In my life there have been just three perfect hot dogs. The first was bought in the Village at 2am, a simple Frankfurter made special when Jenny slipped her bangled arm through mine. The second was a British sausage, a 'banger', whose crisp brown skin I savored on the last night of my bachelor party. And the third is the one I can see now, being built for a man I call The Professor, Jenny’s lover.
I didn't expect to see him ordering a dog. I don’t know why. Perhaps because I knew he was older and I knew he taught English. It just doesn’t seem like a natural fit, even for a teacher loved by his students – something I put down to the lack of judgement life teaches you to expect from 13-year-olds or, more likely, some kind of scam on his part. I mean, who authenticates RateMyTeachers anyway? How easy would it be to create a bunch of burner accounts and pump your numbers a little, leave some comments about inspiration and compassion and other teacherly qualities? Very, that’s what I figure. And that’s coming from someone who’s now reliant on his local library for internet access.
In fact, there’s only one comment on The Professor’s profile which reads as authentic. It’s on page six (of 42) and it says his lessons are OK but that The Professor can be a bit dry. He looks dry now. He looks as though all the moisture has been drawn out of him, leaving lines around his clean-shaven mouth and creating cracks which snake from the corners of his blue eyes towards his silver hair. He does have a good tan though; I’ll give him that. A glow. Teaching obviously pays. Maybe he gives the kids cash for reviews.
A second reason I didn't expect to see The Professor ordering a dog is because it's 10:13am on a Sunday. A third is that it’s stinking hot. So hot that the air is pulsing in front of my eyes and people are barely crawling along streets that reek of garbage. Tourists are suckling from oversized water bottles and every man, woman and child is looking beat up by the heat. While I chewed through my first cigarette this morning, just before The Professor caught me unawares, strolling right past my stoop in his squash gear, I had noticed that even some of the doormen on the better buildings were in short sleeves. Everyone is suffering and yet, cool as you like, this motherfucker is buying a dog.
It does look like a good one though. I don't know this stand personally but the owner has his station organized. The sliced onions are in three piles, with a fresh, white heap in the middle, yellowed crescents sweating on the right-hand side and, in the bottom left, nearest the vendor’s grubby green apron which doubles as a register, there is a small pile of brown, crisped up pieces. Garnish. The dogs are cooking in their salty bath, waiting for their moment to shine and for a moment the soft wop-wop-wop of that bubbling water combines with the excited sizzle of the hotplate to drown out the city’s screams: the car horns, the cell conversations, the doors yanked open only to be slammed shut.
On top of the cart I can see squeezers of ketchup and mustard, fluorescent cans of soda and a plastic water bottle. The Professor hasn't asked for a drink yet. Perhaps he will. Or perhaps he’s already got a bottle in the racquet bag he’s holding between his box-white sneakers. Either way, he's focused on the dog and the man who’s building it. So focused, in fact, that he's hardly moving. Hardly breathing. So focused, in fact, that he hasn't noticed me or my pocket full of bad intentions.I’d caught up with The Professor by the Park, just after he’d placed his order. The cart owner's brown fingers had prized open the bun and the bread, treacle-colored on the outside, white in its sliced-open innards, was waiting to be transformed. The Frankfurter slipped in first, obviously, then the onions followed quickly, sliding greasily down the sides of the meat. What came next was as impressive as anything that happens at the Garden, or in the long-fingered hands of Meatpacking’s mixologists. More impressive than anything the Mets have done in forever. The vendor asked The Professor if he wanted ketchup or mustard and as The Professor answered, this guy, this artist, this magician, picked up both the red and the yellow squeezers (what can I say, The Professor has taste – but I already knew that, look at whose wife he’s fucking), he picked up both bottles in one hand, upturned them, then squeezed, not only simultaneously, but in perfect synchronicity. Red and yellow lines danced down the dog and it was beautiful. Crisply fried onions followed and now, as I step a little closer to The Professor, as my right hand sweatily grips the wooden handle in my pocket, the vendor is putting the whole dog onto a white napkin, set at 45 degrees to the bun, and presenting him with this gift, this multicolored magnificence.
- 5 bucks.
- Here’s 10.
- No change.
- What do you mean no change?
The vendor points to a sign tacked to his cart’s sunbrella. The sign is laminated and it is grubby. It says, ‘No Change.’ The Professor sighs but he does not argue. Nor does he hand his picture-perfect dog back to the vendor and ask for his ten back. He does not carefully place the dog down on the nearest available surface, walk round to the other side of the cart and hold the man’s hands against the hotplate, and he does not carefully place the dog down on the nearest available surface, walk round to the other side of the cart and smash the man’s head into the silver side of his livelihood. All of these would have been legitimate actions in the face of a no-changer. Especially in this weather. Instead, The Professor turns round and says:
- Buddy, you want a dog?
I look over my shoulder. There’s no one there.
- Me?
