The Mortal Nuts (23 page)

“I have to find Sam,” Axel said.

“Just wait a goddamn minute. And watch her.” Sophie stepped back into the stand and took an order from a customer.

Axel washed his hands and put on an apron. “Was Sam here helping out?” he asked Kirsten.

Kirsten nodded. “He left about twenty minutes ago.”

“He said he was gonna take a walk,” Carmen said.

“He's gone, thank God,” Sophie said. “I need four tacos and one Bueno.”

“I need shells,” Kirsten said.

Axel loaded the deep fryer and rotated a batch of tortillas into the hot oil. He watched Carmen moving around the stand, building tacos and burritos. She was moving slow, but maybe she was just tired. Maybe Carmen was right, maybe Sophie was too hyper. Axel relaxed, forcing his mind off his missing money, and let himself swing into the rhythm of Axel's Taco Shop, keeping the tortillas cooking, the meat frying, and the burritos rolling. There were four of them in the stand—Axel, Sophie, Carmen, and Kirsten—all working as one. The customers were stacked up out front, food was flying out the window, and money was flowing into the cash box. Axel thought it a bit strange when Carmen called him “Fred,” but he didn't worry about it. The restaurant was humming, and for the moment all was right with the world.

He had known it wouldn't last, but he was stunned by how quickly things fell apart. He was lifting the batch of tortillas out of the oil when there was a thump, a squeal, and Sophie shrieking. Axel dropped the rack back into the oil and whirled in time to see Sophie shaking Carmen, holding her by the neck, slamming her back against the cooler. Kirsten was pressed against the counter, her eyes open wide.

“Is it poison? What are you trying to do to me?” Sophie shouted.

Carmen's face was turning red. She was trying to say something. Axel stepped between them, grabbing Sophie's arms and pulling her hands away from Carmen's neck. A small, appreciative crowd had gathered in front of the stand. Axel pushed the two women out the back door.

“What's going on?” he demanded.

Carmen was rubbing her neck. “She
choked
me,” she said.

“She tried to poison me. I caught her putting something in my water.”

“Your water? What water?” Axel asked.

“My Canada Dry. She was putting pills in my Canada Dry.”

“Is that true?”

Carmen shrugged. “Did you know you look like Fred Flintstone?”

“She's insane. She tried to poison me,” Sophie said. “She thinks we're the Flintstones.”

“Wait a minute. Back up,” Axel said, as much to himself as to them. “Carmen, did you put something in Sophie's water?”

Carmen pushed out her lower Up. “I was just giving her a couple Valiums.”

“Dope?” Sophie shrieked. “You were trying to give me dope?”

“Just to calm you down a little,” said Carmen reasonably.

“You were slipping your mother a mickey?” Axel asked, struggling with the concept.

“Just a couple Valiums.” Carmen held up the prescription bottle.

Sophie pointed. “Look. She has them in her hand.”

“Let's see,” Axel said, reaching for the bottle.

Carmen backed away. “I don't have to. You're a cartoon.”

“My God, she's on dope. My daughter's a drug addict.”

“Give them to me, Carmen.”

Carmen was walking backward. She pushed the bottle into her pocket, turned, and ran away through the crowded mall. Axel and Sophie watched her until she rounded the corner of the Food Building.

“I told you,” Sophie said. “We should've just left her fired.”

Axel shrugged. “She'll be okay,” he said doubtfully.

“Are you kidding? She's on dope. An addict. I'm lucky she hasn't murdered me in my bed and stolen my VCR.”

“Don't be silly,” Axel said. “Carmen wouldn't hurt a bug.”

“Hey, you guys,” Kirsten called from the stand. “Are you just going to leave me in here alone?”

Chapter 35

It was too bad she hadn't got her mom to take the Valium, and
really
too bad that Sophie and Axel had busted her. At least they hadn't gotten the pills. Carmen shook the plastic bottle, held it up to the light. Only a few left. Maybe that was okay, seeing as she would probably get fired for real this time. She wouldn't have to work with Sophie anymore, so maybe she wouldn't need the Valium. At the moment, it wasn't something she wanted to worry about. She'd figure something out. Why not relax and enjoy the cartoons? They were the best ever. It was almost like being on acid, only smoother and not so scary. Everything had an outline. Some people became familiar characters. Axel and Sophie as Fred and Wilma Flintstone had been hilarious. Carmen wondered whether she would run into Barney and Betty Rubble. She knew people weren't cartoons, not really, but at the same time, they really were. The illusion was at least as convincing as the images on a TV set, and as a bonus, she could make her arms and legs stretch like Plastic Man. She could even float, though not more than a few inches off the ground. It was like wearing antigravity skates. Carmen moved down Carnes Avenue, letting herself drift toward the midway on the crowded, littered street. She was thinking about how it might be fun to go on a few rides, when a figure appeared before her wearing a straw cowboy hat, mirrored sunglasses, and a red paisley bandanna. He put out a hand, palm forward, and she ran into it with her left tit.

