Scratch the Surface

that much for Witness most of the time, you know. But in a crisis like this, I’m glad you’re coming through.”
    Before hanging up, Sonya gave Felicity the address of Tony’s Deli, which was on Centre Street, a main thoroughfare of Jamaica Plain. As Felicity knew from having dined in the area three or four times with Ronald, there were dozens of eateries on Centre Street, many of them storefront establishments serving ethnic food that Ronald liked and Felicity didn’t. Before leaving on what she saw as a quick errand, Felicity checked on the cats, who were sitting close together at the end of her bed. Edith was grooming Brigitte’s ears. The cats were such dear friends! When she’d accidentally stepped on one or both of them last night, the cause of the scrambling and hissing that followed had been her foot rather than any animosity between Edith and Brigitte.
    A half hour later, having encountered no traffic on Route 9, Felicity was driving Aunt Thelma’s Honda along Centre Street in search of Tony’s Deli. She passed a restaurant that Ronald had misrepresented to her as specializing in seafood, as it had, in a way, but the place had been Asian and the seafood cooked with dark sauces that Felicity had found unfamiliar and far too strong for her taste. Spotting the Tony’s Deli sign above a storefront, she parked on the street, locked her car, and approached the store, which looked nothing whatever like her idea of a delicatessen. A deli, in her view, was an informal restaurant with a big case of takeout food. The best delis were Jewish and sold half-sour pickles, bagels with cream cheese and lox, pastrami, and fat sandwiches. From the outside, Tony’s didn’t look like a restaurant at all. Piled in the big windows were bottles, cans, and little packages with labels in some foreign language and, indeed, in some foreign alphabet.
    Tentatively opening the door, Felicity saw a grocery store packed with what were obviously Russian foods. A pale-faced woman behind a small cash register nodded to her, and she nodded back. Mystified, Felicity wandered to the rear of the store, where there was, a long refrigerated glass case with takeout food, but not at all the kind of food Janice had served on Sunday or at any of the Witness meetings. Despite a thick brown coating, the piles of whole, flattened chickens looked nauseatingly like naked birds. Potatoes abounded: thick, fried patties, mounds of potato salad containing unidentifiable objects and bits of grayish-green leaves. Many of the vegetables were marinating in clear liquids. The cheese looked like provolone, but a tiny label identified it as yogurt cheese, something Janice had certainly never provided. A second refrigerated case contained whole dried fish, some large, some small, all with eyes that Felicity avoided meeting and mummified skin that reminded her of the foot exhibited by the forensic expert at the Witness meeting. Although the refrigerated cases and the rest of the store looked clean, a musty scent permeated the air, and Felicity was eager to leave.
    On her way out, she paused at the cash register to speak with the pale woman. “A friend of mine shops here, I think,” she said. “Janice Mattingly.”
    The woman was expressionless.
    “Janice?” Felicity prompted. “I thought she was a friend of someone here?”
    “No.” Even the single syllable was heavily accented. Embarrassed, Felicity said, “Could I have a half pound of yogurt cheese?”
    While she waited for the woman to get the cheese, she reflected that people like her must wander in by mistake all the time. The shopkeeper must be used to customers who didn’t belong and who bought strange foods they didn’t want. Why had the proprietors chosen such a misleading name? Why wasn’t the place called Boris’s Groceries or Natasha’s Russian Takeout? Feeling mildly victimized, Felicity paid for her cheese and left. As she drove home, she promised herself that if she ended up making a trip to the correct Tony’s Deli, the one Janice patronized, she wouldn’t buy anything at all.
    By the time Felicity got home, she was feeling remarkably healthy and made herself a cup of tea and a small Russian-yogurt-cheese sandwich on white bread. The cheese was bland enough to be from Scotland and made an excellent food for invalids. Fortified, she called Sonya to report on her investigation.
    “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she told Sonya, “but it was the wrong Tony’s Deli. This one is