Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [15]
“You gonna order?” The gruff voice came from behind the counter, but all Taft could see was the top of a bald head with a paper hat perched askew there on it.
Taft froze. That voice. He knew it.
“Mr. Waldemann?”
The short man peered up at him from behind the counter. He wielded a cleaver in one hand and a bottle of mustard in the other. “No, it’s the Meat Fairy. Come on, I ain’t got all day. What’s your order?”
Taft couldn’t believe it. Surely Mr. Waldemann, the proprietor of Waldemann’s Deli, had been dead for decades. Yet here stood his spitting image.
Of course. Waldemann’s had always been a family business. Three generations of Waldemanns had worked behind the same counter together when Taft and Butt had come here every Thursday for lunch. It was one of their rituals; each week, under the pretext of a round of golf, the two of them would sneak out, evade the Secret Service, and stroll down to Waldemann’s for a brisket sandwich. He felt for all the world like a boy playing hooky again; he and Butt would laugh and gossip about the White House staff while gorging themselves on sandwiches as tall and as wide as their hats.
And this little man? Why, he must be Waldemann’s descendent. His voice, his temperament, his lack of height: all Waldemann.
“Yes, sir. My apologies. I’d like a double brisket sandwich on rye, if you please. And an egg cream.”
“On rye, eh? As opposed to …?” He lowered his head, grumbled, and began slapping at the side of an electric meat-shaving contraption. Once the rickety machine reached a sufficiently high pitch, he began feeding a skull-sized chunk of beef into it.
The smell engulfed Taft. Oh, how he’d loved these sandwiches. He’d always had a hard time explaining just how comforted food made him feel. When the world was at his door and the dogs were barking at his heels, eating was the best way to take his mind off it all. The orderliness with which he ate his food, the fastidious way he’d mop up each morsel.… He knew that, in many ways, he spent so much time eating simply as a means of procrastination. He’d always had that problem, even as an athletic and relatively well built young man. But what was one to do when facing the enormity of all the world’s problems? Especially when, without fail, they all wound up on his desk?
“Order up!” yelled Waldemann, who then rang a bell on the counter. The same bell the Waldemanns had always rung. The sound made Taft’s mouth burst into salivation. At the end of the counter sat a monumental sandwich and what may well have been a halfgallon of egg cream in a tall, frosty glass.
Taft had to keep himself from running to the cash register. Once there, he pulled out the wallet Kowalczyk had given him. “Here, good sir. How much will it be?”
“Nine seventy-five.”
Taft gaped. He looked at the cash register to make sure he’d heard right. A sawbuck? For a lone man’s lunch? What had happened to this country? He’d have to look into the state of the economy. As soon, of course, as he’d finished this marvelous-looking sandwich. As Waldemann stared at him, Taft flipped through the wallet’s contents, pulling out and then pocketing a series of what appeared to be colorful, rigid business cards. Finally he found the (odd-looking!) currency. He handed a $10 bill to Waldemann, who squinted at him.
“Keep the change, dear fellow.” Taft grinned at his own munificence.
“A whole quarter? Gee, you’re too kind.”
Indeed, Taft had to agree.
Duly equipped with sustenance, Taft found the table toward the back of the small eatery, the one that had been unofficially reserved for him and Butt during the era of their frequent patronage. Remarkably—and, he liked to muse, due to his unassuming nature—he seemed to go mostly unrecognized during their weekly lunches. But at least once a month, a wide-eyed patron would approach him and either ask