Now Serving Eternity (Part 1)

The roast beef came out of the slicer warm and wet, the color of something wounded but still trying to be useful.

Eddie Marrone held it with both hands as the blade worked through it. His left hand was flat on the carriage handle. His right hand kept the meat steady beneath the clear plastic guard. The machine made its steady, silver whisper. Not a buzz, not a grind, but something finer and more intimate than that. A whisper with teeth.

The first slice fell and folded over itself on the wax paper.

Too thick.

He turned the dial back a hair.

The second slice came off better. Thin enough to show light through the fat. Thin enough for a woman to hold up and judge.

“Little thinner,” the woman said.

Eddie nodded.

She stood in front of the ShopRite deli counter in a tan winter coat with a fur collar going bald around the neck. Her pocketbook was clamped under one arm like somebody might run off with it. Nobody was going to run off with it. Nobody was running anywhere in the ShopRite of Netcong at four-twelve on a Thursday afternoon in February of 1986. The whole store seemed to be moving through syrup. Carts squeaked. Children cried from somewhere near the cereal aisle. The fluorescent lights made the hams shine in their cases like preserved organs.

The woman watched Eddie’s hands.

“Not shaved,” she said. “I don’t want shaved.”

“No, ma’am.”

“I said thinner. Not shaved.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My husband can’t chew it if it’s thick.”

Eddie adjusted the dial again, though only slightly. He had learned that the dial was half mechanics and half theater. People liked to see you touch it. They liked knowing their instructions had entered the world and caused movement.

The slicer whispered.

Juice ran off the heel of the roast beef and down onto his glove. It was warm enough to surprise him. It splashed against the cuff of his white deli coat, not much, just two brownish-red freckles near his wrist. The coat was already marked with mustard, olive brine, and something orange from the macaroni salad tub. They gave you two coats at the start of the week. By Thursday, both looked like confessions.

Eddie peeled a slice from the pile and held it up.

“How’s that?”

The woman leaned forward. Her face came close to the glass. Under the deli lights she had the waxy exhausted look people got in supermarkets after work, as if the day had taken their real face and left them with the one they used for errands.

“That’s fine,” she said, disappointed.

“How much?”

“Half pound.”

He layered the slices carefully, as if the arrangement mattered. Behind him, Frank was scooping potato salad into a plastic container for a man in a Netcong High football jacket. Brenda was at the cheese end cutting yellow American for a woman with two kids. The younger kid had his mouth pressed against the glass case, fogging it. Brenda kept saying, “Sweetheart, please don’t lick that,” in a voice that had died somewhere on the way out of her mouth.

Eddie put the roast beef on the scale.

.48.

He added two slices.

.53.

He removed one.

.50.

The woman looked at the number and nodded with the authority of a bank examiner.

Eddie wrapped the meat in wax paper, slid it into a plastic bag, printed the price sticker, and pressed it flat. The sticker wrinkled at one corner. He smoothed it with his thumb.

“Anything else?”

“Quarter pound of domestic Swiss.”

He had not pressed the button yet.

The red number above the counter still read 37.

There were people holding white paper tickets all the way past the olive display and down toward the seafood case. The numbers came from the red dispenser near the end of the counter, a little metal mouth that spat out order and gave suffering a sequence. Customers arrived already irritated by the existence of other customers. They pulled a number, stared at it, stared at the display, then stared at the clerks like the clerks had personally invented waiting.

Eddie sliced the Swiss.

The cheese stuck slightly to the blade. It came off in damp pale sheets, each one dragging a little before dropping. His gloves were slick from roast beef juice, and the cheese made them worse, waxy and sour-smelling. He could feel his fingers sweating inside the latex. The glove on his right hand had a pinhole somewhere near the thumb, and every time he touched something cold, a little wetness found him.

The woman watched the Swiss fall.

“My husband says the imported has no taste anymore,” she said.

Eddie said nothing.

“He used to like the imported.”

The slicer whispered.

“Now he says nothing tastes like anything.”

