Two Guys Walk into a Hot Dog Joint
Welcome to part three of Carlo's ongoing short story. There's also a mustard recipe.
I recently went to an all-you-can-eat sushi dinner in Midwood, Brooklyn where the restaurant carved an entire tuna. My final count of pieces consumed: 32. Never have I felt so close to the subject matter of the story I’ve been writing than after that dinner, mercury surely at an all-time high. So it’s with great pleasure that I give you the latest chapter in my short story about that guy who eats an absurd amount of fish (more than double what I did that night). Also, today’s recipe is a mustard with an ingredient that’s very important to me.
If you missed it, catch up on part 1 and part 2 of the saga.
-Carlo
David & the Glizzy Run-In
David left Sushi Para IV the first night the mystery sushi man came in and immediately walked to Oz Park. He often took this route home, meandering through that giant piece of land dropped in the middle of the Lincoln Park neighborhood with statues of the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, and Dorothy & Toto at the park’s four corners.
On these walks, he always visited one of the statues, which he picked depending on his mood. No matter what though, he had conversations in his head with them. One day, when he published his first best-seller, he’d tell the story of his evening visits with the characters at his book launch, as an allegory about how he’d always been in conversation with the classics.
After the shift he just had, he felt as if a cosmic spirit took him by the collar, shook the shit out of him, and screamed, “Is this what you need to start writing you lazy piece of dung?” He was riding high; so full of energy, so full of visions of himself hunched over his computer, writing until four or five in the morning, letting sleep pass him by like all his contemporaries did in college.
Would that happen tonight? David didn’t know, but he wanted to believe he was capable of anything.
David stopped at the Scarecrow, the teal rust on the statue’s jacket barely visible in the dark. Seeing his oblong face, that previous energy faded.
“Did you really need the Wizard to give you some kind of fake brain to be happy?” David asked the Scarecrow in his head.
The statue blankly stared back at him. The park was exceptionally quiet at this time of night, a couple minutes before it closed. Very few people were around, and certainly fewer were having made-up conversations with its statues.
“Or maybe you were smart enough to realize that the more you know, the less you really know.” David shot back to the Scarecrow’s empty glare.
The statue continued his stare, and David perceived a look that communicated the thought of “even if I wanted to engage in this conversation, I am not human, made of bronze, and have probably been pissed on in the last 24 hours.” The monologue that David would give at his book launch had never felt further away.
He continued his trek home, mainly because the park was closing and he couldn’t stand to look at the Scarecrow and his rusty face any longer. He spotted the glow of Glizzy & The Sport Peppers just down the street, a new-age dog joint he’d walked by before. The neon sign out front flashed as if to say, “Come on in you glutton!” David wanted to forget his most recent mental conversation, and took the fact that he was actually spending time assessing the place as a call of destiny to give it a try. Either that, or he couldn’t bear to walk home and reconcile that even such a thing as a near paranormal sushi-eating event couldn’t get him to write.
David pushed open the door and found the place pretty empty besides a couple of solo diners and quiet couples, everybody either at the start or the end of the night. Beyond the piping hot, red-tinged hot dogs that came screaming off the grill, most people came here because they had several different (but all excellent) types of mustard at a free condiment bar.
The whole thing was clearly some kind of anti-ketchup marketing tool, but David had to hand it to them, he’d never had better mustard anywhere. That includes the first time he had a squirt of the spicy brown stuff at a barbecue surrounded by his cousins in Vernon Hills, the Chicago suburb where he grew up. He had trouble pinpointing his age during this memory; he could’ve been anywhere from five to eight since memories like that tended to blur together. After he took a bite and felt his nostrils violently flare, he remembered looking directly up at the blue sky filled with wispy clouds, as if saying directly to God, “I get why you brought us all into the world.” Afterwards, David and his cousins had run around the backyard, taking turns pelting each other with a singular Wiffle ball, claiming they had invented something called Tag Ball. Back then it was all just mustard and games.
He ordered a Chicago dog and went over to the impressive mustard station and grabbed a couple of samples; chipotle mustard, regular old spicy, and one with giardiniera that he had high hopes for. Each were on-point and made David fantasize about throwing it all away and opening a spot like this that served a very niche passion. Although what else could he exactly throw away now that he was a dropout?
