The Sub in Question

Introduction and First Reading

And the multitudes proclaimed that he who had cast the first sandwich was without sin.

Councilman Plessy dissented.

“I mean, it was a fucking sandwich,” the mayor murmured, as the Third Ward rep swiped macerated tuna and mayo from his cheeks and his favorite red Monday night polo.

“It was fucking assault is what it was!” Plessy raged. “It was malice of forethought, incitation, terrorism against a public official, and I could have been seriously injured.”

“Maybe, it’d been toasted or a footlong,” Detective Mead mulled gravely. “Thank the Lord it wasn’t a meatball sub or one of those teriyaki chicken things. They got some heft – the onions, I ‘spose.”

The mayor, who’d been mainlining Prilosec in anticipation of tonight’s council session, threw the cop a weary glare. Mead peered over the placard-bearing mob for concealed hoagies. “Can we take this inside, you think?”

“Not ‘til that thug’s been apprehended!” Plessy panted. “Don’t think I’m not pressing charges!” He pivoted to the throng. “Don’t you people think I’m not pressing charges!”

The crowd gawped at the councilman before laughter crackled through the motley ranks, and a gleeful chant went up. “EAT FRESH! REFRESH! EAT FRESH! REFRESH!”

“Then quit fucking with the evidence,” Mead suggested. “Officer Brainard’s been canvassing the protestors for incriminating packaging or Sun Chips or trace mayo. Subway uses a proprietary blend ‘steada Kraft or Hellman’s, so our lab condiment database may be able to link it to the weapon, God willing.”

Plessy turned with a red-eyed glare, then caught himself. Publicly dressing down Curtis Mead in front of the socioeconomically diverse crowd might invite another fully dressed meat missile or a Big Mac or a barrage of microgreens and quinoa from the university/gentrified libs scattered amid the homeless and the clergy. He stalked back inside City Center.

“You googled that up about the mayo, didn’t you?” the mayor accused weakly. “Just to piss him off.”

“Chat GPT,” Curtis amended. “More a guac guy, myself.”

**

“WEEK managed to capture the incident in its entirety,” Tyler Lopez intoned somberly. “We must warn you that the following video contains mild violence.”

Gilbert Plessy growled as he caught Jenise Rebholz’ near-break just before the cut to City Center plaza and the replay of his humiliation. The blurred six-inch tuna on Italian herb bread was scarcely recognizable until it exploded sloppily against Plessy’s right cheek. Indeed, a 12-incher spinning through the air at his aldermanic skull would have underscored the violent anarchy of these leftists and derelicts.

Madison Porter, who’d apparently pulled a short straw, was back – literally, back a half-block from the Millington Mixed Chorus celebrating the anonymous Subway bomber. “Councilman Plessy represents Millington’s Third Ward, which includes the downtown retail district. Plessy’s plan to unveil the Millington Safe Foods/Safe Streets Resolution tonight elicited a strong response from local residents, community organizations, and West Millington churches that sponsor food collection and distribution programs.

“Plessy’s ordinance would essentially ban outdoor food pantries. The councilman, a vocal critic of the homeless presence in the downtown area and transitioning West and East Side neighborhoods, argued his initiative attempts to enforce existing municipal codes aimed at protecting residents and the homeless from foodborne illness and adulterated foods. According to 1894’s Ordinance for the Regulation of Hawkers, Hucksters, and Other Purveyors of Victuals, ‘no person, whether styled hawker, huckster, peddler, purveyor, or by any other appellation, shall vend, dispense, or otherwise distribute any meats, fish, bread, dairy, fruit, vegetables, or other victuals fit for the sustenance of man, within the limits of any public street, lane, alley, or square of this City,’ except for city-licensed markets or stalls.”

“You read it that way, and it sounds crazy,” Gil snapped, slapping the sectional arm. Though he’d showered an hour ago, he still smelled like the day’s catch. “Fucking lying libtard media!”

“What’d they lie about, Hon?” Dayna asked casually as she deposited his fresh scotch and settled at the far end of the couch.

“Don’t start with me,” Councilman Plessy muttered. “They coulda paraphrased it – they didn’t have to quote the thing, you know…”

“In context?” Dayna supplied.

“Yeah.” Gil bolted half the glass.

