When he turns, Alphonse and Eileen are both staring at him through the service window, along with—Sam swallows—every other member of staff on shift today. The minute Sam looks at them, some internal dam seems to burst, and they all start talking at once:
“Come on, let me see?—”
“What does itsay?”
“Did Jake write it? Is that what he?—”
“Oh, someone go and snatch it off them, it’s been?—”
“Sam.” Sam turns again; it’s Joanie, who has disentangled from Marty after all, and is standing right in front of him. “How do you feel?”
A squabble breaks out behind them, presumably over the magazine; Sam ignores the squawks and low-level crashes. “Honestly? I have no idea.”
“Really?” Joanie is smiling at him, small and kind. “Are you sure?”
Sam opens his mouth to say heissure, he reallydoesn’t, but can’t quite find the right words. He was so angry—he’d beenrightto be so angry—hadhe been right to be so angry? He doesn’t know anymore; abruptly, he can’t remember why the whole thing mattered so much in the first place. Surely, in the scheme of all he and Jake have weathered together, not to mention the things they’ve had to manage alone, one stupidreview is small potatoes. Maybe if he’d just let Jake explain that horrible afternoon… Well, okay, Sam probably still wouldn’t havelovedit, but he thinks he would have understood.
Honestly, and horribly, the violation of journalistic ethics is a salve to his wounded pride. He’s embarrassed to admit it even to himself, but the thought that Jake had been concealing a desperate hatred for Silverman’s, and thus for the part of Sam thatisSilverman’s, had been the hardest pill to swallow. It had been so…sowonderful, so new, to share this work and this place that meant so much to him with Jake, to feel seen and encouraged and celebrated. To realize it must have all been a lie had cut him so close to the bone that Sam thought he would never recover, but in this new light, the wound is shallower than he thought.
A thought, clear like a bell, cuts through the noise of the deli and the whirling dervish of Sam’s thoughts:Man, you have been in love with this guy sincehigh school. Are you seriously going to let one stupid magazine column ruin the rest of your life?
“God,” Sam says, “I have to talk to him.”
“Are you sure?” That’s Deb, who has stepped up to put a hand on his shoulder; she’s giving both him and Joanie a doubtful look. “Because from where I’m sitting, this kid has messed you up one time too many.”
“Oh, stop,” Joanie says, flapping a hand at her. “You haven’t met him, at least not as an adult;weall hung out with him. He’s fine. He’s better than Al Fiskar, that’s for sure, and you were fine withthatas a setup.”
“Al, our pickle guy?!” Sam demands, briefly but entirely distracted. “Deb! He’s like seventy!”
“He’s…fifty-one,” Deb counters, wincing slightly. “After everything, we thought you might, uh, enjoy a more mature?—”
“Oh my God, Marty, tell me you know where heis,” Sam says, turning away from this madness before it can engulf him again.
“I…do,” Marty says carefully. “I do know that. But, well, what are your, uh, intentions? Because I reallywasn’tsupposed to say anything, and if you’re planning to, I don’t know, give him an earful, then I think I’d rather not?—”
“I don’t want to fight with him,” Sam says, low and urgent, not looking away from Marty. “At all. I won’t do anything…I don’t know, bad or crazy or…or anything! I just want to talk to him. I promise.”
Marty hesitates, but then he sighs and says, “Ah, well. He’s, uh. In the alley outside, actually. Moving out.” Reaching up a hand to rub at the back of his neck, he adds, “I may or may not have promised to distract you until…let me see here…seventeen minutes from now? So he should still be back?—”
But Sam’s already dashing through the restaurant, ignoring the cheers that follow him.
When he gets outside, Pastrami panting and excited at his heels, Sam looks around wildly. He realizes that he is, foolishly, half expecting to see Jake just standing in the center of the alley staring back at him, and decides maybe it’s for the best he takes a moment to catch his breath.
But then Jake—or, at least, a pair of legs, one arm, and the end of a be-stickered cane, which Sam assumes is Jake—doesappear in the alley. The person these appendages belong to is mostly obscured by a tower of small, precariously balanced items, which is being carried by the arm that isn’t holding the cane. That arm looks to be nearly at its limit, and Sam moves forward without so much as thinking, let alone catching his breath, as he calls, “Hey, can I help you with those?”
“God, yes, thank you,” says Jake—because, on hearing his voice, Sam’s assumption of his identity becomes a fact.
When Sam scoops the boxes out of his arms, revealing the face hidden behind them, Jake’s smiling; the expression falls into one of horror when he realizes who he’s looking at.
“Sam,” he gasps, flailing to grab the boxes back and managing only to knock several to the ground; Sam hears something shatter inside one of them and winces. “Shit, I’m so sorry, you weren’t supposed to have to see me or—Marty said he would—oh my God, wait, Pastrami! Stop! Don’t! I can’t pet you right now, it’s?—”
“Jake! Calm down. It’s okay,” Sam says. “Although, Pastrami, Jesus, get off him. Where are your manners? He’s not going to have pocket pierogies every time you see him out here! Let it go.”
Pastrami, up on her back legs with her paws balanced on Jake’s chest, barks happily at Sam, licks the side of Jake’s face, and then settles down to sit directly next to him instead of trotting back to Sam. She could not more clearly be communicating “I’m glad to see this guy; where has he been?” and Sam feels himself flush, suddenly embarrassed.
Jake is also flushed, although there’s a certain eyes-bugging-out-of-his-head quality to it that Sam suspects he, himself, lacks. “Sorry, but when you say it’s okay, what do you mean, exactly? ‘It’s okay that you’re standing here?’ ‘It’s okay that you accidentally let me do manual labor for you when I, justifiably, hate you?’ ‘It’s okay if you pet my dog?’” Sounding like it’s shaming him slightly to do so, he adds, “It is kind of killing menotto pet the dog.”
“Of course you can pet her,” Sam says, shaking his head. “Let me just—” He turns, sets what boxes he’s still holding safely down on the curb, picks up the ones that were scattered, sets those down, too, and then holds out his arms entreatingly for the small stack Jake clawed back from him. Warily, Jake hands them back, and in turning to add them to the curb Sam notices for the first time the car parked in the mouth of the alley, just a few feet away.
