Cinco de Mayhem (3 page)

“Buckwheat with ham and cheese,” I repeated to Cass as we swung into a front approach of Crepe Empire. “Make sure I order that. I freeze up when he glares at me.”

My brave, fire-wielding friend made a dismissive
pah
. “Don't let him bother you. He thinks too much of himself. He does make good crepes, though.” She strode boldly toward Crepe Empire.

“Hold up,” I said, putting a hand on her elbow. “Flori wants me to look for vulnerabilities. Health code violations. Improper food and cash handling. Pigeons, dogs, kids with sticky fingers, anything . . .”

“Looks pretty good to me,” Cass said, slowing to strolling pace.

Unfortunately, she was right. Napoleon's cart of polished stainless steel gleamed under a blue and white striped awning. The quavering voice of Edith Piaf, the famous wartime lounge singer, wafted toward us. There wasn't a rat in sight, unless you counted Napoleon.

Cass and I stepped up second in line and inspected the blackboard menu. Flowery cursive script listed six crepes and, in the biggest font,
NO SUBSTITUTIONS!
I mentally rehearsed my order as Cass asked for lemon with a sugar brûlée.

Too late, I realized that Cass had stepped aside.

“You! Make your order. You're holding up the line!” Napoleon snapped at me. His dark hair swirled like horns up the sides of his towering hat. His lips turned downward, outlined in deep clench lines.

“Order or get out of the way!” he demanded.

“Buckwheat crepe,” I stammered. “With egg and ham. Oh, I mean, the fried egg and with cheese.”

My request was met with disdain. “Of course with cheese and the fried egg. No substitutions! And I assume you mean the galette. There is no buckwheat crepe.”

He spat out the correction as if any fool would know that buckwheat turns a crepe into a galette. I actually had known, but I'd forgotten under pressure. I'd also forgotten to get out my wallet.

“Ten fifty-five,” he ordered, making no moves to assemble my crepe until I'd paid.

I forked over a twenty and reluctantly left two dollars in his tip jar. My bank account would be happy when I went back to boycotting this jerk. Still, I was enthralled as he spread the crepe batter into perfect circles of uniform thickness. After flipping my crepe—correction, galette—he added thinly sliced ham and grated cheese to the center. An egg, frying at the side of the griddle, topped off the masterpiece, and Napoleon tucked the four sides of the crepe inward so that only the sunny yolk poked through. Gorgeous. Cass's sweet crepe was just as pretty. The pale yellow batter bubbled into delicate lace that Napoleon sprinkled with sugar, a squeeze of lemon, and a dash of lemon
liqueur
.

I stepped back as the bully chef reached for a blue propane torch. He spotted my retreat and smirked. “Scared of a little fire, ladies?”

Cass snorted. I suppressed a snicker, imagining what she must be thinking.
My torch is bigger than yours, little man
. Napoleon didn't notice our snorts and snickers. He ran a hissing blue flame over the lemon sugar, creating a bubbling caramel. With a few flicks of his wrist and a dusting of powdered
sugar, Cass's crepe was folded into a neat triangle. He slid the paper trays across the counter and dismissed us with a wave of his hand. No “thank you” or “please come again.”

“Next!” he yelled.

Cass and I found a free bench near the center of the Plaza. She shook her head. “I've heard of this happening, people lining up to be abused for soup or corned beef, but I never thought I'd see it here. Santa Fe's a relaxed, accepting place. You don't come here to be yelled at by some jerk with a fake accent.” She took a bite of crepe and moaned. “I do wish his food wasn't so delicious. Maybe we could make crepes at my studio. Do you think my acetylene torch is too powerful?”

“A tad,” I said, thinking more of what she'd said about Napoleon's accent. “Fake?” I asked. “I thought he was French.”

“Ha!” Cass replied. “He studied cooking in France for a couple years and I think he does have some distant relatives there. Mainly, he's New Mexican, from a suburb of Albuquerque. He should take pride in both sides of his heritage.” She paused to enjoy another bite, then said, “A while back he catered a gallery opening for one of my friends and refused to make anything resembling New Mexican food. No green chile crepe. Nothing with cornmeal. Too common, he claimed. Insecure little bully . . .”

I considered this information. Was Napoleon's denial of local ties a point of weakness? Maybe, but then Flori probably already knew more about his family connections than he did. She had a
chessmaster's mind when it came to relations and was a grande dame of gossip.

The screech of brakes broke my thoughts. I turned to see Linda's battered white truck pulling up to the northwest corner. Her wooden tamale cart, painted bright yellow with a Zia sun symbol on top and colorful flowers along the edges, rattled behind the pickup.

I panicked. “She can't see us eating these!” I warned Cass. Luckily, Linda didn't notice us gobbling our last bites. She was a one-woman moving machine. She got out, laid down a ramp, jumped back in her truck, and expertly backed her cart up the ramp and onto the Plaza. Hopping out again, she unhooked the tow hitch and pushed the cart into place.

