They don’t serve sliced meat and the owner’s name isn’t really CK, but it’s CK’s Deli all the same. Located in a crack between Flatbush, Midwood, Kensington and Ditmas Park, it’s my favorite of the two delis at Newkirk Plaza. I’ve been going there since I was a kid.
Now that I don’t have a job, I take my place near the counter, reading the Daily News and listening to the regulars talk shit. Given the neighborhood, it’ll usually be some mix of Bangladeshis, Jews, Haitians, Chinese, Mexicans, Russians, plus everyone else. They gossip as they stir tea, drink beer out of brown bags, and scratch lotto tickets. CK’s coterie barely makes room for customers to pay, but no one complains because the offer is open to them too. Anyone with a spare minute is welcome to hang with CK.
It’s a cold and gloomy afternoon at the plaza. Even the pigeons seem disenchanted, like they just learned they were too fat to leave the borough, when all along they thought they had the option and that was the only thing that made living in South Brooklyn tolerable. I don’t feel too different. This morning at breakfast, my mother reminded me that I’m too old for an entry-level job and too unskilled for whatever comes after that. Well, she didn’t say all that. Just, Happy thirty-fourth birthday. I intuited the rest.
Still, I try to keep my head up because I’m hanging with CK and his crew. It’s the middle of a workday for them, too, and they don’t seem bothered. My therapist tells me loser is a state of mind. Then again, she’s younger than me and accepts Medicaid so maybe she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
A man and a woman about my age walk into the deli and we all tune in. The man is tall and has a cast on his arm. The woman is pretty and loud-talking like she’s thrilled to be herself. They do a lap around the store looking for something CK doesn’t seem to have. The woman goes up to the snacks and asks the man, apparently her boyfriend, what chips she should buy. He says he doesn’t know. She says, Pick for me. So he picks sour cream and onion, a reasonable choice, but she says, Ew. I hate those. Why would you pick that?
All of us at the counter are groaning, listening. The man can tell. He says, You asked me to pick. Pick for yourself. She says, No. All of this is unhealthy bullshit. Why don’t they have any, like, organic or healthy snacks here? I turn around and joke, What about the Veggie straws? But no one seems to hear. People always tell me I mumble.
The woman asks CK if he has a bodega cat. He says no, even though there’s a cat sleeping on a bread box in back. He’s Lebanese and doesn’t like when people call his store a bodega.
When the couple walks out, everyone erupts. What an obnoxious person. That poor guy. Why is he with her? I think they’re being kind of harsh, but she’s definitely tacky. Everyone is taking their best shot except for CK. He says no, you’re wrong. Her boyfriend is the idiot. She’s probably just acting like that because she’s sorry to be with him.
The others are incredulous—something about her complaining about CK’s terrible snack options rubbed them in a personal way. He seems fine, they say. She’s definitely the idiot in the couple. But CK’s adamant. He says, You’ll agree with me when I tell you what happened last week. And then he tells us.
So a bunch of kids were hanging in the store after school. About six of them, probably twelve years old. Another kid, who wasn’t with them, came in by himself. He was skinny and mopey and pale, kind of like you, he says, pointing to me.
The people at the counter are always roasting each other like that. I laugh and say, Alright, alright. Get on with your story, CK. I forget to take my chance to tell them my name. CK goes on.
So the kid by himself, the mopey kid, has a skateboard. One of the kids in the other group approaches him and asks if he wants to play SKATE. CK stops and looks at me, expecting me to explain what SKATE is. Maybe he saw me skating in the plaza when I was young. I say, SKATE is just HORSE but with a skateboard. If you can’t match your opponent’s trick you get a letter. Everyone nods like they get it and CK continues.
He says he had a feeling there was going to be trouble. The kid with the skateboard didn’t look like he had a lot of heart. The other group were a bunch of little shits. These are middle school kids, mind you. The worst of the worst. We laugh because CK’s own kids are in middle school. They hang out in the deli sometimes and are actually pretty sweet.
So eventually CK hears yelling in the plaza, and he goes outside to see what’s happening. The mopey kid and the popular kid are each holding one end of the skateboard, refusing to let it go. The six other kids are laughing at the one, making fun of the eczema around his lips, occasionally kicking him in the shins.
CK asks the fruit lady outside, What’s going on? Apparently, the mopey kid lost in SKATE and he had to give his skateboard to the other kid. The popular kid claims they made a bet, but the mopey kid says he never agreed. It’s a he said/she said situation, except it’s obvious the popular kid is lying. You take one look at the mopey kid, and you know he’s not a bettor. I feel bad for him, but you can’t interfere in this stuff, right? CK waits for us to agree and then goes on.
At that moment, the couple who was just here comes out from the subway entrance. They see the situation and stop to listen. I’m thinking the man is maybe a teacher or something because he walks over to the kids and asks them what’s happening. They’re still too young to disrespect a big, tall random man like that; you know, he could probably kill them. So they explain the situation. The man figures out real quick that the other kids are just fucking with the mopey kid. He tells them to give him the skateboard. He puts his hand on the board. Pretty much demands it. They can’t say no. We’re all like what the fuck is this guy doing. For a second, it was actually pretty heroic. His girlfriend even took a picture on her phone.
So with me and the fruit lady and the kids and some other plaza regulars, we’re a little crowd. The man sees he has a show. He’s about to give the board back to the mopey kid, but then turns to the other kids and asks what the final trick was, the one the mopey kid couldn’t do. They say it was a kickflip. The guy has this stupid grin now and says, I used to skateboard too. A kickflip’s easy.
CK turns to me and asks if a kickflip is easy. I say, Not with all those people watching. He waves the back of his veiny hand at me like I answered wrong. He goes on.
Anyway, me and the fruit lady are like, Oh my god. What is this man doing? No fucking way. But he really puts the board on the ground and he tries to kickflip. We can’t believe it. He hops on the board, crouches and then jumps. The board turns in the air but I guess not enough. The man’s feet land on the thin edge. He falls backward. It’s just gruesome. We all hear the crack of his arm breaking. That’s why he’s got a cast now. Anyway, the guy is on the ground in agony. But the skateboard keeps gliding, right into the group of bad kids. One of them picks up the disputed skateboard and then they all run away laughing. The mopey kid realizes what happened and now he’s crying like crazy. The girlfriend’s screaming for a doctor. It’s a whole scene. By then, there’s a line of customers waiting in the deli, so I go inside. But you see what I was saying. He’s the idiot, not her. CK knocks a quarter on the counter like it’s all settled.
We’re convinced. Me and the lotto lady and the retired MTA track layer and CK’s imam uncle and the delivery guy on break savoring his Corona. We all agree it was the man who was the idiot. Then we start laughing for like a minute straight. No part of me is thinking how the man is still the one with a girlfriend, and confidence, and probably a good job too. I just listen to us laugh. It’s nice to laugh on your birthday.
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Rumpus Original illustrations by Carl Dimitri
