Kumquat

by Jeff Strand

  "Can I take your picture for our Facebook page?" Reginald Jr. asks.

  "Oh, uh, no," I say. "We're really not supposed to be here."

  Reginald Jr. frowns. "Are you on the run?"

  "No, no, nothing like that."

  "You sure? We could give you plenty of dogs. You could hide out for quite a while."

  "We're not hiding out."

  Reginald Jr. looks disappointed. I'd tell him that we were fugitives, but after the initial rush of excitement he'd realize that us being on the run from the law meant that we didn't really drive across the country just for his hot dogs, and then he and his father would be heartbroken.

  "To get off work, Todd had to lie to his boss," Amy explains. I'm grateful that she doesn't go into detail about the dead grandmother, a lie that might not reside within the boundaries of everybody's moral code. "So we can't have her finding a picture of him online."

  "We wouldn't have to tag your name to the picture," says Reginald Sr. I'm impressed that he's aware of that function of Facebook, which I suppose is kind of ageist of me.

  The chances of Gigi stumbling upon an untagged picture of me at Hunky Dory Dogs are extremely remote, and it's not as if I wouldn't be allowed to go to a hot dog place for lunch while in town for my grandmother's funeral, but if she did stumble upon them at some point in the future, I'd be retroactively busted. I don't want to make up a story about having met Amy at the funeral. That wouldn't hold up to scrutiny. We don't necessarily have to be in the picture together, but if Reginald Jr. or Sr. chose to caption it, our connection would still be clear, and ultimately it's easier to just not have a Hunky Dory Dogs picture taken, even if it hurts their feelings.

  With this level of caution, I'd probably make a pretty good criminal.

  Finally, Reginald Jr. delivers our tray with great flourish and the Reginalds leave us alone to enjoy their culinary masterpieces. I look down at my hot dog with the peanut butter and grape jelly, and Amy looks down at her hot dog with the marshmallow, graham cracker, and chocolate, and I know that we are both reflecting upon the many regrets in our life, most notably this particular regret.

  We each take a bite and chew thoughtfully.

  Amy chews much longer than I do, because she's chewing marshmallow.

  "You know," she finally says, "I'm ashamed to admit this, because it basically means that my definition of self-respect no longer applies, but mine is pretty good. How's yours?"

  I glance around to make sure that neither of the Reginalds are listening. "Mine is disgusting," I say.

  "Oh, no."

  "Yeah," I say, trying not to laugh over my own surprise that a PBJ hot dog might not taste particularly good. "It's really, really, really bad. It might be because they used chunky peanut butter instead of smooth, but that's probably not it. I think it was just an unwise ordering decision."

  "At least you tried something new."

  "Yes, I certainly did. And do you want to learn a fun fact about me?"

  "Sure."

  "Because I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, I'm going to choke down every bite of this foul concoction."

  "You can't do it."

  "I can and will."

  "I'll bet you that you can't finish it."

  "What are the stakes?"

  Amy gives me an extremely knowing look.

  * * *

  When I was in third or fourth grade, I went on a fishing trip with my dad and a few of his friends. On the way back (fishless) we stopped at a small restaurant. I ordered a hamburger, and it was absolutely enormous.

  "I'll bet you two dollars you can't eat all of that," said my dad's friend John.

  I accepted the bet, even though losing two dollars would be devastating.

  So I ate, and ate, and ate, and I finished that hamburger.

  John, however, shook his head. "You didn't eat the tomato."

  I despised, and still despise, tomatoes. And this particular tomato was wilted and gooey. But with two bucks on the line, I was willing to make the sacrifice, so I ate it.

  John still shook his head. "There's still juice and crumbs on the plate."

  Even as a third-grader, I had far too strong of a sense of dignity to want to lick a plate in public. But it was for two dollars...

  And then I realized where this was headed. I'd lick up the vile tomato juice, and then he'd say "But you didn't eat that paper salt packet." Or the plate itself. I wasn't going to get my two dollars. I'd eaten that tomato for nothing.

