The Bialy Pimps (39 page)

The Anarchist was fascinated. He had written out his experimental setup and his hypothesis in his impromptu scientific journal (the back pages of the Ted Investigation Unit log) and, following the debut face-kicking, made a note:
First successful trial. Yes, people really are dumb enough to put their face in something called a “face-kicking machine.” Unable to reject null hypothesis.

“What the
hell!”
the customer shouted.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that,” said the Anarchist. “We’re still getting the bugs out. Maybe if you try it again?”

The First Customer of the Day seemed unsure.
 

“I’d do it if I were you,” said the Anarchist. “I, a 22-year-old college student working in a deli, am arbitrarily suggesting that you voluntarily injure yourself. You should do it because I must have authority and knowledge, based on the fact that I’m on this side of the counter and am wearing an apron.”

The First Customer of the Day saw the logic of what the Anarchist had said.

He returned to the machine and settled his chin in the small plastic cup at the bottom of the face-shaped indentation on the front of the machine. The boot, visible through the pipe frame of the gadget, had already returned to the cocked position. He pulled the huge slot machine lever on the machine’s side. There was a click as the catch released, then a sound like a hammer hitting a steak, then a ratcheting series of clicks as the machine reset.
 

“Mother
fuck!
” said the First Customer of the Day.
 

The Anarchist made another note:
Statistical significance low due to small number of trials, but experimenter confidence remains high. Initial findings suggest that customers are moronic to an extent previously thought impossible. Future experiment: need to determine if people who submit to the machine often walk into walls and fall down spontaneously.
 

At the Anarchist’s suggestion, the First Customer of the Day took two tampons from the Box Next to the Slicer, which had become the Box Next to the Face-Kicking Machine, and inserted one into each nostril to stem the bleeding. On each tampon, Philip had hand-written DO NOT EAT THIS.
 

Then the First Customer of the Day made his title official by purchasing a bagel with cream cheese and a coffee. The Anarchist asked him if he wanted lard in his coffee, and explained that it was sugar-free.
Why not?
said the customer.

Was the Face-Kicking Machine a bit much? Absolutely. But if the Bingham’s crew was going to get away with what they were doing (and impossibly, it looked that way) then the employees were going to pull out all of the stops. The Anarchist decided one day to explain his thoughts to Tracy in layman’s terms.

“We’re going to pull out all of the stops,” he said.

Tracy shook his head. “There are no stops left. You’ve pulled them all out.”

“Oh, there are stops left.”

“No. There are no more stops.”

“There are stops. And we’re going to hunt them down.”

“And what are you going to do once you find these alleged stops?” Tracy asked him.

The Anarchist shook his head with conviction. “We’re going to pull them out,” he said.
 

Tracy whistled.

Over the next few days, the Anarchist had hunted down the few remaining cowering stops and pulled them out into the light of day so that he could beat them to death. The construction of the Face-Kicking Machine was the final insult.

“Let me get this straight,” Philip asked the Anarchist. “This machine kicks people in the face?”

The Anarchist turned his head toward Dungeonmaster Eric, who was sitting beside him opposite Philip like a lawyer at a senate hearing. Eric whispered something to him. Then the Anarchist looked back at Philip and said, “Yes. Yes it does.”

Philip frowned thoughtfully. A Face-Kicking Machine? That couldn’t be good.
 

“It kicks you in the face,” he clarified.

“Yes.” It was Eric, who was the person most able in Trip’s absence to appreciate the machine’s brilliance.
 

“Why not just kick people in the face yourself?” Philip asked.

“We...” Eric started. The Anarchist interrupted him.
 

“Let me handle this,” he said. He turned to Philip. “That would be
us
assaulting
them
. The machine allows the customers to assault
themselves.”

Philip nodded. “I see. And?”

