But he just says, “Thanks,” and then repeats it when Sam passes him a napkin, now looking a little amused. But then he takes a bite, and his whole face changes; his eyes go wide, stay wide as he chews, swallows, takes another bite. “Dude.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Okay, listen, I know I say this about six times a week, but I’mreally seriousthis time, Sam: You have to put this on themenu,” Jake says. “Oh my God, it should be the specialtomorrow—why am I eating it; I should be photographing it.”
“Oh, comeon,” Sam repeats, sure he’s blushing. “It’s just an egg sandwich with pastrami, basically! No, notyou,” he adds to Pastrami, who gives him a slightly woebegone look in response, as though he’s taken her name in vain, before turning back to Jake. “It’s not like it’s anything special.”
“It is, though.” Jake takes another bite and, nodding to himself, says, “Crispiness from the hard roll! And sweetness from the poppy seeds, and richness and acidity from the sauce—and it’s a really nice hollandaise, too, which is impressive, because the deli doesn’t serve anything with that, right? Anyway, it doesn’t matter except that it’s well-seasoned on itsown,and then the smoky pastrami and the creamy yolk from the poached egg… God. It’sreallygood, Sam. I’m not just saying that! I—” He pauses, and his expression twists for the barest second into something closed-off and wretched that Sam doesn’t entirely understand before it smooths out again and he finishes, “Wouldn’t just say it. I don’t. As a rule.”
“Well,” Sam says, smiling at him, “if it’s a rule, I guess I have to accept the compliment, don’t I? Thanks.” He takes a bite of his own. It tastes how it always tastes, which is of course good, because Sam wouldn’t keep making something if it tasted bad. Still, he doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.
“Seriously,whydon’t you put this kind of stuff on the menu?” Jake asks. It’s not the first time—he’s asked after a number of the family meals Sam has cooked, and Sam’s always given him half an answer, or one that was only partially true, or, most often, dodged the question entirely.
But abruptly, full of the warm glow of Jake’s praise, Sam wants to be truthful. “Honestly? My aunt—this place—they saved my life. If I change things from the way they’ve always been, what kind of thanks is that?”
Jake stares at him.
Sam bears this with good enough grace, at first. After all, Jake does this semi-regularly, the dramatic incredulous look followed shortly by a series of questions; Sam is used to it.
Except this time, no questions appear to be forthcoming. Jake just…keeps staring at him. Eventually, Sam has no choice but to say, “Um. What?”
Jake blinks and seems to shake himself, reminding Sam briefly but fervently of Pastrami after a bath. He must remind Pastrami of this, too, because she mimics him, with a wide doggy grin like she thinks it’s a game, before settling down in a crescent shape on the floor.
But Jake sounds completely serious when he says, “Sorry, I just genuinely need every brain cell I have to formulate a response to that. It’s taking most of them to wrap my head around how you could evenbeginto think—and your aunt sounds so chill, I can’t imagine she wants… No!” Jake is very clearly saying this final word to himself, since he picks up his last bite, adds, “Food first, it’s too delicious and thusdistracting; I need all my thinking power,” and shoves it in his mouth.
There is a long pause, in which Jake’s face goes on a long and arduous journey.
Trying not to laugh, Sam says, “Slightly too big a bite, then?” When Jake nods, pained, his mouth still visibly full, Sam half grins and says, “Betrayal’s in the name, really. Since it isn’t exactly eggs Benedict, I’ve always thought of it as… Pastrami Arnold.”
Jake’s eyes go wide and his chewing becomes frantic. After another few seconds he swallows, takes in a huge gasp of air and then, sounding crazed and almost furious: “Pastrami Arnold is genius! Your whole menu should be like this! This should be your entirething—you’d be raking it in; why are you even selling the creamed herring salad?!”
“What did the creamed herring salad ever do to you?” Sam, having also finished his own dinner, takes Jake’s empty plate and starts washing up. “People like the creamed herring salad!”
“Two people, Sam!” Jake is waving a hand animatedly enough that Sam can see it from the corner of his eye even as he washes the dishes. “I’ve only ever seen two people order it. The same two people! And they’re both, I’m sorry to say it,old as balls. I’m not trying to be ageist here, you understand. I just don’t think creamed herring salad is set to be the next big thing in the food scene!”