The glasses slid down and caught on the tip of his nose, revealing a pair of big brown cartoon eyes.

“Hey there, Carmy,” said a familiar voice.

She tried to make him into Elmer Fudd. It didn't work. It was James Dean.

Carmen said, “Guess what?”

“What?”

Nothing occurred to her. “Just a minute.” She squeezed her eyes down to slits, blurring his image. She heard another voice.

“What's she doing?”

“She's fucked up on something. Hey, Carmen, snap out of it. I gotta talk to you.”

Carmen said, “What do you want?” She had an idea. “You want to go on the Tilt-A-Whirl?” They were on both sides of her now, James Dean and his friend with the big white hat—what was his name? Trigger, like Roy Rogers's horse. Carmen asked him, “Is that a ten-gallon hat?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“I gotta go to the bathroom.” She started walking again. They fell in on either side of her. “Then I wanna go on the Tilt-A-Whirl.”

Dean said, “I do not want to go on the fucking Tilt-A- Whirl.”

She ducked her head below the brim of Trigger's white hat and said, “How about you? You want to go on the Tilt- A-Whirl?”

“Those things make me puke. Hey, Dean, what about the guy?”

Dean grabbed Carmen's wrist, jerking her to a halt.

“Hey! I gotta pee, y'know.”

“You want I should go back and watch him?”

“Yeah, you do that, and I'll take her to the can.”

“Then we go on the Tilt-A-Whirl, okay?”

He squeezed her wrist, really hard. “Fuck the Tilt-A- Whirl, Carmy. Let's go. Talk to me about the man. What happened back there?”

“Sophie got mad.” She pulled away, but her wrist was stuck in his hand. They were walking again.

“That bag he's got. You know what's in it?”

“Who?”

“Your taco guy.”

“Axel?”

“Yeah. What's he got in the bag?”

“You want me to look?”

He seemed surprised. “You think you could?”

“Sure I could. Only I really gotta go to the bathroom, okay?”

The restrooms by the Giant Slide were in a long wooden structure, with entrances at both ends of the building. A line of women waited at the south entrance.

“I'll be just a minute.”

He released her, and she squeezed past the women in line and pushed her way into the building, oblivious to the stares and comments from women who had been waiting for twenty minutes. She walked past the row of toilets, past the sinks, and out the opposite end of the building, where she turned toward the midway. She wanted to immerse herself in the flashing and the shouting and the overamped rock and roll. She needed to get back to cartoon land as soon as possible. Those skinhead cowboys, they were no fun. If she wanted to answer a bunch of questions, she'd have stayed at the Taco Shop.

Dean lifted his hat by its crown and fanned himself with it. “This fucking sun,” he remarked to no one. He moved toward the shade of the Giant Slide, found a light pole to lean against, and examined his surroundings. His senses had become so acute that each blade of trampled grass stood out against its neighbors. An old guy in bib overalls and a green baseball cap stood a few yards away, hands buried in his pockets, looking at him. The old man nodded when he caught Dean's eye.

“Hot one, ain't she?” he called out in a cracked voice.

Dean gave the guy a cold stare, then returned his attention to the restroom entrance. What the hell was Carmen doing in there? He amused himself by fixing his gaze on a teenage girl waiting in line outside the restroom. If he focused, he felt, he could make her turn toward him. Lock eyes with her. He felt a presence behind him, turned his head. The guy with the green hat, inches away, an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

“You got a light, Mac?” The hair on his jaw was about the same length as the hair on Dean's head. They both needed a shave.

Dean said, “Get lost.”

“What, you don't got a light?”

Dean took a quick look at the restrooms. No Carmen.

The old man said, “You waitin' on your gal?”

Dean stabbed a forefinger at the old man's chest. “What did I just tell you?”

The old man laughed.

“You think that's funny?” Dean said. He squeezed his right hand into a fist, thinking about letting the guy have it—bam!—right in the nose.