“And? And that’s funny!” He leaned back, remembering. “Trip and I had the idea a long time ago, and half of the fun of it is simply the bizarre idiocy factor. We never – not in a million years – thought that it would ever be built, but given the new Bingham’s, it can be. The other half is that we get to watch people injure themselves of their own accord, which is the next level of this psychology/sociology experiment we have going, which I still think you should write a thesis on. And half of it was...”

“That’s three halves,” Eric pointed out.

The Anarchist ignored him. “Half of it was this girl last week. She came in and asked me if butter has fat in it. Does
butter
have fat in it. I told her that I wanted to slap her, but that I didn’t want to hurt my hand, so I told her to slap herself. I remember reading that quote in a magazine once, and I thought that it would be funny to say. But here’s the thing: she did it.”

“She slapped herself?”

“Yep.”

“No way.”

“Swear to God. She hauled off and gave herself this big, hard pimp slap. She actually knocked herself down. So I got to thinking, what about the Face-Kicking Machine? If people would actually slap themselves because someone told them to do it, maybe they would kick themselves in the face.
If only there were a machine,
Philip.
If only there were a machine to help them do it.”

Philip nodded, but it bothered him. It felt like crossing a line.
Another
line. The contraption sounded like Dr. Kevorkian’s assisted-suicide machine.

“I have all sorts of ideas if this works out and we feel like expanding,” said the Anarchist. “What about a Noogie Machine? What about a Roundhouse-Kick-to-the-Kidney Machine?”

Philip pursed his lips. “I don’t know...”

The Anarchist eyed him. “This is a stop, you know. You know that we have to pull out all of the stops around here. Are you going to protect this stop, or are you going to step aside so that I can pull it out?”

Rich had been walking by as the Anarchist said this. “Pull it out,” he said, and giggled.

Philip acquiesced, and the machine was built.
 

Encouraged, the Anarchist immediately began collaborating with Beckie to create and then slowly fulfill what the two considered to be the store’s ultimate dream list. Suddenly, every idiotic idea ever conceived during an annoying lunch rush or an infuriating customer interaction began coming to life.

“Number fourteen,” Beckie told the Anarchist after the completion of one such dream item.

“Excuse me?” he asked, looking up from the make table.

Beckie held up a foil-wrapped sandwich and jiggled it. “Number fourteen,” she repeated. “Ham and Swiss on rye and a small Coke. For that obnoxious Forty-Dollar Haircut.”

The Anarchist looked across the room and saw the Forty Dollar Haircut in question sitting near the window, chatting with his hipster friends. Everyone at the table had expensive oily haircuts that looked like Shop Vac accidents. The customer, Number Fourteen, was the only one with a stylish black band around his neck. Every once in a while, a small red LED on the band would blip, to show the thing was charged and receiving.
 

The Anarchist and Beckie knew exactly who the ham and Swiss on rye belonged to, so half of the point of this experiment was, if they were honest, kind of moot. But the store
was
full, the music
was
loud, and the customer
did
look like he was deep in conversation. Why waste their breath yelling across the room? He’d never hear it. They’d yell, then yell again, then finally set the Forty Dollar Haircut’s order on the counter and would forget about it. He’d come up fifteen minutes later to complain, and the bagel would be cold, and then he’d complain again.
 

Well, they wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore. That was just the kind of customer service snafu that the new system was designed to prevent.
 

The Anarchist turned to the back counter and pressed the #14 key on the new transmitter.

The Forty Dollar Haircut was up in an instant, jumping into the air with gestures that were almost dancelike. He spasmed and contorted, grabbing and clawing at the black collar on his neck. His companions looked at him with disdain.

Beckie decided to help. This was a new system, so it only seemed fair to help people learn how best to use it. As the Haircut looked toward the counter in panic, Beckie waved. Then she gestured toward the huge
Family Feud
style ring-in button that had been installed at the corner of the countertop.

The strange ballet at the front of the store continued. The customer continued to clutch at the collar on his neck, wrapping the fingers of both hands around it to try to tear it off. But of course, the collar couldn’t be opened until he tagged in. It was a safety feature.

Beckie gestured with the bagel. “Your food is ready,” she called above the din.

