Chapter Five
After Jipson announced that he was beginning a new advertising campaign, he explained that they should all meet outside because he wanted to show them something in the back of his truck. He hinted that he had purchased something spectacular.
“That sounds nice,” said Frank. “Everybody out! Let’s see it!”
Of course, Frank the Fart didn’t even work there, and nobody wanted a crazy old drunk like him ordering them around. The other waitresses, besides Sonia, and a bus boy named Maurice were curious about what Jipson had in the back of his truck. The cook, Otis, who was really not the type to enjoy restaurant camaraderie, wasn’t interested, especially on a night when several customers had sent back their plates with a bunch of dumb complaints. He was banging huge restaurant pots around in the kitchen and cursing. “Goddamn dry macaroni! Effing Applesauce out of a can!” Otis was a black man who had been a cook in the Air Force and he wanted the kitchen operation to be flawless. Jipson thought this chef could finally be the one to keep the restaurant out of trouble with the health inspectors, but Juan and Willy didn’t think he’d last. Irritated and pissed described the range of Otis’ mood swings most nights.
It was warm and wet outside Bess Tacos after another big rainstorm. Traffic roared through the water all over town and it made a steady, sloshing noise. A plane, the last taking off that night, was revving its engine at the nearby airport. Sheet lightning flashed over the northwest corner of the mountains and a minute later the thunder rumbled. A lot of broken glass and puddles made the parking lot sparkly in the pale moonlight and sprinkles of rain were falling through the light of the old neon signs all along the street. With the rains came the smell of wet creosote, and it helped the town forget about the way the scorching summer had shriveled them up until they felt like the corpse of their great grandfather.
Willy was one of the last ones out the door, and everybody was gathered at the back of Jipson’s truck near the restaurant sign. The letters “Bess Tacos” looped around in some pink neon which Jipson liked to say had cost him a chunk of change. When the light was on, the O in Tacos always shivered like it was half- baked or something which fit in with the neighborhood around there. Bess Tacos had troubles remaining open because it sat in that dangerous section of Ocotillo Highway between the El Paso Motel and what remained of the brick walls of the old Palm Court Inn. Ocotillo Highway used to take you out of town, but Juan liked to point out that it was a wasted street and everybody took the Interstate whether they were going to Texas or California. That section of Ocotillo Highway was chock full of meth addicts and criminal types with a few ordinary poor people sandwiched in between for good measure, just to give the meth addicts somebody to rob. Besides a lot of those nice people, there are also plenty of legless guys pushing themselves in wheelchairs and yelling nasty questions at you like “have you ever had a child come at you with a grenade?” and if you say ‘yes’ they screamed and wheeled for you and if you say ‘no’ they called you worse curse words and said they had a gun hidden under a blanket. These were guys with bottles in brown paper bags on their laps.
Bess Tacos was named for this aunt of Jipson’s who was named Bestamenta Bojarandes Bettencourt or something like that. She was an old bag who was high up in the Democratic Party. Jipson liked her a lot. Another aunt named Fidelia, which is the female of Fidel, like Fidel Castro, wanted the restaurant named for her, not this Bess lady, and planned to loan Jipson money, and that would have made the name of the restaurant Faithful Taco in English which was an okay name, but four letters fit better on the sign and Jipson liked Bess better. Aunt Fidelia didn’t say anything about being jealous about the name Bess until the sign was made up and raised in front of the abandoned dance hall that Jipson was converting into his restaurant and then she wouldn’t give Jipson the big loan at low interest which she promised. He’d been on a provisional restaurant license many times since, due to no money from this faithless Fidelia.
The chef came out. “And Frick and Frack, who perchance was it that spilled all that sanitizer on the floor in the pantry and left the pump top off where I could step on it in the dark and break it in two?” He was really sarcastic when he was angry and his hands were on his hips, but asking who did it was only a trick because he was staring at Juan with his eyes narrowed.
“Changos,” said Juan, “it was me that did that earlier. I meant to clean it up and put the top back so you’d never know.”
“Well, now you don’t have to worry about that because the top is never going to go back on the goddamn thing because of the way I have trodden on it underfoot! And we don’t happen to have another one of those sanitizer pumps and now what does that mean, perchance? I guess it means that I will have to haul myself out of here sometime tomorrow and hurry up and find an open restaurant supply house that’s got one of those pumps and I’ll have to buy one or we’re in violation of the health code!” said the chef sarcastically and he glared disgustedly at Juan.
“Otis, don’t you understand what is going on here? I am trying to discuss my advertising campaign right now. It’s not a good time to bitch about detailed kitchen business,” said Jipson.
Otis took out his keys and strolled toward his cherry red Camaro without another word to Jipson or Juan.
“You never stay when I have to ask your opinion,” said Jipson. “And you exaggerate everything.”
“I’m going to exaggerate myself to bed,” growled the chef. “I gotta go to the restaurant supply store tomorrow.”
