Chapter 9 #2
That particular Thursday, Sam finds himself in a bit of a daze after getting off a call with the deli’s accountant.
Geraldine was kind, cool, and matter-of-fact in executing what had felt like a conversational axe murder: Sam was correct that they wouldn’t make it to next quarter if he didn’t turn things around, and that there wasn’t any wiggle room to free up additional funds, and also, just as an FYI, property taxes were going up, so his monthly numbers were even shorter than he thought.
After hanging up, Sam sits and stares at the office wall for a while, and then stands up and begins prowling around the deli in something closer to a sleepwalk than anything else.
All the staff take one look at his expression and edge away from him, finding some task or another to busy themselves with, which Sam thinks, distantly, is fair enough.
They’ve all seemed a little cautious around him since the day last month when Alphonse had cheerfully asked what they were going to do for his thirtieth.
Sam had stared at him with blank, uncomprehending horror for a long minute before, bleakly, saying, “Oh, enjoy my last birthday in the deli, I guess,” and wandering off.
It wasn’t exactly Sam’s personal best, leadership-wise, but he didn’t realize it would spook them so much, and he wishes he could take it back.
Jake glances at him, does a double take, and then immediately uses his cane to push out the chair across from him as he says, “Jesus, who died? Sit down; you look awful.”
Sam sits down. He puts his head in his hands.
He stares down at the woodgrain of the table, familiar from hundreds of childhood brunches and thousands of after-close wipe-downs.
Pastrami, who has been following him around with obvious concern, settles down next to him, sticks her head into his lap, and gives him a mournful look.
“Okay, listen,” Jake says, urgent now, “if someone did die, then I’m very sorry I said that. I never learn! Every single time this happens I’m like, ‘Jake, you idiot, stop asking people who died because sometimes someone really has died and then you look like—’”
“Nobody’s died,” Sam says, in a tone of voice that sounds very much as though someone has.
He clears his throat, and more audibly but no happier, adds, “I’m just going to lose the deli, that’s all.
Just my family’s deli that I’ve built my whole life around, that my aunt trusted me with, after all this work, over one stupid review!
” He takes a deep breath, trying to think steady, calming thoughts.
“But things happen, right? No big deal.”
There is a long, slightly awkward pause. Then Jake closes his laptop and, very quietly, says, “It sounds like a pretty big deal to me, Sam.”
And Sam, to his own surprise and mild shame, tells Jake everything.
With everyone else he spoke to—save Deb, who had already seen the numbers—he’d been conservative with how much he shared, not wanting to reveal the full extent of either his stress level or just how bad it is.
He tried not to mention just how insanely viral the review had gone, or exactly how much that virality has affected things.
If nothing else, it was easier to keep himself steady without talking about Hearth’s gigantic online reach, or the fact that it’s read all across the country and even beyond, or the way Sam had gotten sympathy calls from friends in New England and Nevada.
But with Jake it all comes pouring out of him: the nosedive in traffic and profits, the changed suppliers, the horrible fights he had to have with vendors whose contracts he was cancelling after thirty years.
The cuts to his own salary, and to their inventory and backstock, and the fact that it isn’t enough.
Jake, unusually for him, doesn’t talk much. He just listens, nodding and shaking his head and occasionally muttering, “Christ, Sam, I’m so sorry.” Sam wonders when he learned that, how to contain his energy until the appropriate moment, the way he couldn’t as a teenager. It’s nice.
But something shifts when, at the end, Sam screws up his courage and says, “Anyway, I know it’s a long shot, but I’m just wondering if you have any, um… ideas? About how to, maybe, I don’t know… market this place? That first day you came in here you said something about branding—”
“Oh my God,” Jake says, his hand flying to his mouth. He stares at Sam, his gaze going from shocked to accusing. “You know, don’t you? You’ve known this whole time!”
Sam’s brow furrows. “Know… what?”
“About Walt,” Jake moans, running a hand over his face.
“And LA and the whole hideous breakup and all of it. It was stupid of me to convince myself you didn’t know, honestly, but hell, I’m going to miss believing it.
That’s why you’re asking me, right? Because you know I used to be, like, fame-adjacent, and naturally everyone who is must know all about how to digitally promote things and make them go viral. ”
“Uh,” Sam says, blinking at him. “No? Or, I mean, okay, I did look you up a little when you got back to town, and so I do, sort of, know about Walt. But not a lot!” he adds, holding up his hands when Jake groans.
