Losing Joe's Place

  That’s it? Paper airplanes? I gasped. Was my glorious success at an end so soon?

  With the undivided attention of every patron in the place, Rootbeer made about fifteen of these airplanes and test-flew them. The people outside in line had their noses pressed up against the glass, watching in fascination.

  The fifteenth plane landed nose first in Juliet’s Chocolate Memory Banana Split. Painfully I signaled Jessica to make her a fresh one.

  Finally one of the customers piped up, “Aren’t you going to play the harmonica?”

  “No,” said Rootbeer honestly.

  “Why not?” called someone else.

  “I don’t do that anymore.” Then he went into his long speech about executive burnout. The audience stared at this woolly mammoth in a poncho lecturing them about stress, and decided that it must be a comedy routine. So they laughed. And once they got started, they were rolling in the aisles.

  I was terrified Rootbeer would be insulted and start passing out bad luck. But he just returned to paper airplanes until another voice called, “Hey, there’s a better way to make those.”

  So Rootbeer handed out paper, and everybody had a go at it. In no time at all, Chocolate Memories looked like the sky over O’Hare International Airport. It wasn’t entertainment, exactly, but everyone seemed to be having a good time, and you can’t argue with that. And the fun and games didn’t cut into our take, either. People were ordering sandwiches, coffee, and desserts faster than ever.

  Then the Peach made a paper airplane. It should be in orbit about now.

  THIRTEEN

  Plotnick’s doctor said he could go home on Saturday, September 1st, to bid us an emotional farewell. I knew what the old stinker was really concerned about was getting his hands on the September rent, which we had to pay, according to my arrangement with Joe. My brother had already paid for our two weeks in June, and would refund the other half month when he got home.

  Since the Olympiad Delicatessen, now a distant memory, didn’t open till noon on Sundays, I was able to visit our landlord without him having a fit over why I wasn’t in the deli.

  The old man was in his usual rage. “They have two nurses here — the ugly one, and the uglier one. It puts me off my food, which is okay, because it’s poison.”

  I smiled. “So you’re doing just fine.”

  He glared at me. “You’re maybe deaf, Mr. Cardone? This so-called doctor — a more annoying person doesn’t live. What would make me well is to work in the restaurant, where my whole life is.”

  My heart lurched. “Well, I guess I’ve got to go back and — uh — open —”

  “Hurry up,” ordered Plotnick. “My customers like their coffee on time.”

  But Plotnick probably wouldn’t have recognized his customers anymore. They were young, trendy, and hip. We catered to silk suits, leather and chains, and neon minis. Long hair, short hair, facial hair, pink hair, blue hair, and no hair were all welcome. From the stock exchange to the loading docks came Chocolate Memories’ clientele, bringing power ties and dog collars, and all shades of gray in between. None could seem to place the elusive flavor of our feature dessert, and all were united in a fever of admiration for the talents of Rootbeer Racinette.

  That week, Rootbeer took up whittling, ant farming, calisthenics, shoe repair, and yodeling. This last was on Thursday, and it brought the house down. By this time, Don had quit his job at the theater, and was working for me again, which was okay, as long as he kept his flirting to a minimum. And even Ferguson came straight from the office to the restaurant every day. The Peach was the big genius, but we were out-earning him from our tips alone. We were getting customers from as far away as Montreal, Buffalo, and Detroit. Chocolate Memories was the hottest place in town.

  There were tears in my eyes as we opened the doors at four o’clock on Friday, August 31st, and ushered in the first flood of customers, mostly business people who had left work early in order to get a seat. It was an emotional moment. Chocolate Memories would probably be around for a long time, but after tonight its mastermind had to go home and enroll in the twelfth grade. This was my last opening.

  Who knew what direction Plotnick would try to take with his new restaurant? Jessica had lined up a couple of waiters to start tomorrow, and Rootbeer had vowed to continue the fight against executive burnout in public, so we weren’t leaving Plotnick in the lurch. But if our landlord thought he could run this place by the meat fork, like he had the Olympiad, he was in for a shock.

