SPARROWS POINT

“I’m sorry I asked to hear it,” says Paulo, shaking his head and laughing as he downs the last half of his Anchor Steam beer. “If I were a scorekeeper, Faidley's of Lexington Market would score a hit with their crab cake. But this is only the first inning. Whataya want to try next?”

After a pause, they shrug their shoulders, look at each other somewhat perplexed and throw up their hands, surrendering to their gastronomical dilemma. Finally Heathcliff says, “You talked me outta having oysters, but the crab cake from Faidley’s was a winner. We’re on a roll, ‘crab wise’ as Billy Wilder would say. How would a juicy pastrami sandwich on rye suit you?”

“The bell boy said we should try Mary Mervis Deli,” Paulo answers. “We could see how their pastrami compares to Cantor’s in Greenwich Village, sandwich-wise.”

They decide to walk down an aisle, passing Polock Johnny’s stall on the right side and pausing to inhale the aroma of fat oozing out of sausages on the grill. Seconds later they face a crowd of people coming up the aisle with no way to pass them, and are forced to the right, facing Captain Chucky’s stall, famous for its ‘Philly-style cheese-steak’ hoagies, sprinkled with onions and sweet peppers.

Eventually Heathcliff and Paulo maneuver into the third row of customers around Mary Mervis Deli. A sign in the center of the-stall reads: ‘We’ve been satisfying customers since 1913’. On display in five-foot-high refrigerated showcases, completely encircling the stall, are a wide variety of high quality meats, cheeses and salads, each labeled with a price per pound. Behind the showcases are at least five workers, moving like a well-orchestrated team. In the corners are meat slicers, running continuously and slicing wafer-thin portions of pastrami, corned beef and kosher ham that workers grab by a handful, often without weighing on a scale and slap it on a roll faster than you can say ‘Jackie Robinson’ five times. A short, stocky, middle-aged waitress with her hair tied in a bun and muscles bulging under her short-sleeves, counts out the change and hands it along with a paper bag to a waiting customer. “OK, who’s next?” she shouts, wiping her gloved hands on her soiled apron.

“I am,” answers Mark Hopkins, a handsome, six-foot four-inch, 30-year old that resembles Cary Grant in his prime; he wears the gold-plated trident emblem of the Navy SEALS on his collar, leans closer to the glass showcases and hollers, “Shrimp salad on a hoagie roll.”

In less than 10 seconds she uses her right hand to jam an ice-cream-trigger scooper into a stainless-steel pan of shrimp salad with the home-made dressing oozing out. She smears two scoops on a fresh roll held in the palm of her left hand, wraps the hoagie in a special cellophane paper and slides it into a takeout bag. The entire process is synchronized robotic perfection, completed in less than 30 seconds. No time or energy was wasted and not a word spoken or sung by the waitress.

“Anything else, hon?” she asks, smiling and suddenly feeling the urge to flirt. “How about a corned beef on rye or I? In case you didn’t catch my drift, it rhymes.”

“I catch your drift, but I’m a happily-married man. As for the corned beef, maybe next time,” he answers then feels a bump from someone pushing him from behind.

“Give it back. Give it back or I’ll break your arm!” says a slender man standing behind Mark; he appears to be about 40 and is dressed in a pink short sleeved, open neck polo shirt and dungarees.

Mark turns around to see that the man has a teenager by the throat.

“What’s all this commotion about?” Mark asks, using his fists to break the man’s