Mid-July, a sandwich line out the door. The sequence goes like this: you take a slip, check the boxes accordingly (smoked turkey, all the fixin’s, maybe some Mendo mustard), then sign your name and drop the slip in the wooden box. Behind the counter, surrounded by half-cleaned metal surfaces, I snag a couple slips from the box, tack them up in front of me, and ideally in consecutive order I knock out towers of meat between our highly sought dutch crunch. There’s only enough space behind the counter for one or two sandwichteers, but we aren’t slow. About five minutes per order, when we are backed up we will tell you fifteen. Everyone waits. They like our sandwiches.
The old woman came in near the end of my shift. It was a fifteen minute type of day. She wasn’t a regular, we know them by name or by sandwich or sometimes neither, but the point is we know them. She begins to tell me her order, I politely hand her a slip and a pen and ask her to drop it in the box when she’s finished. She has some simple questions: what are the differences between the two ryes? Is the lettuce butter or iceberg? Could I toast it?
I picked her slip from the box.
Eleanor
sliced rye
tuna
double mayo extra wet Nothing else.
She wasn’t so tall. Her head fit perfectly between the counter and the bread shelves above me, most people had to bend down to speak to me while I made their sandwich, she had to only open her mouth.
‘Do you have olives?’
‘You want olives on your sandwich?’
‘Well, no.’
‘We don’t have olives.’
She continued to watch me.
‘Are you passing through? Going to the coast?’
‘No, I’ve just come home.’
I slopped the tuna onto the sliced rye, mayo dripped disgustingly down my wrist. I shuddered.
‘Are you sure you want this much mayo?’
‘Yes. I’ve been away from home for 60 years now.’
I reached for the white wrapping paper above the loaves of bread, wondering what that had to do with mayo. Her hair was wiry and gray, it ran away from her face like frozen limbs after a storm. I caught her eyes, melancholy. I put the two faces of bread together and watched the tuna sneak out the sides.
‘Where did you go?’
‘Everywhere I could, just away.’
I folded the paper around the sandwich like a diaper, praying it would hold up.
‘Why did you leave?’
Sixty years, I thought. This woman must be ninety.
‘I was running from death.’
I smiled, running a knife passed the paper and into the rye beneath. When I looked up she was watching my mouth. She seemed to mirror my expression, dropping her upwards lips as I did.
‘But now you have decided to come home.’
‘Everyone I knew is dead. I’m the last.’
I reached for another square of paper, placing it below the sliced sandwich. I wrapped it again, the same method, for the 148th time that day.
I handed her the sandwich through the space she had been poking her head.
‘And you’re tired of running?’
‘I’m not tired, but I’ve tested Death’s pace long enough. This world is round, and no matter which direction, how far, or how fast, you will always end up in the same place you began.’
She took her sandwich, forgot to pay, and shuffled out the swinging door. Her purse was full of olive jars.
Wise older lady....? So very descriptive, I feel as if I have been behind that counter.