The Bialy Pimps (24 page)

Philip nodded.

“So what are we looking at, here?”

“Civil disobedience.” It was Darcy.

“Simpler than that,” said Beckie. “I’d say that we’re looking at anywhere from a few days to a few weeks in which nothing we do, right or wrong, matters. It’s like when a defensive penalty is called after the snap in football. Might as well shoot for the moon, because it’s a free play. If you screw up, you can erase it by accepting the penalty.”
 

Mike turned to her, impressed. “I forget that your major is sports journalism. I’ll admit that I’m a little bit turned on right now.”
 

“I have some stuff I’d like to try, and see if it matters,” said the Anarchist.

“Trouble a-brewin,” said Tracy.

The smallest of smiles crossed Philip’s lips. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s do it all.”

BOOK TWO:

The Rise of the Pimps

“Why do I smile at people who I’d much rather kick in the eye?”

– The Smiths

“We are the knuckleheads.”

– The Bloodhound Gang

The dream is always the same.
 

In the movie, in
Risky Business,
which the Anarchist had watched before going to bed, the dream is Tom Cruise’s dream, and he’s walking in on some hot naked chick in the shower. That would be better. There were no hot naked chicks in the Anarchist’s dream, and what’s more, it couldn’t “always be the same” because he’d never had the dream before. But the dream didn’t seem to know that, so the phrase ran circles in his head, oddly appropriate considering the risky business currently in the works at Bingham’s.

In the dream he was in a field of newly reaped corn, in Kansas. He knew it was Kansas. There was a red barn in the distance, maybe a half mile away, and next to the barn were two silos. At first, the feeling of being in the open was disorienting, but then he looked into the sky and saw a huge black storm, bigger than anything that could ever exist in real life, bigger than life itself, hungry and somehow sentient, and his disorientation dissolved into terror.

Someone was at the barn, calling to him, telling him to run for the cellar. So he ran toward the barn, away from the storm. The noise from behind him grew until it was as loud as an oncoming train, and he looked back to see that the storm was devouring the world as it rolled forward. Giant chunks of field, of existence itself, were flying into its unfathomable blackness, and what was left behind was a featureless gray nothing.
 

He awoke with his heart pounding, the instinctual fear of pursuit still heavy upon him.
 

In the dream, the feeling had been that the storm would devour everything, that the storm was the end of time itself. But now, as the fog passed, all he could hear were two other lines from the movie, from
Risky Business.

Sometimes, you’ve just gotta say, “What the fuck.”

and

Time of your life, huh kid?

The huffing fat man placed a sandwich on the counter and said: “I didn’t want mayo on this sandwich. Make me a new one.”

Slate glared at him. He was not in the mood for this son of a bitch. He knew this son of a bitch, too, because he’d been in before and always made a bunch of son-of-a-bitch demands. Slate had known he was a son of a bitch from the first time he’d seen him, months ago. You could always spot the sons of bitches because they walked differently and spoke differently and carried themselves as if they had something to prove, because their daughters were sniffing glue (the daughter had ordered earlier and glue-sniffing seemed beyond doubt) and they needed to let people – people like minimum-wage deli workers – know that they were in charge of
their
world, by God.
 

And plus, Slate had no tolerance for anyone who interrupted a game of Scrabble. He hated the fat man instantly.

“Did you
tell
us not to put mayo on it?” Slate asked.

“No. But I don’t want it.”

Slate gazed at the fat man’s table and realized that his wife was Dreadnought, a customer of particular annoyance who had been coming in at least once a week for months. Dreadnought always explained that the presence of a tip jar was inappropriate because it implied that people
should
tip and that anyone who
didn’t
tip was a skinflint. She always used the term “skinflint” and didn’t appreciate being labeled as one. Slate wondered how she’d feel about being labeled “dreadnought.”
 

“Well,” said Slate, “the sandwich
comes
with mayo. If you don’t tell us ‘No mayo,’ we assume that you want it.”

“You should never
assume
anything,” said the man. “Do you really think that every person who walks through the door wants mayo? And really, does it matter what you
assume
? If a customer isn’t satisfied for
whatever
reason, you should fix it.” And with this, he nudged the offending mayo-bagel with only one finger, as if he were afraid of catching something from it.