“This is another obvious backdoor effort to evict the unhoused from the retail district and gentrified neighborhoods.” It was Radley, whose Sixth Ward covered the college and its woke hangers-on. He’d run this script during open meeting, getting SF/SS tabled ‘til the end of the month. “These pantries, which I might stress are on private church and agency grounds, provide vital sustenance to unhoused veterans, mentally and emotionally challenged individuals, displaced youth forced out of hostile or abusive home environments, the elderly, and working parents attempting to feed their children on inadequate wages. Councilman Plessy’s hanging his hat on laughably antiquated municipal language in a transparent ploy to starve the poor, the apparently unwanted out of sight, out of options, out of Millington.”

“Fucking boo hoo,” Gil opined.

“Meanwhile, Millington police have been unable to identify or apprehend the councilman’s assailant,” Madison transitioned. “Protesters at tonight’s meeting claim neither to have seen the source of the, ah, projectile or the declaration reportedly made prior to the attack. However, WEEK has been able to isolate the cryptic call that accompanied the…the attack.”

Gil’s 72-inch screen went black and the asynchronous City Center A Cappella Chorus mute before an audio wave exploded like crackling, hissing lightning across the plasma.

“At mekhanesh di mityahev le-ravyuta. Lakhma la yitpras lakh, ve-nuna la yeitei le-metzidakh!”

“Jesus,” Dayna gasped. Gil pushed abruptly and unsteadily from the cushions as Charles Barkley appeared onscreen, brandishing a Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki large enough to take down a first-grader.

**

“Excuse me?” Curtis murmured, a statue on the mayor’s carpet save a single eyebrow and a twitch of the mustache. “Hamas?”

The mayor squeaked back in his chair, nearly capsizing against the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Main and its start-and-stop, constantly merging and course-correcting with nearly calamitous results. Curtis glanced at the kind soul at the Blimpy’s across the way passing a bulky wrapped parcel to a bearded cadaver in a larger man’s burgundy corduroys, a Cardinals tee and a filthy Cubs cap.

“He didn’t specifically say Hamas or terrorist, per se,” the mayor grunted. “I have no desire to repeat what Gil did say, on multiple counts, except that he believes some malcontent of Middle Eastern origin hurled that tuna salad sandwich with malicious intent. So, yeah, I’m gonna need you to double down on catching this guy before fucking Plessy brings ICE, the National Guard, DOGE, and maybe even the freaking Food and Drug Administration down on us. So what you got on that sandwich?”

Curtis was a Firehouse Sub guy out of responder esprit de corps, but he hadn’t had a Hoboken Hero since forever. He pulled his eyes from the street. “Well, you know we found a crumpled Subway wrapper at the curb, and it fit the general description. But here’s the thing: I hit all six local Subways, even the ones in the Student Union and at the Shell heading out of town. Nobody sold a Tuna last night, in fact all day. I mean, shit -- they don’t even have a clever little name for the thing, you know. Just Tuna. I guess I can widen the search to Jimmy John’s, Firehouse, Blimpy’s, think we got a Jersey Mike’s on the Beltway.”

The mayor nodded dismally. “Oh, and that thing the guy yelled. We know it was a guy, right?”

“Or a Hezbollah baritone.” Curtis glanced over the mayor’s shoulder, and his eyes locked on the victorious cadaver’s. Detective Mead stumbled backwards as the stringily bearded man grinned up and waggled his sandwich, dislodging tomatoes and ham and an ejaculation of mayo.

**

“Yeah, what is this?” Councilman Plessy demanded. The pink-haired girl in the calico uniform stared down at the club sandwich, latched within seconds onto the Williamsburg Blue fuzz seemingly sprouting from around the ribboned toothpick.

“OK, if I were going to venture a guess…”

“I fucking know what it is,” Gil said evenly as his teeth clicked together. “That was a, a rhetorical question. I want to know why.”

“I can bring you a new sandwich, you know, and maybe knock your Coke off the bill?”

“Another sandwich. It isn’t just the bread, goddammit – look at the lettuce, and the fucking bacon is, shit, it’s practically gray.”

“I just dropped a BLT at table 7, and it looked fine,” the server murmured, flipping a tattooed hand over her left shoulder. Gil craned angrily around her hip, and Vincent Radley nodded at his colleague, a crispy bacon tail lolling from his lips. He waggled a wad of white bread, fire engine heirloom tomato, and vibrantly green iceberg as he grinned around the glistening strip. Gil pulled hastily back into the waitress’ sheltering shadow. After the breakfast debacle, he was ravenous, but prolonging this would merely give Radley further ammunition

“Just, just, just fucking gimme me the bill,” Councilman Plessy whispered harshly, or intended to, drawing more than a few constituent glares.