The Haircut spasmed his way to the counter, knocking over chairs and knocking drinks onto the floor. Others yelled at him. They already had their food; they didn’t want to put up with this guy’s bullshit.

The customer pointed at his collar, trying to mime to Beckie that there was something wrong with it. He was too panicked to speak, or the voltage had locked his facial muscles. Really, either one could be the case.

“The collar?” Beckie asked. “That’s what it’s
supposed
to do. That’s how you know when your order is done. Have you ever been to a restaurant where they give you those vibrating pagers so that you know when your table is ready? Like Outback. I really like Outback. Do they still do call-ahead seating, or are they one of those too-good-for-it restaurants now that won’t even let you call to reserve your spot in line?”

The customer shook his head. Beckie decided that he must not like Outback.

“You might want to turn your collar off,” said Beckie.

The customer shook his head in the affirmative.

“You have to tag in over there,” she said, indicating the ring-in button.

The Forty Dollar Haircut followed her gesture, leaping and almost falling toward the button. He slapped it repeatedly and then stopped convulsing, collapsing into an untidy pile.

Beckie walked around the counter and set the sandwich on the customer’s back. “Enjoy your food!” she said with a smile.

Beckie was enjoying herself less on the following day, as she stood outside the small duplex on West 10th Street. She was uncomfortable here, concealed in the bushes like a prowler, but the air was brisk and sweet, and the mystery of Army Ted was unfolding inside.

She had stalked and found him earlier at the movie theater, having recently decided that enough was enough. Ted’s stories had become increasingly wild of late, and her curiosity was piqued. She had to uncover his secrets. Why was he taking the credit for keeping the police and the lawyers out of Bingham’s collective hair? Sure, he tended to capitalize on whatever he could, but this was too much. She thought back to his stories of Sandy Duncan and Clint Eastwood and of the time that Ted was forced “in self defense” to kill some huge bodybuilder-type mugger in one of the campus parking garages. Well, those stories were pretty over the top as well. But recently?

J. Edgar Hoover was still alive, Ted told the crew one day in a low voice from behind the back of his hand, and he was personally interested in Bingham’s. Hoover had been working undercover with both the FBI and the CIA, you see, and he was hot on the trail of a ring of spies. These spies were known to frequent Bingham’s Bagel Deli, and the recent upheaval had threatened the operation because Hoover
only
knew the spies as customers of the campus deli and had yet to learn their names, home addresses, or contacts. He had been alarmed when the uprising had begun, and had feared losing them.
 

The finest efforts of the FBI and CIA were required, Ted explained, to quell any disturbance to the Bingham’s status quo. Sure, he told them while giggling girlishly as usual, the status quo had all but upended during the past months, but at least if the staff could be protected and the deli kept open, then maybe – just maybe – Hoover would get lucky and the spies would continue to patronize them.
 

Why didn’t the FBI and the CIA just stop the uprising from occurring? the Anarchist had asked.

Ted didn’t have an answer. He hemmed and hawed for a while and eventually mumbled something about the constitutional rights of citizens. The Anarchist smirked. Ted had not anticipated the question.

Anyway, Ted had continued, J. Edgar Hoover was a close personal friend of his before Hoover had been required to fake his death back in ‘72. Because Ted had been both an ambassador and a secret agent himself and knew the spies’ home territory well (he refused to divulge the location of this territory), Hoover had called on him. Besides, Ted knew Bingham’s.

Wouldn’t Hoover be over a hundred years old by now? the Anarchist had asked.

The yarns spun on and on. Espionage. National conspiracies. Murder. The Tango.

The Tango? Beckie had asked him.
 

Ted told her that when he had been an agent, he usually had to dance the Tango with beautiful women and sleep with them so that they would tell him their secrets. Michelle Pfeiffer was a spy, he told her. Did she know that? And so was Elle McPherson. He had been forced to Tango with both of them.

At the same time? the Anarchist had asked, playing along.

Hee-hee!