ONE TACO
DOLLY
They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
How about tacos instead?
Lemonade is a scam, and I can prove it. You have to squeeze a hundred lemons to make one glass. One. Glass. That’s not a beverage, that’s a hostage situation. Meanwhile a taco asks nothing of you. A taco arrives complete. A taco has never once made me cry into a pitcher at two in the morning.
Tacos are simple. Stick to tacos.
You can find them lots of places, but my place — my kingdom, my cathedral, my emotional support building — is Twisty Tacos. On Tuesdays, tacos are twenty-five cents.
Keep that to yourself. I mean it. More people means longer lines, longer lines means waiting, and waiting means somewhere out there a taco is getting cold that could have been in my mouth.
If you absolutely must have a Tuesday treat, go get one of those diabetes unicorn frappes and leave the shells to the professionals.
Why do I love tacos so much, you ask?
Why do dogs love belly rubs? Why do birds fly? Why does the moon pull the ocean around like a needy boyfriend?
Some things just are, Susan.
For the record: I have not missed a Taco Tuesday in six years. Not one. Rain, plague, a suspicious Tuesday-morning jury summons that I will legally not be discussing — doesn’t matter. I show up.
Anyway.
“How many this time, Lolly?” Kurt asked.
Kurt works the register on Tuesdays. Kurt has the face of a man being slowly compressed by an invisible trash compactor, and honestly?
I understand his pain. If I had to hand my tacos to strangers all day — just give them away, over and over, watching them leave — I’d need therapy too.
Eventually I’d crack completely. I’d go full Sméagol.
I’d barricade the doors and crouch on the counter hissing at customers and stroking the warming tray.
My precioussss.
…What? Everyone has a five-year plan.
“Twelve for now,” I said. “And it’s Dolly. We’ve been over this. Six years, Kurt.”
“Sure, Polly.” He slid my cup across the counter like it had personally wronged him. “Drink’s on the machine.”
I slapped my bills into his palm. They were slightly damp. That’s between me and my pocket.
“Keep the change! Buy yourself something happy!”
Kurt looked at the money. Then at me. Then at nothing at all, for a long time, the way sailors look at the sea.
Poor guy. And listen, before you say anything — I know what’s wrong with him, okay? I figured it out months ago. The strained face. The agonized winces every time I walk in. The way he grips the counter like he’s riding out a storm.
Constipation. Textbook case. Man is backed up like a holiday drive-thru, and nobody in his life loves him enough to say something.
Nobody except me.
I leaned across the counter and dropped my voice to a respectful whisper, because I am a professional about these things. “Kurt. Buddy. Drink more water. Maybe coffee. Fiber’s your friend. I left another pamphlet in the suggestion box.”
“That box is for suggestions.”
“That WAS the suggestion.”
His eye twitched. Textbook symptom. It’s honestly getting worse, and if he doesn’t take my pamphlets seriously soon I’m going to have to stage an intervention, and neither of us wants me to have that kind of time.
I skipped off to the soda fountain and filled my cup with lemonade — and before you start, no, that’s not hypocrisy, that’s diplomacy. The lemons and I maintain a professional relationship. I just refuse to work for them.
I was mid-sip, basking in the holy smell of impending tacos, when the foghorn went off.
“ORDER SIXTY!”
I jolted. Lemonade went everywhere. Down my shirt, in my hair, a little in my soul.
“KURT.” I stood there dripping. “I am the ONLY PERSON HERE.”
“Policy,” said Kurt, who has never once been sorry about anything.
The lemons. Even now. Even here. They found me.
I mopped myself off with nineteen napkins, collected my tray — twelve perfect, crunchy, golden children glistening under the heat lamps like the treasure room in a pyramid — and turned around to find a table.
Twelve tacos. I counted them. I always count them.
Which is how I know that four steps later, there were eleven.