Cold Sandwich

The sandwich was from the Walmart on Elm Street. Ham and cheese. $2.99. It was cold because Ray had bought it at midnight and it had been sitting on her kitchen table for twelve hours.

She sat on the steps outside trailer 14 in the Sunset Trailer Park off Interstate 70 in Youngstown, Ohio, and ate it slowly. The bread was stale. The ham was processed. The cheese had separated from the bread in one dry sheet that crumbled between her fingers. She ate it anyway.

Jules sat down next to her. He was wearing the same jacket he always wore—charcoal, faded at the elbows, the zipper broken so he held it shut with a rubber band. His hair was the color of the sky on a day when nothing is happening.

He didn't say anything. She didn't either.

Behind them, someone's television was on. A game show. The audience laughing at something that wasn't funny. The interstate rumbled in the distance—the constant vibration that you stop feeling after a while, like the hum of a refrigerator or the sound of your own blood.

Ray took another bite of the sandwich. It tasted like nothing. Everything did.

"You miss work?" Jules said. It was the first thing he'd said in three days.

"Yeah."

"Get fired?"

"Probably."

He nodded. He was looking at the horizon. Somewhere out there was Columbus. Three hours west. Where he used to work on a trading floor where the coffee was good and the chairs were ergonomic and the women wore heels to work. Before his mother got sick. Before she died. Before he came back to Youngstown and mixed drinks at The Rusty Nail and wore the same jacket every day and didn't talk much.

Ray finished the sandwich. She scraped the crumbs off the paper wrapper and ate those too. Her fingers were greasy. She wiped them on her jeans.

"You going into work today?" Jules asked.

"No."

"Good."

She looked at him. He wasn't looking at her. He was still looking at the horizon. But his mouth had moved in a way that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite nothing. It was the space between the two.

She stood up. She didn't look at him. She walked toward the bus stop—the one on Elm Street, the one with the bench that had been painted green twenty years ago and hasn't been repainted since.

Jules watched her go. He sat on the steps for a while longer. The television was still on. The audience was still laughing. The interstate was still rumbling.

He went inside trailer 14. It was empty. Ray had left her thermos on the kitchen table. He picked it up. It was warm. He opened it. The coffee was cold.

He drank it anyway.

The bodega down the street had a ham and cheese in the cooler. $2.99. Jules bought two. He ate one. He put the other in his pocket and walked to the bus stop on Elm Street.

The bench was empty. The green paint was peeling. He sat down and waited.

A bus came. It didn't stop. It kept going.

He sat there until the light changed. Then he stood up, walked back to the trailer park, and put the cold sandwich in the trash.

He didn't know why he had bought it. He didn't know why he had kept it. He knew, with the dull certainty of someone who had stopped expecting anything from the world, that he would buy another one tomorrow. And another the day after that. And he would eat one and keep one, and he would never know why.

That was fine. That was enough. It wasn't nothing. It wasn't everything. It was a cold sandwich in a trailer park in Youngstown, and it was the closest thing to a heart he had managed to grow in three months.

He went back inside. He sat on the couch. He put the rubber band on the table. He closed his eyes.

Outside, a dog barked. The interstate rumbled. The television in trailer 14 was still on.

Nobody was home to turn it off.

Author Note & Copyright:

Author Note & Copyright: