The Bialy Pimps (10 page)

To clarify his request, Captain Dipshit made the loathed “cut in half” gesture by slowly karate-chopping the air.
 

“I’d love to help you out, but it’s beyond my control,” said the Anarchist, giving the bag a nudge with his spatula.

From the table behind Captain Dipshit, Roger cackled again. This time the laugh rose to a high, girlish chuckle.
 

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” the Anarchist continued, indicating the Law School Posse, “I need to assist these fine douchebags.” Then, pitching his voice toward the Posse, he said, “How can I help you, douchebags?”

Roger guffawed.
 

Captain Dipshit grabbed the bag, snuffed his joint on the counter, and ran out the door. He ran without stopping, back to Dicky Kulane.

Dicky would know what to do. Dicky would have a plan. Bingham’s had beaten him, but just let them try to beat he and Kulane both.

Philip, who had just walked out from his office, from dealing with Wally and the spreadsheet and the annoying demands of management, picked up Captain Dipshit’s crushed joint and lit it.
 

“Meeting tonight,” said Philip to the Anarchist.

The Anarchist groaned.
 

“Annoying shit. You’re going to hate it. Actually, there’s a decent chance I’ll be shoved into a tutu and sent to a biker bar after the meeting.”
 

“That bad?”

He took a drag on the joint, held it, released it. “Nah, just numbers.”
 

The Anarchist didn’t like having his private time invaded, and evenings were private time because he never took evening shifts. “If it’s just numbers, then post them on the bulletin board and be done with it,” he said.

“Not that kind of numbers.”

“There are different kinds of numbers now?” said the Anarchist.

“Budget stuff. New policies involving you guys paying for meals. Profit and loss. Breakeven percentages.”

“Sounds thrilling.”
 

“I may bring some old lady porn,” said Philip.
 

Testament to the spirit of Bingham’s, the Anarchist honestly didn’t know if Philip was kidding.

Philip puffed the joint, then removed it from his lips and glowered at it. “This is oregano,” he declared.
 

The small slips of register tape bearing the Law School Posse’s sandwich orders began to make their way to the side of the make table. The Anarchist pulled them closer, scanned them, and began pulling bagels from the shelves behind him.
 

“Look at this,” said the Anarchist, holding up one of the order slips. “Lox. Who the fuck gets lox here a second time? Once, fine. But then you eat it and you get your ptomaine poisoning and you move on with your life.”

Philip’s head snapped toward the customers, then toward the Anarchist. “Dude! Company pride!” he hissed. Pause. “At least when there are witnesses.”
 

 
The Anarchist chuckled. “These guys can’t hear us. Their ears are with the rest of their heads, up their own asses. Watch this.” He pitched his voice louder, toward the Posse. “I would like to hit each of you repeatedly in the face with a loaf of bread.”

“HAHAHA!” said one of the beta males in the Law School Posse. “Adjudication.”
 

The Anarchist raised his eyebrows at Philip.

“I’ve seen this phenomenon before,” said Philip. “Curious. I had a girlfriend who could do it. I’d have entire conversations with her and then eventually she’d look over at me and say, ‘What?’ She was blocking out the world, but I suspect this is different.”
 

“These guys are just gigantic assholes,” the Anarchist agreed.

And they were. Neither Philip nor the Anarchist could put their finger on exactly why the Law School Posse sucked, but suck it did. They committed every peeve of every member of the staff. They ordered annoying food that required additional time (lox was underneath the table, in the fridge, in a plastic container). They vultured over the counter and watched their food being made. They talked loudly about how awesome they were. They talked loudly about women they were currently working on being rejected by. They commented on the music and hence soiled it with their assholishness. They exuded privilege and entitlement. They cut in line. They wore sweater vests.
 

“If any of them vulture,” said the Anarchist, “I’m going to open a steamer really fast so that the steamer lid hits them in the face.”

“I wouldn’t advise that,” said Philip.

