odd rob

Sundays are always dead, good mornings for nursing Saturday night hangovers, but Frank, ever the capitalist
pig, has me open Hero Sandwich anyway. I would lead my proletariat brothers in a bloody uprising against my
oppressor if I wasn’t afraid of losing my job. Perhaps someday I will muster the courage to at least tell him his
poetry is as emotionally stirring as the dessert menu at Denny’s.

I spend Sundays bagging and boarding comics, looking for holes in our inventory, and reading. The
occasional customer wanders in; there isn’t a lot for young people to do in this city on Sundays. In high school,
I used to play football with my friends, giving baseball a wide berth, and watched a lot of movies. Reading
novels and biographies came later, though comics have always been present in my life. I finish closing Hero
Sandwich for the day, locking the front door and then doing the register count. After I’m done, I pick up the
phone and dial my brother’s number. No answer.

I sometimes wish that I was still a newborn, overzealous aunts praising me for having my father’s eyes. It would
be preferable to being 25 year-old Joseph DiMaggio, reviled by fate and kept at arm’s length from fortune.
Perhaps life wouldn’t be the grocery sack of rotten produce that it has become if I had not been named after
the man who kept my hometown’s major league baseball team out of the World Series, my father’s hero, Joe
DiMaggio.

Once the drawer is safely hidden away, I try my brother again.

“City morgue. You stab ‘em, we slab ‘em,” he answers the phone cheerfully. Sometimes, I cannot believe that I’
m the younger brother.

“It’s me, “ I say. Hopefully, Mick won’t hang up on me or verbally shadowbox with me.

“How was dinner?” he asks me brightly. I hesitate. Maybe he doesn’t know what happened. Maybe I heard
Grace wrong. Only one way to be sure...

“We need to talk. Can you meet me at the comic store?”

He pauses. Did he just sigh? He answers, the cheerfulness gone, “Yeah, alright. Be there in a few.”

I hang up and snag a root beer to drink while I wait. I lock the comic shop behind me and lean against the side
of the building, going over and over what I am going to do when Mick arrives. Is there any subtle way to ask
him what happened? Would any of this have happened if I were a meat-eater?

Invariably, I get asked: How could you have been a vegetarian for so long and still be so fat? Well, asshole, I
have a sedentary job in which the only exercise I get is occasionally moving comic boxes around. After I go
home, my girlfriend and I watch foreign films and drink box wine. Every now and then, I take her out dancing.
My diet doesn’t have meat in it, which means that I eat a lot less fat and grease than most carnivores do, but
there are still carbohydrates and sugars and sodium that contribute to the ruination of my girlish figure.

During my childhood, I saw a wild boar being roasted alive on a spit. I can never remember if I had seen this in
a photograph or if it had been on television, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I tried to imagine if the boar
had smelled like honey, like the glazed hams that my father used to bring home for Easter dinner, or if it
smelled more like when Mom accidentally burned bacon. I wondered if the boar’s flesh sizzled and popped, and
imagined the orange glow of the flames on my face as I sat next to the fire, waiting to sink my teeth into a
succulent piece of pig meat.

That had been a long time ago and before a visit to the slaughterhouse where Mick worked one summer
changed me from a perfectly good meat-eater into a happy-go-lucky vegetarian. People sometimes ask me if I’
m Jewish or an animal rights nut. Nope, but the possibility of a piece of sausage among the sun-dried tomatoes
on my pizza is revolting to me. If there’s anything on my sandwiches besides tofu or peanut butter and jelly or
lettuce and tomatoes and sprouts, I’ll send it back to the kitchen. Mick had never teased me about my
conversion, not out of any love lost between us in those tumultuous years of my prepubescent angst, but
because he had practiced vegetarianism himself for a couple of years.

He slammed my head in his bedroom door once, and despite the fact that Dad had forced Mick into indentured
servitude around the house for a week as a result, I had not felt vindicated until after I had kicked his portable
radio down the basement stairs. Maturity had brought us closer together though, and I have to admit that he
had been pretty decent as far as older brothers went.

Well, until last night anyway.

