The Rat and the Cleveland Steamer

All this rambling talk the other day in my rage post got me thinking first about my old trunk novel The Bialy Pimps (which some people have asked for, so I need to find out if it’s worth trying to sell on my site) and then about the place that inspired it all. See, the book is about a bagel deli, and if you read between the lines, you’ll see that it’s about MY bagel deli, like from real life. The story in the book is fiction because it involves hippies and spies and bombs and Stinky Ed throwing an ashtray into the windows. But it really didn’t need to be fictionalized to be funny as hell. Not at all.

The place was called Bingham’s Bagel Deli (not its real name) and was run by a guy named Paul Breyer (not his real name) who may or may not have waited on customers while wearing a python around his neck. Paul was an awesome, awesome guy but made for a shitty manager because he may actually have hated the customers worse than the rest of us, and because he had a worse attendance record than any of his staff.

The place would open totally unsupervised and would chug along in debauchery, with kids smoking pot in the back and bums licking the seats in the dining room, and by mid-day, I’d have to phone Paul to rouse him. It would go like this:

Me: “Paul? Are you awake yet?”

Paul: “Mmmmbgphhhp.”

Me: “Paul? It’s noon. The meat guy is here and he wants to be paid.”

Paul: “Ha ha. ‘Meat.’ ”

Me: “Paul? Are you coming in or not? I can’t get at the checkbook because you put it in the safe. If I don’t pay the guy, this load of meat is going to go back.”

Paul: “Ha ha. ‘Load.’ ”

Me: “Paul?”

Paul: “I’m sorry, man. My eardrum got all infected again and so I didn’t get any sleep and had to go to the doctor. And also, I’m drunk.”

Me: “Dude, this is the third time this month. This is your last chance, for real. If you do it again, you’re fired.”

Paul: “You know I’m your boss, right?”

Bingham’s enjoyed great success based largely on the fact that we wanted our customers to suffer. Especially the hippies, whose patchouli scent was, from my perspective, indistinguishable from body odor. There was this one kid who used to come in and yell at us for charging him for sprouts and lettuce because they came from the Earth. Then he’d demand to see the avocado and would yell at the avocado, like “You suck!” and “Be tastier!” He had a dog that he claimed was a vegan and that appeared to be slowly dying from protein malnutrition. We called the kid “Captain Dipshit.” The dog we just called “totally fucked.”

Bingham’s also had a rat. We called the rat “The Rat,” and we always used those verbal capital letters because it was tacitly agreed that there was one rat and that no matter how many times he was caught in a trap or crushed by a 100-pound tank of CO2, it was the same rat that kept coming back again and again in different incarnations, not totally unlike the Dalai Lama. Each time he reincarnated, he gained Karma super-points and possibly special tools and enhanced agility and became larger and harder to kill, not totally unlike the Dalai Lama.

So the hippies would congregate and stink and the meat would get taken back for nonpayment and Little John the angry midget homeless guy would come in yell at the customers and The Rat would get trapped in the bathroom and when Paul came in, we’d punish him by making him wade into the gross little crapper in full battle gear to kill The Rat yet again using (in at least one case) the blunt rubber end of a toilet plunger.

Then he’d come out all victorious and we’d forgive him for his lateness. Because you can’t fire a hero.

We’d play offensive music and people would complain, and when it got to that part in the Rage song where he yells FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME Jack would turn it up really loud and at the register, I’d be like, “What?” to customers and they’d yell their order again and Jack would rewind it a little and all I could hear was Zach de la Rocha telling me to fuck off.

Sometimes we’d make up special bagels. Patsy had one called “Patsy’s Paradise” that had all sorts of vegetables on a whole wheat bagel. Bill made one up called a “Cleveland Steamer” and wrote it up on a colorful sheet of construction paper he taped below the menu board. These little old ladies would come in and say, “Can you give me a Cleveland Steamer?” or “I think I’d really like a Cleveland Steamer!” and Bill would laugh until he cried and have to go get a glass of water from the vomit sink before he could recover and return to work.

I miss those bastards. My current job involves far fewer bums and rats. What kind of a way is that to live?

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