“The Sandwich Artist” // The McNeese Review

*This piece originally appeared in The McNeese Review Vol. 62

Sandwich making is the noblest art form. To craft a sandwich is to thumb one’s nose at the vast cosmic nothing that envelops us, to breathe life into a world hellbent on its own destruction—that was my ethos, anyway. But my coworker, Garrett, insisted sandwich making was nothing more than a job and a bogus-ass, thankless one at that. We replayed this argument in an infinite loop as we waited for customers to grace our godforsaken Subway with its flickering neon sign. It was nestled in the heart of Effingham, Illinois of all places, a whisper of a town that glimmered like a mirage in a sea of cornfields. On slow nights like this, I gazed out at the domed Midwestern sky, which was somehow claustrophobic in its sheer immensity.

“We’re not painting the Sistine Chapel for Christ’s sake,” Garrett said, ripping his weed pen. “We’re slapping deli meat on bread, you feel me?” He offered me a hit.

“A true artist is not constrained by the strictures of his medium,” I said, refusing the hit. “He can create a masterpiece on any canvas he chooses, be it a chapel ceiling or a ciabatta roll.”

“Isn’t art supposed to, like, stand the test of time? To weather the centuries? These masterpieces of yours get gobbled up in an instant, washed down with cheap diet cola.”

“That is why the art of sandwich making is especially noble. We commit ourselves to a medium that is fleeting by its very nature, that exists in the universe for a mere blink.”

“Uh-huh,” Garrett mumbled, staring dumbly at his phone. The device illuminated his face, the droopy eyelids, nose piercings, and untamed peach fuzz working in concert to create his signature look of stoned indifference. I knew better than to argue with him when his eyes reached this particular shade of red; I’d have more luck debating a fencepost.

The bell above the front door dinged, interrupting our intellectual sparring match. A blonde and a brunette stepped into our godforsaken Subway with its flickering neon sign, both clad in scrubs. The blonde appeared robust and capable, from her generous thighs to her tree-trunk torso to her Slavic cheekbones. Her entrance commanded attention; she possessed a gravitational pull. The brunette moseyed in meekly behind her, a mere afterthought. We fanned away the vapor and snapped on latex gloves.

“Welcome to Subway! What can I get started for you tonight?” I asked the blonde. Garrett attended to the brunette with a guttural sound that could be loosely construed as a greeting.

“I’m dying for a toasted tuna melt,” the blonde said. That alliteration, “toasted tuna,” revitalized her weary visage. According to her name tag, she was Candice Perkins, ER doctor. I imagined her wielding a pair of whirring defibrillators, wresting car crash victims back into this mortal coil through sheer willpower and determination. I imagined the tear-streaked faces of the car crash victims’ loved ones as they embraced her, praising said willpower and determination.

It felt only right to craft a sandwich that paid tribute to Candice’s emergency room heroics. So, I guided her through the buffet line, urging her to select toppings that embodied the duality of sweet and savory, a subtle nod to the duality she faced each day in her line of work: life and death. I contrasted the savory tuna with honey, sweet relish, and red onions, creating a chiaroscuro of flavors Rembrandt would have envied. Ultimately, the sweet flavors shone through, for so long as Candice wielded her trusty defibrillators, life would triumph.

Garrett, meanwhile, took a more avant-garde approach to the brunette’s Italian B.M.T. He tossed salami, pepperoni, and ham haphazardly across the bread like the bastard child of Pollock, as if the act of throwing the deli meats was more important than what was produced on canvas. When he attempted to toast the lopsided sandwich, he got distracted by his phone, finally snapping to attention when a cloud of black smoke billowed out, triggering the fire alarm. For his finishing touch, he slopped on enough mayonnaise to make the brunette wince.

When Candice beheld my finished work, she dropped all pretense of decorum. She snatched the sandwich from me before I could wrap it and shoved it into her mouth. Her eyes rolled back in ecstasy, and she emitted a moan that bordered on carnal. “Even better than I remember,” she said, leaning in so close I could smell her lavender perfume. “You’re a lifesaver.” She placed her hand on mine.

