Now Serving Eternity (Part 2)

The lights had come back, but something in the store had not. 

Eddie stood with his apron half untied.

The next customer, a woman with three children and a face gray with fatigue, raised her ticket.

“I’m forty-six,” she said.

Marty looked at Eddie.

Eddie looked at Marty.

The woman said, “I just need a pound of bologna.”

One of her children was crying quietly into the sleeve of his coat. Another had a black eye turning yellow at the edges. The third sat in the cart basket, staring at nothing.

Marty said, “Brenda can—”

But Brenda was still with a customer, and Frank had two pounds of antipasto spread open before him, red peppers bleeding oil across the paper.

Eddie tied his apron again.

Marty said, “Eddie.”

The woman said, “Please.”

Not sharply. Not even to Eddie, exactly. To the air. To the store. To whatever agency governed the distance between wanting to be done and being done.

Eddie put on fresh gloves.

Marty’s face closed.

“Fine,” he said. “After this.”

Eddie pressed the button.

46

“Now serving forty-six.”

The woman came forward.

“Bologna,” she said. “The cheap one.”

Eddie took out the bologna.

Her oldest child, the one with the fading black eye, stared at Eddie’s stained coat.

“You got blood on you,” he said.

“It’s roast beef,” Eddie said.

“My dad got blood on him once,” the boy said.

The woman said, “Shut up.”

The boy looked down.

The slicer whispered.

The woman closed her eyes while Eddie sliced, not resting, not praying, just leaving for a moment. Her face slackened. The child in the cart basket began to hum to himself. The other child kept crying into his sleeve, a wet muffled sound.

Eddie cut the bologna medium-thin. Not because she asked. Because children ate it easier that way.

The woman opened her eyes.

“He won’t eat it if it’s too thick,” she said.

“I know.”

She looked at him.

He weighed it.

1.00 exactly.

A perfect pound.

He almost called attention to it, the way clerks did sometimes, a tiny professional triumph.

Perfect.

But the word seemed cruel here.

He wrapped it and handed it over.

The woman took it.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The boy with the black eye looked at Eddie again.

“Do you have to stay here all night?”

Eddie looked at the number display.

“No.”

The boy waited.

Eddie said, “Just till ten.”

The boy nodded as if ten were a year adults had invented.

The woman pushed the cart away.

Marty did not return. Maybe aisle six had found another sinner.

The line thinned and thickened, thinned and thickened. The numbers moved. Forty-seven wanted olive loaf. Forty-eight wanted provolone and complained it smelled like feet. Forty-nine took a pound of ham salad and told Brenda her boyfriend would leave her if she got fat. Fifty was skipped. Fifty-one was a priest who bought roast beef and said nothing except “God bless” with his eyes already somewhere else. Fifty-two was a man who asked Frank if the seafood salad was fresh, and Frank said, “Fresh from a bucket this morning.”

The store grew darker at the windows. Night pressed its face against the glass. The deli lights made everything inside brighter and more terrible. The slicers needed cleaning. The trash can was full. The floor behind the counter had become slick with dropped scraps and heel-smears of grease. A torn ticket lay near Eddie’s shoe, trampled into damp paper pulp.

At seven-fifteen, Marty came back and told Eddie his ex-wife had called.

The sentence hit him physically, a hand between the ribs.

“She called here?”

Marty nodded, annoyed by domestic life entering business hours.

“Said it wasn’t emergency, but you should call when you can.”

“Did she say what?”

“No.”

“When did she call?”

“Maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“You’re just telling me now?”

Marty’s eyes narrowed.

“I’ve been running a store.”

Eddie looked at the line. Four people waiting. Maybe five.

“I need to call.”

“On your break.”

“I didn’t take a break.”

“You can take it at eight.”

Eddie felt the old thing rise. Not anger exactly. Anger had heat. This was heavier, a black mechanical movement somewhere inside him, gears long rusted suddenly turning. The loading dock at Randolph Graphics came back in pieces: the foreman’s hand on his chest, the wet pavement, somebody saying Calm down, Eddie, calm down, the forklift beeping backward, the impossible stupid second when a shove became a fall and a fall became an incident and an incident became a life.

He looked at Marty.

Marty took one step back without meaning to.

Frank said, “I’ll cover.”

Marty looked at him.

Frank said, “He can call. I’ll cover.”

Brenda said, “Me too.”

Marty looked embarrassed, then angry at being embarrassed.

“Five minutes,” he said.

