A. Litteri
After yesterday’s cold tuna sub that was fantastic, I was excited to try the meatball on a toasted, hard roll. There was some anxiety getting there; shortly after moving onto 6th Street I was cut off by three people who were not in the same rush as I was and were happy to take their sweet time meandering down the road without a care in their pretty little heads, perfectly content in knowing that food’s gonna be there whenever they want it and there’s almost no chance of a bear mauling them to death before they get to said food. Must be a nice, if not silly, way to go through life. They were spread out along the sidewalk perfectly so I couldn’t get around them (which I decided to take the high road and not take personally, that’s just the kind of guy I am), and my normal attempts, such as coughing slightly louder than normal or saying “jesus fucking christ I really wanna kill a mother*cker right now” so they’d be alerted to my impatience, were to no avail. Of course it was then that I noticed they were flashing each other sign language and of course I felt like a complete asshole. Not enough of an asshole to stop desperately trying to get by them, of course – I knew the odds were high they too were going to A. Litteri and this meant three more sandwiches I’d be behind in line.
Finally, sunlight broke through and I was able to squeeze by and break free, getting to the line a full 30 seconds before they quietly came rolling in. Unlike yesterday when I was scared of messing up the ordering process and getting the Soup Nazi boot, I confidently filled out my order (meatball with mozzarella on a 9-inch hard bun) and almost smugly handed it to the guy behind the counter as if unlike all the knuckleheads around me, I’d been doing this for years and “got it.” He took the order, looked at it, and then repeated it to me before handing it off to the sandwich guy. So I spent the next few minutes wondering why would you have this paper ordering system if you’re just gonna ask me anyway? Wtf? I’m all for killing trees if the sandwiches are worth it but only if it’s actually necessary.
I sauntered through the aisles while waiting, if “sauntered” means “dreamt that everybody else would be thoughtful enough to drop dead so my sandwich would be up quicker”, noticing that there were about 6,000 different brands on the shelves for every item – sauce, pasta, whatever; thousands of different labels were looking back at me. “Very European”, I thought to myself (as if I can think to anybody else, I suppose). I then spent a minute or so patting myself on the back for believing I had a handle on what it took for a grocery store to seem “very European.”
I began to notice people who’d shown up after me were getting their sandwiches. This guy. That guy. The goddam deaf kids I’d nobly worked so hard to overtake in the line. The entire time the guy was handing out these sandwiches, one remained up on the shelf untouched, as if the guy didn’t see it. Naturally, it started bugging the shit out me, wondering if this was mine. I pictured my sandwich sitting their getting cold as the bun was steamed into sogginess, and thought of a million ways to approach the guy, ranging from suffocating politeness to jaw-clenched threats, without of course coming close to having the balls to simply say something in an exchange that would take at most 4 seconds.
Suddenly mine appeared! I happily grabbed it and hustled down the aisle to pay. In the process I rather purposefully cut off some guy on his way to the register as well so I could hurry up and eat my what felt like an amazing sandwich in my hand. I was first in line with him behind me…and the cashier was busy filling out an order from over the phone. As she held up her “in a sec, dangerously handsome fella” finger I rather cleverly disguised my outrage over her making me stand there like a dope when I had in fact taken the trouble to show up and order like a human being by smiling with an “oh please, take your time I’m just lucky to be here!” wave. As I was doing this of course the guy behind me that I’d cut off simply moved over to the other cashier and was out the door by the time my cashier hung up and let me pay and gtf outta there.
On the way back I considered “hey, it’s a sunny day, it’s not hot, why not for once in your pathetic life you not eat while hovering over your laptop watching yesterday’s clips from Mike Francesa’s radio show and instead sit outside at one of the tables at Union Market, soaking in some fresh air & sunshine?” Also, it would get my sandwich to my mouth about 3 minutes earlier. Coming upon Union Market I noticed for the first time there was some big patch of grass, on which a couple of younger people (i.e., “people”) were happily sitting down eating, with a bunch of flowers amongst them. “Who is this, Jefferson fucking Airplane?” I thought and decided to skip the sunshine and go back to my desk (side note – this clip is, in a word, delightful)
Long story short: it was amazing. The bun had stayed hard, the meatballs were perfect and the cheese stretched and clung to its subject like my dreams of one day having an 8-slice toaster. I barreled through the first half and then thought about doing the adult thing and saving the second half for dinner. While considering this, I chowed through most of it before packing the rest, i.e. maybe three bites that will probably have been eaten by the time you read this.
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