Luncheon

SO I had the time for a real sit-down lunch, you know, actually sitting at a table in a deli instead of just going into the deli and saying "give me a pastrami on rye" and you grab a bag of chips and a bottle of seltzer and run back to your office.

And anyway I was dining with a client, a hot young lady who I though had real potential for, you know, like slasher movies, but she was really good looking and sexy and could actually remember lines, and fifteen percent is still fifteen percent, and maybe you get lucky, you know?

So I took her to this deli near my office, a kind of old crappy place with the sign outside that hadn't been painted in probably twenty years and where you could tell the floors under the tables rarely get a good cleaning, but the food was really good for the price and the prices were decent, so we took a booth that was just big enough to fit four people, and we'd just started eating after talking for a while, me a chicken salad sandwich on rye and her a tuna salad on white, and a plate of fries between us, the usual pickle wedges and cole slaw coming with the meal, when I see this kind of shabby looking old fella comes in, and the owner behind the counter had a look on his face of 'get out of here, you bum', as the old fella was pulling his hand from his pocket and he said, "look, I got fifty cents, how about you give me fifty cents worth of cole slaw, maybe a piece of bread so I can have a little something to eat..."

And the owner was looking like, ok, fifty cents it is, and then the look was like, and then get out.

 So I waved a hand and said, "Hey, it's ok, he can sit with us."

And I said to my client, "Honey, come sit next to me," and I waved the old guy over and motioned for him to sit on the other side of the table. As the old schlep was sitting himself down, I asked him, "You want a bagel or something like that?" And he, looking like he was touched at my bit of generosity, said, "thank you, yes, with some butter, that would be very nice of you."

So the girl came around to my side of he table and the old guy eased himself into the other side of the booth. "Famous people used to sit here, people from before your time, show business people" the old guy was saying before he took a look over his shoulder to see what the owner was doing, then he carefully took a pickle wedge and pushed it into his mouth. He nodded his head as he chewed, after swallowing he said, "they have very good pickles here, real old fashioned quality."

Kat, she liked to call herself, Katherine or Mary Katherine, something like that, who was never going out without her cross and probably didn't believe any of it, rubbed my knee. "I'll tell you later," she said with a wink. I know what you're thinking and you shouldn't be thinking that, you know, I am her agent, and mixing business and pleasure is only for those with an expensive lawyer.

The busboy brought over a bagel cut in half and with butter oozing out the edges. I took the half of my sandwich I hadn't gotten to and used a knife to push some of the filling on to the plate next to the bagel. "Here, make it a little more filling." Again he was looking like he would get tears in his eyes.

He took a bite of the bagel, and after chewing and swallowing, he said, "I am descended from Eric the Red, the great Norwegian conquerer."

"Really? I would have thought you were Jewish", and Kat said, "me, too, aren't people like that, you know, like warriors?"

"Oh, hush," I said into her ear, "hush."

The old fellow was a real schlep, you know, looking like he wore clothes from a poor box, not trash you'd find in the street but second or maybe third hand stuff, but looking at him you could see he had that certain dignity and style of someone who was a failed someone.

"My father was a rabbi, and his father, and his father, but they had so many children that they didn't know what to do. I was the last of nine, and I could have been a shamas, but I..."

His face fell. "Oy," I hollered, "bring my friend a cup of coffee here," I said.

"Too many sons, and too many cousins, and so many sisters who needed for their dowries..." He fell silent, not looking up or down or at anything, just staring at whatever he saw looking between my right ear and Kat's left ear. Kat nudged me and then whispered in my ear, "he's had a terrible life, if he's telling the truth."

If. Could be.

"But it still could have been good for us, if we'd had any luck, but then the shul burned down and we had to leave. A small wooden shul in the town... papa wept for days before we left."

Kat seemed touched and almost put her hand on his. "I remember my grandmother telling me how her grandparents left Ireland when they were children because of the famine. That was a long time ago, and there was nothing to eat, but they had a little money and they managed to come to America."

"It's all too sad to talk about, long gone friends also told me about that... real entertainers they were, some of them," he said. "Anyway, the story that was handed down from parents to children was that hundreds of years ago, the Vikings raided a city in the east, someplace near Russia, near the schtetl my family came from, and one of the vikings was badly hurt and was left to die. My ancestors had made a trip to sell some chickens or ducks -- no one is sure if it was chickens or ducks -- and they found the viking by the road and took him back with them. And over some time he was able to recover some of his health and he married into the family.

He even let them, you know, like all Jewish boys have done. And that is hundreds of years ago, but you can see how I inherited my red hair and blue eyes and that is why my family name is from Eric of the Red Shield, grandson of Eric the Red, Rothschild..."

And we sat and finished our lunch without anything being said, then he pulled a coin from his pocket and let us look at it. "See this? It's a coin from my viking ancestor. I don't want to ask anyone how much I could sell it for, because I would never sell it, but it means the world to me, that I had an ancestor who was a warrior king."

Kat and I looked at the coin for a long few seconds, he let us see both sides of the coin before he put it back in his pocket. I will admit that his fingernails looked cleaner than you would think.

And he got up and said, "You have been very kind to me, I appreciate your kindness, but I must be going now, it is time for me to go and say Kaddish for my mother." As he left, I watched the owner watch him leave, he turned giving me a half dirty look for inviting such a person to sit in his fine establishment. Another fella who admires himself too much.

"I kind of thought a guy like that would be like those people you see sleeping on the subway, you know, dirty and stuff, but he was okay," she said.

"He used to be a small time actor, " I said, "the kind of guy you'd see in old movies selling newspapers, delivering mail, bit parts, things like that. Lives in a little room in one of those SROs, probably gets a check or two every month, but it's the end of the month so he's probably down to his last dollar or two. Probably made that whole thing up, bought the coin in a hock shop. Harmless."

"But what was that word he said about his mother? Cattish..?" she asked, "what does that mean?" and I said "Kaddish - it's the Jewish prayer for the dead. All about praising God."

And she said, "I remember when my mother died a couple of years ago. She smoked like two packs a day, and I asked her to stop and she smiled and shrugged it off. And I cried at the funeral mass and others said it was the will of God, and I think I told them 'fuck you.' But you were very nice to him, that's what I wanted to tell you when I rubbed your knee. "

Poor girl. Nice girl. I think I have another slasher movie for her, I gotta get back to my office.