*   *   *

“Harry Houdini died at 1:26 PM in room 401 of Detroit’s Grace Hospital on October 31, 1926. His last words
were, ‘I’m tired of fighting.’ The official cause of death is attributed to peritonitis resulting from appendicitis. He
is buried at Machpelah Cemetary in Queens, New York.”

Every week Grace showed up at open mic night and recited celebrity obituaries and Sylvia Plath poems. The
previous week had been Guy Fawkes. She had beautiful blue eyes that were jezebeled with eye shadow. Her
figure could only be described as waif. Her look said, Punk is dead and a Hot Topic was built on top of its
grave. I had wanted to ask her out since the first time I saw her.

I watched her from my usual table. It seated two, but I seldom had company except when I came with Frank to
hear him read angry poetry. I suspected he was secretly a white supremacist. My eyes were underscored by
dark circles from hours of reading the night before. Once I started it, I couldn’t put The Dark Knight Returns
down until I finished it. I hoped that I didn’t look too crazed and maniacal.

Grace was one of the few women who actually stopped by Hero Sandwich to buy something. Every now and
then, mothers would drop in, teasing that they were looking for birthday presents and then leave without ever
opening their pocketbooks. One time, a feminist came in and accused Frank of peddling a medium that
objectified women, creating unrealistic standards of beauty. Frank argued that the standards of beauty in
comics are unrealistic because the women depicted in comics aren’t real. She got pissed and slammed the
door behind her as she left. Grace, however, came in occasionally to look for back issues of Eightball and
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

She dignified me with her smile, but probably hadn’t said more than five words to me since I first laid eyes on
her. Frank told me her name. She’d been the one who’d turned him on to open mic night.

Grace had left the stage and was sitting down on a leather sofa. A crumpled pack of cigarettes kept a half-
empty cup of _mocha company on a coffee table in front of her. I wanted to go talk to her, but memories of
past rejections kept me in my seat. A print of Bob Dylan watched me from the wall in quiet contemplation. I
resolved to leave rather than risk opening myself to rejection and emasculation. I wanted to peel myself away
from Bob’s stoic gaze and the specter of my failures. Someone stepped into my line of sight.

I glanced up and there she was, looking at me and me looking at her. I hoped the look of surprise was not
evident on my face. She smiled and leaned in so I could hear her over the scattered applause for the next poet
who was taking the stage, “Is anyone sitting here?”

“No, not at all,” I said, pulling out the other chair for her.

Grace smiled again and sat down across from me. “You’re Joe, right? From Hero Sandwich?”

“Right,” I answered, wringing my hands and hoping that she hadn’t noticed. I always do that when I’m nervous.

“I’ve noticed you here the past couple of weeks. My car’s been recalled because of a bad fan belt or
something, and I was wondering if I could get a ride here with you next week?” she asked.

How could I say no to her?

“Not a problem,” I told her. “Um... actually, your readings are one of the things that keeps bringing me back
week after week. Have you ever heard any of Lydia Lunch’s spoken word stuff?”

Her face lit up, and I knew I was in love, “Yes! She’s fantastic! You really don’t look like the type to get into her
stuff, though. Sure you aren’t just dropping her name to get into my panties?”

I imagined my face became somewhere between tomato and beet red. “No!” I managed, and then, quieter, “No,
I’ve been listening to her since I heard a Teenage Jesus and the Jerks album in college. This girl I was seeing
turned me on to her spoken word stuff.”

She giggled, “Was seeing? How could anyone resist such a cute blush?”

Her laughter got louder as my blush deepened. Oh, she was good. My pick-up lines teetered on the edge of
inarticulate and awkwardly painful.

And that’s how I started seeing Grace.

*   *   *

Grace works for a catalogue warehouse, and had been scheduled for a ten hour shift yesterday. Saturdays
are usually her days off, but she has to work one Saturday every three months for the company’s quarterly
inventory check. I had promised her that I would take care of dinner, thinking that I would have enough time
after work to swing by Tucker’s and pick something up. Tucker’s was one of the city’s finest restaurants. They
had great vegetarian and pasta dishes, and have won several national culinary awards. When I arrived at Hero
Sandwich, though, I remembered that I had to go to my parents’ house after work to help my dad move some
furniture. So I called Mick.