  The weekend crowds were always larger, and the line formed almost immediately. Ferguson was going to be late, as Plastics Unlimited was throwing him a giant farewell bash for his last day at work. So Jessica, Don, and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Rootbeer showed up around five-thirty. His new hobby? Bubble blowing. The giant assumed his stool with an entire carton of chewing gum under his arm.

  It was his most amazing performance to date. First he popped about ten pieces into his mouth and chewed for a few minutes. Then he jammed this wad behind his ear and started on another ten. As he chewed, cheeks moving like two dogs fighting under a blanket, he seriously informed the crowd that he wasn’t going for the world record. That would be stressful, he said, and bubble blowing was a very relaxing hobby.

  “But just in case I get it anyway, somebody better have a tape measure to witness it for the Guinness book.”

  In the roar of appreciation that followed, I knew that if I slapped on a $100 surcharge per table, not one single person would leave. This was an event.

  By the time Ferguson arrived around eight-thirty, Rootbeer had worked up his first really good bubble. It extended from his mouth like a second head, only bigger, bobbing slightly, thinning as it grew. Finally, his face an unhealthy shade of purple, he nodded at Jessica.

  “Forty-eight and a half!” she called out, measuring the circumference at its widest point.

  The audience howled its approval. It was well short of the record, which was seventy-three inches, but no one seemed to mind. Then the bubble burst, and there was Rootbeer, his entire head encased in a thin layer of pink gum. He got a standing ovation. Rootbeer didn’t seem to mind the gunk matting his hair and beard. Instead, he looked with great annoyance at a tiny speck of gum stuck to the front of his poncho.

  “I hate when stuff gets on my stuff!” Irritably he ripped off the poncho and threw it over the counter. It was just like washday. Debris rained all around him for thirty seconds. The crowd was in an advanced state of hysterics, but Rootbeer just popped more gum into his mouth and started on another wad.

  It was non-average. The sight of Rootbeer bare‑chested would have made a show in itself. Add layer upon layer of exploded bubbles from the top of his head to the buckle of his belt, and you had something these people were going to be telling their grandchildren. I was afraid that the combined weight of the standees outside in line, leaning four deep against the glass, would bust the show window. They came in in awe, they went out in awe, having eaten, laughed, and tipped lavishly. And as the bubbles gradually inched their way towards the record, I knew perfect contentment. It was a storybook ending to an amazing summer.

  I was taking a breather, basking in this feeling, when I spotted Don backsliding on his promise. There he sat, at a corner table, in earnest conversation with a pretty redhead. The guy was a flirtaholic. Here, right at the moment of perfection, I was going to have to fire Mr. Wonderful again — and have him hate me all through the twelfth grade.

  Squaring my shoulders, I began snaking my way through to Don, much to the annoyance of the customers who were concentrating on Rootbeer. I stopped short. That wasn’t just any girl Don was nuzzling up to. It was Kiki. The Kiki.

  How would Don react? My mind raced back to the hundreds of phone calls at all hours of the day and night; the endless fights with her “parents”; Mr. Nevins, and our panic the night of the shootout. Don was going to kill her! I strained to eavesdrop.

  “You sent me on a wild goose chase
!” Don was saying angrily. “You deliberately gave me a phony number, and I almost got busted!”

  “I was going nuts!” she exclaimed, beaming up at him. “The number isn’t phony it’s right, but I’m not from Toronto — I’m just visiting! I forgot to give you the area code — 519!”

  Don goggled, and so did I. “519? But that’s — that’s —”

  “Have you ever been to Owen Sound?” she inquired innocently.

  As it turned out, not only did Kiki live in the same town; she also lived ten minutes from Don’s house. And when she found out he was Mr. Wonderful, the local hockey legend, I figured nothing could stop them.

  Wrong again. There in the show window stood Kiki’s father, face stony as ever, beckoning to his daughter.

  “I have to go.” Painfully she shook Don’s hand, and made her way to the door, gazing back at Mr. Wonderful with every other step. She said, “Call me,” and was gone.

  I put my arm around Don’s shoulders. “Well, what do you have to say to that?”

