter, Neetsa Pizza was clear: all callers deserve the best, which is to say, a pizza shaped according to Pythagorean principles. In principle, though not always in practice, Leonard subscribed to this creed, which also stated:

  Those who experience a rending of their joy are in pain.

  Clients must be relieved of their pain. It is a sacred calling to restore clients to optimal satisfaction.

  Pain is relieved through compassion. Compassion is best achieved in a White Room, and delivered through concentrated Listening, use of time-tested Listener algorithms, and liberal use of Neetsa Pizza coupons.

  So Leonard listened in his White Room, ten hours per night, seven nights per week, ten being a perfect number, according to Pythagoras, seven being pure and inviolable, Leonard being, by trade and also by nature, a Listener.

  Like most young men, Leonard had wanted to be a pizza thrower. He admired the gold braid, he wanted to toss pizzas in NP’s zero-gravity rotating window. But eye-hand coordination wasn’t Leonard’s Special Gift, and he vomited when upside down. He begged then to be a pizza greeter, but he lacked the necessary ebullience. Pizza neatener? Alas, his examiners found, his love of order was not sufficiently strong—and they made no judgment about that, for we are all of us, each in our own special way, unique and individualistic!

  We’ll find something, NP promised, and they did. It happened that his soul’s evolution, chartable through the generations, had prepared him exactly for this: to be a Listener. His fascination facility was undeveloped, naturally, but its potential was limitless. His receptivity, moreover, was near perfect, allowing him to encourage the transfer of pain, a faculty present in less than one percent of one percent of the population. Leonard could handle Neetsa Pizza complaints, in other words, so he did.

  The White Room was a Neetsa Pizza innovation, the creation of which, under the off-site but highly supportive supervision of a Pythagorean Mentor, was an NP rite of passage. Over a three-day period (three because three dynamically bridges the dyadic gap between Listener and client-in-pain), Leonard had converted his grandfather’s garage-apartment bedroom—dragging away the faded settee; painting the walls, onto which his grandfather had scrawled undisciplined columns of unreadable script; fastening flimsies to the windows and sixty-day sealant to the closets, all the while fasting and chanting the NP theme song. After the Whitening, his Mentor had wept with Leonard over the purity of the Room. Or rather, his Mentor had wept, while Leonard, in a dehydrated delirium, begged for food.

  Books were forbidden in the White Room, as was any reading material other than the Pythagoras Papers and Listeners’ Manual, as was Medusa, the neighborly cat. Needlework was off-limits, as were half-life pencils, solo-games, and other distractions. Between calls, Listeners were to memorize conversion scripts, play Listener problem-solving games, ruminate on the moral and aesthetic value of neat pizza, or practice a Company-developed form of meditation based on Pythagorean echemythia, or silence. Leonard had shown unusual echemythia aptitude but he found pretzeling hard on his knees, so with Felix’s help he unfiltered his screen and installed true-ray blockers on his roof (his little rebellion) so NP couldn’t overfly and see.

  On night two, bereft of clients-in-pain, Leonard paced his White Room, again asking questions of the Brazen Head:

  Q: Sue & Susheela—are they real? Are they married?

  A: They exist. In this land, however, females cannot as yet marry each other. In a while, crocodile!

  Leonard practiced his bonhomie, a skill that came less naturally to him than listening. Clients-in-pain with a justice record, he knew, find presumptions of familiarity deeply humiliating, while clients-in-pain from certain middling classes are comforted by probable nicknames, a preapproved list of which was offered by his screen, in ranked order of priority: Pher for Christopher, Don for Donna.

  Good evening, Med! he said to Medusa the cat. How can I meet your Neetsa Pizza needs?

  Top of the evening, Madame Medusa! Can I interest you in a Neetsa Pizza coupon?

  Still he received no calls. No opportunities to relieve pain. By the third night, Leonard was frantic. His phone log showed the usual number of incomings, r
andom call lengths within the expected range. When he tried calling one of those numbers he heard a soft static that somehow hurt his ears. What if Neetsa Pizza had achieved an optimal level of client satisfaction? This was everyone’s dream, but what then? What other job would suit him half as well? He wasn’t diminutive enough to be a barbecutie, and he was too polite to be a soda jerk. Caravan driver? Too much face-to-face. Water carrier? Leather beater? No screen time!

