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?"
"I have friends." Ed protested, "You don't think I have friends?"
"I think you need to expand your PNC outreach. Have you tried diversifying your clique portfolio? Theatre kids? Howabout Bandos? Maybe a sports team." Piruz's eyes glittered at his own mention of a hypothetical sports team, "athletes like to eat. How about your school's track team? They're always skinny and hungry."
Ed accidentally caught a glimpse of Audra, and he was done with whatever Piruz was saying. She had set the watering can onto the tiled floor and retrieved her iPhone from her skirt pocket, read something on it, and put it away. She then pressed her hands on the window panes and looked up and down the street outside. Is she bored? Ed worried, she's watered the catci. Is she gonna want to leave now? Is that it?
"Listen!" Piruz shook his index finger in front of Ed's face. "I need you to move the enchiladas. I can't get rid of them. Everybody wants tacos and burrito bowls and salads, because they believe they're 'healthier,'" he made finger quotes.
"Well enchiladas are meat-filled tortillas smothered with melted cheese, though, so they're not wrong-" Ed began.
"Just go sell your girlfriend an enchilada," Piruz shooed him. "Make it your number one priority!"
***
"So, you've watered the cacti," Ed pointed at the watering can on the blue tiled floor, "how was it?"
Audra turned around from the window and greeted Ed with an enormous smile. He felt briefly dizzy, as if he had stood up too quickly after a long rest.
"Superb! I see you have the Mickey Mouse kind here." She knelt next to a cactus that grew in little round pads, "that's not their real name, but it's what I call them."
"Because of their shape-" Ed said, "I get it."
"This was the first type of cactus my dad bought me, when I was six or seven," Audra poked at the soil in the pot to check its moisture level. "I wanted a pet goldfish, but he said they always get overfed, or underfed, and die in a matter of weeks. Cacti don't die so easy."
"I think I killed a cactus before," Ed thought back to a succulent his mom bought him for a seventh grade biology class. The last time he saw it, it was brown and in the kitchen's garbage can. Yep, that thing was definitely dead. I killed it.
"Better not say that so loud in front of this Mickey Mouse." Audra held her hands over two of the cacti's pads as if shielding its ears, "it will become suspicious of you."
Ed laughed harder than that joke deserved.
"Enchiladas, Ed?" Piruz called from the front counter.
Ed glanced over his shoulder. Dude's got no chill.
"What did he say?" Audra looked from Ed to Piruz and back to Ed.
"Do you want to order anything?" Ed rubbed the nape of his neck. He didn't want to feel like an enchilada salesman, but here he was. Audra stood up and studied the menu on the back wall. "What do you recommend?"
"My boss really recommends the enchilada," Ed squinted, "but I would go for the chicken tostadas. The ground beef in this place can get pretty greasy. The pico's actually really good, but obviously mild. I usually add one of the hot sauces here-" he gestured toward the hot sauce stand behind him.
"Such pretty little bottles!" Audra grabbed a green Tabasco bottle. "I've seen this in France before, but never tried it."
"That's the jalapeno pepper sauce, about 1000 Scoville units." Ed picked up a bottle, "it's got a nice flavor. Mild. Not vinegary like the traditional Tabasco Red, and not smoky like the Tabasco Chipotle."
"You know a lot about the Tabasco sauce," Audra unscrewed her bottle's lid and sniffed its contents. She blinked as her eyes watered.
"Mexican food purists prefer Tapatio or Cholula, also good, but hotter at about 3,000 on the Scoville scale," Ed gestured at the bottles of Tapatio and Cholula, "but my dad always puts Tabasco Red in his bloody Mary hangover cure. When I was little, I liked to mimic him, so I had it on everything- eggs, toast, French fries-"
"So that one is your favorite," Audra put back the green Tabasco bottle and picked up a red one.
"I developed a taste for it, I guess," Ed said. "I'm a creature of habit."
"You're a beta male," said a familiar voice behind Ed. He turned around.
Gina bugged her eyes and grinned slack-jawed like a maniac. Next to her stood Emily, who scrolled through her iPhone.
"Got 'em," Gina patted Ed's head. "You look like such a good little sausage, all in your uniform. Who's a good little corporate cog? You're a good little corporate cog!"
"Gina?" Ed was so surprised he couldn't speak.
Gina's gaze fell on Audra. "Come on, Frenchy, let's get some nachos." Even with Gina's boney talons dragging her to the front counter, Audra didn't break eye contact with Ed until after Piruz asked her for her order. Ed felt like he had won a great victory.
"This is where you work, huh, Edward?" Emily had looked up from her iPhone and ran a finger across a nearby table top, "Are we going to get E Coli from just standing in this place or what?"
"You need to ingest the E Coli to become infected with the E Coli." Ed rolled his eyes.
