42
OUR FINAL NEW York destination: Nathan’s Famous. It was all the way out on Coney Island—which is not actually an island but is so far away from Manhattan on the lurching, sluggish F train that it felt like an entirely different world.
When we finally got there, the beach was as wide and flat as a parking lot, the waves small and distant. There were a lot of people, and some of them were actually swimming, which no one in Oregon did without a wet suit. The Pacific is cold.
Though Robinson seemed drained, we strolled along the boardwalk past bumper cars and an arcade popping with digital gunfire. People were flying kites and skateboarding and jogging and hawking cheap souvenirs, like huge foam sunglasses and T-shirts that said KEEP CONEY ISLAND FREAKY.
“You want to ride the Cylone?” I asked, pointing to the roller coaster in the distance. “Or the Wonder Wheel?”
Robinson shook his head. “Let’s just get the hot dogs.”
Because he seemed so tired all of a sudden, I suggested, ever so delicately, the idea of going back to the hostel. But Robinson wouldn’t hear of it.
“I need my daily dose of nitrates,” he said. “Plus, we’re tourists, and it’s our job to be touristy.”
So we turned up Surf Avenue, where the enormous green sign for Nathan’s loomed above the street. There was a big outdoor seating area, with seagulls perched near the plastic tables waiting for scraps. The air smelled like the sea and beer and grease. Not that appetizing, in my opinion, but Robinson’s whole demeanor had changed. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning.
“How many should I get?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, scanning the menu. “Two?” I was going to have to order the Caesar salad, since this wasn’t exactly the place to get a tofu dog.
Robinson scoffed at two. “Sonya ‘the Black Widow’ Thomas ate more than forty. Says right there on the sign.”
“But that was a hot dog–eating contest,” I said. “This is just a meal.”
Robinson considered the statement. “True. I’ll settle for … four. One with chili, one with sauerkraut, and two plain.”
“You’re taking your life in your hands,” I said disapprovingly.
“Only my gastrointestinal tract,” Robinson countered, and I grimaced.
Instead of eating with the rest of the crowd, we took our food back to the beach and sat on the warm, gritty sand. It was littered with cigarette butts and half-buried beer cans. But still! The ocean was a gorgeous blue-green, and the weather was perfect, and we were together.
“Can you believe that two weeks ago we were on a beach in California?” Robinson asked.
“Crazy,” I said, taking a stab at a limp piece of lettuce. “We’ve done so much.”
Robinson waggled his eyebrows at me. “Not enough, if you know what I mean.”
“Pervert,” I said, nudging him with my bare toe.
He bit into his second—or was it third?—hot dog and nudged me back.
I decided to abandon my wilted, greasy salad and lay back in the sand, watching the kites swoop and dive above me. I must have fallen asleep for a little while, because when I woke, Robinson wasn’t next to me anymore.
I looked around for a moment, and when I didn’t see him, I got up and began walking toward the boardwalk. Maybe he’d gone off to find the Headless Woman or Insectavora, the tattooed fire-eater. Maybe he was buying me a Coney Island shot glass to go with my Cedar Point snow globe.
But he wasn’t doing either of those things. Instead, I found him leaning against a fence, shaking.
And vomiting.
I reached out to touch his shoulder, but he waved me away. I took a step back. “You need to see a doctor, Robinson,” I pleaded.
After a moment he looked up, his face pale and his eyes red and watering. “Before you go all drama on me,” he said, “it was the hot dogs. Not the you-know-what.”
“And how do you know that?” I asked.
“I’m fine now. And actually, this is totally awesome,” he said, wiping his face and trying to smile at me. “I could so beat that Black Widow lady—I’ll just eat and barf, eat and barf, and that way I can consume an unlimited number of hot dogs.”
I sighed. “You are sick, Robinson. In a lot of ways.”
“But you love me,” he said, reaching for my hands.
“I do,” I said. So much.
Robinson fell asleep on the train home, and I practically had to carry him up to our cell in the hostel. He seemed feverish, but I told myself it was just sunburn. Windburn. Whatever it needed to be, as long as it wasn’t another infection.
I sat for a long time, listening to the sounds of the city all around us, but mostly just watching him sleep. Were his cheeks less full? His eyes deeper, more sunken? It could be happening so slowly, so subtly, that I hadn’t been able to see it …
I lay down beside Robinson and curled my body around his, remembering how I’d refused to tell him a bedtime story back in Las Vegas. I pressed my check against his beating heart and vowed I would never say no to him again.