“Are you the guy?” I ask through a screen of cigarette smoke and radio waves.
“Yeah…You here for the slicers?” replies the cool middle-eastern tone.
“I sure am, let’s get this pig a-roasting.”
“Alright bud, follow me to my office. Its a few blocks from here.”
The Palestinian’s black Mercedes slinks out of the gas station like a hungry house cat. In tow is my bulky Jeep Liberty with a missing hub cap and a dream catcher hanging from the rear view mirror.
This is my job for the night. Instead of dealing with the dinner rush back at the restaurant as usual, I am off performing a suspicious wheel-and-deal with some land lord who had no use for two meat slicers and a bread oven anymore. You see, I am a corporate manager of a few restaurants called Happy Hoagies. A run of the mill sub shop, but recently the corporation has been buying back franchise owned stores in the area. The franchisees never had a good relationship with the company, as I was always performing little inspections for upper management, giving improvements that would increase sales and ‘keep down labor costs’.
“Oh, I see you guys serve sweet Italian sausage. Well, that actually isn’t on our corporate menu.” I’d say.
“Listen you asshole, I don’t give a flying fuck. You people want to come in here tell us how to run our stores, after you give us nothing but a pain in the ass all year? We’re serving whatever we goddamn want.” replied a hushed but quite serious tone. This guy was not to be swayed, and I couldn’t say anything but,
“Okay then.”
You might be asking yourself how I got from managing a sub shop to running around town with shades and a dodgy alibi. Well, I have been asking myself this very question a multitude of times during the drive over here.
It all started when the company bought out a franchisee’s store in Warwick. As expected, there were some hard feelings as the investor didn’t make the money he had thought, and was ultimately forced to sell back the store. This owner’s name was Harold McSweener, McSwee to his friends and associates.
McSwee was a shorter man with drooping eyes and had what seemed to be, perpetually sagging features. When behind the counter, his white V-neck shirt clung to him like the sails of some decrepit tourist wreck, unable to reveal itself in hopes to protect even the smallest amount of dignity it had left. Flecks of fresh roast beef blood and vinegar stained his apron and left his hands permanently smelling like those of a grave robber’s.
McSwee just had a few trials and tribulations of life that, due to finances, forced him to sell back his store. That’s where I come in. Now, since the franchisees are so pissed at the company, we can’t exactly talk out a nice settlement. What usually happens is the franchisee cancels the lease, bills the company (which is cheaper to pay than to fight in court), and tries to pawn off all the equipment. Of course the mastermind of a corporation I work for couldn’t pass up an opportunity for discount on their own machinery, so I pose.
* * *
“Hello, sir. My name is Ahmad. Ahmad Mattas. I apologize for the strange circumstances under which we must go through with this business.” He seemed to be searching for some stain on my clothing, one that wasn’t there. Even through his thick designer sunglasses and even thicker cigar smoke, he could tell something was up.
“Ah, no problem Ahmad. The name’s Matty. Just Matty. No need to give your condolences, I like to think this kind of shit spices up my boring life, eh? Haha!” He wasn’t entertained.
“Let us leave this parking lot. I will bring you to the merchandise you wish to purchase.”
We leave our cars parked haphazardly in the strip mall lot, and walk around back to a plain grey door. Ahmad takes out a ring of maybe a dozen jangling keys, and opens the door. I can barely sit still in anticipation, as if I am going to catch a sneak peak into the criminal underworld of arms dealing, not that of black market deli equipment. To my disappointment, it is merely a storage facility lined with some cardboard boxes.
“Here we are,” breathed Ahmad as he opens up a sliding door to reveal what seemed to be a scale model of Antarctica. He pulls the white sheet off the silver parts with a flick of the wrist. There, in storage unit D-32, sits the reasons that I had embarked on the most exciting endeavor in recent time. There, in storage unit D-32 are two twelve-inch, medium duty meat and cheese slicers, basking in their glory of one and a third horsepower. Next to them lays a twenty four rack bread oven, complete with three years of grease and cornmeal caked onto the inside.
“This is it I assume?” asks Ahmad.
“This is it my man. An oven and a couple of slicers. Here, is your check.” I hand him a personal check for three thousand dollars for machinery that easily could have sold for ten thousand. It had to be a personal check so McSwee or Ahmad, who was his land lord, didn’t get suspicious. After all, I am just a “financial consultant doing a little P&L for a client in New York”.
“Well, let’s load this shit up!”
* * *
“So how did it all go!” asks Calvin, my youngest employee. He’s a good kid. Bright, polite and has the whole world ahead of him. He is starting off on the wrong foot here.
“Just fine man, thanks. How was it here? Busy?”
“Did you get patted down or anything? Did they blindfold you and drive you to an abandoned pier?!” gasps Calvin with a twinge of ironic hope in his voice,
“You crazy? Haha, I just had to get some stuff for the new store. Come on, you got some food prep to do.”
“Ah, whatever. They’ll just kill me if you tell, huh? Sounds good. Food prep! Gotcha!” He winks at me and waltzes into the back room, peering over his shoulder, as if I am going to jump him at any moment.
I walk out back, get a cigarette from my jacket and prop open the back door. It was the next day, around four o’clock, but it felt like years since my little episode. My episode! As if I went through an odyssey. The pitiful excitement I felt from buying back some loser’s meat equipment, I just don’t know.
“Hey Matty! We got a line to the door, get back in here!”
“Well,” I think to myself, “back to the real world," as I am greeted with a line of hungry roofers on their lunch break.