9:00 a.m. Al’s Deli — Canning, Nova Scotia

Caucasian male, mid 30s, short dirty blonde hair, ripped jeans, and T-shirt with the number “42.”

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon (Vintage)

Page 351:

“You look fabulous.”

“Ah, you’re lying, you liar.”

“You look like thirty-five hundred dollars to me, Shpilman,” the landsman said, not unkindly. “How about we leave it at that?”

Sometimes he wished he could be sitting at Dunn’s or some other crowded 2:00 a.m. deli in the city of his youth, listening to half a dozen conversations from as many different parts of the world. To walk through the door of this place and have it be a portal to the other — that would be ideal. When he was finished, he’d leave, his belly full of smoked meat and black cherry soda. Then he’d walk out the door, back to the rural bliss of home.

Ami McKay