Less Of Me

by Edward Goble

  Chapter 6

  A heavy blanket of bleakness kept him in bed till almost noon the following day. He finally dragged himself through the shower, pulled on trusted sweat pants and a clean t-shirt and stared in the bathroom mirror, hands resting on either side of the sink. “Buddy, you’re a mess,” he said. He brushed a nights worth of scrum out of his mouth and swirled around some Scope before leaving the room. He opened the front blinds and looked out at the street, the rest of the world had been up and operating for hours. In most of the offices and shops that lined the streets, people were halfway through their workday, a fact that opened depressions ugly door, slightly, in front of him. He chose not to walk through it. A good choice he didn’t notice. Instead, he looked down the block towards Martin’s wondering what had transpired in that little mystery since yesterday.

  “Some detective you are,” he said out loud. “Sleep till noon when your friends might be in trouble.”

  He decided to catch up on his morning blog and head over to the deli to talk to Mr. Martin. He unconsciously detoured through the kitchen where he looked into the refrigerator and freezer for a few moments before going into his office. Routine is a cloistered mistress. The iBook was in sleep mode and came dutifully to life when he tapped at a few keys. He scratched at his scalp and studied the blinking cursor.

  Andy’s Weblog, November 2

  Bad Choices

  I hate to admit this, but almost as soon as I decided to begin making good choices, specifically in regards to my health and weight, I went out and blew it big-time. It was like I was rewarding myself for deciding to make good choices, by making some really bad choices. I’m a living, breathing, oxy-moron. Anyway, I decided that I can’t do it. I don’t have the will power, the stamina, the moxy, or whatever it is that people have that enables them to lose 100 pounds, develop six-pack abs, run marathons, or whatever. My self-discipline extends to my work, and that’s about it. Even then, it’s probably more about the guilt of missing a deadline and letting people down, than actual self-discipline. I’m a product of what others think, or, at least, my perception of what others think.

  But, as I have confided before, I am committed to being honest here. And, while I hope that no one actually reads any of this, I’m writing as if they do. Because it helps me believe that there might be people counting on me, or hoping for me, thinking good thoughts, trying to help me get past this monster that has me pinned like a schoolyard bully.

  I get another day, now, to make good choices. I should be thankful, I guess, for the opportunity. But to be honest, I don’t look forward to it. In truth, I’m afraid that I’m going to blow it again and be forced to grovel before you again tomorrow. I’m expecting defeat. I would be surprised by victory. How’s that for confidence going in to battle. What General, with that attitude, would be worth beans leading troops? You wouldn’t want that guy leading a parade. So here I go, I’ve got my baton and my whistle and I’m ready to march...

  What a dope - Andy

  Andy posted the blog and opened his email, just one message, from Will Heard.

  Andy -

  How’s it coming? I’m going to stay off your radar screen for a while so you can concentrate, don’t want to be a pain in the ____! So I wanted to write you a note first to say thank you for what you do. I appreciate it and I know there are a lot of people that really look forward to your work. You are an amazing guy!

  Sincerely,

  Will

  William Heard

  Literary Agent

  Bigby, Sachs & Heard

  New York, NY

  888-555-4646

  Reply -

  Hey Will,

  Thanks. Don’t worry, I may be a mess sometimes, but I understand how the process works. I’ll have this thing wrapped up and in your hands right around Thanksgiving. And, by the way, it might be pretty good, too.

  Andy.

  Send-

  Andy smiled; he never realized how badly his fragile ego needed stroked. Will was good at it, too. Maybe that’s why he worked so hard to please the guy. He opened the new Broadback document and scanned the first few pages. He wanted the story to percolate in his mind while he was at the Martin’s.

  Dense fog had given way to a light rain sometime during the morning and the streets were wet with little puddles gathered in divots and potholes. Car tires hissed down the wet road like a million snakes telling you to keep your distance. This was San Francisco at its most familiar and Andy loved it. Weather that required people to put on a loose overcoat was the heavenly equalizer. In Phoenix or Huntington Beach only the perverts wore overcoats, while people like Andy wore big heavy jeans and sweaty t-shirts, and the skinny people wore next to nothing. No fair. But on a brisk San Francisco afternoon, frumpy and dry was the order of the day, which suited Andy. There weren’t many people on the streets this afternoon, though, as most would avoid the outdoors, eating in or going without so they could try to beat the rush across the bridges, which always seemed to clog up early on rainy days, for that exact reason. “Get a clue, people, you are causing what you are trying to avoid!” Andy would mutter as he watched the exodus some afternoons at two or three o’clock.

  Andy removed his Giants cap as he stepped under the green and white striped canvas awning of Martin’s Deli. There were a few customers inside that gave a cursory glance his way as the bells bounced on the glass door, proclaiming his arrival, “Thank you. Thank you very much,” he thought with an Elvis twang. The Martin’s niece was working the counter while her uncle paced back and forth between the far end of the deli case and the little office, holding a wireless phone to his ear, with a stern, “Don’t make me take off this apron,” kind of look.