Eddie turned toward the back room.

A customer called, “Are we supposed to wait?”

Frank said, “Yes.”

Eddie pushed through the swinging doors into the back but did not leave the deli. The wall phone hung near the time clock, beige and greasy around the buttons. He stood beside the meat racks and cardboard boxes. The air was colder there. Fans hummed. A bucket under the prep sink held gray water with lettuce floating in it.

He dialed Diane’s number from memory.

It rang four times.

“Hello?”

It was her voice, but flatter.

“It’s me.”

A pause.

“I called.”

“Marty just told me.”

“I didn’t say it was emergency.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

He closed his eyes.

“Diane.”

“She asked about you.”

His hand tightened around the receiver.

“Who?”

Diane exhaled through her nose.

“Don’t do that.”

“What did she ask?”

“She wanted to know why you didn’t come Saturday.”

“It wasn’t my Saturday.”

“I know.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“I told her the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That the schedule changed because you and I had to figure things out.”

“Jesus, Diane.”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting.”

“You always say that when you’re starting.”

He opened his eyes. The back room shelves were stacked with jars of peppers, industrial cans of olives, boxes of paper hats. A calendar from a meat distributor hung by the door, Miss March smiling beside a ham glazed with pineapple rings.

Diane said, “She made a card.”

His throat moved.

“What?”

“At school. For Father’s Day or something. I don’t know why they’re doing it now. Some project. She got upset.”

“It’s February.”

“I know it’s February.”

“What did the card say?”

“I’m not doing this with you at work.”

“You called me at work.”

“She misses you, Eddie.”

He leaned his forehead against the wall. The paint was cold.

Diane said, “And then she gets scared of missing you. Because when she misses you, she thinks it means something bad is going to happen.”

He did not speak.

“I’m not saying that to hurt you.”

He still did not speak.

“I’m saying it because you think everything is about whether I’m punishing you.”

The line crackled.

From beyond the swinging doors he heard Frank call, “Now serving fifty-four.”

Diane said, “You there?”

“Yes.”

“She needs you to be steady.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

The words were worse than accusation.

Diane’s voice softened, and that was worse too.

“I know you’re trying.”

He covered his eyes with his free hand.

She said, “Call her Sunday. After dinner. Not late.”

“Can I see her?”

“We’ll talk about that.”

“When?”

“We’ll talk.”

“Diane.”

“I have to go.”

“Wait.”

But she had already hung up.

Eddie stayed with the receiver against his ear until the dial tone became a sound he could no longer bear. Then he placed it back in the cradle carefully.

His five minutes were not up. They were gone anyway.

He returned through the swinging doors.

The counter looked worse than when he left. Frank was arguing with a man about head cheese. Brenda was trying to rewrap a leaking container of coleslaw. Marty was nowhere.

Frank glanced at Eddie.

“Everything beautiful?”

Eddie put on gloves.

“Yeah.”

Frank nodded.

“Good. Beauty helps.”

Eddie pressed the button.

The display changed.

55

He had missed fifty-four.

“Now serving fifty-five.”

A woman stepped forward with red eyes. Not crying now, but recently. She ordered a pound of turkey breast, oven roasted, sliced thin. While Eddie sliced, she told him her sister had cancer in her bones. Not because he asked. Because the deli counter had that effect sometimes. People mistook a uniform for a confessional screen.

“She’s forty-one,” the woman said. “Forty-one. She eats right. She jogs. I smoke two packs a day and she gets cancer.”

The turkey came off dry, fibrous, white at the edges.

“They say everything happens for a reason,” she said.

Eddie laid the slices down.

“What reason?”

He did not answer.

“What reason?” she asked again, but not to him.

The blade moved.

“My mother says pray. I said, Ma, pray to who? The one who gave it to her?”

Eddie weighed the turkey.

“Little over okay?”

She laughed once, wetly.

“Sure. Let the universe have the extra eleven cents.”

He wrapped it.

She pressed the package to her chest for a moment without realizing.

Then she left.

He pressed the button.

56

“Now serving fifty-six.”

A man wanted pepper ham. A woman wanted cheese sliced so thin it dissolved when he tried to pick it up. A boy wanted nothing, just stood at the glass until his mother yanked him away. Marty returned to say the district manager might come tomorrow. Frank said he hoped to be dead by then. Brenda cut her finger on the plastic wrap blade and cried in the back room for exactly three minutes before returning with a bandage and red eyes, saying she was fine, fine, everybody was fine, why wouldn’t she be fine.

