“I can always hear you comin’， Saul,” says Lenny. “You sound like you weighs four hundred pounds!” Lenny, a three-hundred-pound fixture at the deli, has a slow Brooklyn drawl and a smile that unfolds across his whole face. He exudes a protective gentleness, a slow-to-anger loyalty, a moral compass with a diamond tip. He kept Saul standing and eating when Saul first stumbled into the deli, homesick and haggard.
“We need some cats, Lenny,” says Saul. “I just scared a rat the size of a side of pastrami.”
“Hogwash,” says Lenny. “We got you to keep ’em in line!”
Lenny grins as Saul squeezes past him in the dark basement. In the half-light, he looks maniacal. “Hey, Saul?” he asks.
Saul turns.
“It’s good to see you doin’ a little better,” says Lenny.
“Thanks,” says Saul. “I’ve been trying. I had a letter from home this week.”
“Well now, that’s the stuff,” says Lenny. “Good news?”
Saul shakes his head. “It’s my mother, so she lies. She says everything is fine, that she has been given a job sweeping rubbish from the streets. I’m sure it’s much worse than she admits.” Four years of study in grammar school and months of full immersion had rendered his English nearly perfect, but the German clip of his consonants sneaks in, especially when he is upset.
“She’ll make her way out, Saul.”
Saul nods and walks to the back of the basement. He is exhausted from imagining everything that could have happened to his mother, to his country. He finds an apron and a hat, and leaves his coat on a hook in the staff room. He washes his hands, dries them on his apron, looks in the mirror and blinks the sleep from his eyes before ascending the stairs to the deli floor.
It’s already packed, and the straining crowd outside fogs the windows with its hungry breath. “Get to work, Grossman!” barks Carol. Saul is sure he hadn’t paused for more than half a breath, but he nods at Carol and shuffles behind the row of other sandwich makers to his station.
Saul stacks roast beef in precarious towers; he layers steaming chunks of turkey on rye; he spears slices of brisket and ladles their drippings on top. His hands deftly manipulate loaves of bread, slabs of meat, spoonfuls of gravy and dressing, mustard and mayonnaise. The world narrows down to the thumping, hissing, beating of a busy deli. Thoughts of his mother and his country are subsumed into the squeak of rubber shoes on floor, the sizzle of melting cheese, the clang of empty metal trays being exchanged for new ones, the happy burble and chatter of chair-screeching, finger-sucking customers. Down the counter at the pickle station Lenny has emerged from doing the books in the basement to shout, “One sour, one sour, two half, pickles, pickles, dill pickles, how many, ma’am, yes, three sour, enjoy!”
“Hey, kid!”
Saul turns toward the counter, wondering what he has forgotten. Pastrami on rye, two pickles—he can’t imagine. “What can I do for you?”
The man who spoke to him is tall and dark-featured like Saul, but with the broad chest, the chiseled-out cheekbones, and the smoothed-back hair he has learned to associate with Italians, rather than Jews. “You make a damn good sandwich,” he says.
“Thank you, sir,” says Saul. He can feel Carol’s watchful eye burning a hole through his apron. “Well—” and he moves to take a ticket from the next customer in line. It’s not in his cache of muscle memory to stand still when the deli is this loud and bustling.
“Hey!” says the tall man. Saul turns back around. “Look, kid,” says the tall man, balancing his sandwich in one hand and bringing a pickle to his mouth with the other, “you make a damn good sandwich, I was saying—holy Father, that’s a good pickle—but you seem like a smart guy.”
“I do?” says Saul.
“You do. And I’m in the business of smart guys.” The man finishes his pickle and looks for somewhere to wipe his hands; finding none, he brushes his thumb and forefinger along the cuff of the sleeve of his opposite hand and winks.
“Thank you, sir,” says Saul, “but I really should get back to work.”
“Okay, okay, I get it, you’re in the middle of things here. I’ll cut to the chase.” The tall man puts his hand over the counter to shake Saul’s and says, “I’m Joey Colicchio, and I’d like to give you a promotion.” The truth is, Joey Colicchio knows that Saul studied English for years before fleeing, and has been watching him for weeks. He’s young, strong, and spends all of his time outside of work alone. He’s a perfect candidate for a delicate position.