Always Watch Out for the Flying Potato Salad! #9

by Henry Winkler

  “No, sir, it’s all up here,” I said, pointing to my head.

  I dashed over to Carlos to give him the order, trying to remember their words.

  “Hey, Little Man, I’m busy,” he said. “I got eight omelets coming out for Table Eleven. Give your order to Vlady. He’ll take care of you.”

  Vlady is a big man with so much hair on his arms, his skin looks like he’s wearing a sweater. I’ve known him since I was little.

  “Vlady,” I said. “You have to listen to me fast before I forget everything.”

  In a giant rush of words, the order came spilling out of my mouth.

  “Slow down, Small Fry,” Vlady said. That might be insulting coming from anyone else, but next to him, everyone is a small fry.

  “I can’t slow down,” I told him, “or I’m going to forget the whole order.”

  Vlady listened and jotted down some notes.

  “Strange order,” he said. “But your mother says the customer is always right.”

  He shrugged, then turned to the griddle and started to cook.

  “I’ve got a lot of orders coming in,” he said. “You could really help me out by going back to the table and making sure their water glasses are full.”

  I grabbed a pitcher of ice water. I had to use both hands because it was heavy. Holding it against my chest, I made my way over to Table Seven without spilling a drop. I was starting to get the hang of this waiter thing! I was also starting to have a frozen chest.

  “More water, anyone?” I asked the men.

  “Sure, that would be great,” the man with the mustache answered, barely stopping the joke he was telling to the others.

  His glass was pretty high up, and I was pretty low down. I stood on my tiptoes and pulled the glass to the edge of the table so I could reach it better. I lifted the pitcher with both hands and started to pour. Unfortunately, there was no glass in the area I was pouring. Water spilled out onto the table and dripped off the edge and into the man’s lap.

  He jumped up from his chair and screamed like he had seen a mouse.

  “I’m s-so s-sorry, s-sir,” I stammered. “I guess being a waiter isn’t as easy as it looks.”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid,” the man with the mustache said, picking up his napkin and dabbing at his pants. “Every waiter is allowed one mistake.”

  The other men were laughing. I was so glad they weren’t angry.

  “Just go see how our food is coming along,” the guy with the ponytail said to me.

  “Good idea,” I answered. “I’ll leave the pitcher here so you can pour your own water.”

  “Good idea yourself,” he said with a laugh.

  I hurried away before I could get into more trouble. I looked around for my mom to see if she had noticed, but she was in the back of the deli talking to a delivery man. I was glad she hadn’t seen the mess I had made with the pitcher. I would have been so embarrassed.

  I headed over to Vlady to see if the order was ready. He was just finishing putting the food on the plates.

  “Let me help you carry this to the table, Small Fry,” he said. “You take one plate and I’ll carry two.”

  As I hurried across the restaurant carrying the plate, I felt so proud. This was my first order ever. I set it down on the table in front of the bald man. Then I took each of the next two plates from Vlady and set them down in front of the others. Vlady went back to the griddle, and I just stood there with a huge smile spread across my face.

  “I hope you enjoy your meal,” I said to them.

  The men were staring at their plates.

  “Why are there blueberries on my cheeseburger?” the man with the ponytail asked.

  “And pickles on my waffle?” the bald man chimed in.

  “And hot raspberry syrup on my fried eggs?” the man with the mustache said.

  Uh-oh. This was not sounding good. I had told Vlady the right food, but in the wrong place.

  “Um . . . um . . . We like to surprise our customers,” I said at last. “We make up our own combinations. It’s what we here at the Crunchy Pickle call creative cooking.”

  “It’s what I call horrible cooking,” the man with the mustache said. “I can’t eat this.”

  “Me either,” said the man with the ponytail. “A blueberry cheeseburger is disgusting.”

  “Waffles with pickle juice will give me a stomachache,” the bald man said. “This food has to go back.”