  “The nerve of that girl!” he raged.

  “What?”

  “Where did she get off acting like Miss Big City Cool when she’s really a small town hick?”

  “You only talked to her for thirty seconds two months ago,” I pointed out. “And besides, you do the same thing.”

  Mr. Wonderful folded his arms in front of him. “Just because it’s the same doesn’t mean it isn’t different,” he said smugly.

  I groaned. “Fine. But hang onto her number. For my sake, okay? I have a feeling you’re going to need it when this wears off.”

  Suddenly Don slapped his forehead. “Oh, no! I think I flushed it!” And with that, he shot out the front door and up to apartment 2C, in search of his napkin and his destiny. He returned, empty-handed and irritable, planning to knock on every door in his neighborhood until he found Kiki, starting September 2nd.

  The ultimate bubble began at about ten o’clock. It was obvious from the start that this was the one that would catapult Rootbeer into history. He started it slowly, applying air steadily — not too quickly — and even in the early stages you could tell that the pink walls were thick and strong. The crowd fell into a hushed expectant silence as Rootbeer nurtured his masterpiece.

  Jessica was terrified as she painstakingly held the tape measure around the humongous beach-ball-and-a-half that hung in front of Rootbeer. She knew that if she slipped, and burst what was very possibly the largest bubble in the history of man’s life on Earth, she would be lynched by our patrons.

  It took more than one tape measure length. Carefully she remembered her place, and started again from one. The result came quickly.

  “Seventy-four and three-quarters!” Jessica shrieked.

  Pandemonium broke loose. Our hundred-plus customers stood up on their chairs and screamed. For a moment I thought the ceiling would come down. I looked outside. There was dancing in the street. Rootbeer and his bubble rose carefully to acknowledge this ovation.

  It was like New Year’s Eve. People were slapping each other on the back, and kissing. Jessica was dancing on the counter, and I was locked in an ecstatic embrace with Don and the Peach. It was the first time all summer that we truly felt what this excursion was supposed to be all about — three friends taking on the world, and winning!

  I didn’t think anything could overpower the roar of the crowd, but something did. It was a half-demented voice, and it bellowed:

  “WHERE’S MY RESTAURANT?”

  I wheeled to face Plotnick, who stood in the middle of the room, quivering with rage.

  Kapow! The record-breaking bubble could hang on no longer. It exploded all over Rootbeer. It was actually silent, but I heard the kapow in my mind.

  Plotnick took in the scene. There stood Rootbeer, half naked, a woolly mountain of bubble gum. The hair on his head, face, chest, and arms was a mass of sticky pink. Then there was the crowd, which was out of control.

  I ran over to Plotnick to comfort him in this moment of shock. He glared at me with malice.

  “Mr. Cardone, I didn’t recognize you! Now I recognize you! You’re the devil! There are no words for such a terrible person what you are! You — you — you should grow like an onion with your head in the ground!”

  There was no explaining — not in this chaos. So I figured I’d do it by show-and-tell. I dragged him over to the cash register and dramatically pressed the No Sale. The drawer popped open, an eruption of money. You know how, in Saturday morning cartoons, the characters’ eyes bulge three feet out of their heads? That’s what happened to Plotnick. He stared at stray tens and twenties that fell like waste paper from the jammed trays. They came to rest on the metal strongbox that we kept under the counter. With a flourish, I opened it, too. Fort Knox.

  In all the time I’d known him, I’d never seen Plotnick at a loss for words. He gawked for a while, his eyes caressing the treasure, and then looked up at me, the devil.

  “Nobody can be all bad,” he conceded.

  And then he took over. I don’t know where he found a greasy apron, because the laundry was freshly done, but he did. He hefted his meat fork, and smiled at me.

  “You’ll excuse me, Mr. Cardone. I have some freaks to straighten out.” He walked right up to Rootbeer and pushed him off the stool! “Put your clothes on and get a job!” Then he turned his attention to my patrons.