  He stuck the index finger of his other hand in the general direction of the handset and said something, then pulled the phone away from his head, looking through his bi-focals at the key pad, impatiently searching for the “Off” button so he could disconnect the call. Old-school wall phones worked much better for hang-ups. They were forged of steel and some kind of unbreakable material that was made, specifically, to withstand hang-ups from hot-tempered German’s twice the size of Mr. Martin. You could slam the phone down with the fury of a wild stallion if so inclined, very therapeutic. Those old phones never broke; they were just replaced by younger, faster, cheaper versions. The best hang-up you could achieve with these new phones required you to find the right button, which is no small task as the print on them is miniscule, then, tap it as hard as you can without breaking the plastic. Really hanging up with gusto on one of the little wireless phones required hurling them into the street or against a brick wall. And that gets expensive. Even then, on the other end of the line, all that was ever heard would be a little click, unless you accidentally hit one of the numbers, in which case it would just treat the target of your wrath to a pleasant little tone in the ear. No drama.

  The scowl on the immigrants face turned to a forced smile when he saw his portly neighbor.

  “Hey, hey! Velcome, come in, come in.” Mr. Martin developed the habit of repeating himself as a young man in the deli when each customer would ask him to, for clarification. His English career didn’t start off with much promise. Now, after a couple of decades, the English was much better and the repetition quirk had become a local trademark. He raised a hand to Andy to cut off his reply temporarily while he turned to a sink to wash his hands, drying them on a towel and finishing them on the skirt of his apron as he came to the counter. His niece stepped out of the narrow register area and began busing a few tables.

  “So, a little rain today, huh?” Mr. Martin asked his neighbor.

  “Nice, huh? Like the Old Country, I bet.”

  “Ja, ja. Yes.” Mr. Martin liked Andy. He was not only a regular, one who appreciated good food (obviously.) He was also sincere and friendly, with an inquisitive, genuineness that made him easy to talk to.

  “Maria, my wife Maria, she say you stop by yesterday? I’m sorry, I had to run out, must to go.” />
  “It’s okay. Yeah, I came in.” Andy looked around, no one seemed to be paying any attention to the two men, “Mr. Martin, is everything okay? I mean, with you. Is everything alright here?”

  Mr. Martin nodded, smiling and waving a hand across the room, “Yes, is good. Many people come to eat.” Andy forced a grin, nodding in agreement. Mr. Martin cocked his head slightly, “Why do you ask, Andy? What is it that you ask?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I just saw you leave yesterday and it seemed like you were upset.”

  “Oh.” Martin said as if understanding what triggered his neighbors concern, “Thank you, Andy,” he laughed. “It’s okay. Sometimes I am, you know, geisteskrank. Crazy,” he pointed an index finger at the side of his head and made circles.

  “You know, Mr. Martin, if there is ever anything I can do to help you and Mrs. Martin, I mean, you have done so much for me...”

  Mr. Martin’s eyes fell shut briefly and he nodded sincerely, “I know, I know. My friend.”

  The bells clattered against the door as two guests left the deli and three more came in. Mr. Martin looked past Andy and then back, “So, what can I get you today? Rainy day.”

  “Mmm, I think I’ll just have an Antipasto salad.” Andy said, hardly believing his own words.

  Mr. Martin looked surprised, his thick brown eyebrows stretching upwards, crinkling up his forehead, “Okay, okay. I make you Antipasto, wundervoll!”

  The deli slowly cleared out as Andy nursed his salad. It was much better than he expected. Andy could taste the tangy red wine vinegar and fresh basil, garlic and olive oil. And there was pasta, which surprised him, hard salami, turkey, Asiago cheese and roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts and a host of other yummy ingredients. Andy was still admiring his choice when Mr. Martin appeared in front of his table, wiping his hands on his apron, his bushy mustache covering pursed lips.

  “Andy, I sit?” he said, reaching for the back of the chair opposite Andy’s.

  “Oh, yes, sure,” Andy said, not expecting a guest.

  “The Antipasto is good? You like it?”

  “Excellent... Hey, let me ask you, why is it called “anti-pasta” if it is filled with pasta?”

  Mr. Martin laughed, “Crazy Italiano’s! ‘Anti’ is before, okay? ‘Before’ ‘pasto,’ uh-huh? Pasto is meal, yes? eat. Anti-pasto, before-eat, before-meal, ja? Like, uh, in French, H’ors deurves? Ja?”

  “Ah, okay. Hey, I bet I’m not the only person who wondered about that.”

  “I know, I know,” he smiled. Mr. Martin sat back in the chair and looked out the window briefly, then, refocused on Andy’s nearly empty salad and leaned forward, clasping his stubby hands in front of him on the table.