Eddie stacked the cheese, weighed it, wrapped it. The woman took the bag from him and looked at it as if it might contain a mistake she could not yet see.

“Thank you,” he said.

She did not answer. She put the meat and cheese into her cart and pushed away, one bad wheel ticking like a loose tooth.

Eddie wiped the slicer with a gray towel that smelled faintly of bleach and old fat. Then he reached up to the number box and pressed the black button.

A dry plastic click.

The display changed.

38

He looked at the crowd.

“Now serving thirty-eight.”

A man in a green work jacket lifted his ticket without lifting his eyes.

“That’s me.”

He came forward slowly. Heavy boots. Dry skin split around the knuckles. A lunch pail dented along one side sat in the child seat of his cart.

“What can I get for you?” Eddie asked.

The man looked into the case. He said nothing for several seconds, just moved his jaw around like he was chewing on an insult.

“Ham,” he said.

“What kind?”

The man stared at him.

“You got twelve kinds of ham?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you tell me which one’s ham?”

Frank coughed once from the potato salad station.

Eddie kept his eyes on the case.

“We have boiled ham, Virginia ham, Krakus, tavern ham, ham cappy, honey ham—”

“Boiled,” the man said. “Jesus Christ. Half pound. Thin.”

Eddie took out the boiled ham. It was cold and pink and perfect in the way processed things were perfect, made of pieces that had surrendered their original names. He set it on the slicer. The glove on his left hand slid against it. The ham was damp with that sealed-plastic slime that never felt like food, though people fed it to children every day.

The man watched him.

“You new?”

“No.”

“I never seen you.”

“I been here two years.”

The man snorted.

“That supposed to be a long time?”

Eddie set the dial.

“No.”

The first slice folded out, pink and limp.

The man said, “Too thick.”

Eddie adjusted.

The man said, “You people never listen.”

The slicer whispered.

Eddie’s face did not change. It had learned not to change. The deli gave a man certain muscles and took others away. The muscles in his hands became precise. The muscles around his mouth became stone. The muscles inside his chest, the ones that used to rise up when insulted, had become tired animals. They still moved sometimes in the dark, but not here. Not under the lights. Not with Frank watching. Not with Marty near the bakery entrance pretending not to watch.

Marty Schlegel was assistant store manager, though he carried himself like the deputy warden of a prison no one respected. He was twenty-eight, six years younger than Eddie, with feathered hair, a brown tie, and a ring of keys that gave him authority over mop closets and display cases. He had been an assistant manager for eight months and had already learned the exhausted lean of middle management: one hand on the hip, one hand rubbing the forehead, mouth slightly open as if always receiving bad news.

Marty had told Eddie twice that month he needed to “work on presentation.”

The first time, Eddie had asked, “My presentation?”

Marty had looked down at Eddie’s coat and said, “The customer sees the whole package.”

Eddie had wanted to say, The customer sees a man selling them liverwurst in a supermarket off Route 46, Marty. The customer sees God’s joke with a hairnet.

But he had said, “Okay.”

The boiled ham came to .51.

“Little over,” Eddie said.

The man looked at him.

“You think I can’t afford a slice of ham?”

“No. I just—”

“Wrap it.”

Eddie wrapped it.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. You got macaroni salad without celery?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They make it with celery.”

“Who’s they?”

Eddie looked toward the back room, toward the swinging gray doors, toward the buckets and drains and knives and cardboard boxes collapsing in damp stacks.

“The people who make it.”

The man’s mouth tightened. For a moment Eddie thought he might smile. Instead, he looked toward Frank.

“Hey,” the man said. “You got macaroni salad without celery?”

Frank had a voice like gravel in a coffee can. “Nope.”

The man looked back at Eddie, disappointed to have lost the opportunity to prove him useless.

“Forget it.”

Eddie handed him the ham.

The man took it and tossed it into the cart beside the lunch pail. Then he leaned forward slightly.

“You related to that Marrone from Stanhope?”

Eddie’s hand stayed on the counter.

“Which one?”

“Big drunk. Used to do roofs.”

“My uncle.”

The man nodded slowly, as if this explained something.