“No, you are,” I tried to say, but my vocal cords wouldn’t cooperate. Her words had warmed my heart, a vascular organ that, after a lifetime of toiling in anonymity, had grown cold. I watched helplessly as she turned and followed the brunette out the door, the dinging bell marking her departure. The aroma of her perfume faded; in its absence, the sickly-sweet stench of the Subway bread was more oppressive than ever. The prospect of spending another moment alone with Garrett felt insurmountable, like some cruel, Sisyphean punishment doled out by the gods.

He turned to me and asked, “Do you think I over toasted that chick’s sub?”

***

“This is some powerful shit,” Garrett said, cracking open Picasso’s biography and pointing at Guernica. “With this singular work, Picasso laid bare the horrors of war and made a statement that would reverberate through, like, the anals of history.”

“Anals of history, huh?” I replied, stifling a laugh. Garrett’s pseudo-intellectual act provided some much-needed levity; it had been weeks since I’d seen Candice, and I was overcome with longing. “Go on,” I goaded.

“Unlike sandwich making, real art creates, like, a tangible impact on the world,” Garrett continued, oblivious to his misnomer. “When you hear this Picasso quote, I think you’ll be inclined to agree.” He donned a pair of tortoiseshell glasses I’d never seen him wear and skimmed the book with his finger. When he located the passage, he cleared his throat.

“Wait, what’s all this?” I gestured at him broadly. The glasses were one of several changes to his ensemble—he’d also removed his nose piercings, shaved the peach fuzz from his upper lip, and replaced his grimy Pantera T-shirt with a smart, black turtleneck. Most astonishingly of all, he no longer punctuated his sentences with vape hits.

“All what?”

Before I could probe further, a geriatric farmer hobbled into our Subway. In a sight to behold, Garrett greeted the geriatric farmer, prepared a textbook chicken teriyaki sub, and toasted it a perfect golden brown. Instead of grunting his way through the interaction, Garrett made lively small talk. “They’re so cute at that age,” he said, admiring a photo of the farmer’s grandchildren. After Garrett rang the geriatric farmer up, I shot him an incredulous look.

“Okay, you got me,” he conceded, throwing his hands up. “I’ve been seeing this new chick, a PhD candidate in art history. She’s been pushing me to get my shit together—you know, become a better me.”

“That’s a relief. I thought maybe you’d turned to the hard stuff.”

“Anyway, what about you?” Garrett tossed his latex gloves into the trash.

“What about me?” I replied, watching the farmer’s taillights disappear into the night, swallowed by a sea of rustling cornstalks.

“Don’t play coy with me, dude. For weeks, you’ve been gazing longingly out the window, waiting for that blonde biddy in the scrubs to reappear.”

I wanted to deny it, but the truth was plain to see. When Candice tasted my toasted tuna melt, she became my kindred spirit, the sole inhabitant of this desolate spinning rock who appreciated my art. To exist without her was to exist without oxygen, to let the bronchioles of my soul wilt and blacken, to suffer a life of perpetual affixation.

“Is it that obvious? God, I’m such a fool. She’s a miracle worker, and I am but a humble sandwich maker—talk about batting out of my league.”

“You think I’m in the same league as an art history PhD? Until last week, I thought Raphael was a goddamn Ninja Turtle.”

“You’ve got a point there.”

Garrett insisted I find a way to see Candice again. But I had to make it seem like a chance encounter so I wouldn’t come across as desperate. He suggested I stop my heart, preferably by jumper-cabling my nipples to a car battery. This would land me squarely on her operating table, where she could press her trusty defibrillators to my chest and reanimate me. When I shuddered awake, I could play it cool and say, “Fancy seeing you here.”

I said, “I’ll add that one to the maybe column.”

***

Rather than roll into the hospital on a gurney, I elected to walk in on my own two feet. “I’m looking for Candice Perkins,” I told the stern-faced receptionist. I recited a yarn about how I’d dinged her car in the parking lot, but the receptionist wasn’t interested. Without glancing up from her crossword, she slapped a visitor sticker on my chest and directed me to the cafeteria.