“Wow,” Cass said admiringly. “Linda's stronger than she looks.”

“You should try arm-wrestling Flori,” I said, feeling wimpy.

Linda got back in her truck and sped off to park. Within minutes she was hurrying back and calling out, “Tamales! Fresh, New Mexican tamales! Santa Fe style.”

My heart soared for Linda. Good for her! People in Napoleon's line began to drift her way. “Fresh hot tamales!” she yelled again, drawing in customers from all sides.

I couldn't wait to tell Flori. Linda had the situation under control. She didn't need us or Sun Tzu. She could handle Napoleon by herself.

Except that the battle was coming to her. Linda's control of the corner lasted about fifteen minutes,
until Napoleon stormed across the Plaza, chef's coat billowing. With one hand, he held down his puffy hat. In the other, he brandished a cell phone, as if ready to throw it. It was his expression that disturbed me the most, though. The glint in his eye and his thin lips twitching in mean glee.

Cass and I jumped to our feet as the petite tyrant passed, followed by a pale, panting man in wool suit too warm for spring and too large for its wearer. I wished I'd had the forethought to trip Napoleon. As it was, I was ready to rush to Linda and help. I took a step forward.

“Hold up,” Cass said, putting out an arm to stop me. “Let's let Linda handle this. That's what she wants, right?”

“Right,” I said, uncertain that what Linda wanted was the best course of action.

We watched as Napoleon and the man stopped a few yards from Linda's cart.

“Beware that woman's food!” Napoleon bellowed in a voice worthy of the Santa Fe Opera.

“Fresh tamales, homemade tamales! Mexican
mole
for Cinco de Mayo!” Linda called out, similarly operatic.

“Corn mush in old husks,” Napoleon chanted, his voice becoming higher pitched the louder he yelled.

Linda countered, offering wholesome tamales at half price. “Tía's best tamales, healthy and delicious. Auntie Linda's freshly steamed tamales!”

Her voice quavered. I glanced at Cass. We nodded in silent agreement and rushed to Linda's side, reaching her at the same time a scream cut through the other voices.

“A cockroach! There's a cockroach in my tamale!” A few steps away a lanky, twenty-something man with a mop of wavy red hair and a redder face spit out a mouthful of tamale. “Bug!” he yelled.

The crowd congealed around him. Exclamations of disgust filled the Plaza as the redhead held the tainted tamale high. I looked away, hating bugs but hating Linda's pain more.

She trembled, whether in rage or shock, I couldn't tell. “No . . . no! That's a fake, Rita. That tamale's not mine. It can't be.”

The man in the ill-fitting suit approached Linda. “Health inspector, ma'am. I'll have to shut you down until I can get some samples of your cart and kitchen.”

Linda lunged at Napoleon. “You did this! You won't get away with it! I'll show you!”

Cass and I grabbed Linda by her elbows.

“Linda, he's not worth getting upset over,” I said.

Linda wrenched her arm from me and for a moment I was afraid she would strike out again.

“Look at her,” Napoleon said, giddy in Linda's agony. “The hysterical woman who would feed you roaches.”

All eyes turned to Linda. Dear, kind Linda who volunteered at the soup kitchen and rescued stray wolves and maintained—I knew—a spotless kitchen. She wobbled and then ran down the street to her truck. The crowd gawked.

Napoleon sneered as he strode past me and Cass. “Tell your friend it's over,” he said.

“It's not over,” I sputtered.
Not if I could help it
.

I
understand the agony of embarrassment. I don't mean minor mortifications either, like stomping on a certain handsome lawyer's polished cowboy boots or spilling soup on his pants. No, those kinds of flubs can be brushed—or wiped—off. The worst embarrassment is the social kind. Forgetting a person whom you once had over for dinner, for instance. Or blurting out words in anger. Or throwing a Bloody Mary at your philandering husband in a dive bar in downtown Santa Fe. I've done all of those. The drink-throwing incident, I blame on extreme stress. That and binge-watching
Sex and the City,
although I didn't end up sipping cosmos with my chic, confident girlfriends. Seconds after vodka-spiked tomato juice and a stalk of celery struck Manny's face, I was drowning in humiliation. I still avoid the bar where it happened. Not just the bar, the entire street.

Try explaining such chagrin to an octogenarian who says she's old enough to do as she pleases and practices the world's deadliest martial art.

“Linda's embarrassed,” I said, once again. “I'm sure that's why she's lying low.”

“Linda should have kicked him in the shin or elsewhere,” Flori grumbled, hacking at a pile of tomatillos. The waxy green fruits, tart and destined for salsa, turned to pulp under her knife. They weren't the only victims of Flori's mood. Tomatoes, peppers, and several mangos had already turned to mince as Flori took out her anger on produce.

