Margarita in a Box Trumps HotBox

Saturday evening, Lean, Moxy, and I endured such a calamity, Lean was forced to make a late-night liquor store run. She returned and proudly displayed what she’d purchased under duress: a box o’ Margarita. That’s right, it’s Insta-’rita – all the ingredients you need for a Margarita, mixed together, and packaged neatly in cardboard. Neither Mox nor I had ever heard of such a contraption, but seeing the fervor with which Lean filled her glass via the box’s convenient spout quelled any concerns we might’ve had.

What could lead three sassy, sometimes-cosmopolitan ladies to blight their normally-delicate palettes with boxed cocktails? This, I say. THIS:

It all started when we decided to skip Oranje* in favor of veggin’ out at Lean’s place. As it’s often known to, pizza came up and thusly compelled, we ordered from HotBox, which used to be called Pizza Express, which started in Blooomington where I went to college. During my undergrad years, I ordered from Pizza Express often. My fave pizza was the Pesto Mambo, which HotBox still sells. It has pesto instead of tomato sauce and is topped with artichoke hearts, feta, broccoli, and black olives. It’s delish and totally my kind of ‘za. Mox is a fan too and we knew Lean would like it so we ordered a large and waited anxiously. What followed was a more-than-two-hour wait and several absurdly-tedious interactions with HotBox employees and a contemptible manager. When the pizza finally arrived and we refused to sign the receipt, the delivery man stormed off. Fifteen minutes later, when Mox left to pick up a pizza from Pizza Hut, Lean and I heard her gasp and say “Oh my God!” She’d found the landing of Lean’s apartment building littered with pizza toppings and Tootsie Rolls, HotBox’s trademark freebie dessert. Upon exiting the building, we found pizza strewn all over the bushes. Let me just say that again in case you’re a skimmer – THERE WAS PIZZA IN THE BUSHES. Within minutes, Lean saw a baby raccoon scavenging. It was a scene the likes of which I’ve never seen! Apparently the delivery man had a temper tantrum, making the wildlife around Lean’s apartment complex the lucky recipients of some good eats.

Yesterday I wrote a blistering diatribe to the owner of HotBox, explaining the terrible predicament of loving his vittles but loathing our experience, a tale so seething, it afforded me the pleasure of using the word “carnage.” I now patiently await a reply.

P.S. We discussed the name of this event, pronounced “orange” like the fruit and agreed that the gratuitous “j” is exhaustingly bourgeois, don’t you think?