My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [40]
At nine Andre, a dishwasher at the prison, walks in. Andre is a regular, but he’s quieter than the others, a smallish, polite and vanishingly unobtrusive presence. (Dwayne says Andre weighs “a buck seven soaking wet with eight bucks in your pocket,” which I can’t quite decipher but sounds about right.) He has the look of a guy standing on a corner trying not to garner attention. “Hey, I didn’t do anything,” his posture says. When he does talk, Andre likes to discuss issues, which also distinguishes him from the regulars, who generally act as if having a political view would somehow taint their manhood. Dwayne once called Andre “a black man with too much education,” which confused me. “Andre is a dishwasher,” I replied. “I don’t think he has much education at all.” “Exactly,” said Dwayne.
After Andre comes one of my least favorite customers, the unctuous Floyd. A cable TV installer, Floyd is the regulars’ lead raconteur, a regaler of riveting tales, such as those about seducing married female customers whose homes he visits. Floyd likes to tease me in front of the regulars (“What’s the matter, Ben? Stand up straight and quit acting ashamed of your pecker”), hit on Gab and confuse me about how many wine coolers he’s taken from the KustomKool. Tonight he has something rare with him, though: a living, breathing member of the opposite sex. He’s on a date. And she’s pretty.
“You brought your date to the deli?” says Dwayne. “What, AutoZone was closed? The bait-and-tackle store had a velvet rope?”
“Shut up, Dwayne,” says Floyd, not laughing. The woman’s name is Audra, and not only is she exceedingly lovely, she acts as if there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be than a sausage party at the deli, and the regulars treat her with respect and adoration. Floyd, in turn, positively glows, and refrains from peppering me with his usual taunts. I let him put two big cans of Japanese beer on his “tab.”
Later, after the regulars have finally left, that feeling of poise and tranquillity I experienced at the start of the shift begins to return. Late at night, when Brooklyn is so quiet that you feel like you’re tucking the city into bed, back in the stockroom I begin filling a noisy plastic bucket with steaming water and what’s left of a jug of Pine-Sol (which, no matter how much you put on, never seems to make much of a difference on those gray tiles, but maybe it would be worse if we didn’t at least try to clean them), and as I’m bumping around in the murk I accidentally step on somebody’s hand or foot, a body bedded down in the corner among the empty cardboard boxes. After yelping in surprise or pain, a dumpling-shaped old man with a Fu Manchu rises from the recycling area.
“Mr. Chow,” I say tersely. “You startled me.”
As usual at this point in the evening, Mr. Chow doesn’t say anything, just grins, but then he starts making a motion like he’s going to leave.
“You can stay there all night if you want, Mr. Chow. I’ll leave off the burglar alarm. I just need another jug of Pine-Sol.” Using a footstool, I reach up to a high shelf, attempting to coax a bottle that must weigh fifteen pounds into falling, when POW! Something—not the Pine-Sol—hits me right between the eyes, then bounces from my face to the ground, where it shatters. Wincing, and checking my forehead for blood, I hear the distinctly recognizable sound of a glass bottle—another one, not the one that already fell—rolling down a wooden shelf, picking up speed, and then POW! I look up just in time for another direct hit, this time right on the boniest part of the supraorbital ridge. What kind of barrage is this?