Robin Wilder
The Midnight Delicatessen
At the Midnight Delicatessen, your sandwich comes with a song. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say there is a song inside your sandwich. Before you order, before your fingers even touch the doorknob, they are baking your song into the bread. It’s not as if they know you are coming or have some magical soothsaying yeast, but the Midnight Delicatessen exists only when you need it to exist. When you turn a corner, eyes downcast, soles of your shoes scraping the pavement, there it is. You will enter because you are meant to enter.
A bell chimes. The sound is what you have always wanted to sound like crossing a threshold. Two people stand behind the counter, a man and woman in identical lavender aprons. You step closer, see that their aprons are shifting, amalgamating, and it might be the Milky Way or Andromeda or a galaxy of petals you can’t name. But it is beautiful, impossible to unsee. You blink. Your hands are flat on the countertop—you do not remember the time between the door and now. You wonder if the time ever occurred.
The restaurant is empty, save the man and woman and you. In another circumstance this might frighten you, but these people, they remind you of your parents, your parents at their best, distilled into dewy memories of birthdays and holidays and when both were still around. Heat spills down your throat and chest, a hot chocolate sensation, when the woman says, “Welcome to the Midnight Delicatessen.”
Her voice cracks you open, water in your eyes, and nothing makes sense. You haven’t cried in years, not since you cried so hard you became a wretched little thing who lost the ability to do so. The man offers you a napkin; you accept, blow your nose with all the gravitas of a cartoon character. It cannot be a pretty sight. They are unfazed, sharing a look that feels familiar, one you’ve seen a thousand times. You should not have forgotten.
Having embarrassed yourself for no good reason, you suppose you ought to buy something. Tacked to the wall behind them is a menu. You frown. You are bad at choosing things from a menu you don't know. Fortunately, this menu has only one item:
Your Sandwich (and song)
Unexpected, though you are not complaining. You do not enjoy being that person who dithers at the register unable to decide. Still, you want to ask what’s on the sandwich. The woman shakes her head, and you're quite certain you did not speak your thoughts aloud.
“Your sandwich is on the house,” the woman says, and the man disappears into the back.
Well, that’s very kind of them, of course, but what about money (you have no money) or if you don't like it (you will love it) or in an inexplicable way you manage to ruin everything (you won’t) and the shop catches fire (it won’t) and—
Your sandwich sits on a plate, the rim decorated with the history of your life. Friends. Lovers. Successes. Failures. Joy. Sorrow. Your entire life. You cannot fit on the rim of a plate, and yet you do. You stop questioning it. The plate, the sandwich, the man who did not return, the fact you are now seated in a booth by a window just perfect for you, and the woman is watching, brows crinkled. She nods toward the sandwich.
The bite you take floods your mouth—not meat, not vegetables, not cheese, not bread, a violet note, like the end of a sunset, the violinist's bow lifting from the final string, and your song is against your tongue, eternal, scorched into being, pleading for release, battering your teeth until you free it to soak the atmosphere. Your song surrounds you, the woman, the walls and the floor and the window you notice overlooks every decision you ever made, including That One, the reason you’re here, the reason you stare at the ceiling at night and pretend to be fine and pretend that you wouldn’t die ten years before your time to have ten more seconds, ten seconds to spare, ten seconds to do a single thing.
“It's alright,” the woman says. “He knows you wanted to be there. He knows.”
You turn to face her, but the Midnight Delicatessen is gone.
The sidewalk beneath your feet is the same corner from the beginning. It leads to a field of epitaphs and flowers, a stone you never read, spent ages running in the opposite direction because you were too late. Except maybe you weren't. There’s a song in you, and you have to listen. You have to round the corner and meet your mother in the black dress she wears once a year. You have to hold her hand. You have to tell her you’re sorry you made her wait.
You have to read the stone.
Robin Wilder is a non-binary writer, graphic designer, and illustrator based in Missouri. Their work can be found in BULL, the museum of americana, and Roi Fainéant. Robin lives with their two cats, Ash and Carbon, who are often the first to hear a new story. Unfortunately, neither is very good at feedback.