At eight-thirty, the line died.

Not ended. Died.

There were no customers at the counter.

For the first time in hours, the number display held still.

63

Eddie stood under it, feeling the blood in his legs. His lower back ached. His socks were damp. His hands smelled of everything even through three pairs of gloves and two washings. The deli coat had become stiff in places where fluids had dried. Roast beef juice near the chest. Mustard near the pocket. Turkey slime at the cuff. Pickle brine at the hem. Red sauce from aisle six somehow after all, though he had never gone there.

Frank was in the back smoking by the cracked loading door, against policy and beyond punishment. Brenda was refilling the olive bar. Marty was counting something on a clipboard near the registers, his keys flashing.

Eddie began cleaning the slicer.

He turned it off, unplugged it, set the dial to zero. He removed the guard. The blade held the light along its edge. Beautiful, in its way. Terrible but honest. It did exactly what it had been made to do. Nothing more. Nothing less. It did not apologize for cutting. It did not pretend cutting was service.

He wiped it carefully.

Fat came away on the towel in pale streaks.

A woman approached the counter.

Eddie looked up.

She was maybe thirty, maybe forty. Hard to tell. Her face was thin. Her hair was tucked into a knit cap. She held no cart. Only a ticket.

“You still open?”

“Yes.”

Her number was 64.

He reassembled the slicer.

“What can I get you?”

She looked into the case for a long time.

“I don’t know.”

Eddie waited.

“I took a number,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I don’t know why.”

He looked at the ticket in her hand.

The paper was crumpled soft from being held too tightly.

She said, “My mother died this morning.”

Eddie said nothing.

“I came in for milk.”

The fluorescent lights hummed.

“I don’t need deli.”

“That’s okay.”

She looked at the meats in the case. Ham. Turkey. Salami. Loaves shaped by machines. Cheeses sweating softly in their squares.

“She used to like olive loaf,” the woman said.

Eddie nodded.

“I hated it.”

He nodded again.

“She would make sandwiches and cut them diagonal. Like that made them fancy.”

The woman gave a small laugh, then covered her mouth. The laugh became something else and stopped.

Eddie reached into the case and took out the olive loaf.

“How much?” he asked.

She looked frightened by the question.

“I don’t know.”

“Quarter pound?”

She nodded.

He set the loaf on the slicer. Green olive eyes stared out from the pink meat. He had always thought olive loaf looked diseased, festive and diseased, a party held inside a wound.

He sliced it thin.

The woman watched.

“My father won’t eat now,” she said. “He’ll sit there and say he’s not hungry.”

Eddie laid the slices down.

“So I’ll bring this, and he’ll say, ‘Why’d you get that?’ And I’ll say, ‘Because she liked it.’ And then we’ll both just sit there.”

The slicer whispered.

“Do you think that helps?” she asked.

Eddie weighed the olive loaf.

.25.

“Yes,” he said.

The answer came before he could stop it.

The woman looked at him.

“You do?”

He wrapped the meat.

“Yes.”

He did not know if it helped. He did not know anything. But he knew the old woman buying liverwurst. He knew the daughter holding turkey while her mother cut her down. He knew the boy eating cheese because Mommy was gone. He knew that people carried meat home like evidence that love had once required errands.

He handed her the package.

She took it with both hands.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

She left without buying milk, unless she remembered later. Eddie did not see.

He pressed the button.

64

The number did not change. He had never pressed it for her when she came. She had been sixty-four already. The display remained what it was.

He stared at it.

Then he pressed the button again.

65

“Now serving sixty-five,” he said, though no one was there.

His voice sounded strange in the empty space.

Frank returned from the back smelling like smoke and February.

“You calling ghosts now?”

Eddie looked away from the display.

“No.”

“Good. They don’t tip.”

Brenda laughed from the olive bar.

The store rolled on toward closing. The bakery lights dimmed. The seafood man packed ice over fish with a shovel. Cashiers counted drawers. The PA system played a song from years ago about dancing in the dark. Near the front, a woman argued about coupons. Somewhere in grocery, jars clicked as a stock boy faced shelves. The automatic doors opened and closed, opened and closed, letting in gusts of cold air that never reached the deli but suggested another world existed.

At nine-forty, Marty told them to start breaking down.

At nine-fifty, a man came running up.

“You closed?”

Eddie looked at the clock.

“Almost.”

“I need ham.”

Frank muttered, “Course you do.”