Somebody sat down two window stools over from him. He was a bearded guy that seemed to be completely absorbed in his phone. Incessant scrolling, swiping of tabs, typing that was audible because of how hard this man’s fingers were tapping his screen. And, ugh, he had his haptic sounds on. He also pumped the mustard squeezer to the point that the container began dry-heaving and only a few faint watery drops came out. His hot dog was sufficiently covered now, and the man took one big bite that smeared mustard all over his face. He shuffled with the napkin dispenser to pull out eight stacks of the flimsy paper before wiping his face haphazardly. It all became too much and overshadowed David’s desire to wallow with his frankfurter.
How could he get this guy to stop? Maybe just glare at him until he looked over and realized he’s being incredibly annoying. Or point out that he’s still got mustard in his beard, which would be very helpful. Out of the question was moving or telling him to be quiet.
Just then, the guy glanced over at David, and realized he was being watched. His facial expressions looked briefly panicked, like how anybody would contort their face if they got called on in front of a large group of people and had to make up an answer because they weren’t listening.
“Sorry man,” the guy said. “Just excited to have a moment to myself.” He paused briefly. “And this hot dog.”
“No worries at all,” David said. “Right there with you. Long night at work.”
He’d hoped that’d be the end of it, but the guy continued.
“Dude, same. Spent all day working, and now have to work overtime filing this story.”
David must’ve had a blank stare, because the guy quickly followed up.
“Sorry, guess today just has me a little rattled. And that takes a lot. I’m a journalist.”
Marcus Fordrash introduced himself as somebody who covered local news at the Sun Times. Or, as he put, “whatever rubbish nobody wants to write about.” He typed up stories about tragic car crashes involving drunk drivers that happened at 3am, free concerts and pop-up events, and reported on the number of shootings that happened all over the city during the summer.
Today, though, what shook him was a kidnapping story about a middle-aged man who abducted a young girl as she walked home from grade school. She’d been missing for two weeks before authorities found her remains chopped up and disposed of in a garbage bag outside a neighborhood sushi joint.
“Sicko must’ve thought nobody would notice with all that smelly fish.”
David was deeply disturbed. That was an absolutely awful thing to happen to anybody, and he couldn’t imagine how the family felt. He even felt for Marcus, who had to put a name to the face of these people in reporting on the case. But deep down, he couldn’t shake the anger that his experience with the mystery sushi man wasn’t even the most notable sushi restaurant-related thing that happened today. A wave of guilt immediately followed. Especially when he found himself wondering why this nameless pervert couldn’t throw that bag of flesh in the lake, or even in the dumpster behind a pizza spot.
“Totally awful,” David managed to say. “I actually work at a sushi place too. Can’t imagine anything like that happening.”
And yet, he could. He had just witnessed something that he would argue was more messed up. History is littered with older men committing unspeakable acts of violence against young women. How many times has somebody seemingly defied the laws of nature and ingested so much fish that he should probably have instant mercury poison? David didn’t know if he actually believed in this line of thinking. He hoped he didn’t. But still, he needed to reclaim his night, this moment.
“OK, I know it’s not senseless and tragic murder, but a pretty weird thing happened tonight at work.”
Marcus looked over, mustard still in beard. David filled him in.
“That is . . .” Marcus said, “really bizarre. Like what kind of disturbing forces are messing up the sanctity of Chicago’s neighborhood sushi joints?”
Fake deep, David thought. Marcus continued.
“My editor always wants me on the lookout for these kinds of local trends. Hmm, I’m wondering. Would you be interested in staying in touch? If this happens again, like if you see the same guy come in, or just notice anything strange going on at work, could you call or text me? If not, I get it. But I always respect and keep my sources anonymous.”
David tensed up. Now somebody else was going to write about the thing that he promised himself he’d write about? No way. No way in hell was he going to let this content farmer get his scoop. The last thing he wanted to be was anonymous! He wanted the world to know about him, and his talks with the Scarecrow, and how reading Lauren Groff for the first time changed his life. He wanted to meet Lauren Groff, and if Marcus was going to write this story, he would never share a three-story seafood tower at lunch with the lady who wrote Fates and Furies.