"I meant this place is Sketch Central Station," Emily wiped her fingers on her yoga pants.
"It's really not-" Ed was a little insulted, but Emily couldn't tell that. She had noticed Gina pointing to something on the wall menu.
"Oh God," Emily's nose crinkled, "is Gina trying to make my Audra eat this crap? She's French. She's got too delicate a palate for the spicy stuff. Plus, I just cleaned our toilet this morning."
"Emily!" Ed cringed. A dirty toilet was not a mental image Ed wanted associated with his beloved. For that matter, it was not a mental image he wanted associated with anybody.
"What?" Emily seemed genuinely confused.
"What the hell are you even doing here?"
"Audra told us that you were going to show her the infamous 'El Gringo's' and we thought we'd meet up with her before orchestra and check it out." Emily brushed a strand of slippery green hair over her shoulder. "It would kill two birds with one stone, because she'd need a ride anyway. Did you think she'd stay here for your entire shift?"
That was a good point. Ed hadn't considered how exactly Audra was going to get home. What was he thinking? His dad would probably say he wasn't.
"See, I sorta imagined this as a date-thing?"
Emily's eyes grew in disbelief. "You're finally admitting it! You have a thing for Audra!"
"Would you keep it down?!" Ed glanced behind him. He was relieved to see that Audra was too busy listening to Piruz's animated enchilada-sales-pitch to have heard Emily's cackling.
"Well to answer your question, the French don't date," Emily spoke with an unearned authority, "I mean, they do, but they don't go on dates, because everything is a date in France. They go on dates to the grocery store. And they don't even have Wegmans over there."
"I guess I thought she might like me." Ed's head felt hollow. You're a moron, he told himself, you should just go play chicken on the highway, you should take a bath with a hair-drier, you should-
"She does like you," Emily said as casually as if she were talking about the weather. "We've been trying to send you hints all semester."
"She told you that?" Ed searched back in his memory for those hints of Audra's affection. He felt pathetic that couldn't find even one. At least, if he didn't include Audra's offer to visit him at work. That seemed too obvious to count as a "hint."
"You need to get your act together for prom." Emily straightened the collar of Ed's polo as if she were his mother or a busy-body aunt. "You, Phil, and Brian have to all turn in your ticket order forms at the same time so all of us will be seated at the same table for dinner."
"Wait." Ed whispered, "She likes me and she wants me to take her to prom? You talked about this?"
"I'm her host sister. Every night's a sleep-over. Girls discuss potential romantic interests at sleep-overs. It's an unwritten rule."
Potential romantic interests. Ed had visions of big bowls of cheese puffs and pretzels and fuzzy slippers, and Audra confessing to Emily that Ed was her "potential romantic interest." What strange universe is this? It certainly wasn't the old, comfortable universe, where Ed doodled poorly-shaped balloons and Audra called him silly. Ed was pretty sure the scientific community had discredited string theory and all its noodlely parallel universes- at least, if he correctly remembered that Neil DeGrasse Tyson documentary from physics class. But now Ed wondered if this day alone could finally vindicate Brian Greene. Teen slips into parallel universe where crush had liked him all along- imagine a headline like that in Scientific American.
"Wake up," Emily snapped her fingers. "I'm going to include you in the 'male-prom-dates' GroupMe so you all can figure out when to buy the tickets. You're also going to figure out a good way of asking Audra. I'll be pissed if you don't put any effort in."
***
It didn't matter that Audra left with Gina and Emily about ten minutes after they had arrived. Ed's day was already made. He spent the rest of his shift in pure, unadulterated, hot-cheeked bliss. He happily unclogged the crusty lips of the Tabasco bottles; he cheerfully wiped rice off the cushioned seats of the corner booth. During the dinnertime rush, he didn't bat an eyelid when a customer's precocious preteen aggressively called him a "cultural appropriator" for serving her the complementary chips and salsa platter. When Piruz wrapped a tape measure around Ed's bicep, thigh, and the circumference of his head at the end of his shift, Ed remained unflappably placid. Piruz muttered something about "sizing him for the Carlos costume," but Ed barely even heard him. Ed's spleen was in a hundred-percent working order, he had enough money for prom tickets, and Audra liked him (love would happen after prom night, he was sure. All the trains in Ed's life appeared to be running on time.
When Ed got to his car he felt his iPhone buzz in his jeans back pocket. He expected one of Emily's group messages. His heart pounded when he saw Audra's name on the lock screen instead. As he collapsed into the driver's seat, he read her iMessage:
I have figured out the perfect occupation! Culinary engineer for Tabasco! You could design the new hot sauces. Chemistry in motion! And plenty of human interaction! What do you think?
Below this was a link to Tabasco's "culinary engineer" position on the company's website.
Ed grinned the entire way home.
***