“She would have felt worse,” I said. “Linda felt awful when she simply said she hated Napoleon. Can you imagine if she kicked him?”

From Flori's wicked grin, it seemed she was imagining the joy of kicking rather than its consequences. “A woman has a right to defend her honor,” she said, bashing a head of garlic with a cleaver. The garlic collapsed into cloves that Flori smashed again to remove their papery wrappings. “I'm not saying that Linda should do anything extreme, of course,” she added, rather primly.

I nodded, keeping one ear pressed to my cell phone. The ringing on the other end stopped and Linda's voice mail kicked in, inviting me to leave a message and have a wonderful day. I pressed End Call. I'd already left Linda two messages.

“Maybe she's out for a walk or taking a nap,” I said, as much to reassure myself as Flori. “We should make her a care pack. Ice cream or some muffins.”

Flori made a harrumph sound. “Linda doesn't eat ice cream. She's worried it'll give her tooth decay. Says it makes her teeth ache too. That child has always been sensitive. Let me call her. She has to answer for her mother.”

I took over the tomatillo salsa preparation, mixing in minced onion, garlic, and cilantro. The tangy salsa paired perfectly with our steak and eggs breakfast plate and was always popular with salty corn tortilla chips. My mouth watered, and I reached for a chip. Someone had to taste-test.

Flori dialed from her rotary phone at the front desk. While the dial turned, she fussed with the mariachi mannequins, dusting them and their instruments with a napkin.

“Linda!” Flori exclaimed. She abandoned her cleaning, leaving the creepy trumpet player's head at an unnatural tilt. His right eye seemed to stare at me from all angles. I turned away, both from him and from Flori, so I wouldn't appear to be eavesdropping. I couldn't help hearing Flori's side of the conversation, though, and her offers to help. I could also guess Linda's responses.

When Flori put the phone back in its cradle, I said, “She says she doesn't want any help?”

Flori's snort confirmed my guess. “She's always been like this. Stubborn. The most stubborn of my three daughters. I don't understand it.”

I hid my smile from my stubborn friend. “She needs time,” I said, in the tritest of parenting advice. How many times had I heard those words in regard to Celia's tortured hairstyles, gloomy artwork, and sullen moods?

Flori repositioned a few mannequin arms into
tai-chi poses. “We'll have to work behind the scenes,” she said. “And keep your phone on. Linda says she's resting but promises she'll call you back. Maybe you can convince her. Kids never listen to their mothers.”

I knew that. I kept my phone close, checking it in the grocery store, where I imagined I heard it ring in the deli and again in the chips aisle. I stared at its supposedly smart screen as I waited in my car outside Celia's school. I wished that Linda would call, and that I hadn't shown so much snack-food restraint back at the store. Chips increasingly seemed like a stress-management necessity.

“What's up, Mom? Waiting for your boyfriend to text?” my daughter teased, plopping in the front seat. Black and red paint dotted Celia's once-white T-shirt. Her shoes had enough paint drops to pass as modern art. Then there was her hair. A shock of orange fell across her left cheek, bumping against her nose. This color was no art mishap. The pumpkin orange was semipermanent and an intentional dye-job disaster.

As her mom, I preferred her natural color, a rich espresso brown. I also preferred her silky, straight locks to the chopped, tortured, and tangled style she'd taken up around the time Manny and I separated.

I smiled at my daughter. The “give her time” advisors were probably right, and no matter what, I loved Celia wholeheartedly.

“I'm not waiting to hear from Jake,” I said, feeling lucky that Celia had accepted him. His charm and his bulldog, Winston, had won her over. The turning point came when Jake and Winston
dropped by for a walk, and Winston allowed Celia's kitten, Hugo, to ride on his back. Since then the dog and kitten have been unlikely pals, as have Celia and Jake.

“And anyway,” I said, starting the car. “He's not my ‘boyfriend.' We're friends.”

“Right, Mom. Sure,” Celia said with a devious grin. “Is that why you're kicking me out of the house Friday?”

“I'm not kicking you out,” I said. “You already had those plans with Sky and Rosa.” Sky, Cass's son, was like an older brother to Celia. They'd been close as twins since they met, and I never worried about them getting into trouble. That is, unless Celia instigated it. Rosa, Linda's granddaughter, was as responsible as Linda, but without her worries. Celia loved staying at her house. However, part of me wished she'd come home, both because I loved my daughter and because I might want chaperone limits on my date night.

I craned over my right shoulder to maneuver the Subaru into a tight three-point turn. That's when I saw Celia wave, a flick of her fingers, followed by a crack in her ennui mask. A boy with orange spikes in his hair and skinny, chain-draped black pants waved back, grinning widely.

“Who's that?” I asked.

Celia dropped her hand as if she'd grabbed a hot pan. “No one.”

