Matthew Kruchak‘s winning short story, “Business Men’s Lunch,” has been published in the latest issue of So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
“Business Men’s Lunch,” a story that succinctly underscores the working man’s desire for equality and respect, won The Shevchenko Foundation Emerging Writers Short Prose Competition in 2022.
TSF congratulate Matthew and we’re pleased to share his story below!
For more information on the Emerging Writers Short Prose Competition CLICK HERE.
Business Men’s Lunch
By Matthew Kruchak
I might not be a businessman, but I damn well thought I should eat like one. I had the 35 cents I needed for the meal, but the waitress at Electric Lunch No. 2 wouldn’t let me sit at a table for four. She said I had to sit at the lunch counter with my friend Davyd like I always did. She mumbled something about an insurance men’s conference at the posh hotel up the street. They would be packing the place for the four-course Business Men’s Lunch. I said to hell with that—I wanted the new special, too.
“There won’t be room at the counter for all my food,” I told her. “I want to be served the Business Men’s Lunch at a table, just like a businessman.”
The waitress eyed my worn shoes then moved up to my dust-covered slacks and tattered jacket. It’s the uniform of a man who cleans the train station—a uniform that didn’t seem to demand her respect. She scowled and headed to complain about me to the counterman who was sweeping the floor near the kitchen.
This gave me time to decide which dishes would make up my meal. For the main course, I thought about the Frankfurt sausages with sauerkraut, but my wife Iryna could make those for me anytime. There was the fried calves’ liver with bacon, but the breaded veal cutlets with tomato sauce and green peas sounded good, too. My Austrian neighbours called it wiener schnitzel. When they cooked it, the scent wafted into my north-Winnipeg backyard and made me hungry. They’d never invited me over for dinner, so I thought I’d try it today for lunch.
A shadow fell across the table.
“She sent you over now?” I asked Davyd, who works at Union Station with me. He sells the Winnipeg Evening Tribune from his spot just outside the waiting room in the grand rotunda. We had an arrangement where I’d collect any tossed aside newspapers I’d find on my cleaning rounds; he’d resell them, and we’d split the sale—10 cents for a paper with comics and 5 cents without.
I used this extra money on restaurant meals that weren’t toast and coffee. I’d had Italian-style macaroni and cheese from Torino Cafe. I enjoyed Florence Cafe’s fowl dinner and had chop suey for the first time at New Olympia Cafe. Iryna would’ve been upset if she knew I was using the extra money this way, but I was trying to find a dish to replace my favorite meal. Before leaving Galicia for Canada two years earlier, I had tender rabbit in sour cream with beets and a bottle of Bergschloss beer from Dmytruk Eating House in Ostroh. I hoped the Business Men’s Lunch at least came close.
Davyd pleaded with me to sit with him at the lunch counter. They’d make room for all my food, he said.
To hell with that.
“They want me pushed off to the side and out of the way,” I told him. “Why not offer a Working Men’s Lunch? There’s more of us than them.”
I reminded him that he stood up to those men in 1919 during the general strike, yet we’re still poor, we still work long hours, and the best I can do now is eat lunch like one of them—at a table.
Davyd sighed and shuffled back to the counter to retell our conversation to the waitress and counterman.
The restaurant owners had hired a couple of kids to stand outside the Fort Garry Hotel and direct conference-goers to the restaurant. Their plan worked. More men in suits and fedoras filed through the door than the usual workers in overalls and flat caps from the rail yard across the street. I bobbed along in a sea of dark suits made of tweed, gabardine, and soft flannels. Workers wearing shades of khaki and brown sat side-by-side along the counter that stretched the length of the restaurant, where the seat they saved for me sat empty.
The waitress greeted three dark-suited men at the door and led them towards me. She told me the men would be sitting at my table. They were okay with me joining them. I replied with a grunt.
The three insurance men looked over the menu and placed their orders. The bald man went with the baked Lake Winnipeg whitefish. The tall one and the short one both ordered the leg of mutton with red currant jelly, and I chose the cutlets. The men ignored me. I ignored them. They came from different cities by train and disembarked at my place of work. They would’ve stepped off the train onto a freshly swept platform free of trash. They would’ve walked through the rotunda, past Davyd, and over the brass maple leaves embedded in the floor that I polished each night. Would they have even noticed?
“That misplaced comma on the P-24 form could cost us thousands of dollars. We have to correct the document before anyone notices. Who knew you could lose so much money because of overlooked punctuation,” the short man quipped while the tall one and bald one nodded.
To hell with them.
The waitress arrived with the soup course—a Philadelphia fish chowder. I’d never had chowder before and found it too salty. My cutlets arrived. The meat was tough. I should’ve gone with the Frankfurt sausages. My peas were cold. The salad was wilted. The bottom crust of my blueberry pie was soggy. I ate it all, and the insurance men talked and talked.
Table-by-table, the businessmen streamed out the door and back to the lavish hotel for more meetings about numbers. A man outside carrying two suitcases rushed in the direction of the train station. I didn’t want to think about going back to work with a full belly. That meal was for someone returning to a desk to push paper, not a broom. I needed a nap.
That afternoon, I moved slower than I ever had. My broom pushed back. My mop teased me. The floors refused to be cleaned.
I leaned on my broom and watched a suited man on the platform reading a newspaper. When he got up from a bench to board the train, he left the paper behind. I collected it, made sure the pages were in order, and smoothed out the front page. The conductor called “all aboard,” and I went looking for Davyd.
On my walk home I followed a man and a woman for a couple of blocks before they entered a restaurant. I passed a darkened florist shop and a furniture store with a dozen lamps for sale all lit up. I crossed the bridge over the train yard and passed a movie theatre where couples milled about out front. I wondered how Iryna would spend the extra change in my pocket.
“Business Men’s Lunch,” by Matthew Kruchak was first published in the 2024 issue of So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum * Library. It appears here with the author’s permission.