“Good, Sammy,” Deb says, offering him a smaller, sadder smile. “That’s good. It hasn’t been much fun here these past few months, has it?”
Sam sighs heavily, slumping forward to put his head in his hands. “No,” he says, and then, rather more honestly, “Well…yesandno,” and then, so honestly he feels like it mightpeel his skin off, “It’s kind of been the most fun I’ve ever had and the least all at once? I think maybe the best way to describe it is like…” He pauses for a moment thinking, and then, on another heavy sigh: “Imagine…finding a winning lottery ticket at the exact moment you’re struck by lightning, thinking it’s for ten million dollars, recovering from being struck by lightning, going to cash in the ticket, and discovering it’s only worth five dollars and, also, somehow, you owe them an additional twenty.”
Deb makes a face at Sam. It’s a familiar face, but the familiarity is not, in this case, very comforting, since Sam is used to seeing it directed at customers who have said something like, “Can you tell me—is the salmon here grass-fed?” or, indeed, “Please cut all the pastrami seasoning off of the pastrami.” He makes one back, which he intends to communicate that he knows he doesn’t sound like he’s doing amazing, but which, based on Deb’s raised eyebrows, mostly communicates that he feels like crawling under the desk and never emerging again. In fairness to her, thatismore or less how he feels.
“That bad, huh?” Deb says finally. “I thought the numbers had been looking better?”
“Oh, it’s not thenumbers,” Sam says. “Or itisthe numbers, sort of, but not directly. They have been doing better! It’s just the reason they were bad in the first place that’s getting to me.”
“Sammy,tellme you’re not still hung up on that stupid review!” Deb sounds mildly appalled now. “You can’t let these thingsgetto you like this; it’s been months.”
“It’s not the review I’m hung up on,” Sam says, hearing the note of bitterness creep into his voice and not caring enough to fight it back, “so much as the reviewer, actually.”
Deb raises her eyebrows again, so high this time that they nearly meet her curly, salt-and-pepper bob. “Sorry…what?” Lowering her voice, she adds, “Not that I’m judging, but isn’t Norman Endicott a little old for you?”
So Sam tells her about Jake, wishing he could pretend even to himself that he didn’t want to—that he wasn’t, to a genuinely painful degree, desperate to talk about the whole thing with someone. He’s been so desperate to do so that he’s been considering going to Joanie, but he’s glad it worked out like this. Deb’s a good listener, asking occasional clarifying questions like, “Wait, the guy from the car? Back when you were in high school?” and “Wait, he waitedhowlong to tell you?” and, at the end, “Listen: Do you want me to have him killed? Because I know a lot of archeologists, and while I wouldn’t call any of them likely to be excellent hitmen, I can promise they’ll know where to bury a body.”
This last makes Sam laugh, which is at least a relief. It occurs to him as he does that it’s the first time in days, as though Jake took all the mirth with him when Sam told him to go. “I don’t think having Jake assassinated?—”
“That little shit isn’t important enough to assassinate,” Deb corrects, as though the point is quite critical to her. “It would be a straightforward murder, and it would serve him right.”
“I think we can skip it,” Sam says, rolling his eyes, but a little pleased in spite of himself. “After all, it’s not like I didn’t nearly get him killed in?—”
“Oh, what happened when you were teenagers was his fault,” Deb snaps, sounding as annoyed as she always has whenever this comes up. It occurs to Sam, for the first time in thirteen years, that maybe she was annoyedforhim—not, as he’d assumed at the time, upset that it had happened at all, and all but forced her to take him in. “He said as much to you himself, didn’t he? It was on him and that idiot in the other car, andyoutook the collateral damage. I reallycouldkill him, you know, for that more than for any of the rest of it. For a while there I was sure you’d never get over it.”
“I’m not sure I ever did,” Sam admits, letting out a shaky breath. “Sometimes it feels like I’m still that kid, you know?”