“Figures,” he said.

Then he pushed his cart away.

Eddie looked down at the counter. A smear of ham water glistened near the scale. He wiped it once. It spread. He wiped it again.

He pressed the button.

39

“Now serving thirty-nine.”

A teenage girl stepped forward with a ticket in her hand. She wore a denim jacket with a Bon Jovi patch on the sleeve and had black eyeliner smudged under both eyes. Behind her stood a woman Eddie guessed was her mother. The mother’s face looked sharpened by cigarettes and disappointment. She held herself with arms crossed, staring past everything.

The girl said, “Can I get a pound of turkey?”

“What kind?”

She looked back at her mother.

The mother said, “Whatever’s on sale.”

Eddie checked the sign. The sale turkey was the square loaf, pale beige, with a slick surface and small bubbles trapped inside it. It always reminded him of erasers.

“This one?”

The mother leaned in. “Is that the cheapest?”

“Yes.”

“Then yeah.”

Eddie lifted the turkey. It nearly slipped from his glove. Processed turkey had its own kind of life, not animal life anymore, not quite dead either. It sweated. It shone. It resisted being held.

“How do you want it sliced?”

The girl shrugged.

The mother said, “Regular.”

Eddie set the loaf on the slicer.

Brenda came behind him carrying an empty pickle bucket.

“Behind you,” she said.

He stepped aside.

The bucket brushed his leg. Pickle juice sloshed inside it and splattered his shoe.

“Sorry,” Brenda said without stopping.

Eddie nodded.

The mother saw it.

“They got you people running around like crazy,” she said, but not with sympathy. More like accusation.

“It gets busy,” Eddie said.

“Everything gets busy.”

The slicer started.

The girl watched him, then watched the number display, then watched the floor.

The mother said, “You better eat this. I’m not buying food to watch it rot in the fridge.”

The girl’s face went red.

“I eat it.”

“You eat garbage.”

“I said I eat it.”

“You eat cigarettes and Tab.”

Eddie kept the slices even.

The mother looked at Eddie now.

“She thinks I don’t know. You think I don’t know?”

The girl said, “Mom.”

“What?”

“Stop.”

The slicer whispered.

Eddie could feel the turkey slime through the tear in his glove now. Cold, intimate, obscene. It worked its way under the latex and sat against the side of his thumb. The deli smell seemed to thicken: salt, meat, vinegar, bleach, wet cardboard, perfume from the women, cigarettes from the coats, the faint metallic frost from the open case.

The mother leaned toward the girl.

“You want me to stop? Stop making me look stupid in public.”

The girl looked down.

Nobody in the line pretended not to listen. They all listened in the particular public way people listen while pretending the world has not become a room.

Eddie weighed the turkey.

.98.

He added two slices.

1.01.

“Little over,” he said.

The mother said, “Fine.”

He wrapped it and handed it to the girl. She took it gently, almost gratefully, as if it were a small warm animal.

“Have a good night,” Eddie said.

The girl looked at him. For one second there was a person in her face, not a customer, not a child, not an embarrassment. Just a person trapped on her side of the glass while he was trapped on his.

“You too,” she said.

The mother had already turned the cart.

When they left, Brenda came up beside him and leaned back against the low cooler.

“Jesus,” she said. “People are nuts today.”

Eddie stripped off the torn glove. His thumb was wet and smelled like turkey.

Brenda was nineteen and had a way of looking exhausted and pretty at the same time, which Eddie knew was a brief condition life would correct. She went to County College part-time and said she was getting out. Everybody at the store who was under twenty-five said they were getting out. Everybody over thirty knew the map had exits printed on it that did not always correspond to roads.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You look like you’re gonna kill somebody.”

“I’m fine.”

She laughed.

“That’s not what people look like when they’re fine.”

He reached for a new glove.

The glove caught on his knuckles. He pulled too hard and tore it at the wrist. He threw it away and took another.

“You hear Marty’s looking for you?” Brenda said.

“Why?”

She made a face. “Probably because breathing costs the store money.”