I wandered the maze of pristine white hallways, clutching my magnum opus, the physical manifestation of my soul. I’d spent the past fortnight fine-tuning my recipe, starting with the tuna—I scoured every supermarket in a fifty-mile radius for the finest albacore fillets. I then experimented with sourdough starters, churning out more test loaves than the local food pantry could handle. Finally, I tinkered with vegetable combinations, picking verdant lettuce, juicy cucumbers, and sweet onions from my garden. Only after I’d exhausted every permutation did I begin to craft her sandwich in earnest.

I assembled the tuna melt in a trance-like state, my hands guided by some unseen force; I was not an artist, but merely a conduit to the divine. When I applied the final touch of sweet relish, I stepped back and admired my masterpiece. My creation was a thing of beauty, from the golden bread to the fuchsia onions to the delicate tendril of steam rising from the melted Gruyère. Salivating like a mastiff, I cut the sandwich in half. I wrapped it in parchment paper and festooned it with dainty hearts, each an expression of my undying affection.

I strode past mewling infants and stuporous octogenarians, visions of my sweet, sweet Candice dancing through my head. A montage of our future played out: she would take a bite of my sandwich and fall headlong into my arms; I would marry her in a pumpkin patch amid gilded fall foliage; for many years, Candice and I would try for a child, and though our efforts would prove fruitless, they would nonetheless bring us closer; when arthritis stripped us of our dough-kneading and defibrillator-wielding abilities, Candice and I would retire to twin rocking chairs, each passing season imprinting new smile lines on our lovestruck visages.

When I reached the cafeteria, I spied Candice immediately. She emitted a radiant glow that made all the other patrons look like extras, trivial background characters in our love story. She sat alone, generous thighs crossed, engrossed in a romance novel. I tried to approach her, but my knees felt weak, ligaments paralyzed by her nymph-like beauty. I steeled myself, recalling the pumpkin patch, the twin rocking chairs, the smile lines.

Just as I goaded my legs into action, another man approached Candice’s table, a silver fox with a stethoscope draped around his neck. He flashed her a winning smile, the kind of smile that could soften any diagnosis, that could give one the resolve to fight cancer. Candice smiled back and set down her book. The silver fox kissed her cheek and handed her a brown paper bag. His audacity made my blood bubble like molten lava. When she removed the contents of the bag, my anger turned to despair; the proverbial lava cooled, forming an oppressive fortress of black rocks. Clasped in my beloved’s hands was a tuna melt from Jersey Mike’s.

***

I stared at the letter the way one stares into an abyss. The four words printed therein represented a spiritual void, a limbo from which there was no return: “Employee of the month.” The afternoon, likewise, was an abyss, a fugue state I could not deign to remember. After I watched Candice sink her teeth into the Jersey Mike’s sub, I sped down the highway, grain silos, filling stations, and adult superstores flitting past. Effingham’s colossal white cross presided overhead like a tombstone, a grave marker for a life that would never be. Through sheer force of habit, I managed to don my “Eat Fresh” apron and return to that godforsaken Subway to accept my award, the same award I received every thirty days in an endless, purgatorial loop.

“You okay, bro?” Garrett asked, waving his hand in front of my face. “You look like you’re staring into, like, an abyss or something.”

“Just peachy. For a spell, I thought I’d die an unrecognized pauper, but this prestigious honor changes everything! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

“You earned it, big guy.” Garrett slapped me on the back.

The bell dinged, announcing the arrival of a bleary-eyed trucker. The bleary-eyed trucker scratched his ass contemplatively as he studied the menu, at last ordering a meatball marinara. I put my existential crisis on hold and crafted the sub, keeping my emotions in check until I glimpsed the wall to my right. There, stretching across the exposed brick, were my employee-of-the-month photos, dozens of consecutive headshots chronicling my descent from an idealistic young man to a world-weary cynic, his hope and hairline receding in tandem. They towered over me like a depraved art installation, a gallery curated specifically to taunt me, to highlight the futility of my achievements. I realized Garrett was right—I had devoted my life not to an art, but to a job, a menial occupation that had stripped me of my potential.

