Enchilada Ed

12.

Farbod sat in the backroom with a camcorder held up to his thin, pale face.

"What are you filming in here?" Ed asked as he took his El Gringo's polo from his backpack.

"I'm not filming anything."

"Okay. Why are you sitting in the backroom with a camcorder then?"

"Why do we do anything?" Farbod dropped the camcorder to his lap, "Isn't life itself the act of slowly dying?"

"I haven't heard that one before." Ed peeled off his t-shirt.

"This isn't dorm-room philosophizing, kid," Farbod said, "our bodies are walking corpses, swollen with spiritual rot."

"Did something happen, or?" Ed covered his nipples with his arms.

"You've heard of Skydance?" Farbod ran his fingers across his patchy brown beard.

"The indie film festival?"

"It's trash!" Farbod spat, "commercialized neo-colonial fascism! No better than the Linden Valley Young Filmmaker's Association!"

"It's a film festival." Ed put on his uniform polo.

"They rejected my honors thesis," Farbod growled, "for what? A short film about Iraqi refugees in Utah? Mormons and Muslims: Seventy times Seven? Sounds like the name of an atheist porno."

"Yikes." Ed said flatly, "I'm sure your, uh, honors thesis was better than-"

"Of course it was better! It was an autobiographical creative-nonfiction about a gifted student, a child inductee to Mensa, and his struggle to rise above the compulsive alcoholics and nihilistic sex fiends roaming a top tier liberal arts college."

"Sounds riveting."

"I wrapped myself in saran wrap for it!" The overhead light created a mad glint in Farbod's green eyes.

"Cool," Ed backed toward the door.

"You know how much money I spent on saran wrap?" Farbod slammed his hands to his face, "boxes and boxes of saran wrap!"

"I should get on my shift." Ed darted out of the backroom.

***

Audra had somehow gotten a sea-green plastic watering can from Piruz. As Ed slipped his timecard into El Gringo's relic of a punch clock, he watched her water the Golden Barrel Cactus and the Peruvian Apple. The sunlight that poured in from the window behind her illuminated previously invisible undertones in her hair. Those lovely curls, black under indirect light, now glowed a dark burgundy. It was a very good thing that it was right at the restaurant's mid-afternoon dead time. If there had been any customers, Ed would have been too distracted to take their orders.

"Ed!" Piruz emerged from the kitchen, "doing some guerilla marketing I see?" he tilted his head in Audra's direction.

"Guerilla marketing?" That sounded like something Farbod would have put into Piruz's head. Ed couldn't understand why a man like Piruz- a Wharton graduate, former stockbroker, successful enough to purchase a restaurant as a retirement project- would trust the future of his business (or even its marketing) to a full grown, twenty-three year old man who still called both the Skydance film festival and the Linden Valley Young Filmmaker's Association "commercialized neo-colonial fascism." If that wasn't a sign of disorganized thinking, Ed wasn't sure what was. And yet-

"Going out and manually bringing in the youth." Piruz hoarsely whispered, "Attracting PNCs with tales of my cactuses, I like it, I like it. My only complaint is that you didn't bring more. You don't have many friends, or what?"