The old man widened his eyes and puffed out his lower lip, causing the unlit cigarette to point straight up at his left eye. He scratched the underside of his chin. “Guess I did,” he said. “Women is funny. Use to have one myself, y'know. Built like a fuckin' Cadillac, bazooms like watermelons. Had a tattoo of an M-l rifle on her left ass-cheek and a birthmark the shape of Texas on t'other. Name was Tricksy. Gal was fast as lightning every way you can think of 'cept for one. Used to take her twenty minutes just to take a leak. Fuckin' women. You go figure.”

Dean stared at the old man, his lower lip moving up and down as he absorbed what he was hearing. The guy had eyes about six different colors, and more wrinkles than a ton of raisins. As Dean watched, the cigarette migrated from one side of his mouth to the other, bobbing up and down like a snake charmer's flute.

Axel had once seen a TV show about people who exploded. It had been one of those shows where they tell about UFOs and werewolves and people who can bend nails with their minds. Stuff he didn't really believe. But the segment about people who exploded—not exploded, really, just sort of burst into flames—had sounded very scientific and convincing. They even had a scientific name for it, he remembered: spontaneous human combustion.

At the time, Axel had wondered what those people who exploded felt like just before it happened. Now he thought he knew. They felt like this.

His nest egg, all the money he'd managed to accumulate over the past twenty-five years, had been dug up by a couple of dogs, and the only person who might be able to return it to him, Sam O'Gara, had also disappeared. And Sophie—he'd never seen her like this before. She was raging, muttering under her breath, slamming things around the restaurant. Kirsten was so shook up she was screwing up every order, making tacos into tostadas, nachos into burros, and giving people Sprite when they'd ordered iced tea. Carmen was wandering the fairgrounds with a pocketful of dope. He wanted to run after Carmen and lock her in her room, where she'd be safe. He wanted to find Sam, find him and grab him by the ankles and shake loose his money. He wanted to be a thousand miles away from Sophie and her anger. But he couldn't have any of that, because there was a line in front of the restaurant, people who wanted—who needed—Bueno Burritos. He was trapped inside a cage he had made for himself, and if something didn't give, he was afraid he would ignite, leaving behind nothing but a horrified crowd of fairgoers and a charred spot on the restaurant floor. They would write about it in the Enquirer, and only fools like him would believe it to be true. But it would be.

“You're crazy,” Axel muttered as he started building a row of six Buenos.

Sophie said, “What?” Hands like claws, ready to pounce on him.

“I was talking to myself,” he said. Jesus Christ, he'd better be careful. He wasn't the only one ready to blow. One wrong word, a single bad burrito, a fly landing on the wrong person's nose at the wrong time—it was the goddamn Middle East, all packed inside a hundred eighty square feet. He felt the weight of the .45 in his pocket, tugging down on his right suspender. Every time he moved, it rubbed the outside of his thigh. Looking up from his work, he rolled his neck and let his eyes play across the crowded mall. He picked his way from face to face. Even after twenty-five years, they still looked like individuals to him. Then he saw a familiar green cap making its bobbing progress in the direction of the Taco Shop, and for a moment he felt it, an intense burning sensation, just above his belly, hot enough to ignite human flesh.

Sophie had always wanted one of those
Shit Happens
bumper stickers. She saw them all the time, but she didn't know where to buy one. It was so true, especially now. It came in waves, like the weather. When had it started? She tried to think back. Even as she smiled at her customers, took their money, pushed their food across the counter, and shouted instructions at Kirsten and Axel, a part of her mind was reviewing the last few days, trying to remember when this latest shit storm had rolled in. Was it when Carmen arrived from Omaha? When the fair started? Or was it when Axel made her a partner? She was having mixed feelings about that. Ten percent a year. What did that
mean
? And in the meantime, she was doing most of the work. In years past, Axel had spent most of every day in the Taco Shop, doing whatever needed doing. But this year … This year, every time she turned around he was going somewhere, or gone, or just standing out back, doing nothing at all. Like he thought now he had a partner he didn't have to hold up his end anymore. Well, if he didn't care enough about the business to do his share, then the hell with him. Telling her she was crazy, when he was the one acting like a jerk. There was this other bumper sticker she liked:
Don't like my driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT.
As long as she was the one running this restaurant, he was going to have to help out, and not just for a few minutes here and there. Sophie turned around, thinking to share her thoughts with Axel whether he liked it or not. But Axel was gone, his apron hanging by the door, still moving.