“Or spray them with the Purple Stuff,” he said. The Purple Stuff was a cleaner of East German origin that cleaned tables better than any legal solvent and hence seemed likely to cause skin burns or possibly gigantism. What made it more perplexing was that the current stock of Purple Stuff in the back was new, and still from East Germany. East Germany had ceased to exist in 1989, almost a decade ago.
 

“Again, not recommended,” said Philip.
 

“What if we put a sign at the door? ‘By entering these premises, you agree that being punched in the face is totally cool with you and you agree not to sue us.’”
 

“I thought you wanted to hit them with the steamer lid, not punch them.”
 

The Anarchist shrugged. “Either-or.”
 

“I think a sign like that would drastically reduce our customer base,” said Philip.

“We could make it really small. Or write it with white paint on a white sign.”
 

Philip had been working on the oregano joint, willing it into marijuananess, and now snuffed it with irritation.

“There are places,” said the Anarchist, “where the shtick is that they insult the customers. It’s what customers come to the place for. So why can’t
we
maul the customers?”

“I think there’s a difference between verbal assault and actual assault,” said Philip.

The Anarchist stacked roast beef and cheddar cheese onto a wheat bagel and put it in the steamer. “You’re the least fun boss ever,” he said.

Roger’s most curious habits involved the bathroom. Every time he came to Bingham’s, he ended his visit with a trip to Bingham’s disturbing toilets. He always snagged the key from the countertop and entered when nobody was looking, vanishing silently from his usual station in one of the high chairs across from the counter while a customer had the crew distracted, or when the lobby was empty and the employees had retired to the back. If you watched Roger, he wouldn’t go to the bathroom. He wouldn’t leave, either. He’d sit and sit and sit and sit, clearly growing more uncomfortable but unwilling to show it through his suave exterior.

Once, months ago, Philip and the Anarchist decided to test Roger and see how far his self-control would go. Roger came in at 10am on a Saturday and took up his normal post. He usually stayed for around an hour – whistling, coughing, laughing, and once examining himself for fifteen full minutes in one of the lobby’s tall mirrors – and then would leave. So at around 10:30, Philip hopped up onto the stainless steel counter behind the make table and register and began watching Roger. Sometimes he watched intently, and sometimes he simply kept Roger in his field of view... but Roger was never out of sight.

By 11:30, Roger’s cough was worse than normal and he was fidgeting, looking up and down and around, as if for help.
 

At noon, Philip hopped down from the counter. Roger hopped down from his stool and put on his hat, making ready for a mad dash to the can once Philip was out of sight. But when Philip turned to go, the Anarchist hopped up into his spot and began watching the table next to Roger, apparently interested in the nothingness he saw there.
 

Roger bent down to pick up an invisible coin, then climbed up back into his seat. After a few minutes, when it became apparent that the Anarchist meant to sit for a few, he lit another cigarette.
 

The day wore on in this fashion, with the Anarchist and Philip alternating turns on the counter, always looking forward amicably and attempting (and failing) to engage Roger in conversation. Customers came and went. Music was played on the overhead stereo system – too loud and too profane, as was Bingham’s custom.
 

At around 7:30pm, as the dinner rush was winding down, Philip put Slayer on the stereo and turned it up another notch.
 

Roger squirmed in his seat.

The Anarchist and Philip began to headbang to the music and throw devil horns into the air. They’d only headbang one at a time, so that the other could keep an eye on Roger. It was like one of those REM sleep deprivation experiments where researchers place a cat on a tiny island surrounded by water. If the cat falls into REM sleep, its muscles go lax and it falls into the water and wakes up, so that it can regain its perch and resume its hell on earth.
 

Roger sat on his red velour island next to the table, muscles tense. Philip, on duty, would look away and Roger would start to rise, but then Philip would look back up and Roger would slide back into his seat, back to his hell on earth.

The Slayer CD, now uncomfortably loud, was into its sixth song (“Criminally Insane”) when without warning, Roger stood up, clamped his hands over his ears, yelled, “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!” and ran out the door.
 