Mick spends his Saturdays sleeping off Friday night hangovers until the clubs open. Every now and then, he’d
get up long enough to come heckle me at the comic store, so I never felt bad about interrupting his alcohol-
induced stupor.

“I need a solid,” I told him after he’d picked up the phone. “If you’ll pick up a couple orders of spaghetti for me
from Tucker’s tonight, I’ll get you that issue of Sandman you’ve been after.”

“I don’t know. Tucker’s is pretty pricey,” he said sleepily.

“Fine, fine. I’ll throw in Amazing Spider-Man # 201, you mercenary,” I offered, knowing an early Punisher guest
appearance would seal the deal.

“Okay, that’s cool,” Mick told me. “I’ll drop the food off at the store before you leave tonight.”

“Thanks, man,” I told him, relieved my dinner plans with Grace had been saved. “You’re the best.”

“Oh, sure! You say that now...!” he laughed and hung up.

Imagine my surprise, at Grace’s apartment later, after two or three bites into the supposedly vegetarian
meatballs that densely populated my plate of spaghetti, I realized that I was eating real beef cooked in a rich
wine and meat sauce. I nearly overturned my chair in the mad dash I made for the restroom. Grace was
watching wide-eyed and speechless from the table. I hoisted open the lid of the toilet and kneeled down before
it.

I must have spent fifteen minutes throwing up. I tried to console myself with the fact that Grace wouldn’t have
the same reaction I was having since she had not spent the last sixteen years of her life avoiding meat in her
diet. I suppose I should have picked up on the fact that she wasn’t checking up on me and known something
was up. I didn’t, though, until later.

*   *   *

I alphabetize the five-for-a-dollar comics to keep from lamenting about last night. In the early afternoon, I give
little attention to the two fanboys debating over who the sexiest female X-Men character is. It always
embarrasses me to even remotely be identified with comic book fans like these. Comics are looked down upon
as being entertainment for children and adults with no lives. Certainly, many comic writers will never be
compared to J.D. Salinger or Franz Kafka, but there are just as many who could be. Unfortunately, though,
trends in popular culture are reflected in comics, and just like television, movies, and advertising, many writers
cater to the lowest common denominator.

“I think Steve Rude should get more attention for his work on Nexus,” I interject, trying to change the direction
of their conversation. One of them continues gaping at the latest issue of Wolverine, his friend giving me a
patronizing nod. Philistines. I shake my head and return to my stupor behind the counter.

*   *   *

After I had regained my composure and left the restroom, I found Grace standing in the doorway between the
kitchenette and the living room, arms crossed across her chest.

“We need to talk,” she told me.

No four words in the English language had ever filled me with so much dread. Her face was calm, her eyes
never wavering from mine, indicating that she was deadly serious. I didn’t want to see that look on her face. I
didn’t want to hear those four words. I wanted to hold her and kiss her and watch the Independent Film
Channel with her. Steve Buscemi always made her smile.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Can’t you guess?” she answered, a caustic edge creeping into her voice.

“I don’t know. Does this have something to do with me ruining dinner?” I said, glancing over at the blank
television screen. Steve made me smile, too.

“For starters, you’re fat and lazy,” she said. Grace stood an inch above my 5'9" and my pants were as baggy
as clown pants around her petite waist, but she had never thrown it in my face like that before.

“You never seemed to have a problem with that before,” I said.

“I never realized how unambitious you are before. I have to admit that you had me completely fooled. I thought
that you cared about me and wanted this relationship to go somewhere. You promised me that you were going
to her a real job instead of sitting around the comic store all the time; you haven’t had one interview. Have you
even bothered to look for work?”

Hero Sandwich is a real job. Originally, Frank had asked me to work weekends so he could see his daughter;
his ex-wife had her during the week. I had done so well that he gradually gave me more and more hours until it
has reached the point that it seems like I am in the store more often than he is. I don’t just sit around the store
reading comics. I place orders and help customers. I even sprained my ankle once while helping Frank move a
heavy display case. It is a dead-end job and I know that someday I will have to grow up and get a full-time gig,
but I have no idea what I will do.

