BUGSY'S

     Bugsy of course was not his real name but what else were you going to call him if you were never introduced? Anyway, in a joking sort of way that is what everybody called him and he always took it in good humor. First you would have to search for the number in the yellow pages and call him up with a list of what you wanted in hand. When he answered you knew somehow that he was holding the phone between his ear and his shoulder with a sub in each hand and memorizing your order by heart—or not. Usually, by the time you got there your subs had not even been dreamed of yet and would take your personal supervision in their making, with direct questions as to what you wanted and didn’t want…etc., above the noise of the pinball machines and jukebox that the kids from the junior high school next door were eternally playing. But that was what it meant to go to Bugsy’s and you expected it…and even enjoyed it.

     In the spring though on a visit out west it wasn’t that way. Something had changed. Close to seven o’clock when the Friday traffic had died down and my mother had the idea to order one of Bugsy’s specialties, a two-foot-long sub that you could cut into pieces, to save the trouble of cooking, she and I got in the car and arrived there within twenty minutes. The parking lot was empty. After pushing open the glass door with the bell on it to announce customers you could hear music playing but in a vacant sort of way, as if no one were really listening and the TV suspended over the pinball machine was shouting and flickering unconvincingly to a silent Bugsy who was standing, one leg propped up behind the counter, smoking. No one else but him. Yes, we did go through the ritual of calling and yes we did give him our order but there he was standing alone with the other hand in his pocket beneath the dirty apron and an ashtray full of crooked butts in front of him. The ketchup bottles had not even been filled or cleaned, and the tomato that had dried on the outside was attracting flies that went unmolested by the owner to investigate as they pleased. The salt and pepper shakers were not evenly matched up so that some of the tables had two salts or two peppers and the dispensers were without napkins and there were mustard-stained copies of the Albuquerque Journal open wily-nilly on chairs and tables wherever a surface would allow. Awkwardly, we tried to make our presence known though we felt that we were interrupting. Odd how we absently assume that the other, a fellow human being, is merely made of cardboard, some inanimate entity lacking a past prior to our entering their lives, and are there exclusively for the job they are to perform for us. Very gently we each said “hello” and that brought him to. He looked at us through his glasses as at a picture hard to interpret, added his cigarette to the many in the tray, put his leg down and matter-of-factly wiped his hands on his apron.

     “Yes?” he said. He did not even recognize my mother, who had been coming for years, and seemed to wonder what it was we were doing there. I picked up a menu and reordered what we had ordered over the phone, without mentioning it. He moved slowly to the refrigerator to extract the meat and the 3-foot-long buns and, after gathering up a cold jar of mayonnaise with the crook of his elbow, he put all the provisions on the counter ready to get to work.

     “I lost my wife last week,” he announced, yet not to us but more to himself, as if by making the statement he would come to better understand it. He continued to make the sub in an artful way, carefully spreading the mayonnaise and loading on a variety of sliced meats, sprinkling the whole with salt and vinegar and oregano and heating it brown before wrapping it up warm in tinfoil. No one came in while we were there nor did the phone ring even once…just the noise of the television and the buzzing of flies in the air and the bell on the door clanking on closing it behind us.

     “Poor man,” was all my mother said as she read Bugsy’s sign painted in large letters on the window now thinly washed by the evening red of the SandiaMountains reflecting in the glass. That following spring Bugsy’s and the man we called “Bugsy” too were gone.

©Vincent Montenegro

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