by Rob Hart
The memory is there, just beyond the reach of my fingertips. The way my father smelled, the heat in the air, the line of people wrapped around the block.
It teeters on the horizon, but then it slips over and it’s gone.
I pull down the gate of the store and it rumbles like thunder crashes. I twist and clamp the heavy padlock. Look up at the sign, the red paint in the cursive script cracked and faded to a dingy pink.
Sal’s Bagels.
Sal, shortened from Salomon, because in America they like names that are short and not so obviously Jewish, my father said.
I step into the stairwell next door, to climb up to my apartment above the store. Something else that’ll disappear along with the business. Halfway up, I stop and decide I’m too anxious. I walk outside, make a left, and walk through the neighborhood I don’t recognize anymore. Something to make me tired, but also, something else to be depressed about.
Tommy the butcher, he used to be on the corner, the front window of his store crammed with hanging tubes of maroon cured meat. It’s a bank now. I pass the vegetarian bistro that used to be a hardware store. Every morning they would pull shelves onto the sidewalk. This is back when you could trust people to pick up a coil of wire or some screws and then come inside to pay.
Some of the bars have the same name, but it’s only nostalgic if you don’t know the original owners, all of whom are long gone. When I went to those bars, you would go in and ask for a beer, that’s it, and if you asked for anything else, you were asked to leave. Now college students huddle outside, smoking cigarettes, looking at this place like it was a playground or an amusement park.
The city looks different. Smells different. Cleaner, like it’s been scrubbed with antiseptic. The things I remember are gone, and I feel an empty space in my chest. Something vital is missing and I can’t breathe as well without it.
I stop outside the bakery around the corner. The lights are still on, glowing yellow through the huge front windows. There’s a long line of people at the marble counter, and a sign in the window advertising jalapeňo bagels and sweet potato bagels and chocolate bagels.
Nothing is sacred.
The cold wind bites my neck. I bunch up my shoulders and shiver, head back to my apartment. Climb the stairs, drop my keys on the kitchen table, and strip off my work shirt. I pull a bottle of vodka from the top of the refrigerator. The light on the answering machine is blinking red. I press it and sit.
“Mister Joselewicz. This is Mister Chapin. We spoke last week. I tried to call you at the store today but nobody answered and I couldn’t leave a message and…well, I was hoping to stop by tomorrow so we can talk about the future of the building. I’ll come by around opening.” A pause. “Be well, and I look forward to meeting with you.”
I sit at the kitchen table and stare at the machine. I dig the fingertips of my left hand into the soft web of skin between the fingers on my right hand, try to rub away the pain. I consider the vodka but don’t open it. There’s no real solution inside the bottle.
My head dips forward, yanked at by the gravity of sleep. My thoughts drift to Paulie, what he said about busting heads. Like it could be that easy. That was a different time. Different time, different values.
WHEN PAULIE RETURNED, he didn’t return alone. The bell above the door dinged and I looked up from the remains of the display case. Only the metal trim was left—I had cleared out all the glass but hadn’t gotten around to replacing it.
I didn’t need to be introduced to know it was Manny Calabrese. He wasn’t a huge guy. A little stocky, and not tall, but he seemed to tower over everyone around him.
He stood at the counter for a moment, sizing me up, before saying, “I heard you make a good bagel. I would like to try one, please.”
I nodded, pulled out a plain one, asked, “Schmeer?”
Manny nodded. “Of course.”
I placed my palm on the top, cutting through the bagel sideways, crumbs flying across the cutting board. Manny said, “I knew your father. Do you know that?”
“He never mentioned you.”
“We weren’t close. Your father never played ball. I gave him a pass because of that damn union. Those Yids were some tough bastards. But they don’t count for much no more, and I’m tired of looking at this store, thinking about all the wasted income.”