  “Andy, I have a little trouble,” he said in an understated tone.

  “Whatever I can do...”

  “It is my family, my brother’s son. He lives here in the city. The boy is no good, geisteskrank, you know?”

  Andy just looked at Mr. Martin, not sure if it was his turn to speak.

  “Uh, can you come up? Come to my house?” Mr. Martin asked.

  “Okay, sure.”

  Mr. Martin was already up and unstrapping his apron, he led Andy through the saloon door, which Andy turned sideways to address, and told his niece that he would be gone for a few minutes. They passed through the little office, which was nothing more than a pass-through with a small wooden desk holding up piles of receipts and invoices, a two-year old calendar was pinned to a wall by a small mirror. The stock room was larger, with a tall ceiling and metal racks filled with gallon cans of sauces and kraut, crates of vegetables and racks of flour and spices. There was a metal door leading to the back alley, which was held fast by a large steel bar, and a set of stairs leading up and back towards the main dining area of the deli. Mr. Martin climbed the stairs, inviting Andy to follow, and entered the apartment through the unlocked door at the top, announcing his presence loudly so he wouldn’t shock his unsuspecting wife.

  “Maria! I have Andy! Andy is with me here!” he said.

  Mrs. Martin stepped out of a little hallway wiping her hands on a small towel. “They are always doing that,” Andy noted. She was warmly dressed for a crisp fall day and wearing dainty house shoes over bare feet.

  “Andy! I am surprise. Welcome to mia casa.”

  “Thank you, it is very nice,” Andy said, not knowing quite what to say.

  “Maria, you please go to help Katherine, ja?” Mr. Martin directed in the form of a question.

  “Si,” she smiled, slipping past the men to change shoes. “So nice to see you again, Andy.” Mrs. Martin said and disappeared down the steps.

  “Okay, you sit. Please,” Mr. Martin said, motioning to the living room. He disappeared into the hallway and Andy took a seat on the couch, noticing that he had pretty closely envisioned what the living quarters of the Martin’s would be like, right down to the brown suede Laz-y-boy with a stack of newspapers sitting in a magazine rack on the side. He had to laugh. Everything was simple and proper, “very Dick Van Dyke,” Andy thought, recalling a sitcom he and his mother used to watch when he was a kid.

  Mr. Martin emerged from the hallway carrying a white plastic grocery bag. He sat on the sofa next to Andy and sat the bag on the small coffee table in front of them, which also held a few coasters, a candle and a family picture.

  The deli owner took a deep breath and rubbed his face, he wasn’t sure exactly where to start. “My brothers son, my nephew, he is Albert, like me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Andy said, honestly trying to keep up.

  “My name is Albert. Same, my nephew - Albert Martin.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’m with you now.”

  “My brother says, ‘I want my son to be a strong man, a good business man like my brother,’ and so he gave him my name. I am honored.”

  “That’s great.”

  “But now my nephew, he lives in the city, he is problem. His father and mother are in Arizona, and he lives here. He came here for college, St. Mary’s, but he drops out. And now, he is no good.” Mr. Martin shook his head. “Sometimes he comes to the deli, so hungry. He is skinny, white, like he is sick. No big German like his family, ja?” he said, doubling a fist and pursing his lips.

  “But now...” his voice trailed off as he thought absently about the young man. He felt responsible; yet, he felt anger for the way the boy was representing the proud family name. Mr. Martin reached for the grocery bag and extracted a small brown package that may have been the same one Andy saw delivered the previous day by bicycle messenger. Mr. Martin held the package and shook it up and down slightly, with an edge of disdain. “...This comes to me. Yesterday.” He handed the package to Andy who accepted it without choice. The addressee was one Albert Martin, 842 Chestnut, San Francisco, CA 94113.

  “This is not mine. Not me. This is my nephew, ja?”

  “Okay.” Andy got the mistaken identity thing. He’d heard of several people, mostly fathers and sons that had mixed up pensions and car insurance rates and all sorts of problems arising from having the same name.

  “I open. But now I close it.” Mr. Martin said raising his bushy eyebrows, pointing to the fresh tape on the side of the box. “I think I should call the police, but I don’t know, so I ask you.”

  Andy was understandably curious, given his nature, and handed the box back to Mr. Martin. “What is in it?”

  The old man just looked at Andy for a moment, wondering if he should go further. Finally, he lifted the package and said, “Here. I show you.” Mr. Martin carefully removed the fresh tape and slid the box out of the brown paper wrapper.

  It was a box of Ritz Crackers. “Everything is better when it sits on a Ritz,” Andy thought to himself. Mr. Martin looked at Andy again, moving the box up and down as if emphasizing his outrage. He slid a pocketknife under the rubber cement sealed box top, which opened easily.

