Delivery
2025-Dec-09 • Hayley Phillips
She had been watching the news when they called the restaurant, which is why, later, Hannah felt she had known immediately who the order was for. The man on the phone didn’t say—he probably wasn’t allowed to—but by the time he asked if they did delivery, she knew. It was a half-hour drive. She told him no. He sighed, disinterested, and read off an order and the time it should be ready for pickup. On the television the blonde reporter talked about the protest. Not a large one, as the case had left little to the imagination by the end, years back. But they were out there with their signs, mostly local women who thought the death penalty was inhumane even though it was supposed to be painless these days.
Hannah scraped down the grill because it hadn’t been done well the night before. It would be another hour before she unlocked the front door. His face came on the screen then, harshly lit and still in front of the numbers; he had been 5’10’’. Hadn’t looked it when he used to sit at the bar, third stool from the right, and roll the straw paper around his pointer finger so it curled like Christmas ribbon. They would be here to pick up his food as soon as she opened. She decided the grill was clean enough, but it really wasn’t.
She didn’t need to look at the ticket she’d written. It was something she’d done so many times before—sometimes lazily, crisping the sandwich edges too much, or hastily, leaving the middle lukewarm and congealed—but this time she was careful. She knew that a lot of people in her position would at best change the order in some small way, leave in the tomatoes or use the wrong seasonings, lay four slices of bacon out on the grill instead of the requested five. Someone more vengeful might drop it on the part of the floor the closers forgot to mop, but Hannah did none of these things.
When it was ready she eased it into the container to keep its shape, but found she couldn’t clasp it shut. It couldn’t be so easy to make a last meal. She couldn’t send it out the door this way, this mundane thing taken to an extraordinary event. For a moment she wondered if she should take an anxiety pill from her purse to hide in his parcel. Surely he’d be bouncing his foot, worrying. It was a risk, though, and she didn’t take those. She looked down into his food. Another thing a vengeful person would do is spit in it, send their DNA into the gut of a dying man to die with him, be cremated and sent away together. She opened the sandwich, saw the neat way she'd arranged the bacon. She spat. He wouldn’t mind it, coming from her, not that it was noticeable anyway. Outside, the unfamiliar car pulled up early. Hannah could see it coming through the window.
Hayley Phillips
A Virginia native, Hayley Phillips received her MFA from Randolph College in 2021 and is now a PhD candidate at Louisiana State University. Her work is included in Blue Earth Review, ONE ART, Evergreen Review, Appalachian Review and elsewhere.