Relish

“Just the usual, please. One hot dog with relish.” 

Hannibal handed me his five-dollar bill. I grabbed it and went to open the register, but found myself stopped dead by the unblinking gaze of Lincoln.

When Jason woke me up early this morning, so that we could set everything up, he reminded me that we promised to go through with it on the first day of spring. No particular reason, we just needed to have an easy to remember deadline. But as I sat there and scrutinized the paper eyes and facial hair of Abe, I tried to remember why I ever made that promise.

“Something wrong?” Hannibal said.

“No. Nothing. Just tired.”

“Understandable. I’ve had a helluva day too.”

I put the bill Lincoln face down into the register. For the past seventeen years, Hannibal Kingston has come to my cart and ordered the same thing. I could have prepared the dog in under a minute. Instead, I hesitated, took my time about it.

“What happened?” I said, trying to keep my mind off what I was about to do, even though I was flagrantly obeying orders. Don’t talk to him, it will just make it worse. That’s what Jason told me to do. But I just couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t prepare that hot dog in silence.

“Well, where do I start?” Hannibal said. “Let’s see, so I go into the office today, right?”

“Right.”

“And, y’know, for context, these past few weeks, I’ve been dealing with this guy named Percy, right?”

“Right.”

“Now, Percy, he came to our offices, he took out a loan to start a bakery. Well, turns out all his croissants and his cakes tasted like shit. Couldn’t keep up with the interest payments and defaulted. Just defaulted, right?”

“Right.”

“So, my guys, they’ve been trying for these past couple weeks to track him down. And we’ve been trying hard. Using all the methods, leaving no stone unturned, right?”

“Yeah. I get it.”

“We finally get an address from a sister of his in New York. Go to his apartment and find he’s sold it, fled the city, and is now living in a shack in Nevada. Can you fucking believe that, Finn?”

“No. I can’t.”

“I know. Christ, I could murder that kid. Well, anyway, I’ve got my best guys, Hector and Claudius, out in Carson City right now. You know Hector and Claudius?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you know it doesn’t take them that long to find a guy when they’ve got him pegged. But it’s been hours and I haven’t heard anything back. Can you believe that?”

I paused. I looked down at the hot dog. I got the bun and the sausage. All that remained was the relish.

“Finn?”

“What? Yes?”

“Finn, is something wrong? You zoned out there.”

“I did? Sorry, I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“I can tell. Listen, why don’t you finish up my hot dog, then you call it quits for today? Go home and sleep. Not much foot traffic around here right now anyways.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I think...I think I’ll do just that.”

“Good.”

I wiped my sweaty palms hands on my apron. Again. For the fifth or sixth time. But now a quivering accompanied the sweating. And it wasn’t just my hands. I was shaking all over. I was as jittery as a hummingbird with a cocaine addiction. 

My train of thought became just a singular boxcar, just a repetitious prayer to God for forgiveness that I knew was in vain anyway. I knew after today that it was all over and that I was going to hell, booked my one way ticket to be ground to sinful ashes between the molars of Satan, like Judas and Brutus before me.

I reached on the bottom shelf of the cart and grabbed the green tube of relish. I had lied to people all day, telling them I was out. In truth, I’d just been saving it, saving it all for Hannibal. 

I brought the nozzle over the dog, squeezed, and handed him the dog. I’ll never forget how he then took a giant bite, slathering relish on his upper lip, before scooping it up with his finger and licking it off. It’s done. He’s done. And I’m done.

“Thanks a million, Finn.” Hannibal said as he began to walk away. “I can always rely on you and your dogs for a pick-me-up. Hey, you have a good day now. Go home and get some sleep, you hear me?”

“I hear you.” I said. “Goodbye, Hannibal.”

“Goodbye.”

I didn’t move, didn’t even breathe at all as I sat there, watching him walk away. When he turned the corner and disappeared from sight, I knew that I had just gotten my final glimpse of Hannibal Kingston.

“Finn?”