  “All right, you mutants!” he bawled, marching up and down like a fat drill sergeant. “This establishment is under new management! These are the rules! There will be no throwing up in this restaurant! You’re going to see a lot of offensive degenerate things, and if it makes you crazy, you’re out! Food goes from the plate to the mouth — nowhere else! And if you use filthy, disgusting, nasty language, I’m going to call your parole officers! Have a lovely evening.”

  I was in agony. After all my sweat making Chocolate Memories the best place in town, this ill-mannered old lout was going to insult the customers and ruin everything.

  But then something weird happened. Instead of getting up and walking out, the crowd burst into laughter and applause.

  “They think he’s an act!” I blurted out.

  “What else?” grinned the Peach. “Who’d believe there could be a guy like Plotnick?”

  Since the customers stayed, we got back to work. Plotnick joined the waitering squad, serving coffee and dessert with all the grace and charm of a farmhand slopping the hogs.

  “Okay, you Cossack, eat this if you can find your mouth!”

  “He’s so cool!” declared a skinhead, slipping Plotnick a big tip.

  “You’re a good boy, you know that?” beamed Plotnick. “Let me recommend a good vivisectionist for you.”

  The new proprietor was an instant hit. And since Rootbeer was in the kitchen trying to get the bubble gum out of his hair, Plotnick was called to the corner for an encore presentation of The Rules. He was glad to oblige, and went on for twenty minutes about such topics as how to use a knife and fork, what is a bathroom and why do I need one, and when and where not to commit violent crime.

  The crowd was convulsed with hilarity when Plotnick interrupted his lecture and stood still as a statue, nose twitching. A hush fell, and outside, the squeal of tires could be heard. Plotnick raced into the kitchen, and there was the sound of wild scrambling, and things being tossed around.

  “Mr. Cardone, where is it? Where is it?”

  “In the corner with the broom!” I called back.

  A second later, he burst out, carrying his trusty butterfly net. Waving it at face level to clear a path for himself, he barreled out the door just as a sports car hit the pot hole on Bathurst Street. A month in traction had done nothing to dull his reflexes. The hurtling hubcap found the net like a homing pigeon.

  Chocolate Memories went berserk.

  Still on the sidewalk, slightly out of breath, Plotnick examined the hubcap with evident pleasure. Then he stood in the doorway and made his announcement.

  “Okay, out!”

/>   At first, no one took him seriously. But when he started prodding people with the butterfly net, they got the message. They still thought it was part of the show, so there was a lot of laughing and cheering as they filed out, pausing to congratulate Plotnick and pat him on the back.

  “Go home!” he told them. “You’re bringing down the property values!”

  They remained a little longer on the sidewalk outside 1 Pitt Street, giving our landlord one last round of applause. Then they gradually dispersed.

  He turned to us, the staff. “Go to bed. I’m having an ulcer.”

  “Oh, sure, Mr. Plotnick.” I grinned. “You just want to be alone to dive into that cash box.”

  “I have to hide, Mr. Cardone. That fascist doctor could be coming after me any minute. I’m not supposed to be out till tomorrow.” He checked the clock. “Ah! It is tomorrow. The first of the month. That’ll be $685, please.”

  We stared at him. “Mr. Plotnick!” I cried. “Is that all you can think about after what you’ve seen here tonight? We’ve all worked like crazy to make this place a success for you!”

  Plotnick shrugged. “I don’t want no deadbeats in my building.”

  I was furious. “You’d better be nice to us! We’re the only ones who know the secret recipe for the Chocolate Memory, which is the backbone of the whole menu!”

  Plotnick reached over and dipped a pudgy finger into a half-finished dessert. He licked at it experimentally. “Big deal. Cake mix.”

  Where money is involved, Plotnick is always right. When Plotnick is wrong, see above. We wrote him a check. At least this time we could afford it.

  Out on the sidewalk, Ferguson and Don confronted Jessica.

  “All right,” said Don, “you’ve dodged us for a whole summer, made us look like idiots, and almost turned two friends against each other.” Ferguson nodded feelingly. “Now we’ve got something to say to you. We want you to know that we don’t care who you would have picked. In fact, we couldn’t care less. Right, Peachfuzz?”