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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Howe, Ben Ryder

My Korean deli / Ben Ryder Howe.

eISBN: 978-0-307-37477-6

1. Howe, Ben Ryder. 2. Howe, Ben Ryder–Family. 3. Delicatessens. 4. Editors–United States–Biography. 5. Authors, American–21st century–Biography. I. Title.

PN4874.H685A3 2009 818′.603 C2008-906970-6

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,

a division of Random House of Canada Limited

Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca

v3.1

For Dwayne Wright

1968–2009

“Most guys from the projects has Wizard of Oz disease: they can’t go nowhere unless they got three other people with them. They’re like, ‘I’m the Tin Man and I don’t have a heart. Will you come with me to look for one? Cuz I’m afraid to leave Brooklyn alone.’ ”

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Steam Table

Slush Pile

Location is Everything

“Don’t Let It Kill You”

Amateurs

The Ghost

“The Square Root of A Doughnut”

The Accident

Lucy

We are Happy to Serve You

Labor Wants to Be Free

C is for “Cookie”

Death Tomb

Part Two

Packs

Naked with Desire

Alienation of Labor

Problem Employee

I Love You, Tomorrow

A Rare Cat

Fear Factor

Costa Rica

D.I.Y.

Closing Time

I Ain’t Never Leaving BROOKLYN

Author’s Note

About the Author

PART ONE

STEAM TABLE

FALL 2002

Last summer my wife’s family and I decided to buy a deli. By fall, with loans from three different relatives, two new credit cards, and a sad kiss good-bye to thirty thousand dollars my wife and I had saved while living in my mother-in-law’s Staten Island basement, we had rounded up the money. Now it is November, and we are searching New York City for a place to buy.

We have different ideas about what our store should look like. My mother-in-law, Kay, the Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers, wants a deli with a steam table, one of those stainless steel, cafeteria-style salad bars that heat the food to just below the temperature that kills bacteria—the zone in which bacteria thrive. She wants to serve food that is either sticky and sweet, or too salty, or somehow all of the above, and that roasts in the dusty air of New York City all day, while roiling crowds examine it at close distance—pushing it around, sampling it, breathing on it. Kay’s reason for wanting a deli of this kind is that steam tables bring in a lot of money, up to a few thousand dollars per hour at lunchtime. She also wants a store that is open twenty-four hours and stays open on Christmas and Labor Day. She’d like it to be in the thick of Manhattan, on a street jammed with tourists and office workers.

I don’t know what I want, but an all-night deli in midtown with a steam table isn’t it. I’m the sort of person who loses my appetite if I walk past an establishment with a steam table. I get palpitations and the sweats just being around sparerib tips. Of course, I don’t have to eat the food if we buy a deli with a steam table. I just have to sell it. That’s what Kay says she plans to do. But Kay has an unfair advantage: years ago, after she came to America, she lost her sense of smell, and now she can’t detect the difference between a bouquet of freesias and a bathroom at the bus station. My nose, on the other hand, is fully functional.

Luckily, I’m in charge of the real estate search, and so far I have successfully steered us from any delis serving hot food. As a result, Kay’s frustration is starting to become lethal.

“What’s the