  “Yesterday, a carrier delivers this package for Albert Martin. I open carefully, like this, because,
it might be for me, but I don’t expect anything. So I think, no, it must be for my nephew by mistake. And yes, it is for him.” With that he turned the box on a slightly downward angle and shook it’s contents out onto his waiting hand. The contents were wrapped in two double-lock Zip Lock quart bags and pressed into the shape of a brick the approximate size of the interior of the cracker box. Through the clear plastic the substance appeared to be marijuana, at least that was the assumption, given the packaging.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Andy asked.

  “You ask me?” Mr. Martin said. “I ask you.”

  “Did you open it?”

  “Ja, yes.”

  “And.”

  “And it is not oregano.”

  Andy just nodded his head. He’d never tried marijuana, though he’d seen marijuana cigarettes before, even seen little Baggies of the stuff and smelled the pungent scent sneak out of cars and alleys as he walked through the city. “I’ve never seen that much before,” he admitted.

  “I think this is for to sell. For a dealer, Ja?”

  “Your nephew?”

  Mr. Martin shook his head slowly. “What should I do, Andy? Do I fix the box and give it to the boy? Do I call the police? What? What would you do?” Tears of despair welled up in the corners of Mr. Martin’s old grey eyes.

  Andy had more class than to say what he was thinking, which was, “Or, we could close the shop and ‘party like it’s 1999’.” Sometimes quick wit was a handicap.

  “He’s going to figure out that it’s here, Mr. Martin. He probably had it sent here. This has got to be; I don’t know, a couple thousand dollars worth, wholesale... Does Albert have that kind of money?”

  “No. Nein. Albert wait’s tables over by Cal State, he never has any money.”

  “Do you think? No. I don’t know.”

  “What? What, Andy?”

  “Do you think he may have stolen this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because, if that were the case, he could be in trouble, I mean, not just with the police.”

  “My God,” Mr. Martin looked down at the marijuana brick and shook his head. “What the hell is that boy thinking?”

  “Has he tried to contact you?”

  “Ja, today. He called and was real nice, you know, ‘How are you doing uncle, I miss you uncle, I come to your house.’ I was mean to him, I tell you the truth. I hang up the phone.”

  “Did you tell him about this?”

  “Nein.”

  “Is he coming over? Coming to the Deli?”

  “Nein. I tell him we work here. We are too busy today.”

  “Well, if he thinks the package is here he’ll probably come anyway, you know. Does Mrs. Martin...”

  “Nein.” Mr. Martin cut him off. “I don’t tell her about the box. I don’t tell her about the call.”

  The room fell silent as the two men weighed the options.

  “You know, yesterday, after I receive the package, I went to my friend, he has a fish market down at the Wharf. I don’t give him names but I tell him what I found... You know what he says to me?”

  Andy looked at Mr. Martin. “He says to me, ‘Hey, Martin, you can sell some of this to me.’ he says this to me—My God, Andy.”

  “You could always just destroy it, dump it in the bay, or flush it,” Andy said.

  Mr. Martin nodded. “Then the boy blames me and learns nothing.”

  “True. But at least the police aren’t involved.”

  “Is that what you would do, Andy? Flush it?”

  “Well, I just know that if they catch him dealing drugs he’s in some deep, uh, trouble. That’s serious time. It’s not like being caught holding a little. The dealers are the ones they really go after.”

  “But this is small potatoes, Andy, isn’t it?”

  “I think so. But, how do we know, Mr. Martin? Drugs are trouble, that’s all I know.”

  “I think I’ll put it away, think about it a little more... Andy, please, don’t...”

  It was Andy this time, raising a hand to object, “I know, I won’t. I won’t tell a soul, but, Mr. Martin, really. You can’t keep that hidden for very long. This is dangerous.”

  Mr. Martin nodded. He repackaged the pot and took it back into another room in the small residence. When he emerged the big German smile had reappeared and he clapped his hands together, “So, how do you like our house? Nice, ja?”

  “Very nice. Thank you for inviting me up.”

  “We talk tomorrow?”

  “I might come by for another one of those salads.”

  “Antipasto - ausgezeichnet! Excellente!

  “Whatever you say,” Andy took to the stairs first and stepped aside at the bottom so Mr. Martin could lead the way back into the Deli.

  Andy’s mind was running on all cylinders as he walked back to his house. He wished that he could have given Mr. Martin some solid advice, but he really didn’t know what the man should do. “I’d probably flush it,” he thought first. “No, just give it to the kid. It’s his life. Stay out of it, yeah that’s it.” But a few steps down that path would lead to, “What do you mean, give it to him? He’s a dealer for cripes-sake. Give it to the police, let them deal with him and whoever else it might lead to.” There was no easy answer.

  With a fresh bottle of Evian out of the pantry, Andy retired to his office to work on the new story.