“Please just give me another chance,” I implored.

She let her hands drop to her sides and shook her head, “You haven’t even looked. You’re pathetic.”

I could feel my face growing flush. Grace had been working the same position for the same company for six
years with no raise, no incentive to stay. I was sorely tempted to ask her which was more pathetic, her six years
at a job she loathes or my year and a half at a job I love, but I didn’t want to escalate things.

Instead, I asked, “Why is all of this coming out now?”

“Mick told me about you and that slut you’ve been seeing behind my back.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. I hadn’t been seeing anyone behind her back. I had always been
true to Grace and I had no intentions of changing that fact. Ever. I wondered if I had heard her right, that Mick
had told her this.

“I haven’t been seeing anyone behind your back, Grace. I love you,” I told her.

“You’re so full of shit! I know you still have feelings for Angie! Mick told me so!” she said, advancing a step
towards me. Her nose was wrinkled up and hot tears started to run down her face.

There. I had heard correctly. My older brother had told Grace that I was sleeping with Angie.

Angie is my ex-girlfriend. Grace had met her once when we bumped into her at a grocery store. She had
spotted us picking out a pie for Thanksgiving at Grace’s parents and brought her cart up next to ours.

“Joe!” she exclaimed so loudly that I nearly dropped the pie.

We had broken up because Angie despised everything about me, from my interest in comics to my weight, and
she let me know it frequently. She preferred to go clubbing with her insipid friends and, on the rare occasion
when I was invited along, wanted me to ignore her checking out other guys. She had been fooling around
behind my back with this guy who was the spitting image of Neanderthal man.

“Hey, Angie,” I said, trying to sound indifferent so that she would leave us be. It didn’t work.

“Hi,” she said to Grace. “I’m Angie. You must be one of Joe’s little friends?”

“Actually, I’m his-”

“So, Joe, what have you been doing with yourself?” Angie interrupted, returning her attention to me. Grace
was clenching and unclenching her fists. I had to get us out of there or Grace was going to tackle Angie into
the deli case.

“This is Grace, my girlfriend. We were just headed to the checkout. Sorry we can’t stay and chat,” I said, and
led Grace away by her elbow. Murder still danced in her eyes. Angie called out something behind us, but we
both ignored her.

Grace was so angry that she didn’t even make fun of the tabloid headlines with me as we stood in the
checkout aisle. I kept quiet until we got the pie in the car and arrived at her parents’ house. Grace had never
been mad at me. We had argued and disagreed, but I had never seen her fiery mad. She despised Angie, and
I didn’t much blame her. I hadn’t seen Angie, though, since then.

“Honey, I was with you the last time I saw her,” I tried to explain.

“Deny it all you want, but why would your brother lie?”

Why indeed.

“Grace, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it. Just get out of my apartment,” she commanded me.

So I left.

Mick had gone to jail for nine months a couple of years ago on a DUI charge. He had been partying with a
couple of buddies, and must have put a whole bottle of vodka away by himself. They paid their tabs and left to
go cruising. He insisted that he was okay to drive, and his friends had apparently forgotten everything they
had learned from those “friends don’t let friends drive drunk” commercials. He hit a tree. One of his friends
ended up with a cast on his arm. It had been an election year, so the judge made an example out of Mick.

Dad wouldn’t talk to Mick for a couple of months after his release, and his two friends told him to stay away
from them. I was the only friend he had. I visited him in jail. I let him sleep on my couch until he found a job and
his own apartment. He had been a stand-up guy. As I started home from Grace’s apartment, I tried to divine
what I had done to deserve food poisoning and betrayal.

I had gone maybe half a block when my stomach started turning over again. I stepped inside a nearby bar,
shouldering my way through the crowd and dropping “excuse mes” in my wake. I sidestepped one inebriated
couple, necking carefree in the back, and pushed my way inside of the restroom.