“I didn’t read any of the weird personal-life articles—that felt like crossing a line; I just read a little bit about his professional background and watched a few episodes of that show, but then it started to make me feel, uh. Dead inside?”
“Yeah,” Jake says, an odd expression on his face. “It’ll do that.”
“Anyway,” Sam says, eager to press ahead, “it felt creepy to look any further, and I don’t have any preconceived notions about your digital promotion skills?
I’ve just asked, genuinely, everyone I know, and no one has been helpful.
My hairdresser wanted to know if I’d ever considered selling some of my less-vital organs. Apparently, she has a guy for that.”
Jake grimaces. “Should… she have a guy for that?”
“Probably not,” Sam admits, “but I think it’ll be fine, so long as we don’t introduce him to Joanie.”
Jake laughs—he’s gleaned enough of a sense of Joanie by now to understand why that introduction would be dangerous—but then he narrows his eyes and peers at Sam suspiciously. “So you’re really… just asking? This isn’t a play for information?”
“I mean,” Sam hedges, “it is a play for information, technically. But just like, marketing information? Nothing personal. And besides, it sounds like you don’t know much about that anyway, so we can just forget I ever—”
“Oh, no, I can definitely help you with the marketing,” Jake says, waving a hand.
“That’s easy. I was just being obnoxious before.
You do learn a lot of that stuff being adjacent to fame.
At least, you do if you’re paying attention.
” He drums his fingers against the tabletop for a moment, his gaze far away, and then snaps back to attention.
“Yeah, I think I should be able to have a proposal ready for you by… Does this time tomorrow sound okay?”
“Tomorrow?” Sam can feel his own eyes bugging out. “But I mean—thank you, obviously, but you don’t have to do it by tomorrow!”
Jake shrugs, a pained expression briefly crossing his face before he shutters it off again.
“It all sounds… pretty urgent, Sam.” Quietly, like he doesn’t quite want to know the answer, he says, “This is why you were weird about your birthday, isn’t it?
Why you changed the subject whenever it came up?
” Sam’s uncomfortable expression seems to answer the question for him, and Jake returns it before nodding sharply. “Right. So. Sooner seems better, yes?”
Sam opens his mouth to argue, grimaces, shuts it, and nods. He contents himself instead with, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Jake says, and then, confusingly, adds, “It’s the least I can do.” Sam’s expression must give away his bewilderment, because Jake rolls his eyes and clarifies, “You feed me? Every day? Because your dog shamed me for my pilfered pocket pierogies?”
“I think you just wanted an excuse to say ‘pilfered pocket pierogies,’” Sam says, forcing himself to stand up.
It seems more dignified than going into a long diatribe about how he could feed Jake every day for the rest of his life and they still wouldn’t be even, not for the way Sam’s mistakes affected him.
“I should get back to work. Thank you, for… for your help.”
Jake rolls his eyes again, clearly unwilling to accept the thanks, and opens his laptop back up. But as Sam’s walking away, Jake adds, “So you’re really not going to ask about, like. The thing at the Met Gala, or the stories about the skydiving planes from the show, or… any of it?”
Sam pauses mid-step, turns around. On the one hand, he now does, just based on that question, have about seventeen things he’d like to ask Jake about.
On the other hand: “It’s not that I don’t want to know what happened in LA, Jake.
But I’m not looking to find out from the internet, or force you to tell me if you don’t want to. ”
“Oh,” Jake says; for some reason, he flushes slightly. “That’s nice, actually. Thanks.”
“Sure,” Sam says, not feeling it merits thanks, with an awkward little shrug. Then he reconsiders the phrasing of Jake’s original query, one practically begging for follow-up questions, and adds, “Of course, if you’d like to tell me what happened—”
“Now, who said that?” Jake’s face is a picture of amused calm, but Sam notices that one of his hands is shaking slightly. Jake must notice it, too, because he whisks it under the table as he says, “Anyway, don’t let me keep you. Haven’t you heard? I have important marketing work to do.”
Sam chuckles and decides to let the topic of Walt lie, and does, indeed, go back to work.
The rest of the day is good, easy, nothing bothering Sam except a tiny thread of discomfort running through the back of his mind.
He hardly notices it until he’s alone, and when he finally does, he’s surprised to find himself thinking again of Jake’s casual, offhand, “It’s the least I could do.
” As though Sam wouldn’t owe him forever.
As though Sam hadn’t altered the course of his life.
That night, for the first time in years, he dreams of the accident. He can’t say he’s surprised.