The Stars of Summer (13 page)

RICE THIS AND BEANS THAT

A
FTER GLADYS'S VISIT NEXT DOOR,
there was still enough time for her to bike over to Mr. Eng's before her parents got home. When she entered the shop, Mr. Eng was kneeling in the packaged-goods aisle, taking inventory of a shelf of gourmet pickles.

“Gladys!” he cried. “Welcome!”

“Hi, Mr. Eng,” Gladys said. She hurried over and knelt beside him. “Here, let me help you count those.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Using the middle shelf for support, he pulled himself to his feet. “These knees are getting too old for crouching. In fact, Gladys, if you want an after-school job when you're a little older . . . ah, but I forget that you already have one.”

He shook his head, but for a moment, Gladys imagined being a stock girl at Mr. Eng's instead of a restaurant critic. Getting to work would be a lot easier, for one thing—and she'd probably get to keep her paychecks!

“Anyway,” he continued, “I've still got five copies of the paper on hold for you. We didn't really get to talk about your excellent review—there were some types of pork on that tapas restaurant's menu that even I hadn't heard of!”

“Thanks,” Gladys said quietly. It was nice to hear that Mr. Eng thought she'd done a good job, even if Gilbert Gadfly didn't. “I had to do some serious research beforehand.”

“Well, it paid off,” Mr. Eng assured her. “I can't wait to see what you write about next.”

“Oh,” Gladys started, “I—”

“No, no, don't tell me.” He waved a hand in the air. “I prefer to be surprised. And anyway, I go into the city to try new places myself sometimes. If I've already been to the restaurant you're reviewing, I wouldn't want to influence you with my opinion.”

Somehow, Gladys doubted that Mr. Eng had been to any of the “restaurants” she'd be visiting for her next review; the closest thing to a hot dog he carried at his meat counter was an organic German knockwurst that sold for nineteen dollars a pound. But she still had to ask.

“So, Mr. Eng,” Gladys said as she inventoried, “this is kind of a random question, but . . . do you like hot dogs?”

Mr. Eng looked taken aback by this question, and Gladys was worried that she'd offended him. But then he said, “It's been a long time since I had a hot dog. But when I was a boy in Flushing . . . well, that's a different story.”

“Will you tell me?”

Mr. Eng nodded slowly. “My family didn't have much money, and trips out of our neighborhood were rare. But one time, on a hot summer day . . . my father must have come into some extra cash, because he took me and all my brothers to Coney Island.

“We rode the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel and played in the ocean—and when it came time for dinner, my father bought each of us a hot dog from that famous stand on the boardwalk, Nathan's. I'll never forget sitting on the pier, watching the waves, and eating that hot dog. It was the first time that I really felt like . . . well”—his voice cracked slightly—“like a real American.”

Huh
. This wasn't the kind of story Gladys had been expecting, but she could certainly use it. She slipped her notebook and pencil out of her pocket and scribbled
Nathan's at Coney Island—the true taste of America?
onto a blank page. Then she looked up to thank Mr. Eng and saw that, behind his glasses, his eyes were shining with tears.

He slid his hands into his apron pockets and glanced toward the produce section; she could tell he was embarrassed. Finally, not sure what else to say, she asked, “Would you like me to count up these jars of beets down here, too?”

That seemed to be just what Mr. Eng needed to hear. He cleared his throat and turned back to Gladys, the crinkles around his eyes deepening as he smiled. “The beets, yes—that would be such a help. Thank you, Gladys.”

• • •

The next day, as soon as she got home from camp, Gladys called her aunt Lydia in Paris. Other than Mr. Eng, Gladys's aunt was the only adult who knew about her secret work for the
Standard
.

“
Bonsoir
, my Gladiola!” Aunt Lydia cried. “How are you? Have you been getting much use out of that garlic press I sent? They only make them like that here in France, you know.”

“It's been great,” Gladys said. In fact, she had thrown the press into her lobster backpack just that morning so she could use it in the camp kitchen. Once her new supplies came in, she had visions of making a pasta salad with garlicky pesto for one of her staff lunches. Today, however, she'd simply repeated yesterday's sandwiches. They'd received rave reviews from her fellow CITs, though that was probably just because Charissa had instantly proclaimed hummus, Sardo, and watercress to be her favorite sandwich combination ever.

“Well, my Gladysanthemum,” Aunt Lydia said, “what brings your lovely voice down my phone line today? Does it have to do with your job doing you-know-what for you-know-who?”

“Jeez, Aunt Lydia—you make it sound like I work for Voldemort!” Gladys laughed. “But, yeah, it does. My editor assigned me to review hot dogs. So I was wondering if maybe there's some amazing French variety that I don't know about.”

“French hot dogs, no . . .” her aunt said, “at least, not that I know of. But guess which European country does have a surprising affinity for hot dogs? Iceland!”

“Iceland?”

