The Bialy Pimps (7 page)

He would have liked assistance, but the one thing a superior mind can’t abide is pity.
 

With the adrenaline mostly through his system, he found that he was hungry. The ordeal had taken a lot out of him. He’d been hungry when he walked into Bingham’s (when he’d dragged the dwarf into Bingham’s), and that had been over an hour ago. Between the torture, the antagonism, the exercise, and the trauma, he was positively famished.
 

He looked around. Where had the woman come from? He looked at the pavement, where her other three cups and their detritus still lay. Java Jive.
 

He didn’t want coffee. He wanted food.
 

He rotated and took stock: A clothing store, a hair salon, a Buckeyes pride shop. There was always walking a block back to the UDF, but a burrito wouldn’t really do anymore. Serious situations caused for serious food.
 

What he really wanted was a Bingham’s bagel. With vegetables. Whichever were healthiest. That sounded good.
 

But that was out of the question. No more Bingham’s food. He’d just have to wean himself off of it. No more steamed bagels, which was too bad. Steaming made the bagels nice and warm and soft. No other bagel place he knew of did that. He’d never seen it before and doubted he’d ever see it again. But that’s how it had to be. There was something wrong with Bingham’s, and they were out to get him. The place was a den of evil. How could you look at the owner
 

(Satan)

and doubt it?
 

He’d just have to settle.
 

He was just thinking that he’d have to hoof it down to Grinders (not exactly a paradise for the discriminating vegan) when a large flashing sign outside of Java Jive caught his eye. It said “3B.” That didn’t make sense, considering that there wasn’t so much as one B in Java Jive’s name.

Maybe it was a joke that he was too lofty to understand. “To be or not to be.” “2B or not 2B.” “3B the number after 2.” Or something. That’s how pop culture worked.
 

But then he saw something behind it. Below Java Jive, on the lower level of the same building.

Down a small, not-terribly-obvious flight of stairs was a door, and on the door was a picture of a bagel surrounded by white lines that looked like... steam.

The shop, Captain Dipshit learned, was called Big Bagel Bill’s – an alliterative name that was usually abbreviated to “3B.” It was not owned by a Bill or even a William. It’s owner and manager was a man named Dicky Kulane.

Dicky was a gangly man in his mid thirties with dark, somewhat oily hair and a complexion that you could tell had only cleared up in the past few years. His eyes were deep-set and somehow troubling. They seemed to suggest that Dicky knew a person’s motives, and didn’t trust them one damn bit.
 

He was tall but habitually slouched, rounding his shoulders forward like a mantis. His movements were small and quick and watchful. Seeing this, and hearing Dicky speak, Captain Dipshit knew he’d found his intellectual equal. Dicky, like Captain Dipshit, was impatient, intelligent, and just a bit annoyed that everyone else was so stupid..
 

The deli itself was deserted. More than deserted, actually. The place looked varnished, waxed... totally unused. It looked like 3B had only recently been taken off the shelf at some big box store that sold delis whole, and that the shrink wrap had only recently been removed. The chairs and booths were firm and glossy because no people had ever sat on them. The tabletops sparkled, because not so much as a tray or a backpack or a cup had yet had a chance to scratch them. The tiles on the floor were new, untouched, without so much as a speck of dirt or debris. It was immaculate. Showroom condition.
 

At the front of the room was a small area behind a counter. To the right side of this was a cash register, and to the left was a deli case protected by an angled window made of clear plastic – a sneeze shield. Flanking this were two silver, boxy contraptions that Captain Dipshit recognized immediately. They were steamers.
 

When he first came in – after asking tentatively if the place was open because it was so small, so dark, and so poorly marked – he’d inquired about the steamers. Dicky had said that they bathed the sandwiches in hot steam, warming and softening the bagel and anything you put on it and melting the cheese over it all.
 

“Like Bingham’s?” Captain Dipshit had asked.