  “Couldn’t we just keep this little problem between us guys?” I whispered.

  “We can’t pay for this,” the man with the ponytail said. “We need to see the manager.”

  “That would be my mom,” I answered with a gulp. “She’s very busy right now.”

  “Well, you tell her we need to speak with her,” Mustache Man said. “We’ve been customers here for a long time, and we’ve never had a bad meal.”

  This was worse than I thought. I was in big trouble. Not only did I mess up, I messed up with my mom’s best customers. I looked over at the counter and saw her handing a to-go cup of coffee to a man in a white shirt. She looked so happy. I think she could feel me looking at her, because she caught my eye and flashed me a big smile.

  My stomach was suddenly full of butterflies.

  I knew that smile wasn’t going to last long.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Mom,” I said, walking up to her. “I want you to stay calm.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” she said.

  She put down the coffee pot and put her hands on my shoulders.

  “You look so serious,” she said. “Last time I saw that look, you left the front door open and Cheerio ran away. Remember, we had to spend the whole afternoon searching the apartment building until we found him.”

  “Yeah, but it was so cute when we found him in the laundry room, all curled up in Mrs. Fink’s warm clothes right out of the dryer,” I said. “Her sweat socks were hanging off his ears. You’ve got to admit that was funny, Mom.”

  I tried to laugh and hoped my mom would, too.

  “Hank,” she said, not laughing even a little, “you can’t turn everything into a joke. This is my business, and we have to take it seriously. So just tell me what happened.”

  “It’s about those men at Table Seven. They want to see you. I kind of messed up their order a little tiny bit.”

  “How tiny is a little bit?”

  “Let’s just say there was pickle juice on their waffles.”

  “Oh, this isn’t good.” She shook her head.

  “And blueberries on the cheeseburger. I thought I told Vlady the right order, but . . .”

  She didn’t even let me finish. She just spun around and marched right over to the men. I hid behind the bagel counter as I watched her talking to them. Her hands were flying all over the place, and I knew she was apologizing. My mom is so good at talking with people, I was sure she could make the men understand. I was positive—right up to the moment they grabbed their jackets and walked out without paying. My mom was frowning as she walked back to me.

  “How did it go?” I asked hopefully.

  “It went well for the diner down the block,” she said. “That’s where they’re going.”

  “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry,” I said. “It’s my fault. You don’t have to give me my allowance for the next three weeks.”

  “Hank, how did this happen?” she asked.

  “Those three men all wanted a lot of food,” I said, the words just pouring out of my mouth. “And I couldn’t write it down quickly enough and even if I could, I didn’t know how to spell a lot of the words like ‘syrup’ or ‘sausage.’ So I tried to remember it all in my head, but my head didn’t cooperate and got it all mixed up.”

  “I understand, but what you did was wrong,” she said. “If you knew you couldn’t remember the orde
r, you should have asked for help. If you know you can’t do something, don’t try to hide it. Just ask for help.”

  That was easy for her to say. She almost never has to ask for help. There are so many things I can’t do that I would be asking for help every two seconds. And that’s embarrassing.

  Just then, the front door of the deli swung open, and my grandfather, Papa Pete, burst in. He was wearing his favorite red sweat suit that makes him look like a giant strawberry.

  “Oh, here’s my favorite grandson,” he said, giving me a bear hug.

  “I’m your only grandson, Papa Pete.”

  “Which is exactly why you’re my favorite,” he said, and let out a big laugh. That laugh changed my whole mood.

  “Hank is working here today,” my mom said. “And we’re looking for a job he’d be comfortable doing.”

  “I know exactly what Hank should do,” Papa Pete said. “I used to run this place, remember? And not to brag, but I was known as the King of the Triple-Decker Sandwich. How would you like to learn how to make one, Hankie?”

  “Could I, Mom?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “That sounds like a good job for you. I’ll be busy filling the order for the Teacher Appreciation Dinner. So Papa Pete is in charge of you.”

