The Rare Roast Beef Sandwich
I don’t eat rare roast beef from just any deli. I won’t eat roast beef from a deli without a menu because it just feels that they don’t have a plan. One has to prepare for roast beef. A business has to have the correct accoutrement available and the utilities to keep the product fresh. I also won’t eat rare roast beef from a place that sells paper towels or lottery tickets, and that might just be me being a prick. I know I’m a prick because I eat animals. I realize how wrong that is and I choose to do it anyways, so I’m a prick. Anyways, I use to work in a deli myself and I know what a delicate product rare roast beef is. I know that it takes careful maintenance so to stop oxidization and a loss of flavor.
There are occasions where I really crave rare roast beef the same way I’ll crave pieces of sashimi. There’s a de-evolved animalistic appeal to the rare meats that I really enjoy and beef especially has the iron-minerally taste that really encapsulates what eating meat should be all about. It’s tender and beautiful the way a slicer cuts through the layers of muscle and, although I am picky about where I get rare roast beef, there is one bodega about a mile from my apartment where I’ll order it.
I rode my bike there yesterday. The weather was beautiful and I got my sandwich no problem. It was on the way back home that I encountered the problem. A car door flung open into the bike lane and I wrecked into it.
The impact wasn’t too bad as I slammed on my breaks just a second before. I didn’t fall over and wasn’t hurt. My bike wasn’t damaged too much, although I may have done some damage to the car door. But it did shake me up and it did piss me off.
First, I was pissed at myself for not having something better to say than “shit” before a potentially fatal accident. I always thought I would have a great monologue, just a final extravagant farewell before my soul leaves the body. Now I know that I might just “shit” and that’s that. I was disappointed about that but what really pissed me off was the passenger who was getting out of the car.
It was this lady who just looked at me with bewildered eyes, said “oh my God,” and then closed the door without an apology or anything and left. I should say that the driver asked me, very courteously, “sir, are you alright, sir?” But the passenger’s response and lack of care just pissed me off. Maybe she was scared, since she seemed to be hiring the ride, and perhaps didn’t want to be charged for damages. Neither did I, actually, and since the “bike lane” was actually just the margin of the main road and the traffic laws seemed pretty unclear to me at that particular spot, I zoomed off before the driver could check for damage.
I was still shook up when I got to my apartment, where about three ambulances were parked. There were at least five or six paramedics on the stoop, surrounding a large and older woman who was sitting in a metal chair and connected to a mess of plastic tubes. She seemed to be breathing heavily, closing her eyes and staring up into the warm weather. I inferred that the paramedics had saved her from some type of collapse or stroke and I waited patiently by the stoop for them to do their job. As it turned out, they were moving her into the apartment and not rescuing her from it.
The paramedics picked her and the metal chair up and heaved her up the stairs as she took struggling and heavy breaths from the clear spring sky. I watched empathetically, with a special sensitivity for the young boy who seemed to be the only family member helping the paramedics. To me, she looked as if she were ready for hospice care. What would it be like to share an apartment with a dying person?, I thought to myself, considering the young boy. I would probably feel bad all of the time. Even watching her out on this beautiful day I couldn’t help but feel sad: for the woman and for my rare roast beef sandwich that was still in my bag, waiting to be eaten. I had went to great lengths for this rare roast beef sandwich and now my appetite was gone.
