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By Root 1204 0

sat down so obediently. Though built like a steroid-enhanced turtle, Dwayne is hardly the biggest person to walk through the front door. (That would be the rapper Biggie Smalls, who, according to store legend, was so big that Dwayne had to come out from behind the register and rearrange several racks of snack food so he could move around.) What makes Dwayne menacing is his aura, a radiant hum of pure aggression. Dwayne’s body also bears evidence to back up the threatening air—scars, contusions, welts, burn marks, swelling, some of which looks recent. As with a fighting dog, everything you could grab on him in a struggle seems to have been shorn off. And yet at the center of it all is this dapper little mustache, almost military in its trimness, perfectly balancing the rest of his plumlike face, plus a bookish little pair of spectacles that has to stretch so wide to get around his head that looking at him makes me wonder when they’re going to snap!, sort of like Dwayne himself.

Salim made us promise to keep Dwayne on, and said we’d be sorry if we didn’t, but left us to guess why. There are several possible reasons. One, as anyone who has lived in New York knows, African-Americans almost never operate or work at delis. The reasons aren’t clear, but the deep-rooted enmity between Korean-Americans and blacks is certainly part of it. (Many Korean deli owners simply refuse to hire African-Americans.) For that reason alone, it would certainly not endear us to the store’s many African-American customers if we came in and immediately let go of Dwayne. We also wonder if Salim’s insistence could have to do with the deterrent power of Dwayne’s physical presence or his ties to the community after so many years in the store.

Almost immediately, though, we realized that if these are reasons at all, they are deeply secondary. After one shift with Dwayne, Kay called him the best worker she has ever seen. He is energetic, takes initiative and seldom makes mistakes. As Dwayne himself would say, some workers tend to “sleepwalk,” but Dwayne is as perky—and still talking a mile a minute—when he gets off work as when he gets on. Most striking of all, though, he seems to be omniscient, to have almost complete awareness of things happening in and around the store, whether it is the presence of shoplifters, undercover inspectors from Consumer Affairs or someone silently struggling to find canned olives on the shelves.

To Kay and Gab’s delight, Dwayne’s powers of observation also extend to other workers, including, of course, me. He can spot my mistakes while simultaneously engaged in three other tasks, then remember to point them out several hours later or even the next day, when customers aren’t around. “You know, Ben, you charged that lady from the real estate agency tax on her milk, but dairy products are tax-free. Just FYI for the future. You can chew on it now and taste it later. Swallow it now and digest it tomorrow.”

The problem is that Dwayne has groupies, devotees and disciples, people from all over Brooklyn and every demographic in the neighborhood who come to see him.

“So, Preach,” as his fans call him, “you goin to the Founders Day party this year?” Or “Preach, what really happened to Jam Master Jay? You suspicious?” Or “Is Lil’ Kim trying to make herself a female Michael Jackson? What’s up with that nose?” Or “Dwayne, I’ve been offered a job at a West Coast law firm doing the kind of structured finance work I love, but I’m also on the verge of making partner here, and I don’t want to leave New York. What should I do?” Preach has been performing in this pulpit for years, his métier being the bombs-away freestyle jeremiad, a brilliant, crude and Yogi Berra–ish soliloquy that attracts customers as much as his famously well-fortified sandwiches. As long as his fans show, he’s never going to be shy about responding, and he’s certainly not going to censor himself. He’ll be loud and profane, and not all customers will be charmed. “Did he say what I think he said?” “Who owns this store, letting people talk like that?” And his friends can