Storytime: Deli
Very short one today. I just want to make sure I write something every day to make it easier to get into the habit, and a funny thing happened to me recently.
I live in a pretty sketchy neighborhood. I’ve been lucky enough to not have been mugged or anything, and people are generally nice, but let’s put it this way: I can accurately tell the difference between gunshots and fireworks. It wasn’t my first choice, but I wanted to own a home in New York City, and if you want a house in a nice neighborhood here you need to have millions of dollars in cash, which I don’t have.
Anyway, I routinely go to Taco Bell around here because I have very little self respect. I was walking down the block to get my overpriced bean burrito, and I noticed that next door to Taco Bell was a small deli that had just opened up. It also had a welcoming sign telling me to “Come on in!”, and I figured that a deli sandwich sounded good, so I decided to go in there instead.
It was an extremely strange vibe, almost immediately. It felt like I was the first person to ever be in there, and the guy behind the counter seemed surprised that a yuppie walked into his store. He asked how he could help me, and I told him that I would like to buy a sandwich.
“Oh yeah…yeah you can buy a sandwich here.”
“I’d like the ham sub, number four on the menu.”
“Uh…we don’t have any ham right now.”
“Oh, ok, then I’ll take the corned beef special, number seven”.
He had to look at the board to see what I was asking for, then he goes back into the kitchen and starts making the sandwich. It took him twenty minutes, which is kind of an eternity in deli time, but I figured that they just opened up, and so they were still getting used to everything.
While I was waiting, another customer comes in. He yells for the guy in the back and says “Yo! You got the two dollar weed?”
The man comes out of the kitchen, looks at me to see if I’m some sort of cop, then reaches under the counter and hands the customer a tiny baggie of what looks like marijuana.
He eventually hands me the sandwich, and I walk home. I really like corned beef, so I was genuinely kind of excited. I get to my desk, unwrap the sandwich, took a bite, and was immediately disappointed.
First, the meat on there is roast beef, not corned beef, but even more disturbing: they had put what looked like an entire can of whole-kernel corn on there. These deli owners thought that corn beef had corn in it. I have to tell you, and this is coming for a guy who likes corn: corn is not something I want on a roast beef sandwich. It’s a completely wrong texture, and the flavor clashes.
I did finish the sandwich, confused the entire time, and that’s when I realized it wasn’t really a deli. It was a drug dealership that was using the deli as a front. That’s why he was confused that I ordered a sandwich, that’s why they didn’t have any ham, and (this should have been the tell) that’s why he was selling weed.
I have to say that if I were opening a drug front, I probably wouldn’t choose one that has the risk of people ordering prepared food, but maybe that’s why it’s a good front.
That’s pretty much it. It was just a weird situation that I wanted to write down.