And Dicky’s face had darkened. “Same machines,” he said, which was an odd answer. It meant he knew what Bingham’s was, and that he knew they used the same machines, but it carefully skirted the implication that 3B was
like
Bingham’s. Answers such as
What’s Bingham’s?
or
Yeah, the same
wouldn’t have raised his eyebrows. But this answer Dicky had given suggested that he understood the comparison the Captain was trying to make, and resented it.
 

So Captain Dipshit had ordered a bagel with vegetables on it. Dicky, who was working alone, took the order himself. He asked the Captain what kind of a bagel he wanted, and Captain Dipshit said he wanted whatever was healthiest. Dicky had punched a button on the register and had asked which vegetables he wanted. Captain Dipshit said he wanted whichever vegetables were healthiest, and Dicky hit more buttons. Three minutes later, he was sitting down in one of 3B’s booths with a steamed wheat bagel with lettuce, sprouts, cucumbers, avocado, onion, and green peppers. Green peppers? Bingham’s didn’t even
have
green peppers.
 

“Bingham’s doesn’t even
have
green peppers,” he said to Dicky, who, after completing the Captain’s bagel, had begun meticulously cleaning the make area of crumbs and debris.
 

Again Dicky’s face darkened. “They don’t have a lot of things,” he said.
 

Strange, this man’s reaction, thought Captain Dipshit. But what was perhaps stranger was his own behavior. He was sitting to eat his bagel. When had he last done that? He’d certainly never sat down at Bingham’s. It was always too loud and too crass of an atmosphere. The place was filled with nutjobs, and the staff was rude and unhelpful. The walls were dirty and the floor was faded and cracked. The booths were splitting and losing their stuffing. It was an unhealthy kind of place, and he’d never wanted to stay.

But what’s more, he never sat down to eat
anywhere
, no matter whether it was owned by Satan himself (as was Bingham’s) or not. He was too impatient to move on to the next activity, and the next, and the next. Society demanded so much of him, and yet disrespected him so deeply. He had much he needed to do, and had much scorn to endure in doing it.

Yet here he was, sitting.

Here he was, making small talk.
 

He never talked to the employees at Bingham’s. He never talked to the employees at McDonald’s. He never talked to anyone who gave him service, beyond the bare necessities. Sometimes, he could get service by waving, gesturing, and grunting, and he did when he could. It was the most efficient way to get things done, as it expended neither brainpower, decisions, nor breath. If you wanted to be healthy, you had to mind the details. He barely talked to his peers (because let’s be honest – he had none) and he only talked to his friends when he was relatively sure their responses would praise him and tell him how awesome he was.

Yet here he was, talking to this deli owner.
 

Maybe it was today’s scare. He’d heard about being scared straight (he was pretty sure this involved frightening someone to make them stop being gay, like how you cured the hiccups) and he’d heard about people gaining new perspectives after being scared by a near-death experience. Maybe that’s what had happened today. You enter a den of evil and stare Lucifer in the face, then you sprint yourself to death and get assaulted and left for dead after being chased by Mickey Mouse. That kind of a day was bound to make anyone rethink his priorities.
 

Captain Dipshit ran through a quick self-assessment. Had his priorities shifted?

Priority
#1 – Weed

No, they were the same as ever. But there was still something going on here today. Something different. Then all at once, he realized what had changed.

He wasn’t being treated badly.
 

He wasn’t being laughed at or mocked.
 

He’d asked for what was healthiest, and he seemed to have gotten it with no bullshit, no pranks, no unpleasant surprises.
 

Had that ever happened before? He recalled the mechanic who’d sold him the winter tires, the lunch lady, the caterer at his aunt’s wedding, and Bingham’s. Bingham’s. Bingham’s.
 

No, that hadn’t really happened much before.
 

“So you know Bingham’s,” said a voice at his shoulder. It was Dicky Kulane, who’d pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with him. His voice was deep but tended to warble, suggesting that he was anxious and uncomfortable with social interaction. He also leaned too close when he spoke, as if he were trying to talk low, conspiratorially, and feared being overheard. Both were affects that usually made people uncomfortable, but they didn’t bother Captain Dipshit at all.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me. That bagel you’re eating. You get that over there before, at Bingham’s?”