  I glared at him with all of the fury that a completely unintimidating third-grader could muster, but John just smiled and chuckled.

  "Where's my two dollars?" he asked.

  I did not give him the two goddamn dollars, because I had fulfilled the clear expectations of the bet. But neither did he pay me. Yes, a fully-grown adult screwed a little kid out of a two-dollar bet, with no visible remorse.

  This pissed me off for the next twenty-three years.

  Literally every time somebody would propose a bet, I'd flash back to this jerk reneging on our hamburger bet. Long after I'd reached a level of financial security where the two dollars itself was no big deal, the principle of the whole matter thoroughly irked me.

  Until three years ago, at Thanksgiving, when I brought up that memory, and my dad explained what had happened next.

  He and his friends made life miserable for John after that. "Hey, John, wanna bet me two bucks that I can finish this Snickers bar? Haw haw haw!" "Hey, John, I'll give you two bucks if you can eat all of that corn, but you have to eat the cob, too! Haw haw haw!" They were relentless. The poor guy couldn't enjoy a meal with his friends for months afterward.

  And that made everything okay.

  * * *

  This, of course, is a very different bet. I don't know for certain that Amy has just offered me sexual favors if I can finish off this PBJ Dog. In fact, it's reasonable to assume that letting her be a spectator to this kind of gluttony would impede the process of moving our relationship in that direction. But she hasn't clarified the meaning of her knowing look, so I'm going to stick with this fantasy until further notice.

  And, yes, I eat the entire thing.

  I don't lick the plate.

  I wouldn't say that this makes me a hero, but I do feel proud of my accomplishment.

  Reginald Jr. and Sr. return to our table. Reginald Jr. is holding another tray, which he sets down in front of us. This tray contains a large number of hot dogs.

  "We didn't order anything else," I say.

  "Oh, I know. But you can't drive all this way and only try one! You need the full H.D. Dogs experience! Dig in!"

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "It's actually kind of a relief that Hitler was so rude to me."

  --Exit Red, Season 4, Episode 9

  I don't want any sexual favors right now. I don't want to do anything but puke.

  Again.

  We're still in Providence, parked at a rest area. Amy has vomited five times to my three, though if you compare the number of ounces regurgitated they're probably about equal.

  I'm not certain that you can get this sick just from overeating. There may also be food poisoning involved. The hell-chili tasted like it might have been a bit off, but it was sizzling my tongue too much to say for sure.

  "I'm sorry I dragged you into this," I say. "It was never my intention to hurt you."

  "It's not your fault. I made my own choice."

  "Tonight we'll burn the place down."

  Amy shakes her head. "No. God will punish them." She opens the door, leans out of the vehicle, and adds another six fluid ounces to our running total.

  I wish I could say that the sight of her vomiting is beautiful in its own way, but it's really not.

  Yet perhaps our shared misery is bringing us closer together. If nothing else, it's not often that I look quite this repulsive, so if she doesn't run away (later, when she's physically able to run again) then we're meant to be together.

  She wipes her mouth on one of t
he Hunky Dory Dogs napkins we took with us, closes the door, then flops back against the seat.

  "Can you drive yet?" she asks.

  "Not safely."

  Amy groans. I groan. We groan in unison.

  "Why did we let them do this to us?" Amy asks.

  "We didn't want to hurt their feelings."

  "Don't you think it'll hurt their feelings when our bloated corpses are discovered? Don't you think it'll be bad for business?"

  "I guess you're right."

  I won't regret any of this. I mean, I do now, as I wait for the cool, refreshing hands of the Grim Reaper to deliver me from this agony...but once we stop regurgitating, I'm confident that I'll be back to thinking that this was my best weekend ever.

  My stomach alerts me that it's time for the next purging, so I open up the door and lean out. This one you can't really define as vomiting; it's more like heavy spitting.