The Anarchist stood at the make table, watching the exchange and feeling surreality surround him. Last night’s talk had been heartfelt, and even in the light of day everyone had agreed to immediately revoke all of Wally’s rights to tell them what to do. The hats, hairnets, and nametags were gone. The props and the new, strange furniture were in the dumpster out back, having been dispatched by the sledgehammer that Philip called the store’s “crime fighter.” Darcy had cried when she learned this. She’d needed a new bedroom set. Why would they destroy it? Philip had said that it was tainted, and then Rich had made an immature “taint” joke.

The old music was back on the stereo (House of Pain was seeing extensive play) and the old attitudes and policies were back, but that was as far as it had gone. Somehow, at the store, in the daylight, with aprons on and spatulas in hand, the idea of “going a little farther” had dissolved into an old and enticing fantasy, but nothing more.
Obviously
nothing more. There was a firmly established rut right here, with annoying customers on one side and disgruntled but willing employees on the other side. It was hardly the
Time of your life, huh kid?
but what was he supposed to do, now that he was here and the fat man was, as always, being a total douche? Slam his head into the steamer?

The Anarchist nodded to Slate, and made the man another sandwich.

While the Anarchist worked, Philip emerged from the office and hopped up onto the countertop near the soda machine. He didn’t say anything, and the silence in itself was strange coming from Philip. The Anarchist wondered if Philip was feeling what he was feeling – a sense of late-night foolishness that looked dumb in the light of day. It was as if they’d gotten drunk and made out with the Devil, but then they’d woken up next to the Devil in the morning and had stumbled away embarrassed and with a hangover, saying,
Don’t call me, Satan, I’ll call you.
 

Five minutes later, the fat man was back. This time, he was carrying the new three-quarters-eaten bagel in front of him like an offering. “This is wrong!” he spat. “It was supposed to have avocado on it!”

Slate raised an eyebrow at the Anarchist. The Anarchist poked around for the discarded order ticket, scanned it, and shook his head:
No, it
wasn’t
supposed to have avocado on it.

Slate looked down at the two or three remaining bites of sandwich the man was offering him, cradled in shaking foil.
 

“I’m... sorry?” said Slate. He wasn’t sure what was expected of him at this point. The man hadn’t paid for avocado. He hadn’t noticed until now that he didn’t have avocado. The avocado was kind of gross today anyway, and the man had no sandwich left to put it on. Was Slate supposed to give him a few slices to go?

“I want a new sandwich,” said the fat man.

“But sir,” said Slate, “you’ve almost finished it.”

Sir, yet,
thought the Anarchist. He found himself chuckling. Old conditioning really did die hard. How many annoyance clichés was this man hitting? It was like he’d been sent from God to be the ideal idiotic customer, and he’d come the day after Philip had, after a few beers, suggested that they spend their last days at Bingham’s dealing with idiotic customers in rather radical ways. But here they all were, right back in their old fun-but-aggravating roles. Today was work. Tomorrow would be work. Eventually Bingham’s would close, and they’d all be a little sad, and that would be the end of it.

“I just now noticed,” said the fat man. “But so what if it’s almost finished? If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. And if it’s wrong, you need to do it again.”

Philip watched the exchange, saying nothing. The Anarchist couldn’t read his mood. Was he angry? Irritated? Indifferent? Tired?

Slate looked over at the Anarchist. The Anarchist nodded and made a sandwich with avocado.
 

As he worked, he glanced at the waiting family – the large woman who had a problem with being a skinflint and the daughter who looked about twenty, was rail-thin, and had the conversational skills of a glue-sniffer. The girl had a nose ring and was wearing a J. Crew shirt. The combinations of people and fashion at the table were all wrong.
 

One of the steamers ran dry. The Anarchist opened the hinged lid and rested it against the inside edge of the wood countertop, then pried open a spring-loaded valve with his thumb, shoved a large black funnel into the hole it revealed, and began to fill the steamer from a jug of distilled water.
 