No one, eh?
My maternal warning bells chimed. Did my daughter have a boyfriend? I pondered this for several blocks of car silence.

“Hold my phone?” I asked her when we stopped at a four-way intersection and waited for a herd
of camera-wielding tourists to pass. “I
am
waiting for a call. From Linda. If it rings and you see it's her, will you answer?”

My daughter forgot her silent treatment. “Poor Tía Linda. Kids are calling her stand the ‘cockroach cart.' I told them to shut up.”

Great
. If high-schoolers knew about the tainted tamale, the whole town probably did. “Cass and I were there when the bug was supposedly found. We think Linda was set up.”

Celia didn't need convincing. “No doubt. You'll help her, right?”

I glanced at Celia, surprised. Her typical response to my sleuthing is a dramatic display of teen embarrassment. Eye-rolling, sighing, shoulder heaving, foot stomping, you name it, voiced over with, “Geez, Mom, leave things alone.”

“Bullies are the worst,” she muttered. “They shouldn't mess with Tía Linda.”

“Absolutely,” I said, hopefully with more confidence that I felt. “Flori and I will help. Tía Linda will be fine.”

But how could I help? And would Linda let me? The phone remained silent through dinner, my evening walk, and as I nodded over my bedtime reading. At nearly midnight I gave up. Turning off the lamp but not the phone, I vowed to call Linda tomorrow. If she didn't answer, I'd track her down.

T
racking wasn't necessary. When the cell phone's melody rang in the darkness, I initially incor
porated it into my dream, an anxiety nightmare involving a packed auditorium and me, partially unclothed and totally unprepared to lecture on Cinco de Mayo cuisine. The nightmare audience included my high school gym class, Jake, Mom, and George Clooney.

Dreamtime me was cowering behind a podium when I realized the ringing was real. I grabbed the phone and answered in automatic maternal worry mode. “Hello? Celia?” I remembered that Celia was presumably sleeping down the hall about the moment I recognized Linda's voice.

“Linda?” I said, resisting the urge to ask,
Do you know what time it is?
I didn't know myself, except that the room was still dark and my eyelids wouldn't fully open.

My grumpiness faded as Linda gushed apologies. “Oh Rita, I'm so sorry. It's not even six and I shouldn't call you and I wouldn't except, oh heaven help me . . .”

Now I was awake, wide-awake. Blood rushed through my head. I sat up and fumbled with the light. “Linda, what's wrong?”

Muffled prayers came from her end, a jumble of English and Spanish.

“Linda!” I practically yelled. “What's happening?”

“Napoleon,” she cried out. “He's . . . he's dead.”

Good riddance
nearly fell from my mouth. Then reality struck me. Dead? Napoleon was a jerk, but a man not that much older than me. How sad and shocking, but how did Linda know? And why call me? The tragic news could have waited for hot coffee and hushed gossip over breakfast.

“My cart,” she said in between gulping sobs. “He's under my tamale cart, Rita. Come to the Plaza, please. We have to do something!”

I
sped to the Plaza, breaking traffic laws on the empty streets. There would be no helping Napoleon. I saw that right away. His eyes stared blankly heavenward, toward the charcoal dawn sky that would turn into a sunny Santa Fe day. His cheeks puffed as if stuffed. His chest pushed up the front wheels of Linda's cart. One arm extended above his head, the pale underside up, the hand twisted downward. On his wrist, a flashy gold watch was cracked and broken.

Except for Napoleon, Linda and I were alone on the Plaza. I'd parked my car next to her truck, both in illegal spots. A parking ticket was the least of my worries.

“Don't touch him!” I commanded Linda. She knelt near the body, one hand reaching out as though to heal him. At my harsh words, she jerked her hand back.

“What if there's a pulse?” she asked, reaching again. “I couldn't make myself check before.”

I took her by both arms and pulled her up gently. “I'll do it,” I said, regretting this noble offer the moment I said it. I held my breath and flinched when my hand touched Napoleon's cool wrist. There was no pulse, no movement. I forced myself to look closer. A red stain marred the side of his chef's coat and something viscous had oozed into
a crack in the sidewalk. It wasn't red chile.
Blood
. Blood whooshed through my head, and I feared I'd be the next one on the ground. Fainting wouldn't help Linda or Napoleon. I turned my eyes to his twisted hand and the watch. Beneath shattered glass, the gold hands had stopped at eleven-fifty. Is that when the man stopped too?

A few feet away, Linda paced. “I woke up early with a terrible feeling. A panic. I thought it was because the tamale warmer in my cart was still left on. Yesterday I called a friend, Don the hotdog vendor, and asked him to shut it off for me, but when I woke up, I thought, ‘What if he didn't? It could start a fire!' Or what if he did turn it off, and someone ate a chicken
mole
tamale that had been sitting out all night? People die from food poisoning . . .”