  I finish spitting, mop the perspiration off my forehead with a napkin, then lean back inside the car. I don't really have the energy level to pull the door closed again, but the aroma directly outside the car is far from spectacular, so I force myself to complete this physically demanding task.

  We sit there, making various noises, some of them on purpose, none of which include human speech.

  Someday we will laugh about this. Or our spirits will laugh as we haunt the car where we perished.

  I peer at myself in the rearview mirror, then glance over at Amy. "Do my eyes look yellow to you?"

  She gazes into my eyes. "No. They're kind of bloodshot, but not yellow."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I wouldn't hide that from you."

  "Okay." I'm not even sure what yellow eyes would signify.

  We sit there for a while longer. It kind of feels like the car is rolling down a hill, though the fact that nothing around us is getting closer or further away seems to indicate that it isn't.

  I should say something inspiring. Or at least something that doesn't involve wallowing in misery. What inspiring thought can I share? There's got to be one.

  "It's not about the journey, it's about the destination," I say.

  "I think you've got that backwards."

  "No, I'm pretty sure...hold on...journey...destination...wait, no, you're right. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey."

  "True."

  "So even though now we're wishing we were dead, we need to remember that there were other parts of this journey where we weren't wishing we were dead."

  "Were there?"

  "I think so."

  "I don't remember them."

  "There was at least one."

  Amy smiles. Her smile is less radiant with that big blob of saliva dangling from her upper front teeth, but she's still beautiful. And we're still enjoying each other's company, despite our misery.

  It's a shared desire to keel over and die. A bonding experience.

  * * *

  Amy feels well enough to drive before I do, so we switch places and we begin our journey back home. With the windows down and cool air blowing into my face, it isn't long until I'm feeling better, too.

  "How do you think Eddie is doing?" she asks.

  "I assume that wherever he is, whatever he's doing, he's being somehow disruptive."

  "I can't help but like the guy. I'm not saying that I would want him to be my next door neighbor, or that I even necessarily want to ever see him again, but I'll always have fond memories of him."

  I nod. "I feel the same way."

  "The next time we do this, maybe we shouldn't have such a narrow focus for our destination," Amy says. "So instead of saying 'We're going to drive to Providence just to get some hot dogs,' we'll say 'We're going to drive to Providence.' That way, when the vacation is over, we can say 'We sure had a good time in Providence, even with that side trip for disgusting hot dogs,' instead of 'Those hot dogs that were the entire point of our trip sure were disgusting, but at least we enjoyed the other incidental activities.' Does that make sense?"

  "Absolutely. Where do you want to go next?"

  "Well, you're out of vacation time, and we don't want to use up any more grandparents, so it'll have to be a weekend trip. How about Cape Canaveral?"

  "Count me in."

  "Good. You're officially committed. No backing out."

  "I wouldn't dream of it."

  "Maybe that's where I'll pay off my bet."

  "What did I win?"

  "Didn't I tell you?"

  I shake my head. "Nope."

  "Oh. Well, essentially, we're going to fuck like wild animals."

  "I see," I say, not disappointed.

  "Wild animals. We're gonna break a bed. Which is selfish and wasteful, because there are a lot of poor people who can't afford beds, and here we are breaking one, but that's just the way it has to be."

  I have a comment to contribute, something about planting trees to replace the wood we destroy, but my voice cracks and I only get through the first part of it.

  "Or we can make sweet, gentle, tender love," Amy says. "Your choice."

  "No, I'm fine with the bed destruction," I say, or will say, when I regain the ability to speak.

  "You're blushing," Amy tells me.

  "That's just the food poisoning."

  "You are. You're blushing. Wow. I wouldn't have taken you for a blusher."

  "It surprises me, too. Literally every six-to-ten days a woman tells me that we're going to fuck like wild animals. You'd think I'd be used to it by now." I'm actually able to say this.

  "Have you ever broken a bed?"

  "I've fallen off one."