Frank said, “He’s on everybody today.”

Frank had worked deli since before the store changed the cases. He was fifty-eight, maybe sixty-five. Nobody knew. He had gray hair in his ears and a tattoo from Korea or Bayonne or both. He could slice a pound of prosciutto so thin it floated, and he hated everyone with the fairness of a saint.

“Marty can kiss my whole ass,” Frank said.

Brenda laughed.

Eddie smiled because it was expected. It felt strange on his face.

Marty appeared then, as if summoned by disrespect. He came around the end of the counter, not behind it, because managers liked to hover in the customer zone. It made them seem less contaminated.

“Eddie,” he said.

Eddie looked up.

“Can I see you a second?”

“I got a line.”

Marty glanced at the customers. There were six waiting now, maybe seven. The display still read 39, though thirty-nine had gone.

“It’ll be quick.”

Eddie looked at Frank.

Frank said, “I got it.”

Eddie stepped toward the far end of the counter, near the hot foods case where the fried chicken sat under bulbs, drying into itself.

Marty lowered his voice just enough to show that he was a reasonable man forced into unreasonable circumstances.

“I need you to watch the attitude.”

Eddie looked at him.

“My attitude?”

“Customers pick up on things.”

“What things?”

“Energy.”

The word hung there between the olive tubs and the rotisserie chickens.

“Energy,” Eddie said.

“Yeah.”

“What customer complained?”

Marty sighed. “It’s not about one customer.”

“So nobody complained.”

“It’s about the general feeling.”

“The general feeling.”

“Don’t repeat everything I say.”

Eddie looked past him. Behind Marty’s shoulder, the store opened out into aisles and signs and stacked cans. A woman in a red coat was reading the ingredients on soup. A boy was dragging his hand along shelves of cereal boxes, knocking them slightly crooked. The front windows were dark now. Outside was Route 46, headlights moving through winter dusk, people going east, people going west, people convinced direction was the same as purpose.

Marty said, “You’re lucky to have this job.”

There it was. It always came eventually. From managers, from relatives, from women at court offices, from men at bars who had kept their families and their pensions and their opinions. You’re lucky. It was a sentence people used when they wanted gratitude from someone standing in a hole.

Eddie said, “I know.”

Marty’s expression softened in the false way of men who think obedience is healing.

“I’m trying to help you.”

“I know.”

“You’ve had a rough couple years.”

Eddie felt something move in his chest.

Marty should not have known that. Marty knew because stores knew things. Stores were small towns under roofs. Somebody’s sister knew Eddie’s ex-wife’s cousin. Somebody had seen him at the municipal court in Dover. Somebody had heard about the job at the printing plant, the foreman, the loading dock, the incident. By the time a fact traveled through a supermarket, it became both smaller and dirtier, like meat scraps in the drain.

Marty said, “You just need to keep it professional.”

Eddie looked at Marty’s tie. It had a diagonal stripe. Brown and tan. There was a tiny spot of coffee near the knot.

“I’m professional,” Eddie said.

Marty nodded, choosing to believe he had won.

“Good. Great. Thank you.”

Eddie turned back toward the counter.

Marty said, “And change your coat when you get a chance.”

Eddie looked down. Roast beef spots near the cuff. Mustard near the pocket. Pickle brine drying on the hem. Orange macaroni stain. His name tag crooked: EDDIE.

“Yes,” he said.

He went back behind the counter.

Frank had taken one customer, Brenda another. The display read 41.

A man in a brown suit was standing with his ticket raised.

“I’m forty,” he said.

Frank said, “We called forty.”

“I was right here.”

“I called it twice.”

“You did not.”

“I did.”

“I’ve been standing here the whole time.”

Frank’s eyes did not move. “Then you heard me.”

The man looked at Eddie. People often looked to the next employee as if justice might be found in a different apron.

Eddie said, “I can help you after forty-one.”

The man laughed once.

“That’s unbelievable.”

Brenda whispered, “Here we go.”

The woman holding forty-one was elderly and small, with a black scarf over her hair. She held her ticket in both hands. Eddie saw the number tremble.

