“Yes?” He guiltily puts away the BBQ-flavor chips. “How can I help you?” His voice has a Middle Eastern accent, but not very strong.
I introduce myself as Gab’s husband, and behind his heavy-lidded eyes I can him trying to retrieve information from his memory about Gab, like Wasn’t she Korean? What are you?, before he cautiously extends a BBQ-chip-stained hand.
“Yes, she called and said you’d be coming by.” There’s a hint of relaxation, but the suspicion lingers. Who calls the shots—you or your wife? Or that mother-in-law of yours?
“So have you owned the store a long time?” I ask, trying to make conversation.
“Ten years,” Salim says, seemingly wincing at the thought. And you? What were you doing the last ten years? Brushing your pony?
“Are you familiar with the neighborhood?” he asks.
I explain that Gab and I used to live in Fort Greene, just a mile or so away.
“FORT GREENE?” he virtually explodes.
“Yes … I … but it wasn’t for a long time … and I really didn’t like it.” What could Salim possibly have against Fort Greene?
“YOU MEAN FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN?” he repeats, leaning across the counter.
I nod fearfully.
“Tell me, if you lived in Fort Greene,” he demands, “then you must know the store over by the park—the one on the corner. Yes?”
“Oh, sure, I know that place.”
“That’s my cousin’s store—Ibrahim’s!” Salim cries joyfully. “Do you know Ibrahim?”
“I, uh, sure. Doesn’t everyone?”
Salim starts looking for the phone and threatening to call Ibrahim right away. “Where’s that damn phone?” he mutters, while tearing through piles of newspapers, receipts and other garbage around the register.
“Salim, you don’t have to do that, really. I don’t think Ibrahim will remember me …”
Salim has now located the cordless phone, but no matter how hard he jabs it, he can’t get it to dial, perhaps because it’s encrusted with enough mustard to dress a hot dog. “I swear, this place is becoming a pigsty,” he says, as if it weren’t his own store. But then he forgets the whole business and turns his attention to the lottery machine, where a customer is waving a piece of paper at him, which Salim absentmindedly scans.
“No money this time, my friend. Better luck tomorrow.” The customer walks out without a trace of a reaction. Salim turns back to the checkout counter.
“Now, where were we? Oh yes, you were thinking about buying my store. You want to see the books? Meet the landlord? Have a look at the basement? How soon can you buy?”
“We’re not there yet,” I say. “I just wanted to come by and introduce myself. We like the store a lot.”
Salim looks unimpressed.
“That’s good,” he says, “but if you make me an offer, don’t insult me. This store may not look like much, but I promise you it is worth more than you think. I am not the first owner. There are people in this neighborhood older than both of us who have been coming here their whole lives. They have spent more money in this place than they have on their own apartments, their own savings. I will not sell to just anyone.” He folds his arms across his chest.
“Well, that’s good to know.” Is this some kind of bargaining strategy?
“Make me a good offer,” Salim continues, “and on your way out of the store, take anything you like.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
So I ask for a pack of Parliament Lights, Gab’s brand of cigarettes.
“That’s too much money,” Salim says. “Pick something else.”
Why do I have the feeling that doing business with Salim won’t be easy?
BACK OUTSIDE IT is a warm December night, so I start walking toward Smith Street. Boerum Hill still has blocks that are visibly poor, and it is more industrial, with housing projects that seem a lot bigger and more intimidating than those in Fort Greene, where Gab and I used to live. At the same time, Boerum Hill has Smith Street, maybe the trendiest place to open a restaurant or boutique in the whole city. Smith Street is a good place to live even if your idea of paradise isn’t a neighborhood packed with stores selling hand-printed baby kimonos and touchless cat massages. You can almost forget that the housing projects, the Wyckoff Gardens and Gowanus Houses, which have so many buildings they essentially form a neighborhood unto themselves, are only a block away. Ditto the Brooklyn House of Detention and the general seediness around State Street, with its hot-sheet motels, job centers and stores like 99¢ City. They are there if you want them to be.