  "We'll count that."

  "What about you?" I ask.

  "Nope. I guess to break a bed it would have to be a very poorly constructed bed. My standards of craftsmanship are too high for that."

  "Mine too."

  "I did break a stained glass window, though."

  "Seriously?" I ask.

  "Yes. But not while having sex. So I guess it's not relevant to the current discussion."

  "Have you broken anything while having sex?"

  "My finger."

  "Ouch."

  "Yeah. And a condom. That was not a good day. What about you?"

  "I hate to admit this," I say, "but I don't think my love life has ever included personal injury or property damage."

  "That's a shame."

  "Yeah."

  "This doesn't make me a slut," Amy informs me. "Even if this entire trip only counts as our second date--and you could make a pretty good case that it counts as multiple dates--the sex will be on the third date, so it's completely socially acceptable."

  "I would never have suggested otherwise." I'm proud of how cool and calm I'm playing this, even though my brain is doing high-fives against my skull (not literally).

  "Is this making you uncomfortable?"

  "Nope."

  "Are you sure? That really is some serious blushing you've got going on. You look like you're going to spontaneously combust."

  I touch my face. It does feel hot, though no blisters form on my fingers. "I'm completely relaxed about this. There's nothing you can say that will shock me."

  Actually, there are quite a few things she could say that would shock me, including group sex, sadomasochism, bisexual experiences, bestiality, and necrophilia, though only the last two would upset me, and the bestiality would depend on the circumstances. My own sex life has been extremely vanilla. Probably the kinkiest thing I've ever done is dine upon a human hot fudge sundae. I used way too much whipped cream.

  "I think I could shock you," she says.

  "Let's hear it."

  "One time my friends and I ordered a pizza. And when the pizza delivery guy came, we realized that we didn't have any money, so we all thought 'Goodness, however should we pay him?' Finally, after much discussion, we decided that...wait, I may be thinking of a movie I watched..."

  "Did they ever eat the pizza?" I ask.

  "You know, I don't believe
they did. It was a major plot hole. I'm not sure they even opened the box. I don't think the production could afford an actual pizza."

  "I delivered pizza the summer after high school," I say. "You'd be surprised how few times you're greeted at the door by nubile women looking for alternate payment methods."

  "That's a bummer."

  "I'm not saying that nubile people didn't greet me at the door. Just not the kind of people you'd want to see nubile. I used the word 'nubile' incorrectly, didn't I?"

  "Yes, but I wasn't going to say anything."

  "If you don't correct me, how will I learn?"

  "Okay, you totally screwed up the word 'nubile' the second and third time you used it. The first time was fine."

  "I apologize."

  "So were there horrifying sights?"

  I think about that. "No, not really. Lots of 'Maybe those sweatpants would look better if you wore a shirt' situations, but nothing where I wanted to claw my eyes out. I never had to actually recoil."

  "Well, I'm glad you weren't permanently scarred."

  "Yeah. I don't have any good anecdotes about that job. You'd think that going to dozens of houses every night would give me some interesting stories but...nope. They pretty much paid me and took their pizza."

  Somehow I have transitioned this conversation from kinky sex to my job as a frequently under-tipped pizza delivery guy. Nice work.

  "Do you mind if I pull off at this next exit?" Amy asks.

  "For pizza?" I ask, though I'm actually thinking For sex? I'm hoping we have sex relatively soon, but I'd rather postpone until my mouth no longer tastes of vomit.

  "I don't plan to ever eat again, but I wouldn't mind stretching my legs and getting a drink."

  "Sounds good to me."

  We get off the interstate and drive through a small town called Finsing. It has just started to get dark, but most of the businesses already seem to be closed. Finsing is not the Las Vegas of Rhode Island.

  "Jackpot!" says Amy, pulling into one of the many available downtown parking spaces.

  We each get a frozen strawberry lemonade from a small cafe, then walk hand-in-hand down the block, sipping our drinks.