It was a good sandwich.
Turkey, on rye, with a hint of something else. Cranberries in there, with their jelly. Some sort of mustard.
Sam wasn’t a chef, but he knew what he liked. He knew he liked this sandwich. He knew he liked its taste, he knew he liked that it was at the place half a block from his work, and he DEFINITELY knew he liked that it was under five bucks.
Which is what puzzled him so very much the next day, the next lunch, when he walked up to the menu and saw that the sandwich that he knew he liked wasn’t there.
“Turkey,” Sam asked the cashier.
“Chicken?” he cautiously replied.
“Turkey,” clarified Sam.
“Chicken?” questioned the cashier, pointing at the menu.
“Turkey!” insisted Sam, waving his arm at the menu.
“Chicken,” reiterated the cashier, indicating the line which showed there was only one type of fowl available.
All reasonable discourse exhausted, Sam threw up his hands to the sky. “Chicken,” he admitted in abject defeat.
And it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the same. He knew what he liked, and this wasn’t quite it. Not quite.
Sam experimented with lunch.
He tried lunch a little earlier, he tried lunch a little later. A little faster, a little slower. A littler higher, a little lower.
He never found anything he liked as much. He never found his sandwich.
But he did find out something interesting, on the fourteenth day of his stake-out.
At one oh one, he came in and ordered a small salad. At one oh nine, he left. And on the firmly blackbackboard-backed-white-chalkings of the menu, a faintish wisp of something smeared.
Something had been erased. Quickly. Desperately.
And right in the exact spot, down to the millimetre, where once he had read the words ‘turkey on rye.’
Sam came in at twelve thirty the next day. He laughed, chatted, ordered a casual soup, took an egregiously appropriate amount of time consuming it, then left at an extremely casual and normal pace.
After that he circled around the block, picked up the drop package he’d secreted overnight inside a nearby storm drain, and hid in the bushes opposite the shop with a camo jacket, high powered binoculars, and a stopwatch.
At one oh one, his gaze became intense.
At one oh three, a pigeon shat in front of the shop’s window, and Sam nearly jumped out of his shoes.
At one oh six, a man with particularly interesting shoes wandered out of the kitchen, exchanged a casual wave with the cashier, and strolled by the menu. As he did so, his hand flicked through a quick little scribble against the blackboard.
Sam erupted from the bushes like Venus from the waves, launched himself across the street, tripped over the curb, saw lots of pretty colours, staggered to his feet and lurched inside.
“TurkOWy sandjesuswhich pleasefuck,” he said to the cashier.
The cashier looked confused. “Chicken?” he inquired tentatively.
Sam pointed at the menu after three tries.
There was nothing there but a quiet smudge…. And the rapidly retreating back of the man with particularly interesting shoes.
“Nevermindouchdamnit,” said Sam, and heaved himself after the shoes, which he cornered outside the men’s washroom and slammed against the wall.
“Turkey!” he shouted into the man’s face.
The man opened his mouth and got as far as “chi-“ before seeing the especially descriptive glint in Sam’s eyes and giving up. “Oh fine. Yes, there’s turkey. For thirty-three seconds on the third minute of one o’clock.”
“What? Why?”
“Same answer to both of those,” said the man with particularly interesting shoes. “But there’s a question you’ve got to answer first: you want in?”
“For that sandwich?” asked Sam. “Yes.”
The man with particularly interesting shoes nodded.
Sam nodded.
The man with particularly interesting shoes nodded again, somewhat more pointedly, and Sam realized he was holding him three inches off the floor and dropped him, embarrassed and sore-armed.
“Thank you. Now, this way.”
This way was past the kitchen, behind the sinks, down the stair, into the basement, through the grate, and terminated in a ragged chamber scraped out of raw earth, where there were seven people in baggy bathrobes and a single aimlessly confused turkey and a very shiny-and-well-polished-but-impractical knife.
“He wanted in,” explained the man with particularly interesting shoes to one of the other people, who Sam realized was the mayor.
“Fair enough,” said the mayor. “Okay, you’ve got to take the knife and-”
“This is a cult, isn’t it,” said Sam.
The mayor looked a little hurt. “Not really. It’s-”
“I know what I like, and I know what I don’t like, and cults aren’t it. You’re wearing robes and asking me to sacrifice a turkey,” said Sam, filled with leaden exhaustion and also still aching in the skull. “You know what? I’m very disappointed. I thought this was just an unusually secret menu – I’ve tracked down four of those before – but you’ve gone and brought religion into it. Food is personal enough without that sort of attitude. I’m going home and microwaving a corn dog.”
Which he did. He slammed the grate on his way out, too.
Alone in the preparatory chamber, the mayor, the man with the particularly interesting shoes, and everyone else shook their heads and went back to doing the turkey’s cuticles. The new mascot had to look perfect by the time they launched the autumn menu.