Chap­ter 18: The Hot Dog begins with Chona, one week after her assault, drift­ing between dreams and a painful real­i­ty. She lies in her hos­pi­tal bed, bare­ly teth­ered to the world, as frag­ments of a prayer from her child­hood, Barukh She’amar, float through her con­scious­ness like shim­mer­ing motes of light. These prayer­ful echoes remind her of Sab­bath morn­ings beside her father, the com­fort of rit­u­al, and the warmth of faith long held. Her parched lips and whis­pered desire for water elic­it a qui­et response, ground­ing her momen­tar­i­ly. But then, intrud­ing upon the sacred, she catch­es the scent of some­thing utter­ly profane—a hot dog. The smell, vivid and unmis­tak­able, feels out of place. It con­jures a mem­o­ry of a child­hood dare with Ber­nice at Fatty’s burg­er stand. The mix of reli­gious nos­tal­gia and for­bid­den plea­sure under­scores the com­plex inter­weav­ing of past, faith, and long­ing with­in her fail­ing body.

Awak­ened by her dis­com­fort and the sur­re­al scent, Chona becomes aware of her sur­round­ings. Moshe is slumped in a chair beside her, hand in hand, his exhaus­tion vis­i­ble in his pos­ture and pal­lor. Guilt over­whelms her—she sees in him the man he used to be and mourns who he’s become through grief and hard­ship. She remem­bers scold­ing him over the years, mis­un­der­stand­ing his resilience as naivety, his kind­ness as weak­ness. Despite her regrets, she admires the prin­ci­ples that guid­ed him: his belief in music, jus­tice, and shared human­i­ty. Her pain grows unbear­able, and as her sens­es blur, the hot dog’s scent once again press­es against her mind, both com­ic and trag­ic in its sym­bol­ic absur­di­ty. She waves weak­ly, request­ing it be removed. The moment becomes a metaphor: the puri­ty of a life slip­ping away amidst the intru­sion of a world far less dig­ni­fied than it claims to be.

In the haze of her last moments, the room fills with famil­iar faces—Isaac, Rab­bi Feld­man, the Skrupske­lis twins, Addie, Nate, and Ber­nice. But some­one is missing—Dodo. Chona’s instinct is to ask about him, and Moshe’s reas­sur­ance doesn’t reach her as the pain over­takes her. She is caught between two worlds: the phys­i­cal realm that insists on suf­fer­ing, and a spir­i­tu­al mem­o­ry of light, prayer, and love. The bond between her and Moshe, silent yet pro­found, is reflect­ed in every ges­ture he makes. As her strength dwin­dles, she jokes weak­ly to Ber­nice about the hot dog. Her Yid­dish slips out uncon­scious­ly, remind­ing them all of the cul­tur­al tapes­try that has bound them togeth­er, even as life unwinds. Ber­nice, typ­i­cal­ly sto­ic, smiles softly—an emo­tion­al break­through that feels like grace in a moment oth­er­wise ruled by sor­row.

Beyond Chona’s room, her pass­ing draws togeth­er an unlike­ly col­lec­tion of mourners—Black and Jew­ish, work­ing class and intel­lec­tu­al. They stand awk­ward­ly in the hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dor, an unac­knowl­edged coali­tion shaped by shared strug­gle. There is no cof­fee, no com­fort­ing chap­lain, just silence and glances, mem­o­ries and ten­sion. Their pres­ence is a qui­et rebel­lion against the sep­a­ra­tions soci­ety imposes—these peo­ple who, in any oth­er set­ting, might nev­er be seen togeth­er. But now, drawn by loss and loy­al­ty, they wait. A con­ver­sa­tion between Rab­bi Feld­man and Isaac hints at an old dis­pute, an unsent let­ter, and sus­pi­cions about Doc Roberts—threads of a larg­er mys­tery still unrav­el­ing. As they speak, Moshe’s grief bursts from the room in a howl that silences all dia­logue and reshapes the moment.

The hall­way trans­forms into a place of pil­grim­age. The group, frozen by the weight of Moshe’s wail, begins to move for­ward as one. They are not just friends or acquain­tances but wit­ness­es to a fad­ing era. Like fus­gey­ers—Jew­ish refugees walk­ing across East­ern Europe—or the first Africans forced onto Amer­i­can shores, they walk with a dig­ni­ty forged from pain. In this walk, they car­ry gen­er­a­tions of sto­ries: of oppres­sion, of sur­vival, of mis­placed futures and dis­card­ed truths. Their lives, full of mean­ing, are already being erased by the march of time and mod­ern con­ve­nience. The hot dog, once just a scent in Chona’s dream, becomes a sym­bol of cul­tur­al decline—of a future so sat­u­rat­ed with dis­trac­tion and con­sump­tion that real con­nec­tion becomes for­eign.

Chona’s final moments, filled with prayer, mem­o­ry, and the intru­sive scent of some­thing unclean, evoke more than per­son­al tragedy. They offer com­men­tary on a van­ish­ing world—where faith met jus­tice, where iden­ti­ty was lay­ered and fought for, and where life was defined by more than what could be bought or streamed. In her fad­ing aware­ness, she sens­es not only death but the arrival of a future devoid of mean­ing, masked in con­ve­nience. The peo­ple around her—those stand­ing in that hallway—are the last cus­to­di­ans of some­thing sacred. They don’t know yet what they car­ry, or what will be lost. But as they step for­ward into the unknown, they move together—not because of creed or race, but because of shared pain, shared his­to­ry, and the bur­den of remem­ber­ing when oth­ers for­get.