Chapter 12
TWELVE
NOW: JUNE
Over the next few weeks, Sam does what he always has when life asks him to face the realities of the accident: He puts his head down and tries his best to get on with things.
The first time, when he was a teenager, he’d poured himself into work as a distraction, determined to learn and live by the laws of his new home too thoroughly to ever risk being thrown out.
It’s easy enough, now, to do that again.
Or it would be, if Jake hadn’t abruptly become such a central figure in Sam’s professional life.
The marketing plan Jake presented the day after their conversation had been thorough.
Surprisingly thorough. There were charts and graphs and sample posts and a suggested timeline, complete with a fully fleshed-out posting schedule.
Jake had even made graphics, and mocked up merchandise, and a whole list of ideas for deals or promotions to run across their socials.
Many of these had little notes with questions attached for Sam about feasibility on various points.
It had seemed an almost impossible amount of work for one person to have done in a single day, but when Sam said as much, Jake laughed and told him it was nothing.
So Sam had smiled, and thanked him, and given him the okay to get started.
If he found it amusing, not to mention a little odd, that Jake seemed to have aged into a sense of modesty, he kept it to himself.
In the weeks since, as summer has started to creep in around spring’s fading edges, Jake’s proved he had no need to be modest. Most mornings before the dance studio opens, and on the afternoons when he doesn’t have classes, he spends a couple of hours in the deli working, filming people or typing furiously on his laptop.
Social media posts for the deli go up even when Jake’s not there, advertising specific dishes, specials, highlighting the staff.
It’s all stylized cohesively, the food somehow looking more appealing through the lens of Jake’s phone camera than it ever did through Sam’s.
Every post feels polished and intentional, but still a little fun.
He makes Sam sit down for filming on one of his very first days at it, and says, “Forget the camera is here; talk about what this deli means to you. Tell me about what the last few months have been like.” And then somehow he cuts the tangled mess of an answer that follows, one no one would call compelling or professional, into short videos where Sam comes off as both.
He talks about his grandmother, about learning to make gefilte fish from her in the Silverman’s kitchen, the way he still measures them out with her cherished wooden spoon.
He talks about the loss of traffic recently, how desperately he doesn’t want to see the place go under, all that history lost in the blink of an eye.
He talks about finding Pastrami, who comes over at the sound of her name and does a series of tricks for the camera.
He talks about his food-safety practices, and how seriously he takes them.
He talks about how much it sucked to have been a fan of Norman Endicott, only to be squarely in striking range the one time he decided to punch down, not to mention lie.
The videos circulate well locally, or at least seem to. Certainly, Sam receives a number of messages from various people he’s known over the course of his life saying they saw him, and he looked great, and they’ll stop by the deli one of these days.
And something about that video must move something in Jake, too, because in the weeks that follow, in bits and pieces, he tells Sam about his life in Los Angeles.
He had, apparently, gone out there originally to see some specialist for his ankle, less than a year after the accident.
He stayed with his brother, a UCLA student, because the treatment took a few months; in the end, he’d liked it enough to apply.
He got in, did well for a year, and then met Walt; the man gave a guest lecture to one of Jake’s classes about the business side of Hollywood, and, apparently, found it an appropriate place to look for dates.
Sam has to read between the lines on some of the rest, because Jake gets embarrassed and strange whenever the topic comes up, but it sounds to him like Walt was controlling, intense, and did what he could to cut Jake off from both his family and any real source of his own income.
Sam tries, a few times, to tell Jake he’s sorry about what it sounds like was a brutal time of his life, but Jake always brushes him off, rolls his eyes, and tells some story about celebrity, wealth, or excess he witnessed on Walt’s arm.
It’s distracting, certainly, but it always makes Sam wonder if Jake is doing it on purpose: justifying what he went through on the grounds that it was worth it for the rarity of the experience.
Still, in spite of the chill that tends to fall over the conversation when Los Angeles comes up, the days get longer and warmer as June settles in, each one feeling more hopeful than the last. And as each one stretches towards the next, traffic gets a little bit better, diners trickling back in one by one.
It’s interesting to see who returns, and in what way.
There are people he expects to see, and doesn’t; he’s sad and a little surprised not to see Marty, the landlord of the building behind them, show his face.
He’d been a near-daily visitor before it all went down, and had, in the initial aftermath of the review, promised not to abandon them before abruptly going radio silent.
Embarrassing though it is, it kind of hurts that even now he doesn’t trust them enough to return.
On the other hand, some of the once-and-future regulars saunter back in as though there hadn’t been any sort of intentional gap in their patronage at all, only the slightly forced edge to their performance giving them away.
Others are more honest. Amber Baumbach, who has for years insisted that her children are allergic to the coating on the outside of the pastrami, but not to the pastrami itself, nor to the layer of the same coating which makes its way into the center of the meat, comes in nearly weeping with remorse.
None of the other delis in town, she explains, will cut the outside off the pastrami for her!
They all called her crazy! She tells Sam she cancelled her subscription to that awful magazine and then, in the same breath, orders four pounds of mangled pastrami, which Sam dutifully cuts up for her, less annoyed by it than he ever has been before.
And a lot of people, their voices often lowered as though Norman Endicott might be lurking around nearby, have something disparaging to say about Kiss of Death.
This is less gratifying than Sam would have expected, if he’d been expecting it.
It’s not that it isn’t nice to hear them echo his own feelings about Endicott’s trustworthiness and ethical failings, but…
Well. Sam can’t help but wonder now if they’re all talking out of the sides of their mouths—if a few weeks ago, to other people, they were insisting that they, too, had seen rats at Silverman’s, simply because that was the way the wind was blowing.
Still, slightly complicated though it is, it’s nice to have his customers back.
As traffic picks up, spirits within the deli seem to as well.
In fact, there seems to be a certain air of things blossoming about the place, as though the restaurant’s turnaround has triggered a willingness in everyone to trust that things will work out.
Eileen, aggressively single since 1987, goes on three dates with the same person and isn’t consumed with hatred by the fourth; Alphonse and his partner adopt the most adorable kitten Sam’s ever laid eyes on; Lyle, one of the dishwashers, comes in for his scheduled shift one morning grinning ear to ear and says he just got married, up the street, at the courthouse, about fifteen minutes ago, and would Sam mind if he called off for his honeymoon?
Sam lets him go, although not before Jake pops out from around a corner and demands that they replay this interaction word for word, so he can take a quick video.
There’s also… whatever is going on with Joey and Luce.
Sam doesn’t like to involve himself in his sisters’ romantic affairs for many reasons, the most pressing of which is the sheer awkwardness of the thing, but it’s all so obvious that it’s impossible for him to ignore.
Luce has done six paintings of Silverman’s, first of all, when she was only meant to do three; possibly that’s because she’s had to do something to fill the time she’s spending at the deli, which is the vast majority of most days.
Or, at least, she has to find something to do to fill the time other than standing and talking to Joey, or helping Joey restock soda, or following Joey to the back for their smoke break, or staring moonily at Joey from across the diner.
Joey, for their part, is no better. Sam’s had easily a dozen conversations with them that have started, “Luce said,” or, “Has Luce ever told you,” or, “Did you know that Luce…?”
It’s cute, kind of. Or rather, it would be cute if it was anyone but his little sister, who in Sam’s eyes is still the eight-year-old who made him sit and watch while she performed vital surgery on a Pop Tart.
It’s jarring to see her close in on what she wants in such an unmissable way; to realize she’s just as much an adult as he is, if a less experienced one.