**

“What are you doing?” Dayna breathed as her husband rummaged through the kitchen garbage. “Gilbert?”

Gil emerged with a half-sleeve of what appeared to be blueberry bagels excepting the five o’clock shadow and an aromatic flat package labeled Nova Scotia’s Best. As Dayna approached, he threw her a palm and squinted at his rediscovered treasure.

“September 6 2025!” he barked, slinging the furry bagels back into the refuse. “C’mere – look at this date…”

“I’d really like not to,” Dayna began, but the look in his eyes drew her in. “What date, Hon?”

“The, the, you know, the bad-by date, the damned expiration date. What’s it say?”

She leaned carefully in. “I just bought this Saturday. All right, all right. See? September 18 2025. Hmm. Maybe the Prime Foods people let it sit on the loading dock too long, or it went bad at the lox plant or whatever.”

“The bagels, too? THE BAGELS TOO?”

Dayna suppressed a giggle despite or because of her spouse’s simultaneously belligerent and wheedling tone. “You know, why don’t we get you a drink and – give me that, Gilbert – and I’ll see if the fridge is working right. I was a little apprehensive about getting one of these high-tech things in the first place – maybe the motherboard or the hard drive’s malfunctioned. Wash your hands, Hon, before you touch the cabinet doors.” She located the manual in the towel drawer next to the smart fridge, then tapped at the appliance’s touchscreen.

“You have 17 spoiled items, at a replacement cost of $312.47,” Alexa’s cryonic cousin chirped. “Would you like to reorder? Your crab salad has entered Stage IV decomposition. Recommend biohazard disposal.” Dayna frowned, then pecked another virtual tab. “Systems are operating at optimal baselines, with a refrigeration temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit and a freezer temperature of negative 1 Fahrenheit. All sensors are functioning at 100 percent capacity.”

“Okaaaayy...”

“Your kale expired two minutes ago,” the appliance robot appended.

**

The initial report came in from Millington First Christian a block off the downtown loop, via Facebook. “GRATITUDE TO A GENEROUS DONOR FOR FILLING SOULS AND STOMACHS AT A TIME OF GREAT COMMUNITY TRIBULATION!”

In the accompanying photo, the glassed doors of MFC’s fresh air “Helping Hutch” were flung open to reveal three half-shelves solid of gleaming flat metal cans and an equal space stuffed with pitas, naan, tortillas, and brightly spotted twist-tied loaves of Wonder white. First Presbyterian’s similarly stocked shelf was depleted by 11, and church staff returned from lunch to find a new throng huddled before the replenished larder.

The Methodists behind the Main Street Speed-D Wash, the Salvation Army detachment across from the plasma center, and the A.M.E. just east of the Market Street underpass also fed the multitudes. And, yea, the Peoria news vans descended.

“Millington Councilman Gilbert Plessy, who has sponsored a citywide ban on outdoor pantries, called the local outpouring ‘a carefully orchestrated scheme to sway public sentiment and deflect from efforts to ensure the health and safety of Millington’s most unfortunate citizens,’” Madison Porter related above the eclectic fellowship in the church lot behind her. A gaunt man anywhere between 40 and 137 abruptly turned from the mob, bared a sprinkling of teeth and doffed his Cubbies cap at the camera as he waggled a bag of Wonder.

“Fuck,” Councilman Plessy and Detective Mead stated almost simultaneously, six miles apart.

**

Curtis was no platinum fan of the clergy, who generally wanted either his time, money, or a rationale for his life’s work or the speculatively rising Millington crime rate. Neither was he enamored over the prospect of some cunning old academic linguist giving him the discount freshman seminar. Fortunately, a passing acquaintance in the University Arts Department referred him to a cunning young colleague with a law enforcement pedigree.

“It’s Aramaic,” Associate Professor Malik Aboud smiled. Which would have been an impressive enough feat had Curtis actually played the .wav file. “Sorry, Detective – WEEK posted the story with the audio on its website. Professor Deshpande told you I’m the Department’s art historian. A passing knowledge of the classic tongues – including a few ‘dead’ tongues – is essential in seeking out and vetting works that may have originated millennia ago. Especially so during my former tenure with Scotland Yard and the FBI. After several replays, I determined your sandwich slinger was speaking Aramaic. You’re familiar with the language?”