Like all the surrounding neighborhoods of brownstone Brooklyn, Boerum Hill started out as a middle-class community, and despite its disrepair, you can see that background in a building like Salim’s. Probably just a single family had lived in that entire four-story building once. The second floor held a dining room with a parquet floor, a chandelier and special side rooms for entertaining. The backyard contained a patio or a garden, and the garage was where a horse-drawn carriage was once parked. Or so I imagined.
At some point, though, Boerum Hill fell on its luck. Maybe it was the Gowanus Canal, a festering, reportedly body-filled outlet for factories and junkyards, that set off the decline. Or maybe it was after the city decided to plant a pile of public housing and social services in the neighborhood. In any case, at some point those gorgeous brownstones such as Salim’s went through a long and dark period of decay, which some of them still hadn’t come out of.
The first time artists, writers and activists started coming back to Boerum Hill was in the 1960s, as part of the so-called brownstoner movement. Not all of these people were trying to make a political point by moving to a “slum”; some were just looking for old, affordable apartment buildings with character where they could raise families. Nonetheless, the movement helped foster an image of the borough as a kind of ideal community where classes and races mixed. It was the dawn of a new era in urban living, exemplified by the appearance of Sesame Street, featuring a neighborhood that looked a lot like brownstone Brooklyn. This image depended on the brownstoner movement not being too successful, however. That is, it couldn’t attract so many middle-class newcomers that the old-timers, the working-class Puerto Ricans and blacks, were totally pushed out. And in fact it wasn’t too successful, thanks to the race riots, the crack epidemic and the sky-high homicide rate that characterized the County of Kings in the late seventies and eighties. The area around the Wyckoff Gardens and Gowanus housing projects became one of the most violent parts of the city. Much of Boerum Hill remained bombed out, and property values stayed relatively low.
But then The Big Change happened. New York as a whole saw crime plummet in the nineties, making neighborhoods like Boerum Hill ripe for another “discovery.” That’s when Gab and I moved to Fort Greene. As the second generation of brownstoners, we were attracted by the trees, the beautiful old buildings and the open skies—but also by that vision of Brooklyn as a place where people from different classes and backgrounds mixed. It was strange: even though I was a year or two out of college the first time I stepped foot in Kings County, I felt like I had been there many times before, and my experiences had always been pleasant, and I had friends waiting to see me. In fact, one weekend I was walking to the subway when I passed a group of children playing in Fort Greene Park. They were wearing cardboard hats and beating a piñata—it was a birthday party—and among them stood a special visitor whose presence made my heart surge, because everything then made sense. It was Big Bird, as comforting a sight as a doting uncle or beloved pet. I was in the land of Mr. Hooper, Guy Smiley and Snuffleupagus. And tonight as I walk through Boerum Hill’s streets I think, What bad could happen in a place where the solution to every problem is to sing a song, plant a vegetable garden or put on a puppet show?
OVER THE NEXT few days things gradually become more tense. Kay announces that she wants the store before Christmas so we can capitalize on holiday sales of beer and lottery tickets. This is impo
ssible. Christmas week is less than a month away. Not only do we still have to convince Salim to sell us the store—to prove to him that we’re worthy—but then we have to agree on a price and a contract, get landlord approval, hammer out a payment schedule and so on, then get our licenses and insurance policies in order, and then, only then, after what I would imagine to be a lengthy period of renovations, move in.
Only I forgot one thing: this is a convenience store, and making money comes before anything as trivial as fixing a hole in the ceiling. Also, this is my mother-in-law talking, the most impatient person on the planet.
“If Salim not say yes before Christmas, then no deal,” she insists.
Kay also announces that she wants to underbid Salim by fifty thousand dollars, which, given how sensitive he appears, strikes me as unwise. But Kay has her own ideas about strategy. “I never pay full price,” she says, and it’s true: I’ve seen my mother-in-law try to bargain with everybody from car mechanics to waiters. She’s incorrigible—to her, price tags are mere starting points in a negotiation—and I suspect that more than half the time she does it just for fun. But this time she says it’s important.