“You can take him,” she said.

The man in the suit nodded like this was proper.

Eddie looked at the woman.

“You sure?”

She nodded without looking up.

The man stepped forward.

“Pound of hard salami,” he said. “Thin. And don’t give me the end pieces.”

Eddie took out the salami. It was dense and cold, the casing greasy under his glove. He cut off the end and set it aside. The blade hit the meat with a different sound than turkey, lower, more resistant. The slices came off dark red with white fat embedded like little stones.

The man in the suit watched with open impatience.

“Thinner.”

Eddie adjusted.

“Thinner.”

Eddie adjusted again.

“Not falling apart.”

Eddie did not answer.

“You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“You look familiar,” the man said.

The slicer moved.

“You from around here?”

“Stanhope.”

“Stanhope,” the man said. “You know Paul Renner?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“You look like a guy used to work over at Randolph Graphics.”

Eddie’s hand tightened on the carriage handle.

The man snapped his fingers.

“That’s it. You worked there.”

The slicer whispered.

The man smiled, pleased with himself.

“What was the story over there?”

“No story.”

“Nah, there was a story.”

Eddie kept slicing.

The man said, “Some guy got hurt, right?”

The salami fell in neat dark coins.

“Or fired. Something.”

Eddie stopped the slicer.

“How much did you want?”

“Pound.”

Eddie put the salami on the scale.

.76.

He added more.

The man said, “I knew I seen you.”

Frank was looking over now. Brenda too.

The old woman with forty-one stared at her ticket.

The man in the suit leaned one elbow on the glass.

“Small world, huh?”

Eddie kept adding slices.

.91.

.97.

1.03.

The man saw the number.

“I said a pound.”

“I can take one off.”

“Yeah. Take one off.”

Eddie removed a slice.

.99.

The man stared.

“Put it back.”

Eddie put it back.

1.03.

The man smiled again.

“There you go.”

Eddie wrapped the salami slowly. He could feel his pulse in his wrists.

The man said, “You gotta be careful these days. One mistake and they throw you away.”

Eddie printed the sticker.

The machine spit it out with a small electric chirp.

The man said, “Nobody forgives anybody anymore.”

Eddie pressed the sticker to the package and handed it over.

The man took it.

“Thanks, chief.”

Eddie said nothing.

When the man left, the old woman stepped forward.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Eddie pressed the button.

41

“Now serving forty-one.”

The old woman looked confused.

“That’s me.”

“Yes.”

“But I was already here.”

“I know.”

She came closer. She smelled like cold air, powder, and something medicinal.

“What can I get you?” Eddie asked.

She opened her pocketbook and took out a folded piece of paper. Her fingers were crooked with arthritis. The list had been written in large careful letters.

“My son wrote it,” she said.

Eddie waited.

“He says I forget.”

He looked at the paper with her.

“Quarter pound liverwurst,” he read. “Quarter pound bologna. Half pound Muenster.”

“Yes.”

“No problem.”

She watched him take out the liverwurst. It sagged slightly in its casing, gray-brown and soft. He hated the feel of it most of all. Liverwurst accepted pressure too easily. It dented where you touched it and did not recover.

The old woman said, “My husband liked liverwurst.”

Eddie set it on the slicer.

“How thin?”

She looked at the list.

“It doesn’t say.”

“Medium?”

“All right.”

The blade moved through the liverwurst with a soft sound, almost no resistance. The slices curled and stuck to the paper.

“He died in November,” she said.

Eddie kept his hand steady.

“I still buy it.”

The slicer whispered.

“Then I throw it out.”

Eddie looked up for half a second.

The old woman was watching the meat, not him.

“My son says I shouldn’t. He says that’s foolish.”

Eddie laid the slices on wax paper.

“But when I don’t buy it, I feel worse.”

He weighed it.

.24.

He added one slice.

.27.

“Little over okay?”

“Yes.”

He wrapped it.

The old woman said, “Do you think that’s foolish?”

“No.”

She looked at him then. Her eyes were watery and sharp.

“No?”