- Who else?
This is not in the plan. It wasn’t an intricate plan. I hadn’t had time for one of my intricate plans, cooked up in the white heat of another sleepless night – hell, I’d hardly had time to stumble back into my apartment and grab the make-do I’m gripping in my pocket – but I had a plan and now he is fucking it up. Or the no-changer is. Or I am. Any which way, whatever is left of the plan is going wrong and fast. I try to think of a response to his question but The Professor is already talking again. Maybe that’s how he scores with all his women.
- Sure you do. Why else are you in line? Another full works please. Here, you have this one. While it’s still hot.
He passes it over to me, offers it to my right hand. It’s been a difficult time but this is a new low: I am literally being disarmed by a man wielding a hot dog.
- Come on, take it.
Reluctantly, I let go of the vegetable peeler in my pocket. The Professor cushions the napkin into my newly outstretched palm and I appreciate the weight. Up close, I can smell the dog’s different flavors. I don’t know whether it’s the sugar in the onions, the vinegar in the mustard, or the fat in the pink Frankfurter but it smells… Well, it smells better than the garbage stink of this fetid city.
- Thank you.
I actually thank him. My mom would be happy, God rest her soul, but Thank you? I mean, I am grateful, it’s been a couple of days since I’ve got myself organized enough to eat, a few weeks since I’ve managed to sort anything but the most basic, miserable groceries, but to actually thank Jenny’s review-faking, clean-shaving, tan-having lover? Not a good Sunday.
The Professor speaks, says something like, Don’t sweat it. But I can’t really hear: partly because he’s already biting into his own dog, his too-white teeth chewing through the bread, the meat, the onions; mostly because I’ve slipped into a sort of tunnel-vision type thing. It happened a lot as a kid, especially when I played sports. Dad thought I might be a ball player until I didn’t make the high school team. Then he left and mom said it wasn’t my fault, which I hadn’t even considered it might be until she said that and neatly tore my heart in two.
Anyway, the tunnel-vision thing is back for the first time in a while and my hearing goes with it: I’m only getting the vague outline of words. I think The Professor said, Don’t sweat it, but I’m not sure because at the moment all I can feel is the sun, all I can hear is white noise and all I can see is The Professor bending over his racquet bag, his butt lined up like a watermelon on a kicking tee.
Despite working in a high school – or perhaps because he works in a high school and a Sunday is one of the two days a week when he can bend over as he pleases and not worry about what teenage boys might do – The Professor has set his bun on the cart and is fiddling with some zipper or looking at his phone or maybe just stretching his hamstrings. And his butt is right there. Waiting to be sent right between the uprights. It won’t be as satisfying as what I had planned, but it is important to adapt. Plus the man has just bought me a hot dog.
I hold my napkin a little tighter and take a step back.
This reminds me that I am wearing slides. Not just any slides either, but Jenny’s Adidas slides. Which is sort of fine because we have the same size feet – pretty much. Jenny always liked her brands so she bought these high-end German ones which are more comfortable than my Target pair and that is one of the reasons I let myself wear them at the weekend. But it is also sort of not fine because three summers ago when everything was better, Adidas offered a personalization service and across the white band which bridges each of my feet, bright purple letters spell out J-E-N-N-Y.
So I pause. Of course I pause. I pause to consider whether kicking The Professor’s ass while wearing my wife’s personalized slides is the kind of justice a poet might get behind, or, on the other hand, whether The Professor’s butt has had enough close contact with J-E-N-N-Y already. And while I pause, while sweat oozes down my back and greases my forehead, The Professor straightens up. He straightens up, turns around and with both mustard and ketchup on his chin, he says:
- Don’t I know you?
This is also not in the plan. Not in either plan, not the one involving the peeler, nor the one involving the literal kicking of The Professor’s ass while wearing my wife’s slides. So I’m not at my best when I answer him.
- Um.
- Sure I do.
He’s all smiles for now, but I don’t know how much longer that will last, not if he really knows who I am. Unless he’s even more of a monster than I thought, in which case I would like to be holding my peeler, not his hot dog. I run the back of my left hand across my forehead, try to shift some of this ever-running sweat.
- You’re… Oh! Excuse me.
He wipes his chin with the napkin. One neat movement and somehow all the mess is gone.
- You’re Jenny’s ex, right?
Now, it depends where you stand on technicalities. The papers have not been signed. Which is to say, I have not signed them. She has signed them. Twice. The second time after I said I’d lost the first set, which is true insofar as they are no longer in my possession, which is not true insofar as I know exactly where they are: in a fire-blackened coffee tin at the bottom of the Hudson. So, ex-husband? Technically not. But I don’t think The Professor is speaking in technicalities. He is eating a hot dog after all, and that almost always suggests the use of the vernacular.
- She was some woman, eh? Too good for the likes of us.
I nearly drop my dog.