I put the bagel on the counter, cream cheese curling out of the sides. Manny picked it up, regarded it like a piece of art, and took a bite. He nodded, chewed, swallowed. “You make them like your dad made them. That’s good. If you want to keep making them, it’s going to be a hundred a week. That’s less than anyone else in this neighborhood, and only because you make good bagels. I think that’s more than generous, don’t you?”
The way he said it, like it was an act of charity, rage blossomed in my chest like a red-petaled flower. I told him, “A hundred a week is the difference between me eating and not eating. No deal. I’ll give you a dozen free bagels a week. Best I can do.”
Manny took another bite, chewed it carefully, like there might be something sharp hidden inside. When he finished, he turned his head without taking his eyes off me. “Paulie, Rick. Go in the back, look for the most expensive thing you can find. Smash it up.”
The two men smiled at each other, clenched their fists, made their way around to the side of the counter. Invading the space that only me, my mother, my father, and the health inspector had been allowed into. No one else, ever.
I took a step back. Manny said, “Normally, I’d have them break one of your hands, but then you can’t make the bagels. I’m not a bad guy, is what I want you to know.”
Rick was first, not concerned with me, looking toward the back, his eyes searching for something to destroy. Sitting on the counter was a bagel board. Without thinking, I picked it up and swung it with both hands, caught him across the jaw, sent him sprawling to the floor, taking down the coffee maker with him. It shattered on the white tile floor.
Paulie stopped. He and Manny looked at Rick, groaning, holding his jaw. I held the board up, pointed it in Paulie’s face, but I was looking at Manny. “My father escaped the Geheime Staatspolizei to come to this country. He fought to make a better life for us. I will not let you take what he built.”
Manny’s lip curled into the facsimile of a smile. He said, “Okay, kid, if that’s how it’s going to be.” He could have been furious or he could have been amused and I wouldn’t have known the difference. He didn’t take his eyes off me but he turned slightly, to speak to his men. “Paulie. Rick. Out.”
Rick used the counter to pull himself to his feet. There was blood smeared across his chin and his jaw looked distended. Paulie got underneath him and led him through the door. Manny nodded. “If that’s the way it’s going to be.”
He left, too, a dark cloud in his wake.
For the next four days, every time I left the shop, I expected to catch something heavy across the back of my skull. Every time the bell over the door dinged, my heart paused and waited. There wasn’t much to do. The cops were in Manny’s pocket. I could have gotten a gun, but that was a temporary solution.
When Rick and Paulie came back on the fifth day, I was sure that was it. Rick’s jaw was still red and swollen, and there was a thin piece of dull metal wrapped around the back of his head to hold it in place.
Rick looked at Paulie, who lingered by the beverage cooler.
Paulie said, “Manny told you to do it, so do it.”
Rick walked to the counter with a look in his eyes that could have melted glass. My hand went to the bagel board sitting next to the register. It wasn’t a fair fight but that didn’t mean I would go down easy. He mumbled something through his wired jaw.
I asked, “What?”
He sighed. Spoke louder, each word carefully enunciated through clamped teeth. “The bagels, please.”
THE FIRST BATCH should have been in the oven already but I got in late after stopping at the grocery store to pick up plastic containers of poppy
seeds, sesame seeds, roasted minced garlic.
I pour equal parts from the three containers in a sheet pan, follow it with some sea salt. I pluck the bagels from their ice bath, let them drip dry, and place them facedown in the mix, then facedown on the bagel boards. I ignore the pain reverberating through my hands. As I put them in the oven, I feel like I’m doing something wrong, looking over my shoulder, expecting my father to scold me. The kitchen fills with the thick smell of toasted seeds.
The bell dings as I put the first batch onto the cooling rack. I head to the front, hoping to see Paulie. Instead I find Chapin, the kid from the bank, his hair slicked and parted, his fingernails buffed and shined. Wearing a suit with razor-sharp creases. He smiles a plastic doll smile but doesn’t offer me his hand.
“Mister Joselewicz,” he says.
I watch his hands clasped in front of him, tell him, “You know, no one ever gets that right. My last name. You must have been practicing.”