But if Roger seemed to feel that being caught going into the bathroom was bad, coming out was worse. For one, there was no filibustering. He had to come out eventually. Nobody (shame or no shame) would spend more time in the Bingham’s bathrooms than they had to.
 

For another, other people might want in (they were one-person rooms, after all), and the longer he stayed, the more clearly he associated himself with whatever noxious evidence he left behind him.
 

And third, whenever Roger left the bathroom, he had to pass the counter on his way to the door. So, to make it quick – like pulling off a Band-Aid – he practically ran out the door after finishing his business. His smooth, Miles Davis gait dissolved into a spastic shuffle where his legs scissored rapidly back and forth with almost no bend in them. When he went in, he took his coat and hat so that when he came out, he didn’t have to pause, to collect, or to dally. He only had to make like hell for the front door.

Once, when Carla worked at Bingham’s, she tried calling after him. Carla was one of only two employees he seemed to like, so it was baffling when he completely ignored her.
 

“Roger, where are you going so fast?” she yelled.

And boom, the brown flash is out the fucking door.
 

From that point on, it became a game. Once Roger was in the bathroom, the employees would assemble and listen carefully for the squeak of the ghetto door on the ghetto bathroom. As he came out, someone would ask, “Roger, where are you going so fast?” And after it became apparent that he wasn’t going to answer, Tracy tried waiting at Roger’s usual table and handing him a ball cap, pretending that he thought it was Roger’s. Roger deftly sidestepped the extended cap and was gone. Tracy’s hair had practically been blown back by the speed of his passage.
 

Speculation began to surface about Roger’s reasons for his runs (literally) to and from the bathroom. Had he wiped inadequately and had soiled undergarments? Had he been raised in a repressed household? Was he jerking it, relieving himself in an entirely different way? Or did he just drop such devastating loads that he felt he had to distance himself, to get away from the scene of the crime? There was one simple way to answer this last, but nobody had the guts. It was like a corpse and a murder, and everybody had enough respect for the gravity of the situation to keep their distance.
 

One time, Beckie rolled the mop bucket into the middle of the path, right where Roger would need to do his shameful speedwalk. He stepped around it.
 

Another time, Darcy (i.e. “Tits”) laid a chair down across the path. The scenario was absurd; why would a chair have fallen without anybody picking it up? But Roger didn’t stop to ask. Showing excellent agility for his sixty-plus years, he hurdled it.
 

Each attempt to foil Roger’s escape – halfhearted, of course, as befitted both the dumbness of the enterprise and the Bingham’s work ethic – was met with failure. Roger dodged, evaded, shuffled, and escaped, always with his eyes on the door and his face carefully set. If they’d shot at him, Tracy began to think he’d somehow dodge the bullets, limboing his way to superhuman speedwalking freedom.

The night of the meeting, Roger was allowed to enter the bathroom unmolested. His exit would be similarly unmolested, because he was the last person in the lobby and the store had to close before the meeting could start. So no obstacles were put in Roger’s way, and he would simply be permitted to run to freedom and away from his feculent troubles. It was a crime in a way.

As closing time dawned, Rich arrived. He was wearing his cabbie hat and his usual Buddy Holly sunglasses. In his hand was a slim brown bag. He sat down at one of the high tables to wait, pulled several comic books from the bag, and began to read.
 

Tracy arrived, then Darcy. Philip, Rich, and Beckie were already working and took seats as soon as they were finished cleaning up. Others filtered in slowly: Nick, who was the master artist behind the mural and who called his emaciated physique “heroin chic” and Mike, who was as stoic as always. Slate, who lived above the deli, arrived seconds before closing. Then, when closing time arrived, Philip began to wonder if the still-absent Anarchist would show after all of the bitching he’d done about having to be at work late. If not, there would be some ass-handing the next day.

Five minutes later, there was an ascending and descending musical squeak as the bathroom door opened and closed. A Roger-shaped blur darted out and shot past the counter, dropping the restroom key without losing any speed. He moved on rapidly-scissoring legs, holding his arms motionless at his sides and keeping his spine perfectly vertical. He stared straight ahead with tightly pursed lips.