  Panicked, Leonard reinstalled his screen filter, dismantled the true-ray blocker on his roof, and practiced Pythagorean silence with unprecedented focus.

  The situation is dire, he told his sister, Carol, after his shift. He’d changed out of his white caftan and trousers into rainbow lounging shorts; she was getting ready for her day shift at Jack-o-Bites, where she served Scottish tapas in reprehensible tartan steep pants.

  Carol was unsympathetic: You sedate the postindustrial masses with your pre-Socratic gobbledygook, she said, running a pick through her red afro. Pythagorean pizza is the opiate of the middle classes!

  Is not! Leonard said.

  Is too! she replied. Pass me my tam.

  Carol only pretended to be a Jacobite: in fact, she was a neo-Maoist. According to her, the revolution would originate with suburbanites such as herself. It had to, for who was more oppressed, who more in need of radicalization? She took issue with Neetsa Pizza’s rigid hierarchy, its notion that initiation was only for the lucky few—the oligarchy of it!

  Pizza, she liked to exclaim, is nothing more than the ingredients that give it form.

  No! Leonard would cry, shocked as ever by her materialism. There is such a thing as right proportion! Such a thing as beauty!

  Leonard lacked his sister’s sense that the world was broken. He’d been a coddled younger child, while she had been forced by the death of their parents to care for him and their doddering grandfather. No surprise she found the world in need of overhaul. In Leonard’s view, bits of the world might be damaged, but never permanently so. It was his mission, through Listening, to heal some part of it. No need for reeducation, no need for armed struggle.

  The Leader has assumed control of the menus, Carol said, pinning the tam to her afro. Did you even know? FELIX, YOU BETTER BE PUTTING ON YOUR TOREADOR PANTS! YOUR CARAVAN LEAVES IN SEVEN MINUTES! Pretty soon everyone will be selling Heraclitan Grillburgers, or whatever food he favors. You and I will both be out of a job.

  (The food preferences of the Leader were, in the interests of National Unity, a well-kept secret.)

  I didn’t know, Leonard said, but he wasn’t worried: Neetsa Pizza’s concerns were eternal, not political: how to live the moral life, the unity underlying all manifestation. The Leader was undoubtedly aware of this.

  You didn’t know about the menus, did you? Carol said. I thought not. When was the last time you left the house?

  I leave the house every day, as you well know, Leonard said—for at 3:23 p.m. each day Leonard walked to the corner of Boise and Degas to pick up Felix, whom he cared for after school in exchange for living rent-free in Carol’s garage apartment, without which he would have been Out in the World Alone.

  I don’t mean the corner, Carol said.

  I don’t need to leave the house, Leonard said, and he didn’t. He was perfectly fulfilled in his White Room, and joyous in his Life Plan, which was to heal clients-in-pain. It was a good life, its pieces fitting together like the double crust on Carol’s Chicken-in-Every-Pot Pie.

  You need to leave the house, Carol said, fastening her tartan apron around her pleated steep pants. End of discussion. FELIX!

  A breathless boy arrived, bedecked in black-trimmed red toreador pants and holding a junior clutchbag. His red afro was disheveled and he looked vaguely worried. This was Felix.

  Go, Carol said. Don’t believe a word your teachers tell you.

  Three twenty-three, Leonard said.

  Felix nodded all-purposefully, then ran to catch his caravan.

  A good egg

  After Carol left, Leonard helped himself to haggis tarts, smuggled (as a form of revolutionary sabotage) by his sister from Jack-o-Bites. He checked that his White Room was perfectly white, then fretted about his missing complaints, Medusa on his lap.

  He fell asleep on his swirly chair and dreamed of his grandfather. The old man smelled of herring and was holding an improbably tall stack of leather-bound books.

  Boychik, the old man said. You’re a good egg. I need you to listen good.

  No problem, Leonard said. I’m a Listener. What’s it like being dead?

  You’re not listening, his grandfather said. I need you to listen good.

  Oh, Leonard said. I miss you. There was something I needed to tell you, I forget what.

  It is time for you to save the world, his grandfather said. I need you to do this one thing for me. Boychik, are you listening?

  Gosh, I’m glad to see you! Leonard said.

  The world, boychik! You need to save the world!

  Are you holding my calls, Grandfather? Somebody’s holding my calls. I’m worried I’ll lose my job—then what’ll I do?