  “Don’t worry about Hankie and me,” Papa Pete said. Then, turning to me, he added, “Step into my office, youngster, and I’ll teach you the tricks of the trade.”

  I followed Papa Pete over to the sandwich-making area, where Vlady and Carlos were just starting to prepare for the lunch rush.

  “Vlady, my good man,” Papa Pete said, slapping him on the back. “Nice to see you.”

  “Welcome back, Papa Pete,” Vlady said. “We miss you around here.”

  “Yeah,” Carlos chimed in. “There’s no one to give me advice about girls, except Vlady. Last week, he told me that instead of bringing my date flowers, I should bring her a pint of radishes in sour cream.”

  “How did that work out for you?” Papa Pete asked.

  “It was a very short date,” Carlos said. “I got to her house at seven and was on the subway heading home by seven thirty.”

  “Well, if you gentlemen will give us some room,” Papa Pete said, “I’m about to teach my grandson the secrets of the triple-decker sandwich.”

  We hardly had any time to get started on our lesson, because a customer came hurrying up to the sandwich counter. It was Bruce, who delivers mail to the buildings in our neighborhood.

  “Hi, guys,” Bruce said. “I delivered so much mail this morning, I worked up quite an appetite. Can you get me a salami, cheese, fried-egg triple-decker as fast as you can?”

  “Papa Pete, can you take this?” Carlos asked. “I’m going to go wipe down the tables for lunch.”

  “And I’ll go help the people in the booth by the window,” Vlady said. “They look hungry.”

  Papa Pete and I got busy on Bruce’s triple-decker sandwich. Putting the salami and cheese on the bread was pretty easy. The fried egg part was tricky.

  “Hankie, bring me an egg,” Papa Pete said, dropping a blob of butter on the grill.

  I went to the bowl where we keep the eggs and picked one up. I reached out to hand it to Papa Pete, but I let it go before he grabbed it. We both watched the egg fall through the air and land splat on his shoes. Papa Pete didn’t even get mad.

  “That’s okay,” he said, wiping the egg yolk off his shoes. “This is going to make my shoes so shiny, they’ll glow in the dark.”

  Papa Pete fried up a new egg, and let me scoop it onto the sandwich and stick a toothpick in each half to hold it together. We handed it to Bruce, and before he even reached the cash register to pay, we had another customer. It was Lanni, who worked at the nail salon down the block.

  “How about a nice triple-decker for you,” Papa Pete said. “I got some rare roast beef right here.”

  “I don’t eat meat,” Lanni said.

  “How about a fried egg sandwich?” I suggested to her. “I just learned how to handle that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “On wheat bread.”

  This time when I took the eggs out of the bowl, I made sure to put them directly into Papa Pete’s hand. I was really catching on to this sandwich work. I did have a little problem sticking the toothpick into each half. I kind of forgot that egg yolks can drip all over the rest of the sandwich. But Papa Pete said that’s what egg yolks are supposed to do.

  After Lanni left, the line got even longer at the sandwich counter. Carlos and Vlady came over to help until my mom showed up, looking stressed.

  “I need your help,” she said to Papa Pete. “The meat slicing machine is acting up. Can you come take a look at it? It needs your special touch.”

  “Do you want my help, too, Mom?” I asked.

  “The early lunch customers are coming in right now,” she said. “You would be a big help staying right here and making sandwiches with Carlos and Vlady.”

  “Great, I’m pretty expert at making sandwiches now,” I said.

  “You’re going to have to concentrate, Hank. Lunchtime is really busy here.”

  That sounded exciting. I could already see myself standing in between Carlos and Vlady, passing sliced roast beef to my right and salami to my left. Or maybe it was the other way around. I can never get that left and right thing left. I mean right.

  Papa Pete and my mom hurried to the back room of the deli, and I took my place at the sandwich counter.