“Plus, you seem like a cool dude. Could even grab a beer to talk writing and stuff sometime.”
So Marcus had been listening when he told him about being a writing major; David couldn’t actually tell him he dropped out. You know, why not? The night had been weird, but maybe this could be a silver lining. Maybe that silver lining could be a new friend.
“Sure, what’s your number?”
A week after his first showing, the mystery sushi man came back. David started calling him V, short for Vitellius, the famously obese Roman emperor who succeeded Nero. Instead of writing when he got home the first night V came in, he went home and Googled “famous fat men in history,” and went down various rabbit holes before falling asleep without brushing his teeth. He explained the name to his coworkers, rather proud of himself. Only Kenji humored him and played along.
After the first time V came in, Akira, Kenji, and others (but mostly Akira), prayed that they’d never see him again. Six normal days passed, each night of service providing both relief and an anxiety that slowly grew less fragile, but still carried weight.
When V came back, he was his usual robotic self; no easily recognizable mannerisms besides his leg shaking, a very large first order, and Sprite with no ice. David watched the order come in again as he did the first night and thought that if he ever figured out why he preferred his soda (or maybe just his Sprite) without ice, the mysteries of the universe would be unlocked.
“Wednesdays are officially the worst,” Kenji uttered as he started slicing his first of 60 pieces of medium-fatty tuna.
David half agreed. Most Wednesdays started with him waking up to the piercing sun that came in through his childhood bedroom, scrolling on the internet for at least 45 minutes, and hoping that he wouldn’t hear his parents leave for work at 8am, although he usually did. Then, he’d steal some of his dad’s artisanal sheep’s milk yogurt, play video games, read whatever literary fiction novel he was trying to absorb/educate himself with, and hope the start of his shift somehow got lost in space and time. Usually though, work began, and the day might as well have ended right there.
But last Wednesday and today had been the most interesting days he’d had in a while. He had to reconcile that wonder and excitement with the anxiety the whole situation brought on. Never in his life had he experienced hot flashes like this, and when he felt it bubble up, he resorted to walking over to the ice machine, scooping up a handful of cubes, and rubbing them on the back of his neck with his head over the prep kitchen sink.
The only time David remembered feeling this inescapable heat on his body was when his parents told him they were moving from Vernon Hills to Chicago when he was in third grade. He recalled slamming his bedroom door shut and standing in his room that was littered with Shel Silverstein books and a tattered copy of James and the Giant Peach that he had read nearly 10 times. He could easily recall that feeling of resentment gurgling in his gut like a pot of boiling starchy pasta water. What would he tell Sam Freedman, his red-headed best friend, and who would he borrow books from, and who would he talk about them with?
Pulling his head out of the sink, refreshed and wet-faced, David peeked out of the kitchen into the dining room. V was on nigiri number 78, a staggering accomplishment in the feat of seafood consumption, and seemingly near the end of his meal. He vigorously chomped as he ate with a slick noise of rice smashing against the molars that was only audible if somebody bent down to V’s eye-level. In the moment, David could imagine himself doing no such thing, or even continuing to watch. But he felt himself drawn to it like a bad accident, wanting to absorb the way this man’s lips trembled between bites of fish and how it took him just over four seconds to down a nigiri from first bite to swallow.
The mental calculations were flying. Graphs and stats began forming in front of David’s face. There would be hours of writing and storyboarding in his room. There must be. Somebody must capture what is happening here, David thought.
And then V looked up, with black-as-night pupils and tuna sinew smeared on his upper-lip. They locked eyes for a second, and then David escaped to the alley, hauling two bags of trash that he had dropped by the door earlier. Predictably, this was David’s least favorite part of the job (by a long shot), but an exit was necessary. He moved quickly, carrying two wet, fishy, and triple-knotted bags outside.
He made the mistake of overzealously taking out three bags on his first day, trying to show himself and the world (but mostly Akira) that he wasn’t some lazy dropout. That if he could haul tuna scraps expeditiously into a Lincoln Park alley, then maybe there was still hope for him. He held two bags in one hand, supporting the weight with his index and middle fingers slipped through the knots. He kicked the door open with his worn Asics, and scurried out the door like he had to shit himself. The bags ripped precisely two seconds before he could lift the dumpster flap with his pinky and hurl the trash in. Fish guts spread across the concrete, surely attracting rodents, cockroaches, and other creatures. He felt imposter syndrome setting in, even at a job with, in his mind, virtually no stakes.
