My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [11]
“I said marvelous. Wonderful. Enchanting.”
I almost swallow my tongue.
“Incidentally, can I work there? I’ve always wanted to be a stocker.”
“Stocker?”
“Yes, a stocker—one who puts stock on the shelves. You can’t tell me you don’t know this—it’s your line of business, for Pete’s sake!”
“You mean stockboy.”
“Oh, is that what they’re called? Whatever. Let me be your stocker. Just for a day.”
“Okay,” I say, “it’s a deal.” And I think to myself, How could I have ever misjudged this man so harshly? He’s a saint. After that George and I go into the living room, where he mixes us a pair of drinks and we watch the barges drift by on the East River in the late afternoon. It is a favorite pastime of mine, watching the barges at the end of the day, when they always seem to be fighting against the fierce East River tide, as if in a struggle against the very immensity of city life.
“We’re hosting a party tonight, in case you weren’t aware,” George says. “It’s going to be a grand occasion. You’ll be staying, won’t you?”
Glumly, I tell George I have to get home. I’m not sure if Gab managed to schedule a visit to Salim’s tonight, but I promised to bring her the car.
“Ah, I see,” says George, “reporting for duty. It begins already, your double life.” He smiles and drains his cocktail.
“That is what you’re proposing, you realize?” he continues. “A double life. A divided existence, schismatic even. Let me give you a bit of advice about such endeavors: they are even trickier than they look. You must be careful. One half is always threatening to swallow the other, to consume it, to wipe it out. Sometimes a double existence is more than impractical; it is fundamentally an impossible feat—a folly—and in the end you may have to give one side up.”
“Yes, George.”
I wait for him to express hope that it will be the deli I relinquish and not the Paris Review, but he doesn’t. Then he puts down his drink and goes off to get ready for the party, leaving me to watch the barges.
LOCATION IS EVERYTHING
IN THE RETAIL WORLD, LOCATION IS EVERYTHING—UNLESS you’re a Korean deli owner. “Location who care?” my mother-in-law often says. “If owner work hard, what difference make? All store same.”
I can’t tell if this attitude is what makes Koreans so successful or what keeps them from taking over the world. Indifference to risk is admirable, but it can also get you in trouble. Gab once told me that the best way to understand Korean national character was through Korean Air, which at one point held the distinction of being one of the most accident-prone airlines in the world. Korean Air pilots frequently crashed because, according to Gab, they didn’t see little things like mountains and cockpit emergency lights. “The company was so hell-bent on success,” she said, “they became oblivious to safety. Their attitude was ‘Get this plane in the air! I don’t care if it’s missing a wing. Start flying!’ ”
This may explain the preponderance of Korean-run businesses in high-crime districts. After all, if your attitude is that all businesses are the same and only the owner’s work ethic determines success, why would you pay more rent to sell oranges in a fancy neighborhood?
Most of Gab’s relatives have spent significant time working in bad neighborhoods, and many have been assaulted, robbed and threatened more times than they can remember. Strangely, when they’re not working, they’re the most security-obsessed people I know. They fortify their houses with trip wires, moats and floodlights and practically dead-bolt the doors when they go out to get the mail. When it comes to business, though, the Paks seem willing to go anywhere.
Of course, as much as any suburban kid raised on Ice Cube and Snoop, I love the ghetto. Yet as much as I want Gab to fulfill her dream of buying a store for her mother, I don’t want to die for it.
There is something that scares me even more than us getting a store in East New York or Brownsville, and that’s the possibility of ending up in a perfectly safe part of the city, on a perfectly okay block, in a decent