I remembered pondering, at around four that morning, what it would be like to walk back into the apartment. I don’t know what I expected, but I was surprised to find that I felt nothing, as if numb to my own emotions. I was in disbelief. It was only when I came to recline on the sofa that I realized it was possible to grieve for a man that you yourself killed.

Jason was holding a beer can in one hand, a bag of Cheetos in the other. Although orange, ostensibly cheese-flavored dust covered his fingers, he picked up the remote and switched on the TV. A televangelist was anointing his live studio audience with holy water that the text at the bottom of the screen claimed could cure cancer, Ebola, and both types of diabetes.

“So,” Jason said. “How was it?”

“How was it?” I said. “What the hell do you mean ‘how was it’? What do you want me to say, Jason? I just fucking killed a man. Killed a friend.”

“Don’t call that man your friend. I’m your friend, Finn.”

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. My stomach growled. I got up and went to the cabinet where we kept the Clif Bars. The problem was that we had so many damn cabinets, even though it was a tiny kitchen, that I always ended up opening the wrong one by accident.

And that’s exactly what happened. Instead of finding Clif Bars, I found, standing alone in the adjacent cabinet, a small bottle, the glass dark brown, tattooed with a dozen warning labels and pictures of skulls and crossbones. I slammed the door shut.

“Jesus!” I screamed.

“What? What is it?”

“Didn’t you throw the fucking poison away?”

“I was gonna do it this afternoon-”

“Do it now. Do it right fucking now!”

Jason sighed, grabbed the bottle, and went to toss it in the dumpster behind the apartment complex. 

As he went out, I came over to the window. Our apartment was several stories up but our view was terrible. All you could see were other people’s windows. Inside one, a big guy chased a fly around with a swatter. He tried for a solid ten minutes to slay the insect before falling to his knees, sweat stains bleeding through his tank top, and gave up. Next to him was a woman nursing her baby in a rocking chair. When a feeling of intrusion struck me, I drew the curtains and then dived back onto the sofa.

Jason wasn’t around much the next few weeks. Which made sense. The whole reason we did it at all was to buy time. By the time the debts Jason owed Hannibal transferred to someone else, he’d have enough money to pay it all back.

So yeah, there was a good reason he was always off, working at the Mexican restaurant down the street. That’s not to say I wasn’t furious about his absence. The only thing worse than coming to grips with the fact that you murdered someone is coming to grips with the fact that you murdered someone without anyone to comfort you through the circuitous and agonizing process.

I held on for the first few days. I wasn’t doing great. I wasn’t doing OK, not by a long shot. I couldn’t get off the sofa and I kept turning up the volume on the TV as if I could drown out the endless and tiring prose of my mind telling me over and over again that I was a murderer and that I was going to hell with the sound of Rachel Ray telling me how to “commemorate the coming of spring by holding your first cookout of the year with your family and friends.”

I finally snapped while Rachel showed me how to prepare “the perfect” salmon dinner. I was scrolling through local news headlines on my phone, but my plan of clouding my mind with trite news stories backfired when an article’s thumbnail presented itself to me. A photo of Hannibal’s smiling head. The adjacent headline read: “Poisoning Case Ruled Accident After Autopsy Reveals Victim Had Severe Digestive Issues”.

I threw my phone across the room as if it had suddenly transformed into some venomous creature. When I worked up the courage to go and pick it up an hour later, I found the screen cracked and the entire device damaged beyond repair. I let out a sigh of relief, wrapped myself in a weighted blanket, and went back to Rachel, now glazing a ham with brown sugar.

“Maybe you should go see a doctor, Finn.”

Jason stood over me, brown bag of groceries in hand. I was tired, I was grief-ridden, and I was sentenced to an eternity in fiery pits of Hell. The last thing I needed was to be self-conscious about my body weight.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going to a doctor. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Jesus Christ, Finn, you look like you lost a hundred pounds in two weeks.”

I tried to explain to him that the only sustenance I deemed myself worthy of was a glass of tap water and a singular bag of pretzels, all consumed over the course of a three day cycle.