In reality, whoever packed the bag that full had ensured his downfall, a realization that had not occurred to David until this very moment, when he plopped the two moderately-filled bags into the dumpster, which he now opened with the bottom of his palm.
That hot feeling on his cheeks was back. Watching V in the actual act of eating brought on unspeakable dread. It felt the same as it did the first time he saw it, like the whole thing was intentionally sloppy yet calculated. The very act of eating proved V’s humanity, while the amount of food consumed bragged that this man was, indeed, something entirely not human.
Afterwards had brought on a brief surge of wonder and awe. David’s late night wandering around the park, thinking that anything was possible because he had been a part of something extraordinary. However fleeting the feeling, at least he felt a spark. He wondered whether or not he’d feel the same rush after V left tonight.
Right now, it was just nice to feel the Chicago fake spring breeze on his hot cheeks. The sensation reminded David of the first spring he spent in the city, where he had the epiphany that it smelled different when it got warm out.
He had desperately missed Sam and their reading sessions in the blanket and pillow forts they built during his first month in Chicago. But soon, the warm city night became an even better friend. David’s new room on the third floor of the building had a window that looked onto a busy intersection. Right below, he could see the alley lined with dumpsters, broken beer bottles, and occasionally a Jackson Pollock stain of vomit, hurled up by one of the college students who went out in the area.
The night outside the window showed him many things. Three tragic car crashes at the busy intersection, which all happened in the span of three months before the city replaced the stop sign with a full-fledged stoplight. Three muscular boys who flipped back their wavy blonde hair and took off their Patagonia vests before kicking the shit out of a homeless man whom David’s parents frequently gave extra leftovers on their walk back from the neighborhood Greek restaurant. A group of kids that were a couple of years older than him smoking stinky weed and then peeing all over his brick building.
David remembered ducking below his window, glancing outside similarly to how an 18-year-old soldier in WWI would’ve popped his head out from the trenches. His secrecy had to be protected. But also, he wanted to be found and noticed, maybe just once, to feel like he actually participated in the action. Not just watching it from his bedroom, still filled with unpacked boxes of Legos, sports memorabilia, and yearbooks from his old grade school.
He knew he should’ve probably told his parents about all of these things, but holding on to these secrets was his way of getting back at them for the move. To compensate for uprooting his life, David demanded his parents buy him the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, partly as a bit, but partly because he had seen commercials for it on TV and wanted to impress his classmates when he started at his new school in the fall. They surprised him with the first three books in the Artemis Fowl series instead. He never did get into them.
Even though the dumpster in the back of Sushi Para IV reeked of tuna, David still smelled that springy spring smell of warm air and past selves. Nature pushed the world forward, and briefly pushed him away from the existential dread that arrived with V and his appetite. He decided he’d take another five in the alley before heading back in to see if V had left for good.
He thought briefly of Sam, who had once asked him when they were six, “do you also have a weiner?” David chuckled, and felt silly that he had ever been embarrassed at his best friend asking such a question in a way that was both silly and extremely serious.
He went back inside and noticed that V still lingered at the table, leg-shaking, and head down.
“Do you think we can carry him out if we need to?” Kenji whispered to David.
“I think we’d need to call in some reinforcements,” David said, eyeing the table. The staff had dropped all the queues to get him to leave. Refilled his water every two minutes. Cleaned the table with the particularly alcoholic-smelling wipes. Asked him if he needed anything else. Propped the door open slightly so the breeze whooshed by his table. Nothing was getting him to budge.
“Why don’t you go try and fill his water, D,” Kenji said, employing a rarely-used nickname. That meant the situation was dire.
“Why me? I’ve got more garbage to take out.”
“Nobody cares about the stupid garbage. We have all gone over there at some time tonight. You’re up, buddy.”
“Fine, give me the pitcher.”
David strutted over to the table, one of only three that were occupied on the slow Wednesday. It’s just pouring water. He’s just a guy. This is just my job. He knew all three mantras were lies, but repeated them in his head anyways.