“No.”

The store seemed briefly quieter around them. Not actually quiet. Never that. The PA system crackled overhead. Somewhere a cashier called for a price check on frozen waffles. Frank was telling a customer that no, German potato salad was supposed to be served cold unless you heated it. Brenda was laughing at something one of the stock boys said near the swinging doors. The number display glowed red over everything.

But inside the small space between Eddie and the old woman, there was a quiet like snow beginning.

He sliced the bologna.

The old woman said, “He used to stand at the counter and eat it from the paper. Before I could put it away.”

“My father did that.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

This was not true. Eddie’s father had eaten standing at the sink when he ate at all, staring out the kitchen window toward the neighbor’s garage. But the old woman smiled faintly, and the lie harmed no one.

“He would say, ‘What’s the point of buying it if you don’t taste it fresh?’”

Eddie wrapped the bologna.

The Muenster smelled faintly sour. It stuck to the blade. He separated the slices with paper because old people liked that, because it made things easier, because sometimes the whole job was arranging small mercies so thin they could be mistaken for procedure.

When he handed her the packages, she put them carefully in her cart.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

She started to leave, then stopped.

“You should change your coat,” she said gently. “You’ll catch trouble from someone.”

Eddie looked down at himself.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She pushed her cart away.

He pressed the button.

42

“Now serving forty-two.”

A young father came forward holding a little boy in one arm and a ticket in the other. The boy’s face was red from crying. The father looked worse. He had the strained, stunned expression of a man recently left alone with a child and a list.

“Half pound American,” he said. “White. No, yellow. Wait.”

He shifted the boy on his hip.

“What color does Mommy get?”

The boy buried his face in the man’s shoulder.

The man closed his eyes.

“Yellow,” he said. “Just yellow.”

Eddie took out the yellow American. The cheese came wrapped in blocks, mild and obedient, the color of school buses in rain. He peeled back the plastic and set it on the slicer.

The boy lifted his head and looked at Eddie.

Eddie looked back.

The child had brown eyes, hair stuck to his forehead, a wet upper lip. He was maybe four. The same age as Eddie’s daughter had been when Diane stopped letting him pick her up without supervision. No, not stopped. Modified visitation. That was the phrase. The court loved soft words for hard things. Modified. Temporary. Incident. Separation. Arrears.

His daughter would be seven now. Seven and a half. She had lost the roundness in her cheeks the last time he saw her. She had asked why his apartment smelled funny. He had told her it was the downstairs neighbor cooking cabbage. There was no downstairs neighbor.

The father bounced the boy slightly.

“Buddy, come on. We’re almost done.”

The boy said, “I want Mommy.”

The man’s face twitched.

“I know.”

The slicer whispered through the cheese.

“I want Mommy.”

“I know, Sean.”

“You said she’d be home.”

The man looked toward the ceiling.

“I said maybe.”

“You said.”

“I know what I said.”

The cheese slices gathered in a glossy stack. Eddie could feel the static cling of each piece through the paper. His gloves were clean now but already felt dirty. They always felt dirty once the day turned.

The boy looked at the cheese.

“Can I have one?”

The father said, too quickly, “No.”

Eddie paused.

Then he took the top slice, folded it once inside a square of wax paper, and held it over the counter.

The father looked embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” Eddie said. “Sample.”

The boy reached for it.

The father said, “Say thank you.”

The boy took the cheese and held it with both hands.

“Thank you.”

Eddie nodded.

Behind him Marty’s voice came sharp from the aisle.

“We’re not supposed to give samples without—”

Frank dropped a metal pan into the sink so hard the crash swallowed the rest of the sentence.

The father smiled, but not happily. More like someone watching another man take a small risk on his behalf and knowing it was too small to repay.

“How much?” Eddie asked.

“Half pound. Sorry.”

“No problem.”

He weighed it.

.52.

He wrapped it.

The father said, “You got kids?”

Eddie’s hand stopped for less than a second.

“A daughter.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The father nodded.

“They make you crazy.”

Eddie printed the sticker.

“Yeah.”