  Bring on the crowds, I thought to myself. Hank Zipzer is on the case!

  My mind must be really good at magic, because as soon as I had that thought, presto, the front door swung open with our next customers.

  Uh-oh, my mind must have used some bad magic, because standing there at the front door was a stink bomb in human form.

  CHAPTER 7

  The stink bomb’s name was Nick McKelty. He was with his dad, who had a really unhappy look on his face. I couldn’t blame him. I would have that same look, too, if I had to spend an entire day with Nick the Tick.

  Carlos was busy making a ham and cheese sandwich.

  “Do me a favor, Little Man,” he said. “Go seat those people and give them a menu.”

  Oh no. I was going to have to wait on Nick McKelty? I’d rather ski down Mount Everest naked. In a blizzard.

  “I see that Table Seven is empty,” Carlos said. “Seat them there.”

  Double oh no. Table Seven! Bad things happen there. That was definitely not my lucky table.

  “How about if I finish the sandwich, and you show them to the table?” I suggested.

  “No can do,” he said. “You can’t use the knife. Mom’s orders.”

  I picked up two menus and walked as slowly as I could toward the front door. When McKelty saw me, he burst out laughing.

  “What a boring job, handing out menus,” he whispered in my ear.

  “Thanks, Nick. It’s nice to see you, too,” I whispered back. “I thought you’d be spraying anti-stink stuff into bowling shoes.”

  “Hello, Hank,” Nick’s father said. “I see you’re helping your mom on Take Your Child to Work Day. Nick and I were at the bowling alley having a fun day, too, until the automatic pinsetter broke. We thought we’d grab some lunch while they’re fixing it.”

  “Let me show you to your table,” I said.

  “Really? You can do that?” Nick snorted. “Aren’t you the one who always gets lost?”

  I didn’t answer, just made my way over to Table Seven. I wanted to stick my foot out and trip the big creep, but I knew that wouldn’t be right.

  “Is this the best table you have?” Nick asked. “It’s too close to the door.”

  On second thought, I should have tripped him.

  Mr. McKelty didn’t look pleased with his son.

  “This table is just fine, Hank,” h
e said to me. “I’m sure Nick would agree. Don’t you, Nick?”

  “Fine, let’s just order,” Nick said, taking a seat. “What do you have that’s any good?”

  “Everything on the menu,” I answered. “But today we’re making some pretty great triple-deckers.”

  “Sounds fabulous,” Mr. McKelty said. “We’ll each take one. Why don’t you surprise us with your best combinations.”

  As I walked back to Carlos, I thought about what I’d like to make for Nick’s special sandwich. I came up with onion, mustard, crushed shrimp shells, and day-old baloney piled high on stale bread. Oh, and don’t let me forget the moldy cheese.

  I gave my suggestion to Carlos, but he just laughed.

  “What do you have against those people?” he said.

  “Mr. McKelty is really nice,” I said. “But his son Nick is the class bully. And the person he likes to bully most is me.”

  “I see where you’re coming from,” Carlos said. “But remember, we’re the Crunchy Pickle. And we have a reputation to protect. You know our motto: Our sandwiches are almost too good to eat.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Besides, maybe one of our delicious sandwiches will put Nick in a better mood.”

  “I like the way you’re thinking, Little Man,” Carlos said. “So what do you say we make your pal a nice pastrami, Swiss cheese, and coleslaw triple-decker. We’ll make his dad a roast beef, cheddar cheese, and coleslaw. I have to go get some fresh rye bread. While I’m gone, you can get me that sliced pastrami over there on the wax paper.”

  That seemed easy enough. The piled-up pastrami was just a few feet away, sitting on the counter waiting for me. The walk over to it was smooth sailing. Three, maybe four steps. Picking it up was no problem. I grabbed the wax paper from the bottom. I could feel the steamy warmth of the pastrami against the palm of my hand. I leaned over and took a big whiff. Man, did it smell delicious.