Chapter 5 #2
The conversation moves on. It turns out Joanie wanted to show him a sad, desiccated pickle she found at the back of the shop fridge, and to ask his professional opinion on whether or not she should eat it.
He tells her no, and gets her a fresh pickle from the deli, and then goes back to his day.
He leaves the entire topic of Jake, and Walt Gallagher, and their very public, very long relationship aside.
He is a professional, after all. These are his work hours.
Sam’s not about to let anything get in between him and his aunt’s sign-off, a chance to run this place the way he wants to.
Not even if that thing is Jake Goddamned Thompson.
That night, when he’s alone in his apartment and Pastrami is flopped bonelessly across his lap like a weighted blanket, is another story.
Sam is not usually one for reality television, although he does watch that show where Gordon Ramsay goes undercover in restaurant kitchens, mostly out of paranoia.
Otherwise, he avoids it. It’s not any sort of holier-than-thou affectation or anything—his brain wasn’t built to follow unstructured narrative, and he’s medium face-blind, and too many people talking at once on a screen makes all the audio impossible for him to parse.
So he’s not expecting the glitzy, emotional-whiplash-inducing onslaught that is Fund or Fall.
The show introduces you to hopeful small business owners, all with great ideas, and then brings them before the judges to desperately make their pitches.
In spite of the editing and musical overlay, the nerves radiating off the contestants are nearly always palpable, and for good reason: The judges are allowed to interrupt them, interrogate them, demand demonstrations they didn’t plan for, and, of course, force them to jump out of an airplane.
Also, when they’re done presenting, Walter Gallagher tears every one of them—every one!
—down to confetti-like shreds, leaving their hopes and dreams littered across the soundstage.
Even the ones he funds, he finds a way to attack first, pecking and poking at them merrily, a curious robin tormenting an unfortunate worm.
Sam feels concern for Jake swell in his stomach like a balloon and tries, unsuccessfully, to pop it.
Instead he reads several more articles in which Jake and Walt appear together.
This stops when, after a few minutes of glaring at the inaccurate photo caption reading Walt Gallagher and partner Jake Thomas attend Met Gala, Pastrami jumps up and smacks him in the face with her tail.
Sam tells himself this is the act of a top-tier therapy animal completely attuned to his every need, even though he’s pretty sure it’s just time for her last walk of the day.
Of course, about ten minutes later he’s doubting she was ever a top-tier therapy animal. This is because, despite normally being utterly relaxed on walks, she has broken the clasp on her collar in her urgency to barrel towards the person across the alleyway from them.
This person is Jake Thompson.
“Pastrami, NO,” Sam cries, horror-stricken. Why now? Why today, of all days, and with this man, has Pastrami decided to lose track of her famous chill? He runs after her, hoping to restrain her before she can jump on Jake or knock him over or do whatever it is she suddenly and uncharacteristically—
Huh. Sam stops, confused, because Pastrami has also stopped, about six inches from Jake.
She is snuffling with wriggling enthusiasm at the coat draped over his arm, not seeming at all interested in jumping or otherwise bothering him.
Also, Jake is laughing, although there’s a slightly helpless, rueful edge to both it and the expression on his face.
“Pastrami, for the love of God, sit,” Sam says wearily.
Pastrami does, somehow managing to look slightly prim about it, and then resumes sniffing the coat as Sam ties her broken leash around her collar.
She is, Sam notices, drooling. “Jake, listen, I’m so sorry, I swear this isn’t like her.
I mean, she’s a therapy dog, for God’s sake! I don’t know why—”
“No, no, stop,” Jake says, half-chuckling, shaking his head.
“It’s not her fault; it’s me. I… God.” He looks briefly up at the sky, as if in search of something, and then, brightly, making eye contact with Sam, “Well! It seems I have no choice but to embarrass myself before you again, my apologies, not my first choice, either, etcetera, but. What can you do? The truth is, I was at my sister’s engagement party, and they ordered a crazy amount of food, and money’s kind of tight right now, so.
Uh.” Jake winces, and admits, “My… jacket pockets may or may not be… full of pierogies?”
Pastrami barks, as if in confirmation, and wags her tail.
“Ah,” Sam says, trying not to laugh. “That would explain it, yeah. Pierogies are basically her favorite food.”
“And yet,” Jake says, smiling down at the dog, “you called her Pastrami, right? Not Pierogi?”
“She looks like a pastrami,” Sam tries to explain, even though he knows there’s no point. He’s had this conversation a hundred times, and people always look at him as though he’s lost his mind and tell him they don’t see it.
Instead, Jake cocks his head, stares at her for a second, and then says, “Okay, I’ll grant you—yes she does. But it’s not like she chose what she looks like, whereas her love of pierogi is a matter of preference.”
“Are you seriously campaigning for me to rename my dog right now?” Sam’s amused, not annoyed, but a little incredulous all the same. “On merit of… what, freedom of expression?”
“Look in her eyes, Sam,” Jake says, a note of mock-pleading slipping into his voice. “She wants to be a Pierogi; can’t you see that?”