The smile on Chapin’s face dims a little. “So, have you thought about what we discussed?”
I place my hands on the counter and my finger brushes against the bagel board. The one I stopped using to make bagels after it got blood on it. I keep it next to the register, as a reminder or a memento or because I can’t bear to part with something my father made, I don’t know.
The door chimes again. Paulie lumbers in, says, “Mikey Bagels, what have you got for me today?”
“Check the back.”
Paulie looks Chapin up and down, then heads into the kitchen. Chapin opens his mouth to speak but is drowned out as Paulie hoots and hollers. He comes out of the kitchen holding up one of the bagels. “You made me my everything!”
I shrug. “You’re a good friend, Paulie. I just wanted to say thanks before this son of a bitch shuts me down.”
Paulie says, “This the prick from the bank?”
Chapin says, “Sir, I…”
Paulie puts a stubby finger in his face. “No, shut up. You’re a prick. This guy has been in business since before you were a cell in your dad’s balls. And you think you can come in here and take him out? Bullshit. This guy, his family, they’ve dealt with tougher than little shits like you.”
“But…”
“But nothing. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Destroying neighborhoods. Destroying history. I got nothing but respect for this man.” Paulie puts his arm around me, pulls me close. As his fingers clasp my shoulder, I feel a rush of warmth. The pain in my hands disappears. Paulie’s voice rises, face reddens. “You know how me and this man met?”
Exasperated, like he’s talking to a child, Chapin asks, “How?”
“Like this.” Paulie takes the bagel board and swings it, smacking Chapin across the jaw.
Chapin collapses into a pile on the ground, trying to yell, the sound coming out garbled and thick. He grips his face and blood seeps out between his fingers. He stumbles toward the door and bangs into it before sliding out.
I know I shouldn’t, but I laugh. Then Paulie laughs. And then the two of us are bent over, holding each other up, laughing into each other’s shoulders.
When we’re calm enough that we can breathe, I tell him, “You know this can’t end well for us, right?”
“I still know a few of the bulls in this neighborhood. Anyway, we’re old men now. What can they do that someone else hasn’t already tried?” Paulie takes a bite of his bagel. Through a wad of chewed dough he says, “This is a damn good bagel. Look at you, mister traditional, changing things up.”
“Maybe I’ll get a new sign, too. What about that?”
Paulie swallows. “That ain’t such a bad idea. The thing needs a little touching up.”
“What do you think about Michał’s Bagels?”
“You know it should be Mikey Bagels, right?” He laughs. “It’s fine, it’s your business. But I thought you were ready to close up yesterday?”
I pat Paulie on his shoulder, step into the kitchen, pull one of the everything bagels off the rack. I join Paulie back out front, take a bite, and the bagel isn’t bad. Maybe even a little nice to try something new.
The knock at the side door reveals a young couple. They stand in the white glow of the streetlights, shuffling in their shiny shoes, gazing at the sidewalk. Standing apart, as if to hide from each other, their faces draped in shadow.
“The password,” I say.
The boy mumbles something at me and I tell him to speak louder.
“Red dragon,” he says.
I open the door all the way and they dive past me, the boy’s shoulder brushing against my chest. Seeking refuge from the expanse of the street, fidgeting like mice chased into a corner.
This is not uncommon. Everyone has a line. For most people, that line is the back door of my restaurant, and it takes courage to cross.
The door safely closed, the couple is suddenly an inch shorter. Their shoulders were that tense. I get a better look at them in the soft amber light.
The boy is blond and squarely handsome, freshly shaved. He looks like the type who mentions the name of his college within moment of meeting new people. The girl is brunette, hair-straightened. Pretty in a way that would fade into the background of a pleasant group photo.
They’re dressed neatly. Collars and buttons and smooth fabrics. Comfortable in this kind of clothing. They’re not married, but from the way his outstretched hand hovers near her, he’s considering it.