“Indeed!” Aunt Lydia cried. “I was in Reykjavík on my holiday last year, and the food in Iceland can be very expensive. So for people on a tight budget—like
moi
—hot dogs are the cheapest food to eat. But they're not like American hot dogs at all! They're made mostly of lamb, and the lamb in Iceland is some of the best in the world. And they come with a very specific set of toppings, too: brown mustard, ketchup, raw
and
fried onions, and this delicious rémoulade made of mayonnaise mixed with relish.”

Gladys scribbled frantically in her notebook. Special Icelandic lamb hot dogs—who would have thought? “Do you remember what they're called?” she asked.

Aunt Lydia chuckled. “As if your auntie ever forgot the name of a food she liked! They're called pylsur
.
” She spelled the word for Gladys, who hoped once again that she'd be able to find a restaurant in the city that served them.

As soon as she hung up with her aunt, Gladys pulled out her birthday card from Parm. “Call me sometime!” said the note inside, and underneath it was her cousins' home number in Arizona. She dialed.

“Gladys! It's so good to hear from you!” Parm said once her uncle handed her the phone.

She asked Gladys about camp, and whether Charissa was any less bossy there than at school; Gladys asked Parm about Arizona, and whether she was any more adventurous in her eating there than she was at home. The answer to both questions was no.

“Honestly, I can't even find spaghetti on most of the menus here,” Parm complained. “Everything is rice this and beans that.”

“I guess you're pretty close to the Mexican border, huh?” Gladys asked.

“I guess,” Parm said, “but trust me, there are some places here that really go overboard. I mean, does a hot dog really need to have beans on it?”

Gladys sat up straighter in her swivel chair. “Did you say hot dog?” She had planned to ask Parm if there were any special hot dogs in India, but this might be even better.

“Yeah,” Parm said. “Everyone in Tucson is obsessed with them. The most popular ones are these hot dogs wrapped in bacon and covered with beans and . . . I don't know, a bunch of other stuff. They look vile to me, but my brother and my cousins
love
them.”

“Do you remember what they're called?” Gladys asked.

“Sorry,” Parm said. “But I bet you can find out online. Just look up ‘Tucson popular hot dog' or something. I swear, they're everywhere here.”

Gladys scrawled that down—she would have to research the exact name and makeup of this hot dog later, but she was excited to add another variety to her list.

“So, why the interest in hot dogs?” Parm asked. “They don't have you writing about
that
for the
Standard,
do they?”

Gladys explained that they did indeed, and that her review was due the first week of August.

“Well, save me a copy when it comes out,” Parm said.

“Won't you be back by then?”

“Nope,” Parm said dully. “My parents decided that me and Jagmeet could use more time bonding with our cousins, so they're leaving us here until the middle of next month.”

“The middle of August?!”

“Tell me about it,” Parm groaned. “Who packs their kids off to live in the desert during the
hottest time of the year
? Seriously, you can't kick a soccer ball around for five minutes without getting heatstroke. But if I dare complain, all my relatives jump down my throat.” Parm's voice went nasal in imitation. “‘
You think this is bad? Try growing up in India!
'”

When they hung up a few minutes later, Gladys looked over her list. She'd amassed five solid candidates for world's best hot dog. But the real question was, how many of them would she be able to find in New York City?

She devoted the next hour to finding out—and amazingly enough, every single hot dog on her list was available somewhere in the five boroughs. There was a Scandinavian café with pylsur on the menu, a desert-themed bar that served the Tucson-style hot dog (which, it turned out, was called a Sonoran), a Thai hot dog and iced tea stand, and even a cart called Completos Locos, which dished up the elusive completo Italiano.

Less amazingly, the locations were far apart. Scandinavian Kitchen was fairly close to Nathan's in Brooklyn, but the others were scattered all over Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Gladys was just starting to wonder how she'd manage to visit them all when she heard her parents' car pull into the driveway. She closed the browser and was about to close her DumpMail, too, when a new message in her inbox caught her eye.

From: [email protected]
, she read. Sandy!

Gladys clicked to open the long-awaited message. It was only two lines long.

Be at computer tomorrow (Wednesday) at exactly 5 p.m. I'll video-chat you.

Gladys suppressed a squeal. She had hoped that Sandy would write her a long message when he found Wi-Fi, but this was even better. In less than a day, she'd get to talk to him, and see him!

She shut down the computer and bounced out of the office like a jumping bean.

MORE LEAFY GREENS

A
T PRECISELY FIVE P.M. THE NEXT DAY,
the video-chat alert rang out of Gladys's computer. She clicked “Accept Chat,” and a blurry brown-and-green image filled her screen.

“Gladys!” Sandy's voice cried.

“Sandy?” Gladys stared at the screen. “Oh, no—I think something's wrong with my computer. I can't see you. It's all—”

She stopped short. What were those bright blue things moving in the middle of the screen? They looked almost like eyes. But if those were Sandy's eyes, then the brown-and-green thing had to be . . .

“Sandy!” Gladys shrieked. “What happened to your face?!”

Sandy laughed, and Gladys saw a brief flash of white that must have been his teeth. “Camouflage,” he said finally. “Did I do a good job?”

