The Sandwich Maker

short fiction

Photo by Mockup Graphics on Unsplash

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The cop wanted more onions on her sandwich.

I worked the graveyard shift at the deli. Cops. Nurses. Firefighters. Insomniacs. The homeless. The lonely. The mentally ill. University students on study or drinking binges. I made sandwiches for all of them.

But I'd never had a customer who wanted that many onions.

"Are you sure you want all this?” I asked the cop. A full onion. Ten thick slices. Sandwich pollution. I was crying from the fumes. "I think I have to charge you extra."

We graveyard sandwich-makers invented our own procedures and policies. We worked in a small deli. Not a franchise. The owner rarely showed up during the day and never at night. We liked to joke that he was a Russian mobster just laundering money. Our graveyard shift manager rarely left the back office. He spent most of his shift sleeping on a pile of cardboard boxes. He made five dollars more an hour than I did. That would've been $200 more a week. $800 a month. After taxes, something like $600. Good money for a poor kid. I could buy more novels and go to more movies. But I wasn't jealous of the manager. He was divorced and working two jobs to help support his kid. Do you remember when they used to call it moonlighting? A poetic name for a difficult life. But nobody calls it moonlighting anymore because everybody works two jobs now.

"More onions," the cop said. "I want my sandwich to insult me."

She laughed. I laughed. I'd made at least fifty sandwiches for her over the previous two or three years. She'd become something like my house guest. I looked forward to her. I was in love with her. I was a Native American boy. I wasn't supposed to love authority figures. Certainly not the ones in uniform. My reservation cousins would've teased me and said she was just General George Armstrong Custer in a dress. But things change. Even for Indians, it's all about the change. She'd never before wanted that many onions on her sandwich. Impulsive. Impulsive. Who can ever explain the impulsive?

A few months earlier, she'd walked in with a black eye.

"Somebody resist arrest?" I asked her.

"Soccer ball," she said.

Soccer-playing cop. I always assumed she was a lesbian. I knew I was stereotyping her. But stereotypes wouldn't exist if they didn't contain some truth.

"Is this enough?" I asked her as I added more onions. The bread couldn't contain them. It was a sandwich so unruly that it had become a salad.

"Give me all the onions in the world," she said.

"Are you sure sure?” I asked.

I thought about how awful that her breath was going to be. I still wanted to kiss her. I thought about her getting into the face of some smart-ass juvenile offender. I imagined her saying, This is what prison smells like. I still wanted to kiss her.

"You're always reading," she'd said to me one night. As I worked, I usually had a novel propped open by the cash register.

"I drive past," she said. "And if you ain't making sandwiches then you're reading. Why you always reading?"

"Every book takes me closer," I said.

"Closer to where?" she asked.

"Closer to not being here,” I said.

She nodded. She worked graveyard. She knew.

I plated her onion sandwich. There was ham, too, and tomatoes and mayo. I scooped potato chips on top. Added a pickle. Poured her a Diet Coke. She took her meal to a corner table and quickly ate it. As I cleaned our work area for the fifth time that night, I surreptitiously watched her onion extravaganza. I was always falling in unspoken love with lesbians. It gave me all the private heartbreak with none of the public devastation.

After she finished her sandwich, she gave me the thumbs-up and said, "Perfect." Then she left the deli and drove away in her squad car.

My co-workers, Black Mike and White Mike, gave me shit.

"You gotta ask her out," White Mike said. "You look like a shelter dog when she comes in."

"Indian boy loves white cop," Black Mike said. "Romeo and Julie-fucking-ette."

A week later, that cop showed up to say goodbye. She was out of uniform. She'd gotten a job in her hometown, a little village set down in the pine forests near the Canadian border.

"I'm gonna be deputy sheriff," she said.

"Who's the sheriff?" I asked.

"My Dad," she said. She smiled. Her voice broke. Her eyes watered. She was so happy. So proud.

"Good luck," I said.

"Thanks," she said. "Well, I gotta go. Gotta say goodbye to some others."

"Other night people," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "Night people."

Then she was gone

"You idiot," White Mike said. "She wanted to, you know, give you a going-away present."

"Nah," I said. "She plays on the other team."

"I think she might play more than one sport," he said.

Black Mike said, "Damn. Indian boy chooses tragedy. Again."

Twenty years later, I still think about that cop. That deli burned down long ago. A coffee shop occupies that corner now. I used to write book reviews and movie coverage for the local independent weekly. I made barely enough money. But now I’m a paralegal who writes for the firm’s lawyers. I make more money now. That’s a good thing. I’m divorced. I pay half the tuition for my kid’s private school. He has a stepfather. Almost everything gets replaced.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I'll grab my phone and plot travel routes to that cop’s little town on the border. She’s probably sheriff by now. But I'll never go on that journey. Life is better when you keep a loose hold on the smaller kinds of pain.