The man wore a mechanic’s shirt with RON stitched over the pocket. He was breathing hard. His hands were black around the nails.

“My wife’s gonna kill me,” Ron said.

“What kind?”

“Anything. Cheap. Half pound.”

Eddie took out boiled ham again.

Ron leaned on the glass.

“You ever get tired?”

Eddie almost laughed.

“Yes.”

“I mean like tired in your bones.”

“Yes.”

Ron nodded.

“My brother says take vitamins.”

The slicer whispered.

“I told him, what vitamin fixes being alive?”

Eddie sliced the ham.

Ron stared at the rotating blade.

“Sorry,” he said. “Long day.”

Eddie weighed the ham.

.50.

Another perfect measure.

He wrapped it.

Ron took the package and looked at it like he did not remember ordering.

“You ever drive past your own house?” he asked.

Eddie looked at him.

Ron smiled without humor.

“I did that last week. Drove right past. Wife says where were you? I said I don’t know. I knew where I was. I just didn’t want to stop.”

He put the ham under his arm.

“Thanks.”

“Have a good night.”

Ron looked back once.

“Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

He left.

Marty turned off the hot foods case. The lights inside it died, and the fried chicken became suddenly inedible, just dark shapes under glass.

Frank unplugged the second slicer.

Brenda covered the salads. The plastic wrap clung to itself, bunched, tore, refused.

“Damn it,” she said, and then again, softer, “Damn it.”

“You okay?” Eddie asked.

She pressed the heel of her hand to one eye.

“Yeah.”

Nobody believed anybody anymore, but they kept asking.

At ten-oh-two, Marty locked one side of the front entrance. At ten-oh-seven, the last cashier turned off her lane light. At ten-ten, the deli was officially closed, though the work remained: wipe, wrap, label, stack, rinse, mop, drain, haul, sign.

Eddie cleaned the slicer again.

He liked closing better than serving. Closing had an end built into it. You could see the tasks. You could finish them one by one. The counter empty, the meats wrapped, the knives washed, the floor mopped. There was relief in restoring surfaces. Even if everything underneath remained. Even if morning would undo it.

He carried a tray of wrapped meats to the cooler. Ham, turkey, roast beef, salami, bologna. Each sealed for the night. Each would be opened again tomorrow, exposed to light and wanting.

In the back room, Frank punched out.

“See you in hell,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” Brenda said.

“Same place.”

He left through the rear door.

Brenda came out in her coat, hair flattened from the deli cap.

“You closing the counter?” she asked Eddie.

“Yeah.”

“You want me to wait?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

She studied him.

“You’re not as scary as you look, you know.”

“I look scary?”

“You look like somebody in a movie right before something bad happens.”

He gave a small smile.

“What movie?”

She shrugged.

“One my mother wouldn’t let me watch.”

He almost laughed.

Brenda shifted her purse on her shoulder.

“Night, Eddie.”

“Night.”

She left.

Marty walked the front end with his clipboard. Eddie saw him through the gap between the deli sign and the hanging scale. Marty looked smaller from a distance, just another man counting losses under fluorescent light.

Eddie wiped the counter. The glass reflected him faintly: white coat, dark hair, face longer than it used to be. Behind his reflection were the meats, the empty slicer, the red number display.

65

He had forgotten to turn it off.

He looked around.

No customers. No Frank. No Brenda.

The store was not silent. Supermarkets were never silent. Compressors hummed. Freezers breathed. Lights buzzed. Somewhere water dripped into a drain. The building held all its small mechanical prayers.

Eddie reached up to the number caller.

His finger rested on the black button.

He thought of Diane hanging up carefully, probably standing in the kitchen of the house that used to be his too. He thought of his daughter making a Father’s Day card in February, because schools were always early or late with the heart. He thought of the old woman buying liverwurst for a dead man, the woman buying olive loaf for a dead mother, the man with the boy who wanted Mommy, the girl whose mother carved her open in public, the mechanic driving past his house, the man in the suit remembering Eddie from the worst day of his life.

He thought of the slicer blade and how cleanly it cut.

He thought of numbers.

Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.

Every person arriving with a ticket.

Every person believing their pain should move them to the front.

Every person called in order.

Every person served.

His thumb pressed the button.

A dry plastic click.

The display flickered.

For a moment it showed nothing.

Then the red light returned.

Above the counter, the sign still read:

NOW SERVING

Underneath it, where the number should have been, burned a single symbol.

∞