My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [21]
First of all, he’s letting us pay him some of the money we owe him over the course of twenty-four months, with money we earn at the store. And he’s not charging us interest. “Muslims don’t believe in interest,” he says. “It’s un-Islamic.” Though I wouldn’t have guessed that Salim was religious, I could not be more grateful.
On the day of the closing, Gab goes to meet Salim at his lawyer’s office in downtown Manhattan, while Kay and I prepare to open the store.
The countdown has begun. In three hours we will become deli owners. When Gab arrives at the lawyer’s office, Salim seems to have suddenly gotten jittery. He keeps jumping up from the conference table where papers are being signed to look nervously out the window at the traffic on Broadway while yelling into his cell phone in Arabic.
“Everything okay?” Gab asks.
“My wife is outside in the car, but there’s nowhere to park, and the police keep telling her to move. They’re harassing her.”
Gab is horrified. “Tell her to park in a lot. You know what the police here are like.” Ground Zero, barely a year old, sits only two blocks away.
But it turns out Salim’s wife doesn’t drive. Oh no, Gab thinks. Something’s going wrong again.
But then, for whatever reason, the police leave Salim’s wife alone, and Salim stops fretting. Meanwhile, it gets dark outside. Salim’s lawyer taps his foot and makes small talk while Gab signs paperwork. Something else will come up, Gab thinks. It always does. There always has to be something.
“We’re done!” Salim finally says, handing over the store’s primary set of keys. (Kay and I have the backup over in Brooklyn.) “Congratulations. Welcome to the wonderful world of small business.”
Gab isn’t sure if this is a joke.
“Where are you off to?” she asks as they exit the building.
“Arizona,” Salim says. “I have a cousin out there who owns a gas station.”
He gets in his car—a brand-new SUV plastered with Day-Glo orange parking tickets—and waves. “Don’t let it kill you,” he says, and he and his wife ride off through the maze of security checkpoints, into the night.
AMATEURS
TODAY IS MY FIRST FULL DAY AS A DELI OWNER, AND I’M standing next to the cash register, trying to figure out what is missing. A few minutes ago, at four o’clock, the day shift quietly ended, and now there’s a lull. After walking in I slipped behind the cold-cut display and felt a surprising shiver of excitement as I entered the narrow space where the cashiers stand. Where I am now is like a stage (it even has a little platform), but so constricted is the space that it feels like the gap between two cars in a parking lot, without the headroom, thanks to the overhanging illuminated Marlboro display. Behind me is a sink filled with wet coffee grounds; to my right is a vinegary-smelling deli slicer covered with bits of lettuce and ham; to my left is a lottery machine spitting out scraps of paper and sputtering like an angry robot. Yet my first thought upon entering this space was not that it was filthy, cramped or unpleasant, but that something that I can’t quite put my finger on isn’t here. Finally, after a few minutes, I figure out what it is: I’m looking for a chair.
After so many months of searching for a store, this is how the next phase begins. It seems unreal to be on the other side of the checkout counter. Is the store really ours? Could Salim somehow change his mind and take it back? Now that we’re here, all I want to do is to put our stamp on this place and make it our own. There’s no time, though, for even now, during a brief moment of calm between shifts, as the wave of evening commuters prepares to crash over us, there’s an endless list of things to do, and it’s all I can manage to stay out of Kay’s way.
“Excuse,” my mother-in-law says after hip-checking me into the sink. She and Gab have been here since six A.M.; now Gab is going home to collapse, leaving me till one A.M. with her mother, who has yet to stop moving