The man looked down at the boy eating cheese from the wax paper.

“Then you miss them when they’re gone ten minutes.”

Eddie pressed the sticker down.

“Yeah,” he said.

The father looked at him, hearing something in the word. Then he took the cheese and turned away.

Eddie watched the boy over the man’s shoulder until they passed the bakery and disappeared behind a stack of paper towels on sale.

He pressed the button.

43

“Now serving forty-three.”

No one came forward.

Eddie called again.

“Forty-three?”

A woman near the seafood case looked at her ticket.

“I’m forty-five,” she said, angry about it.

“Forty-three?” Eddie called.

Nothing.

Frank said, “Dead.”

Brenda said, “Skipped.”

Eddie pressed the button.

44

“Now serving forty-four.”

A teenage boy in a ShopRite apron came through the swinging doors from the back, carrying a tray of chickens. He was not a customer. He was one of the front-end kids, tall and acne-faced, with a feathered haircut and a thin mustache trying to happen.

“Eddie,” he said. “Marty says when you get a second, you gotta help clean the spill in aisle six.”

“I’m on counter.”

“He says Frank can cover.”

Frank said, “Frank can’t cover his own grave.”

The boy grinned.

“I’m just telling you.”

“What spill?” Eddie asked.

“Jar sauce.”

“Then grocery cleans it.”

“Marty says deli tracks grease out there.”

“I haven’t left deli.”

The boy shrugged. “He says you did.”

Eddie looked toward Marty, who was standing by the endcap of Entenmann’s cakes talking to a cashier. Marty did not look over.

The customer with forty-four cleared his throat.

“Can I get service, or are we having a staff meeting?”

He was a big man with a red face and suspenders under his open coat. His cart held beer, diapers, frozen peas, and a box of chocolate donuts. His ticket was pinched between two thick fingers.

“What can I get you?” Eddie asked.

“Pound of roast beef.”

Eddie reached for the roast beef.

“Rare,” the man said.

“This one?”

“Does it look rare?”

Eddie showed him the cut face.

The man leaned in.

“Not that bloody.”

“We have medium.”

“I said rare. I didn’t say raw.”

Eddie showed him another roast.

The man made a disgusted sound.

“This is why my wife hates this store.”

Eddie said nothing.

The front-end boy was still behind him.

“You gotta go after this,” he said.

Eddie turned. “Go tell Marty I’m with customers.”

The boy lifted his eyebrows.

“You tell him.”

He went back through the doors.

The big man said, “Kid’s got your number.”

Eddie set the roast beef on the slicer.

The meat was fresh from the warmer, not hot exactly but alive with heat at the center. When the blade opened it, juice welled and ran. It splashed onto the carriage, onto Eddie’s glove, onto his coat. A drop hit his neck above the collar. He felt it slide slowly down toward his chest.

The big man said, “Thin but not paper.”

Eddie sliced.

“Thinner.”

He adjusted.

“Little thicker.”

He adjusted back.

The man said, “You married?”

Eddie kept slicing.

“No.”

“Smart.”

The man laughed at his own life.

“My wife sent me here with a list long as my arm. Then she’ll say I got the wrong thing. You know why?”

Eddie did not answer.

“Because I breathe wrong.”

Roast beef folded onto paper.

The man leaned closer.

“You think I’m kidding? I walk in the house, she hears how I breathe, whole night’s over. She says, ‘Why are you breathing like that?’ Like there’s a correct way now.”

Eddie weighed the meat.

.84.

The man kept talking.

“Then the kids start. One needs braces. One needs shoes. One’s got a teacher says he don’t pay attention. I said, maybe your class is boring.”

He laughed again.

Eddie added slices.

.96.

“Then my mother calls. She’s dying every week. Every week, dying. Meanwhile she’ll outlive everybody.”

1.02.

“Little over?”

“Fine.”

Eddie wrapped it.

The man’s face changed as he watched the package. Something in him seemed to sag.

“You ever feel like you’re in the wrong life?” he asked.

Eddie held the roast beef in both hands.