“You’re misreading the signals,” Sam says dryly. “She wants a pierogi.”
There’s real pleading in Jake’s voice this time, as he says, “Hey, can she have one? They’re like—potato and cheese, I think, not, uh. Chocolate and grape and… I don’t know, other things dogs can’t have. Rat poison?”
“That’d be a weird pierogi,” Sam agrees, not bothering to keep the note of laughter out of his voice this time, “but: sure. If you don’t mind, that would make her night.”
He watches in a mixture of sympathy and the well-concealed horror of a food service professional as Jake does, indeed, pull what appears to be a loose pierogi from a ziplock bag in his jacket pocket.
Grinning, he tosses it to Pastrami, who snatches it gleefully out of the air and then, instead of scarfing it down in one bite the way most dogs would, carries it off a few feet, to the end of her leash’s tether.
She settles on the ground, places the pierogi carefully in front of her, and then eats it in tiny, careful bites, her tail wagging furiously.
“She just does that,” Sam says, when he notices Jake staring at her the way people often do the first time they encounter this particular quirk. “At least with any food she finds particularly high-value. I think she’s savoring it? Hard to ask her, though.”
“A gourmand,” Jake says, his voice far away. “Dog after my own heart.” Then he seems to snap back to himself and adds, “I mean, guess that makes sense, doesn’t it? If she was brought up in your deli and everything.”
“Honestly, she’s been given a lot more hot dogs than she probably should have,” Sam admits, only half thinking about it.
The other half of him is stuck on the idea of Jake stuffing his pockets with food at family events in order to eat.
Surely his parents would help him, if he was really in trouble?
Sam knows the Thompsons are loaded, and not the kind of loaded that might have semi-recently diminished to merely “comfortable.” That was old, handed-down money, money stuffed away in so many different bonds and stocks and assets that you’d have to really, really try to ever come close to running out.
On the other hand… Well. Sam learned the hard way that what you might expect a parent to do for their child in a difficult situation and what they actually do can vary wildly.
Maybe Jake’s parents are out of the picture now, or uninterested in helping him; maybe Jake’s been too proud to tell them anything’s wrong.
Maybe nothing is wrong, and it wouldn’t be any of Sam’s business if it was, and he should leave it alone.
Instead, he asks the normal, polite questions about Lila, Jake’s sister, and her groom-to-be, who is apparently called Brian.
While Jake sneaks Pastrami another pierogi and talks around what are obviously some doubts on the merits of Brian, who does indeed sound like a bit of a tool, Sam studies him, trying to decide what to do.
He doesn’t want to hurt Jake’s pride, or God forbid insult him, but he can’t quite bring himself to let it go, either.
There’s something nearly gaunt in the way Jake’s skin is sitting across his chin and cheekbones; his clothes, which Sam can tell now that he’s seen all those articles are fancy, high-end pieces, are loose on him in a way that Sam can’t imagine was intentional.
If Sam were a completely honest person, the sort of person to let his authentic truth fly no matter how audacious or embarrassing, he would say, Hey, Jake, looks like maybe you’re experiencing the symptoms of malnutrition for reasons of your own, none of my business, would you think it was weird if I started cooking you several meals per day? Please say no.
However, the very idea of doing this makes Sam want to explode into ten million pieces, so instead, as the conversation starts to dwindle down towards its natural end, he says, “Listen, uh. If you wanted to, come by tomorrow, around three? We close down for an hour and do family meal, to cover shift change and so the staff can eat. Food might be weird—it’s my day, and it’s my only real chance to get creative—but it’ll be edible, at least.”
“This is your fault,” Jake says, with what Sam is pretty sure is joking severity, to Pastrami.
She gazes up at him with guileless delight.
“You made me look so pathetic that now Sam thinks I’m going to starve to death in my apartment, when the truth is that I suffer from an incurable pierogi addiction—”
“I don’t think you look pathetic,” Sam interrupts, unable to contain it a second longer.
“And I don’t really think you’re a pierogi addict, either?
Look, just… come, all right?” He rubs a hand against the back of his neck, uncomfortable.
“Or don’t, if you don’t want to, but lots of other folks from the neighborhood pop in.
It’s a nice way to meet people. And we’re always cooking up whatever needs using; it would just go to waste.
” Smiling as he watches Jake slip her a third pierogi, he adds, “And, anyway, I owe you for Pastrami’s dinner now, so. You might as well.”
“Hmm,” Jake says, and then, “Yeah, all right, maybe. I’m not sure what tomorrow looks like for me but maybe. We’ll see.”
“Well,” Sam says, with a shrug, “we do it every day at about three, so. Open invitation, if you want it.”
Jake stares at him for a second as though unsure how to respond to this before finally, nodding slowly, he says, “I think that I do, thanks. Thank you. I have to… go now, but I’ll see you, uh.
One of these days, I guess.” And then he smiles at Sam, this bright, brittle smile that somehow looks both happy and sad, the expression fleeting but haunting in its intensity. “Have a good night, Sam. Pastrami.”
And he turns away, hurrying off towards his own building, only waving a hand over his shoulder as Sam calls a goodbye.