“Well, why does it have to be?” Sam doesn’t know why he’s feeling defensive over the creamed herring salad, an unholyconcoction of sour cream, pickled fish, and an assortment of spices that do nothing to conceal the taste of either previous element—he’s hated it since he was a child. “What’s so wrong with tradition? With doing things the way they’ve always been done?”
“What’swrong,” Jake repeats, slow with incredulity, “with doing things the way they’ve always beendone? Oh myGod, Sam.”
For the next twenty minutes—as they wrap up the last of closing, get Pastrami settled for the evening, grab their coats, and head out into the night—Jake presents Sam with a non-exhaustive list of things that humanity would not have if that attitude had won the day. This list includes enormous points like essentially all modern medicine, running water, and the internet, and also smaller but more personal ones, like the original leap into the unknown starting Silverman’s had been for Sam’s grandparents seventy-five years ago. Then Jake veers left, and points out that “We’ve always done it that way” is commonly trotted out as an excuse for a whole bevy of horrors—racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, on and on—even though it’s never actually been true even once.
“After all,” Jake declares, loud and emphatic, as they wait for the crosswalk at the corner of West Sixth and St. Clair, “Humans haven’t been around foralways! There was a Big Bang, wasn’t there? And a lot of years this planet was here without us? And even if you say, ‘Okay, Jake, but that’s taking it a bit far,’ like—we’re notcavemen, are we? We’re here with our cell phones and our central heating becausenothingis ever the ‘same as it always was.’ That’s not how it works!”
As the light changes and they start walking, several passing Clevelanders give Jake odd looks. He ignores them.
“Look, it’s not that I don’t take your point,” Sam says, thinking privately that it would have been very difficult not totake it after Jake went to these lengths to lay it all out. “It’s just that I’m not sure it’s that deep? I mean. I’m not looking to, like, hold up the progress of humanity here, but I don’t think honoring my family’s traditions is really at risk of doing that.” Jake just scowls at him in response to this, an exaggerated, Muppety quality to the expression, and Sam snorts out a laugh, shaking his head. “Why do you care so much, man? Does it really matter to you what’s on the menu?”
Jake groans and throws up the hand that isn’t on his cane, but he doesn’t reply; Sam assumes it’s because they’re only a few steps from their destination, and the conversation is going to be tabled. But then, just before they’ve reached the door, Jake stops. He looks hard at Sam and says quietly, “If you don’t change, you don’t grow, that’s all. Awful but true. Ask me how I know.”
Guilt twists in Sam’s chest, his heart a lidless blender, splattering shame and regret across everything he can see. Sam doesn’t want to, doesn’tneedto ask Jake that question. He learned the very same lesson that very same night, if in different ways, with different consequences, than Jake did. Sam wouldn’t have phrased it like that—he would have said that life doesn’t care what you want, but you have to keep living it anyway—but he knows immediately that Jake’s framing is the truth of the thing. Sam thinks he’d know that even if hehadn’tbeen there, the one driving, the night of the accident. Although it must have hurt to get here, Jake’s face is calm, certainty radiating out from him. The expression reminds Sam of how he used to look when he was dancing: as though he was exactly where he was supposed to be, and finding joy in it. It’s a relief, honestly, to see it again. For years, Sam’s been haunted by the thought that it was one of the things that night cost Jake, along with so many others.
Sam wants to apologize. He realizes, stunned, that he’s wanted to apologize for thirteen years. Not to Jake’s parents, or even to his own—though he did many times—but to Jake himself. It won’t change anything; it won’t do any good; it’s probably selfish of Sam, really. He probably just wants some sort of absolution, permission to put the guilt down. He wants to do it anyway.
But instead of giving Sam the chance, Jake smiles crookedly and slips away into the bar.
It takes roughly forty-five seconds for Sam to remember that categorizing Callahan’s as a bar was pure wishful thinking on his part. Thereisa bar—several, in fact—in Callahan’s, but the place itself is more club than anything, especially on a night like this. Most of the times Sam’s been in here, it’s been to grab a quick bite to eat on a weekday evening, when the place has more of a sports-bar-with-food vibe. But on the weekends, with tables pushed away to make a huge dance floor and strobing, multi-colored lights flashing in every direction, the energy becomes something else entirely.
Sam can’t spot Jake in the throng, nor Luce, Joey, or any of the rest of his staff. He decides, for fortitude, to order a drink, and gets lucky; Eileen is at the bar, looking grim.