“If we offer Salim full price,” she says, “he not respect us,” which will have repercussions later.
So Gab offers Salim one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and rather disturbingly, he accepts.
“He what?” I stammer. “Should we have gone even lower? What if the store isn’t even worth one hundred and twenty thousand?” This is not a pleasant feeling at all, but after resisting Kay’s low-ball offer, I can hardly take a position against it now that it’s been accepted.
Salim seems rather pleased. “I like your mother-in-law,” he says. He promises to vacate the store by December 23.
Now the process begins to gather speed, another worrisome development. Gab’s family seems comfortable banging from decision to decision, but I’m more circumspect. I come from an academic family, and we like to think things through—then think about whether the process of thinking them through was as thorough as it could be, then write a book about it. (A book that takes twenty years.)
But maybe it’s better not to reflect. I have a feeling that if I think too long about Salim’s deli, or perhaps much at all, I’ll have second thoughts.
DESPITE THE RUSH, we manage to set up a deal in a more or less orderly fashion. We skimp on things like the observation period, wherein the new owner traditionally sits behind the register with the old one making sure that the business stands up to the owner’s claims. Usually the observation period lasts a week. Kay pronounces herself satisfied after one shift. Half a shift, actually.
It looks, nevertheless, like it’s going to be a smooth transition. Then one day Salim calls and says he wants to modify the deal. He says he wants us to send part of the money we owe him to an associate in Lebanon.
“Ha ha, that’s funny,” I laugh. “You mean like in the Middle East?”
“I’m not kidding,” Salim says. “What do you think I mean, New Lebanon, Pennsylvania?”
Swallowing my amazement—things were going much too well, I realize—I try to picture how I would send thousands of dollars to a country I’ve never visited halfway around the world. Does he mean to a bank? Do they have banks in Lebanon? Would it be to some kind of money changer at a bazaar?
“Western Union will be fine,” says Salim, while assuring us that this is just a normal way of doing business. Part of me knows that it is, but you know what I’m thinking: This couple thought they were buying a convenience store in Brooklyn and ended up laundering money for an international crime ring that sold kidnapped American children into slavery and invested the profits in pornography and heroin. Tonight, Steve Kroft will take you to Auburn state prison in upstate New York and interview the husband, a former literary magazine editor who says he was framed …
And then I feel guilty. Guilty because during all thirty seconds that I have such paranoid thoughts, I am prejudging Salim, am I not? Would I be suspicious if Salim were Swiss and asked me to send money to Switzerland, which is also a country I’ve never been to halfway around the world? Yes, and if he were Swiss and asked me to send all that money there I’d say, You’re out of your mind! But somehow in Salim’s case, because Gab and I don’t want to entertain even the possibility of prejudging him, we say okay, despite the alarm bells going off in our heads.
“Listen, it’s pretty hard for me to imagine Salim involved with anything nefarious,” Gab rationalizes. “Would you spend seventeen hours a day selling Yummykakes if you had the power to be an international crime lord? Besides, he’s too nice a guy. I can’t see it.”
Neither can I. It just doesn’t add up.
Then Salim calls again. He’s changed his mind: instead of sending the money by Western Union, he wants us to send it to the Middle East with his cousin Farouk, who’s going there on business in a few days. Which of course we say yes to, plus a series of other last-minute requests. Things keep changing, taking us out of our comfort zone. Now the money is going with Farouk as a cashier’s check. Now it’s going to Salim’s accountant, a Hasidic Jew in Crown Heights. Now some of it is going to the hopelessly fickle-minded Salim at the closing. But it’s not as if Salim isn’t helping us too.
First of all, he’s letting us pay him some of the money we owe him over the course of twenty-four months, with money we earn at the store. And he’s not charging us interest. “Muslims don’t believe in interest,” he says. “It’s un-Islamic.” Though I wouldn’t have guessed that Salim was religious, I could not be more grateful.
On the day of the closing, Gab goes to meet Salim at his lawyer’s office in downtown Manhattan, while Kay and I prepare to open the store.
