Enchilada Ed

4.

Ed had hoped to work at Qdoba, but the manager, a bleary-eyed woman in her mid-forties, insisted that there were no job openings. We've had too many teenagers already, she might as well have said, the way she scowled when he asked for a job application. All you kids wiping your foreheads with your bare hands, questionable hygiene. We saw what happened to Chipotle. Ed tried Moe's, and Chipotle, and Chili's, and Taco Bueno. Even Taco Bell. No success. The only Mexican restaurant that would hire him was "El Gringo's," a hole-in-the-wall-sort of place Ed had never heard of before, in a part of town which hadn't quite felt Linden Valley's miraculous economic recovery. The neighborhood wasn't by any means a ghetto, though some of the more well-heeled of Ed's classmates would jokingly refer to it as such. The houses ran close together and the sidewalk pavement was jagged. But compared to the decaying boroughs of other similar-sized rust belt cities, Linden Valley's south side was a low-crime paradise, always just on the brink of a revival. El Gringo's owner, a retired-stockbroker named Piruz "Pedro" Shakouri, had listed an opening for a cashier/bus boy on Craigslist. Ed was the least sketchy applicant he interviewed (and to be fair, the quality of the applicant pool had more to do with Craigslist than with the neighborhood). For his part, Ed's dad seemed pleasantly surprised that Ed actually got himself a job. He didn't know why Ed was so adamant about working in Mexican food, but he accepted it. Ed reasoned that restaurants usually allowed their servers a certain amount of free food. At least, he had heard that somewhere. And what was better than free burritos?

Unfortunately for Ed, free burritos were not part of Piruz's business model. Ed discovered that on his first day. He had begun on a Saturday morning, too early for the lunch shift, but too late for breakfast. The restaurant was completely empty. Ed sat in the front dining room, contemplating sneaking a tortilla chip from the complimentary chips and salsa platter resting on a nearby tabletop. Just as Ed had lifted a chip from its blue ceramic bowl, Piruz popped out from the kitchen.

"No, no, no." He slapped the chip out of Ed's hand, "that's embezzlement."

"Embezzlement?" Ed's face felt hot. "I'm sorry, I didn't know-"

"You can't bargain with the truth," Piruz shot up a finger at Ed, "as Yusuf Islam sings!"

"Yusuf what?"

"Cat Stevens."

"Who?" Ed furrowed his brows.

"Don't play dumb with me," Piruz barked. "I got my degree from Wharton, I know how to do more than just inventory. I'm what they call a money medium."

"A money medium?" Ed repeated.

"I have a sixth sense, just for my money. My money calls out to me, like your dead auntie. It says, don't be a little bitch Piruz-" Piruz raised his voice to an effeminate pitch, "Defend your money-defend, defend!"

"It's just one chip, Mr. Shakouri," Ed pleaded, "I didn't think it would matter."

"In front of the customers, you call me Pedro," Piruz spoke in a rapid-fire staccato, laced with the slightest hint of a second-generation accent Ed couldn't identify. "And would you prefer  a bowl of twenty chips, or twenty one?"

"I probably wouldn't notice a difference," Ed admitted. 

"Odd numbers, eh!" Piruz shook a cupped hand. "There's a whole psychology behind the public's preference for odd numbers. My son just graduated from Oberlin- top tier school- he could tell you how one chip could make or break a business!"

Ed was possessed by a gnawing curiosity. He had visions of a tortilla chip-turned-butterfly-effect: a chef slipping on salsa, knocking over containers of guacamole and lettuce and pinto beans, leading ultimately to the complete destruction of half the restaurant inventory, on the busiest business day of the season-