“Nah,” Deb says, and throws him a smile, so sudden and bright and proud that Sam has to blink abruptly stinging eyes. “You’re not. I know you’re not. It’s what I’m doing here, actually, if you want to get down to brass tacks.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only one thing you really could have done differently,” Deb says, with a little shrug. “Back then, I mean. One choice you could have made that might—and only might—have changed the way things played out. You could have asked for help. You could have called your parents, or me, or the cops.”
“Iknow,” Sam groans, the old shame washing over him again. “I know, I know, I’ve thought about it a hundred times?—”
Deb cuts him off by holding up an imperious hand. “I was speaking, Samuel, and I’d rather die than let a man talk over me, even you.” Eyeballing him and apparently finding him suitably chastened, she continues: “I’m not trying to rub your nose in it, kid. I’m saying, that’s what you could have done, and you didn’t do it, because you were a child and you didn’t know any better, and also because that’s your gap.”
Sam’s brow furrows. “My what?”
“Your gap.” Deb’s expression goes soft, and she glances at the photo of her wife on the desk. “This is one of Talya’s pet theories: Everybody has at least one big, loadbearing gap, a place where something important is supposed to be but isn’t. Hers, for example, is tact: She’s going to tell you the facts even if doing that is horribly, breathtakingly rude. Me? I don’t have anything where my middle gears are supposed to go—I’m cool or I’m furious, but there’s nothing in between. And you, Sam: You don’t ask for help. Even when you really need it.Especiallywhen you really need it.”
“I…don’t, do I.” It’s not a question; Sam realizes it’s true, horribly, undeniably true, even as he says it. “I don’t ask for help. God. Ineverask for help.”
“Nope!” Deb’s voice is bright again, a cheer in it that Sam can’t quite parse. “It was my biggest concern about letting you take over this place, in fact: Sometimes, everyone needs a little help, especially in this industry. No faster road to ruin than refusing to admit no deli is an island, and I couldn’t bear to watch you drive the place into the ground over something small and stupid, something that would be fixable if you could just reach out. Too sad; too wasteful.”
“But,” Sam says, his own tone filling up with despair, “but if that’s my gap, then we should just give the whole thing up, right? You take it all back over? Because?—”
“Hush. We’re not going to do that,” Deb says. Her smile now is so happy; Sam doesn’t understand at all. “Because do you know what you did, Sammy, when business got bad? You talked to Joanie; you asked around for advice; you let that little turd help you, even though it was his fault to begin with. Youcalled me. It’s hard, you know, to close a gap, but you cared about this place enough to get over yourself, and that’s worth more to me than any numbers. My mom would have told you the same.” She puts her feet down at last, leans across the desk, and takes his hand. “That’s why it’syourplace now, kid. Not probationary: yours. I’ve seen what I needed to see. That’s why I came to town, to let you know, and get the paperwork started.”
Sam stares at her for a long time. Then, ashamed by the way his voice cracks on it, he demands, “Really?”
Deb nods, looking desperately pleased with herself. “Retirement suits me, and responsibility suits you. It’s time.” She glances around, her nose wrinkling, and adds, “I’ll tell you what—you better let me take some of this stuff with me. It’s creepy, you sitting here all day staring at a picture of my wife.”
Sam thinks for a second that he’s going to cry; instead he nods, and then bursts out laughing. All this time trying to preserve the place in amber, to ensure he never made a wrong step. He never, he realizes as he calms down, really believed this would happen. He’d kept it all as it was, afraid of changing a single thing, so it would be ready when Deb asked for it back, and kindly but firmly told him he’d failed.
He didn’t fail. Hedidn’t fail. The truth of it settles into his bones as he thanks Deb and hugs her and stares a minute too long at the+ Sam Adelson!Post-it on his door.
And as it does, little plans he never even let himself notice he was making begin to unfold, one by one, from a previously locked drawer in the back of his mind.