The counter lights buzzed faintly.

The man looked embarrassed by his own question and covered it with irritation.

“Never mind. What do I owe?”

“It’ll be at the register.”

“I know that.”

Eddie handed him the package.

The man took it and placed it carefully in the cart, on top of the diapers.

“Thanks,” he said.

Then, as if correcting a mistake: “Try not to bleed on the next one.”

He pushed away.

Eddie looked down. The roast beef juice had spread across his coat in a long diagonal stain. It looked worse than it was. Things often did.

He pressed the button.

45

“Now serving forty-five.”

The woman from the seafood case came forward before he finished the sentence.

“Finally,” she said.

She had short hair sprayed into a helmet and wore a blue coat with gold buttons. Her cart was empty except for a purse and a newspaper folded to the obituaries.

“I was skipped,” she said.

“We called the numbers.”

“I was right there.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t like your tone.”

Eddie looked at her. He had used no tone. That was the trouble. People brought their own and heard it everywhere.

“What can I get you?”

She ordered a quarter pound of ham, then changed it to half, then asked if the ham was salty, then wanted to know if the other ham was less salty, then said her doctor told her to watch salt, then said doctors knew nothing, then asked Eddie if he had ever heard of a doctor helping anybody.

“My brother went into Dover General walking,” she said. “Came out in a box.”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said.

“No you’re not.”

The sentence landed cleanly.

Eddie sliced ham.

“You people say that all day,” she said. “‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Have a nice day.’ ‘Anything else?’ Like dolls with strings.”

Eddie laid the ham on paper.

“Maybe you are sorry,” she said. “I don’t know.”

He weighed it.

.49.

He added a slice.

.53.

She said, “Take it off.”

He took one off.

.49.

She said, “That’s fine.”

He wrapped the ham.

She looked at his coat.

“You should be ashamed handling food looking like that.”

Eddie placed the sticker on the bag.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“My brother worked clean his whole life.”

Eddie handed her the ham.

She did not take it at first.

“Forty years at the foundry,” she said. “Never late. Never once. Then he gets sick and they send flowers. Flowers. That’s what a man is worth.”

Eddie held the ham out.

Her eyes filled suddenly. She looked furious about it.

“Flowers die too,” she said.

Then she took the ham and left.

Eddie watched her go.

Brenda came up beside him.

“You need a break.”

“No.”

“You look bad.”

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I’m still fine.”

Frank said, “Nobody’s fine. That’s why they invented cold cuts.”

Brenda laughed, but softly.

Marty appeared again, inside the counter this time. That meant he was serious. He stood near the slicers, hands on hips, looking at the line, then Eddie’s coat, then the floor.

“Aisle six still needs doing,” he said.

“I’m waiting on customers.”

“Brenda can take over.”

Brenda looked up. “I’m with somebody.”

“Frank, then.”

Frank said, “I’m not his mother.”

Marty’s jaw flexed.

“Eddie, get a clean coat and mop aisle six.”

“I didn’t make the spill.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s jar sauce.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m deli.”

“You’re ShopRite.”

This was another sentence people used when they wanted the hole to thank the shovel.

Eddie looked at the line. The numbers in people’s hands. Their faces. Their impatience and grief and hunger. He looked at the slicers, the meats opened and wrapped and opened again. He looked at Frank, who watched with old tired amusement. Brenda watched with worry, which was worse.

Marty said, “Now, please.”

The word please had no mercy in it.

Eddie took off his gloves. The inside of them was damp. He threw them away. He untied his apron.

Then, before he could step out from behind the counter, the lights flickered.

Once.

The whole store seemed to blink.

The fluorescent tubes buzzed louder and dimmed, then returned. Somewhere near the front, a scanner beeped in rapid error. A child cried out. The rotisserie case hummed and clicked. The number display above the deli went black.

Everyone looked up.

For one second there were no numbers.

Only the red plastic face of the machine, empty.

Then it came back.

45

Still forty-five.

The customers murmured.

Marty said, “Power surge.”

Frank said, “Ghost in the ham.”

Nobody laughed.