V stood up quickly while David was a couple of steps away from the table. David paused, unsure if he should keep walking, turn around, or stay put. His feet felt like the time he got stuck in the mud that he thought was quicksand right by Diamond Lake in Vernon Hills. That day, his father took him to Culver’s for a butter burger and some custard, before they stopped at the lake and walked around. A sort of Sunday tradition. David wandered over to the water, ignoring his father’s “be careful,” to see his reflection in the lake. He looked different than he did in the mirror.
On one of the car rides to the lake, his father had told him that humans were made up of over 50% water. Looking at himself, he felt that H2O shooting through his blood stream, feeling cool waves run through his body. He tried to keep walking, but couldn’t and that cool sensation turned to an internal inferno instantly when he saw his legs sinking into the ground. His father rushed over and pulled him out. A searing shame flooded his body, and David and his dad walked back to the car without saying a word.
David’s dad got him out of the mud, physically and metaphorically, many times over the years. But he wasn’t here now, as David was face to face with the slightly-overweight man who had just eaten more than 80 pieces of sushi and nigiri. V stepped closer to David. Plaque clung visibly to V’s yellow-tinged teeth, and the smell of mayo and medium fatty tuna wafted towards David.
Very quickly, V put something into David’s apron pocket. Whatever it was, it wasn’t big and didn’t weigh a lot. As V pivoted away from the table and slinked out into the spring Chicago night, David began to worry that whatever was in his pocket had somehow immediately slipped out and fallen on the ground or somewhere else out of reach.
It felt like his body moved autonomously from his brain. David bent down to make sure nothing had fallen on the floor, and slammed his head on the corner of the table, spilling his pitcher of water everywhere. He lay on his back, wet, hot, discombobulated, and instantly surrounded by his coworkers. Had he passed out? Had his brief standoff with V been real? Kenji spoke to answer.
“Dude what happened back there?” he said. Him and Akira hovered over him looking concerned, while the high school girls at the table in the back audibly giggled.
“I’m fine,” David said, getting up slowly.
“Bro, he got so close to you. If I was in your position, I woulda told that man to back up. Like get out my face.”
“Yeah I don’t know what he was doing,” David said, patting his pockets and feeling something inside. He felt it vital that he not reveal the handoff to his coworkers. There was no reason for him to keep it a secret, and yet, the thought of more questions felt like something he should avoid at all costs.
“Excuse me,” David said, leaving a gigantic puddle, and walking as slowly as would seem normal to the bathroom.
David took a second to calm himself. He looked at himself in the mirror, and thought back to the good times and the bad at the lake in Vernon Hills. Those days with his dad were the best. Just pure male energy. His mom wasn’t there to police any shirtless howling, sips of beer that David’s dad let him try, or (most importantly) nut-scratching. His dad barely looked at him nowadays, only asking David whether or not he had been eating his sheep’s milk yogurt.
Tomorrow morning, he’d ask his dad to go to the Shedd Aquarium with him next weekend. It didn’t matter if he said yes. Asking was good enough.
He felt a bump on his head starting to form and got quickly pulled back to reality. He shook off the wooziness and slowly reached into his pocket, knowing he couldn’t put this off any longer. His cheeks felt like fleshy tea kettles when he pulled out a thin strip of paper that read:
“Follow Me.”
Giardiniera Mustard
(heavily inspired by Food52’s recipe)
Makes 1 cup
Ingredients
1 (2.4-ounce) jar of mustard seeds, or roughly ½ cup
½ cup beer
¼ cup any kind of vinegar
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon honey
⅓ cup giardiniera (we like the mild or spicy from Alpino)
In an air-tight mason jar or half quart container, add all the ingredients except the giardiniera. Stir to combine. Seal with the lid and store at room temperature for 24 hours.
The next day, add the giardiniera and stir to combine. Blend the mixture with an immersion blender, until there are no big chunks of mustard seed and you’re left with mostly a homogeneous paste. You can try it at this point, but it might taste bitter; leaving it in the fridge overnight will help it mellow and thin out. The longer it sits in the fridge, the better it will get. You can store in the fridge for 1-2 months.
Enjoy on hot dogs, specifically.
All I can say is please don’t stop writing!!!!