A moth fluttered around the light that hung from the ceiling. A fetid smell of unflushed piss and offal hit my
nostrils like a shotgun blast. My jaw dropped when I discovered the stool was empty. The walls looked like the
Wall of Hammurabi, the laws of the obscene written and carved for all comers to read. It always amazes me
how many people happen to have magic markers when they’re using the restroom. I decided then that I would
start carrying one with me in case inspiration hit while emptying my bladder.

A roach scurried away from my foot. I considered crushing it under my toe, but shrugged the thought away.
After civilization collapsed, there would still be cockroaches and Joan Rivers. My stomach growled suddenly,
and I leaned over the toilet. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how I looked through the cockroach’s eyes.
When I was finished throwing up, I opened my eyes again. I washed my hands beneath the running water from
the faucet and rinsed out the acidy taste lingering in my mouth. My face was flush, my eyes bloodshot. Jack
Daniels had never torn me up this bad.

I left the restroom and found the payphone. I dropped a couple of quarters into it and dialed my brother’s
number. No answer, not even the answering machine. I put the phone back into its cradle and left the bar. I
walked home, bars belching patrons out onto the sidewalk every now and then. Coffee houses and nightclubs
comfortable under blankets of fliers and handbills eventually gave way to rows of suburban houses, each
looking as if it had been made from the same cookie cutter. When I finally closed the apartment door behind
me, I collapsed on the couch, determined to get answers out of Mick the next day.

*   *   *

Mick pulls into the parking lot in his Buick Skylark, wearing a big, shit-eating grin behind the steering wheel. I
empty the bottle of root beer with a long swig. I could try to smash it over Mick’s head, but he’d duck under it.
The bottle breaking over his skull would make a satisfying sound, though. While he clutches his cranium,
wincing in pain, I’d drive my knee into his groin.

He’s in better shape than me, though, and despite my need for gratification, I know if Mick got in one good
punch to the stomach, I’d end up curled in a fetal ball at his feet. He would stand over me and yell, “You’re not
Superman, asshole!” and kick me in the ribs.

He punches my shoulder, the standard Mick greeting, still smiling like a used car salesman. I don’t smile back. I
usually smile when Mick’s around. He’s been my best friend my entire life, which is what makes this so hard.
Mick feels something is wrong because he asks, “So what’s up? Somebody use one of your comics as a
coaster again?”

One of Mick’s friends crashed on my couch one time. The next morning, I found a big coffee ring on Superman
# 75, the issue when Superman died fighting Doomsday. Even though it’s not worth that much now, I had
dropped $20 for it back then. Mick’s friend was still snoring, so I wiped my ass with his wallet after a particularly
satisfying bowel movement. Crude? Yes. Disgusting? Definitely. Have anyone else ever used a comic book as
a coaster in my apartment since? Nope.

“Did you tell Grace that I was seeing Angie behind her back?” I ask him.

The grin fades and he looks down at his feet a moment, stroking the stubble on his chin that he claims is a
goatee. He looks up and meets my steady gaze, “No. I told her you were sleeping with Angie behind her back.”

I had hoped that everything that had led up to this moment had been a string of unfortunate coincidences, a
monumental lapse in communication between Mick and Grace. Mick has dispelled that happy notion.

"And you poisoned me with meat. Why? What have I ever done to you?" I ask, needing to know before I kiss
him upside the head with my meaty fist. My eyes are watering. Shit. I don't want to cry in front of him.

He waves his hands like a politician dismissing questions at a press conference, "Let me set the record
straight, little brother. Tucker's messed up your dinner order. I didn't know anything about that until I talked to
Grace this morning."

“You talked to Grace? Did you feed her more bullshit about Angela? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because I love her,” he says.

I blame pop culture for every mistake I have made with Grace. From movies to soft rock ballads played
repeatedly over the airwaves, even to comics to some extent, pop culture pushes the pursuit of true love. They
teach people that guys need to be romantic to win the girls’ hearts, striving to overcome all obstacles standing
in the way of love. What they neglect to tell you, though, is that once a man finds his one true love, he has to
keep working to hold onto her. Sure Ralph Macchio had won Elizabeth Shue’s love, withstanding ass-beatings
and an 80's soundtrack, but by The Karate Kid II, they’d broken up. Mick and I had grown up watching the
same movies, so what had gone wrong?