He backed away from the screen a bit, and finally Gladys was able to make out the outline of his face. His forehead, chin, and round cheeks were all coated with mud, and his blond hair was hidden under a messy cap of leaves.

“Um, yeah,” she said. “You did an amazing job. But . . . why?”

Gladys caught Sandy's white grin again, but when he spoke next, his voice came out hushed.

“I'm in the bushes right outside the camp office. It's empty now; every day at five, the director makes a grocery run into town. But still, I don't want to be surprised while I'm breaking the rules, so I figured a little camo would help me, you know . . . blend.”

“Got it,” Gladys said. She shouldn't be surprised that Sandy had come up with a good plan for sneaking around—after all, he was always helping her figure out how to do it.

“Anyway, sorry it took me so long to get online,” he said. “They keep us really busy here, but I've been searching for Wi-Fi whenever I've had a chance. I finally hacked into this network yesterday—the password turned out to be ‘Camp123,' if you can believe it! I thought that chatting live would be more fun than e-mailing.”

“It's
way
more fun,” Gladys said. “So how are you? How's camp?”

“Forget about me, Gatsby!” Sandy hissed. “Tell me about you, and this hot dog thing!”

But Gladys shook her head. If her encounters with Hamilton had taught her anything, it was how annoying it was to listen to someone prattle on about their life without them ever asking you about yours in return.

“We'll get to my stuff in a minute,” she said. “But seriously, first I want to hear all about camp.”

Gladys listened patiently as Sandy told her about waking up at sunrise to do karate drills, challenging his cabinmate Dane to spar for top-bunk privileges (he lost), advancing from blue belt to red belt, and suffering through bland meals at the refectory. “They're all super-healthy,” he said with a groan. “Our sensei says that a sugar-free body is a strong body. But I
really
miss my mom's brownies. I mean, there are only so many buckwheat noodles a boy can eat!”

Gladys giggled.

“Okay, so that's it for me,” he said. “What about you? What's going on with this hot dog review?”

She told him everything—about the two different e-mails from Fiona, about her day in the city with her dad, and about her freak encounter with Gilbert Gadfly on the train.

“Do you think he could have gotten my assignment switched somehow?” she asked finally.

Dried mud cracked across Sandy's forehead as it creased. “I don't know . . .” he said, “but even if he did, someone still has to write that hot dog review, right? So why not you? If you do a really great job, you'll prove that he's wrong about you . . . and, hey, maybe then Fiona will send you on even more cool quests. Like ‘find the best brownie in America'! I could help you with that one.”

Gladys smiled in spite of herself. “The thing is, I don't know how to do ‘a really great job' on this assignment. Even just trying to find the best dog in Manhattan was impossible—and there are four more boroughs I haven't visited yet!” She could feel the panic rising in her voice.

“Okay, Gatsby, take some deep breaths. That's what our sensei always has us do, and it really does help you calm down. Here, I'll do them with you.”

Sandy looked straight into the screen, sucked in an enormous breath, then let it out, causing his streaky cheeks to puff like a chipmunk's. Gladys couldn't help it—she burst out laughing. And maybe that wasn't exactly the way Sandy intended his exercise to work, but it
did
make her feel better.

“Well, I do sort of have a new plan,” Gladys said once her giggles were back under control. She told him about all the international recommendations she'd received.

“Gatsby, that's excellent!” Sandy cried. “So, what's the problem? You can still sneak away during camp, right? You'll probably need at least one day for each borough, so that's five trips. Do you think you'll be able to squeeze those in by the end of the month?”

“I'm just not so sure about the sneaking out anymore,” Gladys said. “Things have gotten a little complicated at camp.”

“Complicated? What do you mean?”

“Well, I sort of got myself put in charge of making better lunches for the people who work there . . .”

Sandy sighed. “Of course you did.” He thought for a moment. “Okay, well, why don't you map all the restaurants and e-mail me the link? I should be able to sneak out to check my e-mail again after lights-out. Maybe I can come up with a route that'll make them easier for you to visit. Then we can video-chat again tomorrow and figure out a new way to get you into the city.”

“Okay!” Gladys cried. Then she repeated a phrase that she had already said to her friend many times before. “What would I do without you?”

He snorted, sending a dried leaf fluttering from his forehead to the ground. “Don't start with that again. Though if you really want to thank me . . .”

“What?” she cried.

“Well,” he said, “my mom
refuses
to break the camp's no-sugar rule. But . . . if you have time . . . maybe you could send some brownies?” He shot her a hopeful smile. “Just make sure you disguise them as something else, in case Director Samuels opens the package first. Okay?”

“Done,” Gladys said.

The clock on her computer read 5:29 now, which Gladys grudgingly pointed out to Sandy. “You'd better go before your director gets back,” she said.

“All right, but I'll see you tomorrow—same time, same place.”

Gladys nodded, and they each waved at their screens. Then Sandy's camouflaged face disappeared.