Two Beauts from _The Friends of Eddie Coyle_

“Now the only grand jury I know about is the DA’s, and that’s about the Polack hit and they got that other fellow there, I hear, Stradniki, Stradnowski?”

“Stravinki,” Waters said, “Jimmy the Whale.”

“The Polack,” Foley said, “yeah, him. They got the other Polack.”

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“He didn’t show up,” Foley said. “I sit there for about half an hour, and I have a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. Jesus, I forgot how bad a thing a chesse sandwich is to eat. It’s just like eating a piece of linoleum, you know?”

“You got to put mayonnaise on it,” Waters said. “It’s never going to have any flavor at all unless you put some mayonnaise on the bread before you put the cheese on.”

“I never heard of that,” Foley said. “You put it on the outside, do you?”

“Nah,” Waters said, “you put it on the inside. You still put the butter on the outside and all. But when the cheese melts, there, it’s the mayonnaise that gives it the flavor. You got to use real mayonnaise, though, the stuff with eggs in it. You can use the other stuff that most people use when they say they’re using mayonnaise, that salad dressing stuff, you can use it. But it isn’t going to taste the same. I think the other stuff scalds or something. It doesn’t taste right, anyway.”

“They don’t go for those refinements in the Rexall’s anyway,” Foley said. “What the hell, you go in there and order a cheese sandwich, they got a whole stack of them, already made up, probably since last Wednesday, and they take out one of them goddamned things, big fat piece of this orange cheese in it, and throw on some grease, they pretend it’s butter but I sure don’t believe that, and then they go and they fuse it all together with a hot press there. My stomach’s still trying to break that thing down into something I can live on, just like a big piece, two big pieces, of bathroom tile with some mastic in between. Served hot. I get sick, you’re gonna have to give me a pension.”