“You’re infatuated with Grace, so you made me eat meat?” I say through clenched teeth.

“I’m not infatuated,” he argues. “I love her... and I didn’t make you eat anything. The restaurant’s screw up, not
mine. I wanted your girlfriend, I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m your brother.”

I’m really going to miss all of the holiday smorgasbords after I break Mick’s clavicle. Mom is magic in the
kitchen. She makes exotic dishes she cribs from Martha Stewart or from one of the arcane-looking cookbooks
she picks up at yard sales. Her quiche is the best. Our mother...

“So you love Grace. Whoop-de-shit. You and I, Mick? We’re done. I hope that your delusions were worth the
friendship of your brother.”

He barks out, “Why don’t you go home and cry into a comic book? You don’t love her. You’re too busy being
the crown prince of dorks.”

Grace is the only woman I can see myself with. We had never been extremely sexual, neither one of us seeing
the use in fucking for fucking’s sake. Every time we kissed, though, I knew she loved me. I know she loves me.
She is disappointed in me and mad at me because of Mick’s lies. I have to fight for her.

“I do love her, but you’re not the person I need to prove that to.”

I turn and start to cross the parking lot. I don’t get three steps before Mick calls after me, “It’s not going to
matter, Joe. She’s meant to be with me.”

I stop and walk back to him, standing nose-to-nose with him, “I don’t care how infatuated you are with her,
Mick. She’s...”

“Stop calling it that! I’m not infatuated! I love her! I have since you introduced us! I know she loves me, too,”
Mick tells me. I can’t recall Mick ever being in love before. He told me once that he intended to be the
perpetual bachelor, that married people were in a constant state of prolonged agony which he intended to
avoid. I had asked him what he meant by “agony”, and he had told me how people in committed relationships
felt responsible for one another’s feelings, how they beat themselves up when their partner was miserable. He
told me that he would never subject himself to that.

“Has she told you that she loves you?”

Mick stands there for a second and pushes his toe through the dirt like a bored child, looking down at his feet
again, “No.”

“Then why mess things up between us for this fantasy you have made up in your head that she loves you, you
stupid asshole?” I yell. Mick has ruined my life. I do not care about him or his feelings right now. He has always
been the good-looking one. He was the popular one in high school. He is the one who has given up on love
because he did not want to be burdened with caring. Screw him.

“I wanted what you had,” he says.

“What?”

“I was tired of “friends with benefits”. I wanted something more. I thought I might have a chance with Grace
because she could see past your nerdliness. I thought if I broke you guys up, I’d give her a few weeks to get
over you, and then start trying to convince her that we should hook up,” he tells me.

I want to smash his face. I want to destroy him. The consequences are unimportant. I take a deep breath and
let it out slowly through my mouth. There is something warm on my face and when I try to brush it away, I
discover I am crying.

“She never told you that she loves you,” I say out loud.

“No.”

“Mick, Grace might not take me back, but I’d be stupid not to try.”

Mick says nothing as I turn away. It occurs to me I will have to forgive Mick. The next few times that I see him he
will wear the same hang-dog expression he wore when he told Dad about the DUI, but a few weeks from now,
he’ll tell me one of his shitty jokes and I’ll smile, maybe laugh, in spite of myself. It will be some time before I
trust him again, but he’s my brother. I love the asshole.

Better to get my licks in now.

“Mick?” I say and he looks up.

“What?”

“When you were a baby...”

“Uh-huh?”

“Grace always wondered if Mom had dropped you.”

I cross the street and head in the direction of Grace’s apartment. It is a blessedly short walk to Grace’s
apartment. There is no sign of Mick as I stand in front of Grace’s front door.

I have no idea what I am going to say to her. I know she wants to hear that I have a forty hour per week job
making better than minimum wage. She wants assurance that I am thinking about us in the long term. I am. I will
do anything for her. It’s time to prove that to her. Preparing for the worst but hoping for the best, I knock on her
door. One thing is certain, though...

I’m not eating at Tucker’s again.