The Inevitable Surprise

By Nathan Graziano

“Good God, he has a baseball bat between his legs,” my wife says and covers her mouth, trying to blot the grin that slipped on her lips as the pizza boy flipped the lid of a pepperoni pie and presented a wide-eyed bombshell with what Edgar Allan Poe called “the inevitable surprise.”

“No, no,” I say, the air siphoned from my Friday night, “the camera adds six inches.”

I sigh. But my wife knows. And I know. And anyone who has watched Pizza Bone 6 and seen the look of sheer fear in the bombshell’s eyes when that lid was flipped—yes, you know, too. So I turn to my wife and suggest some popcorn and a new movie, one where the hero dies at the end.