  But that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say. It was important, whatever it was.

  Calls, shmalls! his grandfather said. I need you to listen!

  Leonard remembered what it was.

  I’m sorry, he said, extending his hand, but his grandfather was gone.

  His family obligations

  That afternoon, still thinking about his dream, Leonard brought a cup of chicory to the corner. Felix was too old by half to be met at the caravan, but he liked seeing Leonard half a block away—looking off, as if arrested by a compelling thought, his green army pants suavely sweeping the ground, his brown afro shining in the sunlight. On his way to the corner, however, Leonard was stopped by six policemen carrying sniper muskets and wearing yellow sashes that read CHIPMUNK PATROL.

  Chipmunk Patrol?

  They asked if Leonard was skulking, reminded him that the webcam was always watching, offered him a pamphlet of inspiring homilies by the Leader.

  He took two. No, better yet, three! As one, the Chipmunk Patrol squinted meaningfully, then walked away, looking at Leonard again over their collective shoulders.

  The caravan arrived, discharging Felix. No black eye this time, but his toreador pants had been soiled. The municipal compost heap: it happened nearly every day.

  Between the corner and home—territory officially known as the Time between Here and There—Felix was required to tell Leonard anything not-good that happened at school. So he wouldn’t have to bring it home. On this day, head hanging low, Felix merely said, Do you think they’re salvageable? Meaning his pants.

  I have a surprise for you, Leonard said.

  Is it …?

  You’ll see, Leonard said. Already the boy’s face had brightened.

  Shall we run? Felix asked.

  We shall! Leonard said.

  The letters are dancing

  Once home, Leonard put Felix’s toreador pants into the steam-cleaner, then gave him ginger ale in a chilled beer stein and precisely two peanut-butter jam squares. Then he supervised five minutes of awesome karate kicks, after which Felix pronounced himself knackered and ready for a story.

  Leonard wasn’t good at stories. In the early days, when Felix clambered onto his lap, Leonard would say, Once upon a time …, and Felix would say, What? What? and Leonard would say, There lived …, and Felix would say, Who? Who? thus creating an artificial suspense that ultimately proved unsatisfying. What Leonard quickly learned was that Felix was very good at stories, so much so that all Leonard had to say was, Who should our story be about today? and Felix would say, A beautiful princess named Celeste! and Leonard would say, Oh, and where does Celeste live? and Felix would say, In a great wooded land surrounded by beasties! and Leonard would say, Beasties, oh my! and Felix, his pale cheeks pinkening, would say, They’re horrible! They dump boys onto the municipal compost heap! and on it would go.

  After storytelling,
if Felix wasn’t too knackered, he would work on his opus, a finely drawn comic-book retelling of “Leonard’s” stories. He was patient and careful, finishing no more than three or four panels per day, his retelling of the story always an improvement on the telling itself.

  Don’t you want your surprise? Leonard asked after the awesome karate kicks.

  The White Room! Felix had forgotten!

  Every sixty days, the seal to Grandfather’s closet popped open and Leonard allowed Felix into the White Room. Felix put on a white overshirt and either his white toreador pants or white Laplander shorts, depending on the weather. Once in the Room, the boy would say a charm of his own devising, then close his eyes and pick a book at random. Then he’d sit on Leonard’s lap and balance the book on their four knees. Leonard had no use for books—they reminded him of school, which he left at fifteen after learning about little other than the life of the Leader, and hygiene, both physical and social. He’d even less use for his grandfather’s morocco-bound books, which were heavy and written in a language Leonard couldn’t understand. Felix, however, seemed to have a feel for them.

  Most of the books they “read” contained a central text in Hebrew, surrounded by columns also in Hebrew but in a smaller hand.

  Not Hebrew, Felix said. Aramaic. It’s called the Talmud, which is actually a lot of books. I asked the Brazen Head.

  Felix was always asking things of the Brazen Head. Like Leonard, Felix enjoyed his screen time, when his mother allowed it. When Carol told him to go outside and play, he swung halfheartedly on a creaky safety swing till he was allowed back in. When he was younger she used to organize play dates with proletariat children, but in their vigorous class-based outrage they, like his middle-class chums, were often moved to throw Felix onto the municipal compost heap. Peasant children were no better. Carol reckoned she didn’t have time for all that laundry.