The trucker, eyes bleary from inadequate REM sleep, cleared his throat impatiently, jolting me from my trance. I finished his meatball marinara without a flicker of joy or wonder; my movements were perfunctory, as if I were not man but machine, a feelingless android in an assembly line. The trucker accepted the finished product without a word of acknowledgment, confirming Garrett’s ethos—not only was our occupation bogus, but it was thankless, too.

After the bleary-eyed trucker mercifully departed, Garrett spied Candice’s tuna melt in the back room. “Who’s this for?” he asked.

“Me,” I replied. “Who else?”

“It’s got hearts on it.”

“Sometimes, I like to add a little pizazz to my creations.”

“You sure it’s not for that blonde biddy with the scrubs?”

“She’s more of a Jersey Mike’s girl, it turns out,” I said, sighing wistfully.

“I feel you, man. Women are fickle creatures,” Garrett said, placing his hand on my shoulder. I’d been so wrapped up in myself that I hadn’t noticed the change in his appearance—he’d dropped his pseudo-intellectual wardrobe in favor of his old look: the nose piercings, the Pantera T-shirt, the untamed peach fuzz. A pang of guilt shot through me—here I was wallowing in self-pity while Garrett suffered in silence.

“Listen, do you want to split this with me?” I asked.

“Hell yeah, your boy is famished. All I ate today was a damn Hot Pocket.”

To the chagrin of an approaching customer, Garrett flipped the sign on the door to “closed.” I cleared a table by the window and dimmed the fluorescent lights, trying to create some semblance of a dining atmosphere. We pulled up two rickety chairs and sat across from one another. Garrett rubbed his hands together eagerly as I unwrapped the sandwich, the melted Gruyère sticking to the parchment paper. Before we dug in, Garrett offered me his vape pen, and, for once, I obliged, taking an aggressive hit that left me hocking phlegm into my elbow.

When Garrett sank his teeth into the sandwich, his eyes took on a blissful, faraway sheen. He chewed in silence, but this wasn’t his usual indifferent silence—this silence was charged with a reverence, a spiritual quality. He savored each bite, pausing to dab his mouth with his napkin and lick the sweet relish from his fingertips. As he neared the end of the sub, his eyes welled up; when he housed the final bite, a single teardrop trickled down his cheek.

I felt newly baptized as I watched the salty droplet traverse Garrett’s acne-scarred face. It washed away the years I spent swallowing my pride and donning my “Eat Fresh” apron. I was no longer a jaded fossil with a tenuous hairline, but a starry-eyed youth. With incredible vividness, it appeared to me, the crayon portrait I drew of my dream sandwich shop, a quaint delicatessen that would nourish the town. I saw the green-and-white-striped awning, the red-brick façade, the yellow string lights framing the window. Above the shop stretched an indigo sky that was not claustrophobic but spacious, tinged with infinite possibility. The stick figure patrons grinned contentedly, for my shop crafted every sandwich with a secret ingredient, a spice the regional restaurant chains had callously tossed aside—the spice of love.

Years later, Garrett would confess the sandwich had likewise taken him on a dope-ass psychedelic journey. The garden-fresh vegetables activated long-forgotten reaches of his palette, a palette atrophied by a steady diet of beige foods. He would recount how it transported him to the breakfast nook of his boyhood home, a nook that was not only a physical location, but a coordinate in his soul, for it was in that nook that his mother dutifully served his meals until the cruel hands of Hodgkin’s lymphoma ripped her away. Garrett tasted a secret ingredient in my sandwich, the spice his mother infused into every meal, even as chemotherapy sapped her rosy cheeks of their luster—the spice of love. Teasing the tuna melt across his taste buds, Garret said, was like gazing upon the Sistine Chapel ceiling after a decade of blindness.

But that evening, Garrett was too proud to open up to me about the nook.

“So, what do you think? Is it art?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“I mean, maybe, if you want to get technical about it,” he said, brushing the tear from his cheek and washing down the sandwich with cheap diet cola.