“I made it through 10 minutes of The Passion one time,” Detective Mead responded. “Don’t know enough to ask bathroom directions, that’s what you mean.”

Professor Aboud’s eyes twinkled behind designer lenses. “The councilman’s assailant is likely not of Middle Eastern origin, unless he’s fourth or fifth-generation Midwestern or an ancient avatar with a Corn Belt patois. Were I to guess, your man hails from the Land of Lincoln or parts adjacent. Not to say he didn’t display a mastery of the tongue.”

“How you know that?” Curtis asked. “I mean, hasn’t every Aramanian pretty much been dead for like a thousand years?”

“Point taken. And, incidentally, there were no ‘Aramanians,’ per se. The language originated in my homeland of Syria, and spread through what’s now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, parts of southern Turkey, the northern Arabian Peninsula and parts of northwest Iran and even the southern Caucasus. Sorry, Detective. It isn’t so much the man’s phonetic fluency. You see, your hoagie-wielding dissident’s declaration wasn’t simply Aramaic. It’s liturgical Aramaic.”

“Well, that clears things right up.”

“Bear with. It’s a variant of the language used in sacred texts. Your man’s outburst didn’t just mean something—it likely was intended to do something. Your man was invoking something.”

Detective Mead stared at the dapper scholar for a beat, then blinked. “And just what was he invoking?”

"Roughly speaking, ‘You hoard what was meant to multiply. But the bread will not break for you, and the fish will not swim to your nets.’"

“Wait up,” Curtis rumbled. “So you’re saying it’s like, what, a curse?”

“I actually was hoping not to,” Aboud shrugged.

Second Reading

“You look, ah, good?” Councilperson Reynolds ventured as the mayor took his Corleone seat at the horseshoe table. “Been working out?”

As Gil’s eyes turned fully on her, Carlene realized she’d chosen poorly. Then the skeletal councilman smiled tiredly, and OMG, that was just so much worse. “Trying to cut back on the carbs a little. And the proteins. Plus, as you know, it’s been a stressful couple of weeks.”

Carlene nodded uncertainly; she’d been on that mechanical bull many times before. Truth be told, she’d been grateful when Gil had wrested the lightning rod from her following the disastrous public/media response to her ICE welcoming resolution. Even the woman who’d championed resegregating single-occupancy lavatories and defunding handicapped parking had balked at Gil’s please don’t feed the homeless crusade. Family values were her brand, and a little cheap charity was the lipstick on that pig.

As Gil returned to his thick sheaf of notes, Carlene glanced across the horseshoe at Councilman Radley. The now-token snowflake was paler than usual as he stared at his chief nemesis to her right, and it took her a beat to realize pity had replaced contempt in the libtard’s eyes.

**

“By the late 19th century, Midwestern rail hubs like Chicago, St. Louis, and Minneapolis were flooded with produce, meat, and dairy from surrounding farms,” Vince Radley recited. “Cities like Millington worried about spoilage and adulteration during transit, prompting ordinances to control where and how food could be sold.

“At the time, there were no modern inspection regimes, cold storage, or municipal food safety standards. But we now live in far different times. Today’s pantries provide packaged, inspected food manufactured under strict sanitary standards, so the public health rationale no longer applies or can be used as cover for the true agenda of Councilman Plessy’s proposal. I urge the Council not only to reject Resolution 3116-23. This is not our community. Now, I’d ask that we open the floor to public comments. I see we have quite a line forming.”

As if in response, a low, guttural, unnatural roar issued from the Council dais. A silence fell upon the multitudes, and their eyes as one fixed on the gaunt, horrified official above them. And Gilbert's visage traveled his colleagues' faces, from Councilperson Reynolds' mortification to the mayor's amused shock, to Councilman Radley's expression of pained empathy.

The last forced his eyes into the crowd and its mingled disgust and satisfaction and implacable disdain, and to the first of his presumed detractors at the floor mike. The unkempt bearded man in the mismatched cap and T-shirt simply offered an "Oops" grin as he patiently awaited his turn at bat.

"Know what?" Councilman Plessy finally murmured. The crowd and his peers craned. "Withdraw the resolution, and move to adjourn. It's 8:30 and I'm fucking starving."