The truth was that no, he’d never gotten anything remotely like this at Bingham’s. He’d tried, but he’d ended up with jelly and hummus on blueberry, or pickles and horseradish and jalapenos on a dirty napkin. But that was too complicated to explain right now, so he settled for answering the heart of Dicky’s question rather than exploring the full truth.

“Yeah,” he said.

“And how do they compare? This bagel and Bingham’s?”

“This is much better.”
 

“And the price?”

“A little cheaper,” said Captain Dipshit.
 

“What do you think of the restaurant? The music? The environment as a whole?”

Captain Dipshit looked around and took it all in. The place was immaculately clean. He might even take his sandwich into the bathroom and eat it off the floor later, because that’s what he’d heard you could do when a place was incredibly clean. Either that or do surgery, but he was out of practice with surgery.
 

The décor was nice and understated. The tables and booths were arranged into little nooks, perfect for gathering and yet having a decent measure of privacy. The music was soft and mellow – right now, a subtle jazz number. Classy.

“It’s much nicer here,” said Captain Dipshit.

“So why haven’t you been coming here all along?”

The question was the next logical one, and Captain Dipshit had known it was coming. Yet there was something in the way that Dicky said it that was accusatory and unnerving. Something in that wavering, deep voice and in those intense, deep-set eyes was blaming Captain Dipshit for the deli’s emptiness.
 

“I... didn’t know it was here.”
 

Dicky’s glare persisted for another few moments, and then it seemed to melt into a look of resignation. He sighed and looked around the restaurant. When he spoke next, his voice was different, now talking to and for himself.
 

“We’ve been here four months,” he said. “A few of those days, we’ve had a customer. Many days we’ve had none. I don’t understand it. We’re better, cheaper, and nicer than... the competition.” But Captain Dipshit heard what he’d almost said: ...
than Bingham’s.
That was the only “competition” Dicky cared about – not Grinder’s, not Buffalo Wild Wings, not any of the fast food restaurants.
 

“I think you’re hard to find,” said Captain Dipshit, but Dicky wasn’t listening.
 

“Those... other places. They’re rude. They don’t care. They just churn through business and treat people badly. I have to wonder, do people want to be treated badly? Are they that dumb?”

Dicky’s tone was equally regretful and indignant, but the fact that he was telling this to Captain Dipshit said that the Captain wasn’t among these stupid, masochistic masses. Captain Dipshit felt validated enough to respond.
 

“Yeah, I think most people are dumb... Dicky.”
 

He thought that using the owner’s name in such a deliberate manner would feel contrived and fake, but it didn’t. That was another thing he’d never done before – opening himself to familiarity with someone he’d just met. And was he accepting the secondary role rather than insisting on being alpha between the two of them? Yes, he thought he was. But it was okay. Today, he kind of wanted to be led, especially if it was by someone who seemed also to have something against his newly realized nemeses.
 

“Should I play down? Should I make my food worse? Should I raise my prices? Should I be rude, treat people like they’re idiots, abuse them, and insult them? Is that what people want?”

“You’re talking specifically about Bingham’s, aren’t you?” said Captain Dipshit.

“Any competitor. Bingham’s is not my only competitor.”
 

“But they’re the one you care about,” said Captain Dipshit.
 

Dicky’s gaze became less threatening, more familiar.
 

“I’d like to make a profit, regardless of how it happens,” he said. “But, true, I also don’t like the people at Bingham’s. At all.”
 

“Why?”

Dicky waved him off. “It’s a long story.”
 

Captain Dipshit decided that he’d come this far, so he might as well make a leap of faith. His voice unnecessarily low, he said, “Weird things happen there, you know. It’s not a normal kind of a place.”

“They’re intolerable. So rude. So crass. So disrespectful.”
 

“No. I meant like...” Captain Dipshit looked around to make sure the store was still empty. “...
supernaturally
weird.”