TWO TACOS
DOLLY
Here is a complete list of things I know about the man who ate my taco in front of me:
One. He is enormous. Not in a gym-brochure way — in a doorframes fear him way.
Two. He is covered in tattoos. Black ink crawling up both arms and peeking over his collar like his skeleton has opinions.
Three. He thinks he’s funny.
Four. He is now the number one name on a list I keep in my head titled ENEMIES OF THE CROWN.
The list used to be just the seagull from the boardwalk. The seagull has been demoted. That’s how serious this is.
After the Incident — capital I, there will be a memorial — I gathered my eleven surviving children and marched to the register to file a formal grievance.
“Kurt. I’d like to report a crime.”
“No.”
“A taco crime, Kurt.”
“Still no.”
“He’s RIGHT THERE.” I pointed. The thief had installed himself at a corner table like he paid property taxes on it, demolishing the last of my taco with the calm of a man eating his own food, which it was NOT.
Kurt followed my finger. Something crossed his face — recognition? Indigestion? With Kurt the range is narrow.
“That’s the new hire,” Kurt said. “Starts next week.”
The floor tilted. Somewhere, a mariachi trumpet played one long sad note.
“The what.”
“New. Hire.” Kurt said it slowly, the way you’d talk someone off a ledge, if you were also the one who pushed them. “Manager says I ‘can’t legally be the only employee anymore.’ Something about ‘labor laws’ and ‘my visible decline.’”
I gripped the counter. “Kurt. Kurtis. Kurt-o my boy. That man is a taco criminal. You cannot give a taco criminal the KEYS TO THE VAULT.”
“Watch me,” said Kurt, with the first genuine emotion I’d seen from him in six years. It looked suspiciously like hope. “Maybe he’ll take Tuesdays.”
Betrayal. From my own constipated compadre. I’d deal with him later — gently, he’s fragile — because right now I had a war to declare, formally, in person, per the rules of taco engagement that I had just invented.
I marched to the corner table and slammed my tray down across from the enemy. Eleven shells rattled. He didn’t even flinch, which went on the list too.
“You,” I said, “owe me a taco.”
He leaned back. Up close he was even more annoying: sharp jaw, stupid perfect eyebrows, green eyes with a whole lightshow going on in them. He looked like the villain in a movie about a small bakery.
“You gonna eat all those?” he asked.
“That is CLASSIFIED.”
“Because statistically—”
“Finish that sentence and they will never find you, Tatty.”
A grin spread across his face, slow and delighted, like I’d handed him a present. “Tatty?”
“Tattoos. Tatty. Keep up.”
“It’s Lennox.”
“That’s nice, Tatty.”
He laughed — a real one, from the chest, loud enough that two customers looked over. And I want the record to show that I did not care that it was a good laugh. Warm, kind of rumbly. Objectively a top-tier laugh, wasted entirely on a criminal.
I straightened, gathered my tray, and delivered the formal declaration with all the gravity the moment demanded:
“This means war. You’ve stolen from the wrong queen. I know your face, I’ll know your schedule, and I have nothing else going on.”
“Terrifying,” he said, meaning it as a compliment, which somehow made it worse.
I stormed out with my eleven children and my dignity, most of it.
Outside, I loaded the tacos into the taco-mobile — okay, it’s a used sedan, but it has a taco air freshener and taco seat covers and a horn that I’ve trained myself to hear as a mariachi fanfare, so, taco-mobile — and began the sacred feast right there in the parking lot, because home was seven minutes away and the tacos were hot now. This is called logistics.
I was three tacos deep in the driver’s seat when I felt it.
Eyes.
Slowly, I turned my head.
He was on the bench outside the restaurant. Watching. And when he saw me see him, did he look away like a normal citizen? No. He raised one hand and waved. Cheerfully. Like we were neighbors. Like he hadn’t eaten a member of my family in front of me.
Something ancient rose up in my chest.
I don’t fully remember deciding to do it. One second I was a woman in a sedan; the next I was hunched over my tray with my shoulders up around my ears, curled protectively around the remaining eight, glaring at him through the windshield with my lips pulled back.
“My precioussss,” I hissed. Out loud. Alone. In a Hyundai.
The tray understood. The tray always understands.
Across the lot, the thief watched me full-body cocoon around a fast-food tray like a dragon with one hoard and zero shame — and he smiled. Not a smirk. A big, stupid, sunrise of a smile, like this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Then he pulled out his phone. Probably to call the police. Joke’s on him. They know me.
I ate all but one of my precious in defiant eye contact — the last I belted into the passenger seat, because a queen maintains a Reserve — then backed out of the space at a fully legal speed, and drove home with the windows down, yelling my victory into the wind.
The war was one day old, and I was winning.
Probably.
He’d looked awfully happy for a man who was losing.
I decided not to think about that.