- She’s …? You’re no longer …?
- Broke it off a couple of months ago. Said she needed to be free.
I don’t know if it’s the heat, the glare of the sun off the silver cart, or the fact that now I don’t even have an explanation to call my own, but suddenly all I want to do is close my eyes. Maybe forever. Mostly just until everything is different. Better. But I know I can’t stand in the middle of New York City with my eyes closed, not least because The Professor will leave, taking with him a golden opportunity.
To do what?
To hurt him? That was the plan. That is always the plan when I think about The Professor, which is often. Most days really. Most days I find myself thinking about how to hurt him, or humiliate him, ideally both. And at least when I’m thinking about that, about him, I’m not thinking about them. About her. About how, just before she came to bed, she’d comb her hair with her fingers in front of our bathroom mirror, and then sigh, as though she didn’t look magnificent, as though she didn’t always look perfect. And when I’m thinking about him, I’m not thinking about how, despite Jenny being aggressively competent at work, administering the shit out of that school, getting kids to classes, teachers to understand, parents to care, I got my own private version of her, the one I thought no one else saw, the Jenny I’d known since we were at college, who liked nothing more than listening to records with the window open, whatever the weather, and who always lived on the edge of chaos, with bills unopened, laundry unwashed, messages not returned. When I’m thinking about The Professor, I’m not thinking about how Jenny and I made elaborate plans and sometimes even followed through on them, even if they meant leaving the couch, the apartment. Even if they meant both of us saving up just so I could fly to England and take photos of the street where mom’s family once lived, before it was too late. When I’m thinking about hurting him, I’m not thinking about how good it felt to be loved by her, how if I sat on the floor while she lay on the couch, with a record on the stereo and a cigarette in her right hand, her left hand would dance through my hair, running bitten fingertips over my scalp. I’m not thinking about how, when I stood in front of our mirror, as tall as I could, sucking it all in, she would walk up behind me and grab handfuls, and say that she loved all of it, just as it was. I’m not thinking about how she made me almost believe her. About how I did believe her. How I believed: in her, in me, in us.
– I loved her.
The words fall out of my greasy lips, and if you think I’m surprised, you should see that motherfucker’s face.
– Huh.
He chews the last mouthful of his hotdog. Slowly. It lasts as long as the rest of the dog combined and throughout his ruminations, his blue eyes look at me. Really look at me. Not past me or through me or against me, but at me. Then he swallows, glances at his watch, and once those eyes are back on my face, he says:
– She told me you’d never said that to her. Not once.
I shake my head. Not in denial, but in disbelief. At myself and my stupidity, at the fat, hot tears that are suddenly teetering on the edge of my vision.
– That’s not your fault. I don’t think so, anyway. Hell, what do I know? We just met. And maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I’m just saying that’s what she said. It seemed important to her. It must have been if she told me. She talked about you a lot.
I nod. Force myself to stay mute. Force my lips shut with every ounce of my strength, because I am terrified of what noise might come out should they spring open. And I am concentrating on that so completely that I don’t see him move, don’t see him reach towards me, don’t see him put his hand on my shoulder. Which he squeezes now.
– Perhaps you could tell her when you see her next? She might like that. If it feels okay for you to say. Because you have to look after yourself too. Don’t be giving away what you can’t afford. That’s gambling, not love.
The Professor glances at his watch again, bends his bronzed legs at the knee as he picks up his racquet bag, and clears his throat.
- Anyway, I’m in danger of being late for my court. Good meeting you. Say hi to Jenny if you see her.
Then he is gone. Despite his starched white polo shirt and freshly bleached shorts, I soon lose sight of him as he disappears into the city’s broiling masses. I am left with a vegetable peeler, my dog, and a raging thirst. My face feels like a puffy mess so I take a minute before speaking to the vendor, wipe my eyes with the upper arm of my sweater, snatch a breath. And another. Finally, I turn to him and with a voice thick enough to schmear, I ask:
- How much for a Coke?
- Two dollars.
- I’ve only got a five.
The vendor gets a soda out of the ice box by his feet and puts it on top of the cart. Under the can are three singles.
- I thought you said No Change?
He shrugs. For a moment I honestly think I might kiss the guy. At least hug him. A fist bump. Instead, I nod my appreciation and think about telling him the whole story, to confirm that his solidarity is well placed, but my throat feels like I’ve swallowed the peeler and there’s sweat trickling down my collar. Plus the tears are back. Right there. Glimmering on the edge. So I glance at the Coke and I say:
- Could you open it?
I hold up my messy dog to show him why I need his help. I risk a smile, my eyes swimming. The vendor nods and cracks the can. Then slides one of the bills back into his grubby apron.
This fucking city.
E.J. Fry
E.J. Fry lives, works and writes in London, England. His work has recently been published in Litro, Orca and Juxtaprose, as well as being short and longlisted for prizes in the UK and beyond.
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