This dance happens three or four times a night in the dim, quiet storage room in the back of my restaurant. Hidden from the cacophony of the front, where scrubbed couples share complicated plates of charcuterie, aged from the meat of pig and cow and lamb and duck.
What happens back here is a more exclusive experience, advertised only by word of mouth. Much of that, I imagine, delivered in the form of hushed, tentative whispers.
New York’s restaurant scene is surmountable only to the smartest, the most talented, the most willing. This is a city where a week’s salary will buy you a meal at Per Se and a handful of crumbled bills will buy you a meal at a filthy stall in Chinatown, and you’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite between the two.
To sustain, to thrive, you need something to set you apart.
There are four options, as I see them.
One, you can appeal to the base human desire for sugar, salt, and fat. Wrap it in a veneer of nostalgia and call it “comfort” or “rustic.”
Two, you can try molecular gastronomy. Invest in an anti-griddle and immersion circulators and maltodextrin. Embrace the science.
Three, you can come up with a stunt concept. Like burritos, but the burrito wraps are made of bacon. People line up three blocks deep for that sort of nonsense.
The fourth option, the one that I’ve chosen, is to appeal to that demographic that calls a meal a “journey” without a dash of sarcasm. The people whose Instagram accounts are an endless parade of carefully prepared, poorly-lit plates.
The couple before me, they hover, unsure of where to stand. As for their visit here tonight, I believe the girl to be the instigator. She’s looking deeper into the restaurant, curious, while the boy is looking at the exit. This is verified when the girl says, “I heard we have to sign something?”
“Some things I don’t believe should be put into writing,” I tell her.
That established, I turn up my palm and smile. They can’t see me smile because they still won’t look at me. But the boy sees my hand. He pulls a wad of bills out of his back pocket and places it on the flat plain of my fingers. The wad is folded over once and secured with a purple rubber band. I flip through and find it’s all there. Without another word I move through the narrow hallway toward the black door in the back. They follow.
When they get this far, they always follow.
From the shelf next to the black door I take a small plastic bin, which, normally I would use to store clean silverware. I hold it toward them and say, “We do not allow phones inside the dining room.”
They hesita
te.
“They will be kept safely and returned to you immediately after dinner,” I say. “While we encourage and expect you to share this experience with your more adventurous friends, I’m afraid it’s a social media free zone.”
“Aren’t you afraid of the wrong people finding out?” the girl asks, her voice growing more confident. “Like, we could just tell anyone. We could tell the cops.”
“You understand what you are here for tonight, yes?”
The girl nods.
“And you understand the implication of that, yes?”
The girl nods again. Slower this time.
“Then no, I am not worried.”
There’s just enough of an edge to the statement that they acquiesce, the boy pulling a shiny smartphone from his pocket and placing it carefully on the bottom of the bin. The girl takes a battered flip phone from her purse and tosses it on top. The boy winces. I place the bin back on the shelf, up high and out of reach, to give the illusion of safety.
I open the door to a small wood-paneled room, barely bigger than the one table and two seats in the middle. Atop the table is a skinny candle in a silver candlestick. Bach’s cello suites play low on hidden speakers.
Points for ambiance.
On the white-clothed table are two plates. Each plate is set with a silver fork, a silver knife, a folded white cloth napkin, and an empty wineglass. Everything carefully buffed and set with gloves to prevent even the whiff of a fingerprint.
Piled atop each plate is a wrinkled nest of red cured meat, streaked with thick bolts of white fat. Next to the meat is an orange dollop of chipotle mayo, two slices of crusty bread, and three cornichons. The plate is wide and curved, the food arranged like a painting.
The couple lingers by the door. I stand aside, hold out my arm. Welcome them. Smile, even though they still won’t look at me.
“Please,” I say. “Be seated.”
They settle into their seats and I produce a cork on a silver platter. The boy looks at me, unsure what to do, so I place it down and tilt out a taste of box wine poured into a bottle of 2003 Latour Bordeaux. He swirls it, takes a sip, and nods.