“Finn, I get it, you’re mad at me for making you do...that.”

“I’m mad at you?”

“Of course you are. You’re mad at me and you’re trying to get my attention. Well, you’ve got it. You won. Now can you cut it out so we can eat some fucking dinner?”

“Oh, fuck you! You really fucking think I’m doing this for attention!? Because I’m mad at you!? You try murdering someone, you fucking son of a-!”

Jason slapped his palm over my mouth. Then he spoke in a hushed tone.

“You can’t just fucking say you murdered someone, you fucking idiot! You’re gonna get us caught.”

There was a long moment of silence before Jason spoke again.

“Listen, Finn. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did this to you. Why don’t you get some sleep? Get some sleep and then, tomorrow morning...or, you know, whenever you feel up to it...go out there and sell your hot dogs. It will get your mind off things.”

So I did. I got on my apron. I retrieved my cart from the apartment complex’s garage. I got everything in order and, when I was ready, I pushed the cart out of the garage and came to my usual spot.

I was early. Very early. I sold only one hot dog on my last day of operations, the one I sold to...him. So there was no need to restock or resupply or replace anything before heading out.

It felt good to just jump right back into it. And for the first couple of hours, as more and more people came by and ordered dogs, I got to thinking that Jason was right. I hadn’t thought about the incident all afternoon.

Near the end of the day, a little girl approached the cart. Couldn’t have been older than five. In her left hand was a wad of dollar bills, quarters, and dimes, which she laid down on the cart with an adorable gusto.

“Two hot dogs, please!”

I looked up and made eye contact with her mother, who was filming the whole event on her phone. I flashed a wide, toothy smile and my voice took on that high-pitched, squeaky tone of a twenty-something adult talking to a child.

“What would you like on the hot dogs, ma’am?” I said to the girl. She turned about on her heels and looked at her mom, who mouthed her order.

“My mommy wants ketchup on hers.”

“OK. But what about you? What do you want?”

She stood there, locked in a fierce staring contest with the cart’s menu. On her feet were tennis shoes that lit up as she tapped her left foot on the sidewalk. I looked up to realize a small crowd had developed, all of them beaming and laughing quietly at the scene.

“I know what I want.” The girl said at last. “I want relish.”

She was obviously mesmerized by how quickly I prepared the hot dog. The gleam in her eyes and the Cheerio shape her mouth took on filled me with a warmth I hadn’t known in so many weeks.

“There you go.” I said, handing her the two dogs. Everyone, the entire crowd and myself, we all laughed when the girl took a big bite out of her dog and then ran back to her mom.

“Thank you, have a nice day, sir!” She said as they began to walk away.

“You too!”

The crowd faded. I realized rush hour was just about over and I ought to be getting home soon.

As I packed up my supplies, I began to think about how right Jason had been. Of course Jason was right, he knew me better than anybody. Why did I ever question him? I loved him so much. I resolved to go back to the apartment and apologize to him. Then we would eat dinner, get drunk, sit down, and watch the first season of Friends for the third time this year.

And soon, it’ll get even better. Now with the debts paid off, we could put our money towards that new, bigger apartment we’ve always wanted. And who knows what might happen after that? I could buy a new cart, maybe buy my own restaurant. And then Jason could quit that job he hated so much and we could work there full time. And, if the business is a success, we could maybe even buy a house out in the suburbs and maybe even adopt a kid. Wouldn’t a kid be lovely? Wouldn’t we love a kid as adorable as the one I served just ten minutes prior?

I always put away the condiments last. Before I do so, I shake each bottle to determine how much is left and what I need to buy more of later that week. It was a busy day and I was running low on ketchup and mustard, but not relish. The only person who ordered relish the entire day was that little girl.

I got to thinking about how strange that was. Usually, I’m always running out of relish and then rushing to the store to get some more.

Then I remembered that I killed off the regular customer who routinely ordered relish.

Then I remembered that I forgot to swap out the poisoned relish that morning.

Then I unscrewed the nozzle and downed the entire bottle of relish.