• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1182 0

and ask her to stock the refrigerator—not too taxing a job, but maybe hard enough that she’ll reconsider working for us (Kay can’t quite bring herself to fire someone older than her)—then watch as she fills all eleven shelves of the KustomKool with the dreaded Diet Kiwi Lemonade, a nonseller. So as a last resort we transfer her to the morning shift, to be a kind of auxiliary coffee server, which seems to go fine at first. Then the morning shift’s revenue starts plummeting as well, and the commuters, our most reliable source of revenue, the bedrock of our business, inexplicably start disappearing, and as panic sets in, one morning an oxlike secondhand furniture dealer from down the block barges in and bellows in an outerborough accent:

“Don’t you people know how to run a store?”

Startled, we ask him what the problem is, and he tells us that every day this week his morning coffee has been either room temperature or flat-out cold.

“I’ve been living in Brooklyn my whole life, and I’ve never seen such an incompetently run convenience store!” he goes on, rattling off a half-dozen other complaints. “You’re unbelievable. How do you screw up deli coffee? It’s not even supposed to taste good. I want the old store back, with the people who used to work here. Your family stinks!”

After the furniture dealer leaves, I touch the hot plate on the coffeemaker, which I shouldn’t be able to do. Cold as a nicely chilled bottle of Diet Kiwi Lemonade. Did anyone tell The Woman that she had to turn on the switch on the hot plate every morning? No, of course not, because no one would have thought it necessary? Then I go outside and notice that the trash can on the corner is overflowing with our coffee cups and the sidewalk is covered with frozen coffee. Oh, well. Good-bye, morning commuters! I hope you find service as shitty as ours at whichever convenience store you abandon us for, and come back to our deli someday! But I know that’s unlikely.

THE ACCIDENT

STAFF MEETING AT GEORGE’S TODAY. SINCE BUYING THE STORE I have quietly gone back to neglecting my duties at the Review, which I’m hoping won’t be revealed in front of my fellow editors. Maybe I should skip this meeting and blame it on the deli. It wouldn’t be untrue in the slightest to say that I am worn thin by working so many night shifts (four a week since we started, plus endless running around during the day trying to get equipment, dealing with distributors, and so on). But again, is it really something I want George to focus on—that my attention is elsewhere, rather than on the Review? For all I know he’s forgotten our conversation about the deli already, and will be far less understanding the second time.

Then again, it’s not like staff meetings at the Review are all that businesslike. The editors who aren’t off at writers’ colonies or in Paris stalking Kundera file up to George’s living room, plop down on the couches with their yellow notepads, and endure around ninety minutes of gossip from Elaine’s, the famed writers’ hangout on the Upper East Side, with only the occasional feeble effort at following an agenda. Whenever a genuinely pressing issue pops up, such as the Review‘s chronic lack of funds, there is invariably the same solution: party. (This always reminds me of the scene in Animal House when Delta Tau Chi learns that Dean Wormer has put the fraternity on double secret probation: “He’s serious this time.” “You’re right. We gotta do something.” “Know what we gotta do?” “Toga party.”)

“But who will help us?” George will then cry. “Who will perform the readings? Who will provide the publicity? Who will find us a venue?”

“Yankee Stadium!” someone on the staff will shout. “Someone call Steinbrenner.”

“No, we’ll have a party inside the Brooklyn Bridge!”

“No, we’ll do it at LaGuardia, and have readings on the tarmac and shoot fireworks at the planes!”

“Call the Port Authority!”

“Call Norman Mailer!”

“Call Swifty Lazar!”

“No, call Bobby Zarem! Swifty’s dead!”

George loves this. No matter how incoherent it is, seeing the staff brainstorming makes him feel like