The teenage girl ringing orders at Al’s #1 Italian Beef is questioning the man ahead of me in the lunch-hour line. He looks puzzled, an expression of passive amusement slightly lifting the corners of his mouth. The guy is mum. Froze solid.
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A black cashmere topcoat, a silk scarf, and wavy black hair give him a continental look. In his 40s, the gentleman–if he were not so slim –could be a credible Marcello Mastroianni look-alike, or an actor you glimpsed in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits.
Exasperated, the register girl appeals to a nearby coworker, “He already said he wanted a double dog.”
The gentleman is not getting the picture. He has yet to make an audible sound. By now, though, chatter mounts all around him; people are either entertained or irate. Nobody has been waited on since he first approached the counter.
The girl bags the sandwich and hands the gentleman his double dog, for which I have not yet seen him pay. He walks away, the same passively amused look on his face he’s worn all along.
