a pale yellow, with the logo of a girl in some old-fashioned costume. These are generic white with the word PICKLES in bold black.
“Do we have the paperwork?” I ask him.
Lamonte withdraws his hands. “I haven’t seen papers on a delivery since Susan left. It’s all digital.”
I stare at his face for a moment. His warm brown eyes are friendly, even though a hint of concern crosses his features. I hired him myself, because our last produce stocker quit without notice, and Susan, Austin Pickle’s head manager, has been on extended medical leave for almost six months. In Hawaii.
Nobody believes she’s actually sick. Lamonte found her private Instagram, all beach pics and cocktails with umbrellas. She might even still be getting a paycheck. We don’t know.
This has left me doing the manager’s job on a regular employee’s pay. Which I have tried to bring up with our dear boss Jace Pickle a hundred bazillion times. But that man is impossible to get a hold of. He clearly doesn’t give one rat’s ass about his deli.
It’s a good thing I’ve never met him in person. Because I would probably punch him in the face.
Lamonte arranges the pickles he’s salvaged on the cutting board. “Do you think Susan is changing our distributors from her medical leave?”
I shrug. “I sure didn’t change it. The supplier chooses the pickles.”
It’s details like this that make my job harder than it has to be. And without access to the ordering system, which Susan has kept to herself, I can’t even double-check anything. For all I know, this deli is one order away from bankruptcy.
Except our lunch rush just ended, and our crew made a hell of a lot of sandwiches.
We take in scads of money every day.
But I still have a pickle problem.
“So, what do we do?” Lamonte asks. “We can’t make the stuffed pickles with pickles this small. There’s not enough room for the stuffing.”
I close my eyes a minute, trying to keep my cool. “I know.”
“And we have an order for a hundred stuffed pickles for tomorrow. I have to deliver them at ten a.m.”
“I know, Lamonte.”
As I keep my vision black for a moment, I contemplate:
A. Screaming
B. Throwing pickles
C. Running off to Hawaii on medical leave
D. Shoving pickles up our dear owner’s—
The bell jingles to signal a customer has arrived out front. Lamonte and I are the solitary crew mid-afternoon on a weekday.
“I’ll take it,” I say. “Keep searching these pickles. If we can’t find enough to work with, do what we did last week when the new salami was too salty.”
“Grab cash from the register and head to Costco?”
I nod. I hate doing that, because it messes with the books. But technically, I’m not even in charge of the books. And if someone complains about the size of the pickles or the salt in the salami, it’s me they come to. Because like it or not, I’m currently the face of Austin Pickle.
I push through the swinging door into the front of the deli.
And almost stop in my tracks. The man who has entered looks like he came straight from a GQ photo shoot.
I can see the headline.
The latest fashion-forward look for the man who has it all.
His pants are fitted like they were sewn directly on his body. I don’t know what to call the color. Camel, I guess, or something fancy like bleached tobacco.
His shirt is a heathery sort of blue, perfectly pressed and tapered from shoulder to waist. His shoes shine so bright they actually reflect the table legs.
He’s out of place in our casual city, but that’s not unusual. With our downtown location, we get a lot of visitors. Some of them have come from New York and want to compare our pickle deli with the original in Manhattan.
I make it a matter of personal pride when they tell us ours is just as good, and even better seeing as they didn’t have to wait forty-five minutes in line.
Fresh, fast, perfect. Those are the words I keep in my head when I serve something from Austin Pickle.
“Can I help you?”
The man appraises me as he saunters from the door to the counter. “I don’t know you,” he says.
I plan to be friendly and say something cute like, “Tell me your favorite sandwich, and we’ll be best friends.”
But the pickle thing has put me in a bad mood.
So instead I say, “You’re not from around here.”
He takes a step back, an expression I don’t expect crossing his face. Concern?