Emile

I like to make a lunch date with Emile when the somewhat over-privileged and navel-gazing tendencies of the BigLaw crowd get on my nerves.  Emile works at the bagel shop located in the ground-floor atrium of our building.  He may sound French, but he really isn’t.  He’s from Cleveland, has never set foot outside the United States and still thinks of pizza as a foreign food. His teenage parents named him Emile on a whim after finding a reference to French intellectual and author Emile Zola in their history textbook. Short-lived domestic bliss ended abruptly for one-year old Emile when his father took a job in a steel factory in Detroit and his mother joined a commune in California.  Emile was raised by his gentle, common-sense paternal grandparents and made his way to the City at the age of 18 where he stayed ever since.

Now in his early fifties, Emile is the pater familias of an ever extending clan of his own.  He keeps me grounded with his no-nonsense take on the hurried over-achievers he serves with slow-baked bagels and custom-made lattes every day. He strongly disapproves of take-away food and I have often seen him on the verge of refusing a customer’s request to “wrap that to go, please”.

“What, these people have two extra hands or something so that they can eat and type at the same time?  Why don’t they just sit down for ten minutes and taste the bagel for chrissakes,” he grumbles after barely accepting payment from yet another “to go” patron.

“Yeah, I know, it’s crazy,” I agree as I sip my freshly squeezed orange juice on a high stool at the counter.  I don’t have the heart to tell him that I get my lunch to go at least four times a week myself.  But never at Emile’s.  His bagels are too oven-warm, too imperfectly round and too overstuffed to eat on the fly.

“So, watcha working on?” asks Emile as he wipes the counter with a red-checkered cloth.

“I have to prep the client for depositions in the “Your Momma” Case.” With Emile, I use my private code name for the file so he won’t know which client I’m talking about.

“Oh boy,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Does he behave since you told him off about the bad e-mails?”

“Most of the time.  I’ve got him on a pretty tight leash. He still doesn’t get that he did anything wrong though.”

“Didn’t he steal away all his company’s clients, set up his own business and use all of their secret know-how to compete with them?”

“Pretty much,” I admit. “Allegedly.”

“Sure, allegedly.” Emile shakes his head.  “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you is what I say.  I’ve been making bagels at this place for twenty-five years and I never thought of setting up my own business.  Mind you, I don’t know what goes into the bagel batter.  Or the tuna salad.  If I did, I might’ve given it a shot,” he winks.

“I wonder if I should set up shop somewhere and practice law on my own,” I say dreamily.

“What, and not come down here to eat my bagels?  I won’t have it, your dreams aren’t coming out of my paycheck, Missy!”

“Don’t worry,” I laugh, “Before I leave, I’ll tell my client in the “Your Momma” case to give you a bagel contract to supply his whole company for ten years.  That should tie you over.”

“Sure,” he grumbles, “As long as they don’t get them to go.”

And on that note I return upstairs for the afternoon session.

Secretly yours,

The Undercover Writer.