Said Sayrafiezadeh - Brief Encounters with the Enemy

Later that day, as I was coming out of the locker room, Mr. Moskowitz called me into his office. “Max,” he said. He sounded exhausted. “Come in, Max, and shut the door.” The knot in his tie was loose because it was the end of the day, it was casual time. He put his hands on his spreadsheets and looked at me from across the desk, a paternal, patient look. A look of forbearance.

What wrong thing, I wondered, had I done now.

“If you give one hundred percent, Max,” he said, “you get one hundred percent right back.”

And the next morning at nine o’clock sharp, I changed into my new uniform and took my place behind the coffee bar. I had been right, it’s not hard to pour a cup of coffee, especially when you have a five-dollar raise to go along with it.

That winter I learned fast and I learned well, and the customers would come walking up to the counter, tracking slush across the floor, which was no longer my problem, and I’d make their mochas and their cappuccinos and their lattes with a smile and a flourish. Sometimes Amanda would stop in unannounced, sometimes with her parents — who were proud of me — and little Oscar, who had started teaching me how to snowboard, which I had a surprising proclivity for. I’d turn around and they’d be standing there waiting for me to notice them. Amanda would be wearing that old fur coat with the American-flag pin.

“May I help you?” I’d ask, as if they were customers whom I’d never seen before. It was a game we played, and it never failed to get a laugh. Then I’d make their drinks how I knew they liked them — hot chocolate for Oscar.

When they were done drinking and chatting, Mom and Dad would say that they should let me get back to work. They’d wave goodbye. “So long! So long!” Amanda would stay a few moments longer, leaning across the counter to kiss me on the lips, and with that expert sleight of hand she had mastered somewhere long ago, she would slip a single packet of sugar into her coat pocket.

I am indebted to my agent, Zoë Pagnamenta, and to my editors at the Dial Press, Noah Eaker and Susan Kamil.

Many thanks also to Cressida Leyshon, Deborah Treisman, David Remnick, Philip Gourevitch, Nathaniel Rich, Matt Weiland, Jean Strouse, Kelle Ruden, Joanna Yas, Jessica Flynn, Sarah Levitt, Caitlin McKenna, Dani Shapiro, Michael Maren, Sharmila Woollam, Caroline Dawnay, Bryan Charles, Laurie Sandell, Keith Josef Adkins, and Thomas Beller. As well as to the Whiting Foundation, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York University, and Housing Works Bookstore Café (where several of these stories were written).

And every Wednesday evening at 6:45, Jeff Adler, Andrew Fishman, and Jeff Golick.

SAÏD SAYRAFIEZADEH was born in Brooklyn and raised in Pittsburgh. He is the author of Brief Encounters with the Enemy and a memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free . His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Magazine , and The Best American Nonrequired Reading , among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a fellowship from the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He lives in New York City with his wife and teaches at New York University.