The fat man was vulturing. “What is that? Oil?” he asked in a voice that said he was prepared to be annoyed with whatever answer he was given.
 

The Anarchist did not look up. “It’s water.”

“Water? How does that work?”

“It becomes steam,” said the Anarchist. That’s what happens when you heat water.”
 

The answer was pushing it. He expected a rebuttal, but the man said nothing as he took his sandwich and returned to his table. Even the snide answer felt strange, but it was all he could muster. And still Philip looked on.

During the next ten minutes, the fat man returned three more times:

“The floor over there is filthy! Send someone out here to mop it up!”

“My wife is offended by the music. Turn it off!”

and “It’s too damn hot in here!” This last was delivered amongst much gross sweat, all of which had appeared only after the man had begun eating.

After every complaint, the Anarchist looked at Philip and Philip nodded immediately, without the slightest bit of hesitation:
Do it.
 

And yet, still, Philip looked angry. He watched the man eat with his face set, his mouth a straight and tense line, his eyes staring, boring into the man. The Anarchist knew he shouldn’t try to talk to Philip. He could read that much from his body language, at least.
 

What was going on in his head? Had Philip settled into the new-old normal? The Anarchist thought not. Some kind of over-the-top retort was definitely coming from Philip. If the man persisted, it seemed certain that Philip would tell him to fuck off and to shove his fucking order right up his fucking douchebag fuck ass. And he’d use those words too. You could tell. He might even add “sir” at the end to make it worse, more vile:
Fuck off, sir.

After finishing his meal, the fat man visited the counter one final time. Dreadnought and the anorexic daughter stood behind him. Their table was still littered with wrappers and garbage, because it wasn’t their job to clean it up.
 

“I want my money back,” said the man.

Slate looked at Philip. The fat man saw the look and also turned to Philip. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Philip hopped off the counter, his expression unreadable. “Why?” he asked. “We did all you wanted. We gave you three sandwiches. We cleaned up. We adjusted the temperature. We even turned off the music.”

“Because the food was horrible and the service was lousy. Our table was dirty, and there’s garbage all over the floor in here. It’s loud, and the help is rude.”

“But we fixed it,” said Philip. “We cleaned your table before, and I suppose we’ll have to clean it again. We picked up the garbage, despite the fact that you put most of it there yourselves. We made it quiet. I don’t know how you define ‘rude,’ but we did all you asked. ‘The customer is always right,’ yes sir. And as to the ‘horrible food’?” He shrugged, then nodded toward the littered table. “Well, you
did
eat it all.”

The man was disarmed by Philip’s directness, but pulled himself up tall and declared, “I’m not satisfied.”
 

Philip came closer. “But are you ever? Was there
anything
we could have done that would have satisfied you, or was this a losing battle from the beginning? I’ve seen you in here before, and if I could be so presumptuous, I think I’ve gotten a bead on you. So this time, I made a bet with myself that you’d be exactly like you’ve been. I knew you’d complain and probably ask for a refund. And look; I was right.
Despite
our rising to your every little demand.”
 

The man seemed not to know what to say, so he settled on, “Who the hell do you think you are?”
 

“I’m the
manager
,” said Philip. And the emphasis on the last word was like the emphasis you’d put on
king
.

“You’re just a bunch of jerky kids,” said the man. “This generation, I’ll tell you. No respect. All attitude. You’re just a bunch of...”

“Tell me,” said Philip. “Is it a control thing for you? Do you want to try to control us because you can’t control your daughter? Do you think you’re better than us? No, wait... I know the answer to that one; clearly you do. But then tell me this: You’ve been in here several times before. Our prices have nearly tripled. If rudeness bothers you, we’ve been ruder as the prices were rising. If quality matters, our quality has been slipping. Things in here have become so stupid as to be comical, and not in a good way. Yet, you keep coming back. So what
would
it take to drive you away? And would you
ever
be driven away, or is this an interaction you
need
, so that you can order people around who won’t talk back, and control people who will, to a certain degree, allow you to control them? How much higher could we raise our prices and keep you coming in here? How much worse could our service be before you stopped coming instead of just making your little demands? What could we do to you before you backed off and never came back? What exactly
would
you put up with?”