The countdown has begun. In three hours we will become deli owners. When Gab arrives at the lawyer’s office, Salim seems to have suddenly gotten jittery. He keeps jumping up from the conference table where papers are being signed to look nervously out the window at the traffic on Broadway while yelling into his cell phone in Arabic.
“Everything okay?” Gab asks.
“My wife is outside in the car, but there’s nowhere to park, and the police keep telling her to move. They’re harassing her.”
Gab is horrified. “Tell her to park in a lot. You know what the police here are like.” Ground Zero, barely a year old, sits only two blocks away.
But it turns out Salim’s wife doesn’t drive. Oh no, Gab thinks. Something’s going wrong again.
But then, for whatever reason, the police leave Salim’s wife alone, and Salim stops fretting. Meanwhile, it gets dark outside. Salim’s lawyer taps his foot and makes small talk while Gab signs paperwork. Something else will come up, Gab thinks. It always does. There always has to be something.
“We’re done!” Salim finally says, handing over the store’s primary set of keys. (Kay and I have the backup over in Brooklyn.) “Congratulations. Welcome to the wonderful world of small business.”
Gab isn’t sure if this is a joke.
“Where are you off to?” she asks as they exit the building.
“Arizona,” Salim says. “I have a cousin out there who owns a gas station.”
He gets in his car—a brand-new SUV plastered with Day-Glo orange parking tickets—and waves. “Don’t let it kill you,” he says, and he and his wife ride off through the maze of security checkpoints, into the night.
AMATEURS
TODAY IS MY FIRST FULL DAY AS A DELI OWNER, AND I’M standing next to the cash register, trying to figure out what is missing. A few minutes ago, at four o’clock, the day shift quietly ended, and now there’s a lull. After walking in I slipped behind the cold-cut display and felt a surprising shiver of excitement as I entered the narrow space where the cashiers stand. Where I am now is like a stage (it even has a little platform), but so constricted is the space that it feels like the gap between two cars in a parking lot, without the headroom, thanks to the overhanging illuminated Marlboro display. Behind me is a sink filled with w
et coffee grounds; to my right is a vinegary-smelling deli slicer covered with bits of lettuce and ham; to my left is a lottery machine spitting out scraps of paper and sputtering like an angry robot. Yet my first thought upon entering this space was not that it was filthy, cramped or unpleasant, but that something that I can’t quite put my finger on isn’t here. Finally, after a few minutes, I figure out what it is: I’m looking for a chair.
After so many months of searching for a store, this is how the next phase begins. It seems unreal to be on the other side of the checkout counter. Is the store really ours? Could Salim somehow change his mind and take it back? Now that we’re here, all I want to do is to put our stamp on this place and make it our own. There’s no time, though, for even now, during a brief moment of calm between shifts, as the wave of evening commuters prepares to crash over us, there’s an endless list of things to do, and it’s all I can manage to stay out of Kay’s way.
“Excuse,” my mother-in-law says after hip-checking me into the sink. She and Gab have been here since six A.M.; now Gab is going home to collapse, leaving me till one A.M. with her mother, who has yet to stop moving for a single second.
“The checks for the deliverymen are in the cash register, under the drawer, and there are three of them, just in case the beer guy shows up,” Gab says before leaving. “Not the beer guy who delivers Heineken, but the beer guy who delivers Brooklyn Lager. Next to the register is the price list, and I’ve attached instructions for making a void, in case you have to. Don’t forget to refresh the cash supply every few hours, and don’t try to do the lottery machine yourself, or put too much meat on people’s sandwiches, or too much sugar in their coffee. Don’t forget to ID anyone who looks underage and, oh God, am I forgetting anything? Yes! Turn on the awning lights when it gets dark or people will think we’re closed, and if anyone from upstairs comes in, ask if they can turn up the heat—it’s freezing. And your parking meter! Did you park on the street? The fine is one hundred and five dollars as of this week. Can you keep all that in your head?”
My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store Page 5