“All this fuss over the top of a sanitizer. I can get the goddamn top to the sanitizer,” said Jipson. “I need to discuss my advertising campaign.”
“You do not know where the restaurant supply store is at!” yelled the chef, getting in his car. A dog began barking behind the El Paso Hotel.
“If you’re dealin meth, your better get outta that parking lot!” screamed a woman in the doorway of a nearby house. Her shout drowned out the sound of the barking dog.
“I am the owner!” shouted Jipson back at her. He began talking to his staff again: “There’s nothing that bothers me more than a person who exaggerates everything. It makes me so mad I could boil inside. My blood bubbles around my body like I’m bursting. I feel like I’m going to explode! The anger takes over my mind and I can’t control myself. I just want to strangle people who won’t stop exaggerating.”
The chef backed his Camaro and drove away slowly. He might have been angry, but he wasn’t about to splatter the sides of his cherry car with mud.
“Well,” said Jipson sadly, “I got you out here to show you my new promotion. The guy is gonna install it on the top of the restaurant tomorrow morning. It’s under this tarp. It’s a big blow-up taco. It lights up, too.” With that, Jipson yanked back the tarp and they looked at a messy pile of vinyl.
“That’s one ugly taco. It looks like hell,” said Frank.
“Ugly?” said Jipson in shock.
“Yeah,” said Sonia, lighting up a cigarette. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any colors like it except for maybe in vodka vomit.”
“Maybe nobody will notice it,” Frank said hopefully.
“I want them to notice it!” cried Jipson in alarm. “That’s the whole point of publicity and promotion! I want them to drive along Ocotillo Highway and notice this lit-up taco. I have paid for flyers going out tomorrow saying to look for the lit-up taco above Bess Tacos.”
“That ugly taco is a mistake,” warned Frank.
“Do you all agree that it is an ugly taco?” asked Jipson.
Everyone hemmed and hawed and hedged their opinions so carefully that it was obvious they agreed.
“Oh my god, ese carrode mierda, you all hate it! If I put it up, people driving by will notice it and they will be upset,” said Jipson in a panic. “They will be so upset that they will never want to eat here again because the sight of it will turn their stomachs and gag them. This is it! This is the final blow. I’ve been waiting for the final blow and here it is, come at last! I am
so tired of covering my ass in this restaurant. I go to work here every day and all I do is cover my ass. I can barely cover my ass. I’ve got to accept it. I’m not covering my ass!”
Saying all that aloud about his uncovered ass seemed to raise his spirits. Jipson marched over to a wall and shouted some curses and banged the wall with his fist. “It’s ugly!” Then he struggled over to the edge of the slippery parking lot and started prying small rocks out of the ground. He threw a few of them randomly. He was a very bad shot and couple rocks came down near his staff and everybody tried to step around to the far side of the truck in the sticky mud.
“This is a curse,” cried Jipson slumping down on the concrete curb stop in a heap of self-pity. “This trouble is sent from my enemies. I lost another cook and now I got a crabby, uncooperative cook and I bought an ugly blow-up taco and I’m doomed. Caramba!”
They all knew it really wasn’t that bad because the taco wasn’t even up yet and probably no one would read the flyer anyhow. Also, no customers had seen the ugly taco yet because almost everyone but Spigot and Frank had gone home. In their opinions, Jipson was losing it.
“You’re doomed anyway cause of the Pock ’o Lisp,” said Frank, kind of cheerfully.
“It’s a sign,” said Jipson in despair.
“No,” said Frank right away, “This ain’t a sign.” He walked away. “Guess I’ll go home and listen to the adobe falling in my walls. Don’t never stop. Like blood outta human veins. Like sand in the hourglass. So are the days of our lives. See you boys,” he said to Juan and Willy, “Hope you find your gold mine. I’d like to go with you but I gots to find my brother.” Frank stumbled away in the dark.
Jipson was so distracted by his worries that he didn’t hear the remark about gold mining.
They were all left looking at the balloon thing and then Sonia said she had to go home, and she headed for her truck. Juan and Willy scurried behind her, their feet slipping in the mud. They feared she would leave without them. “Slow down,” said Sonia irritably, “I’m not going off without you.”
Jipson walked back to the restaurant and turned off the lights as Sonia circled the truck around to him. The two other waitresses got into their cars and pulled away. The bus boy put up his hoodie and disappeared with Spigot in the direction of a bar.
“Maybe it will look better in the morning,” said Juan to Jipson out the window of Sonia’s truck, but without much faith. They all knew it would still be ugly in the morning.
“My old man has a ladder,” said Sonia hollering out her window over the sound of her gunning engine, “It’s a good one made of aluminum with sections that slide and everything, but we loaned it to the neighbors and they never gave it back. I don’t even see it in their yard now and I asked them politely for it twice.”
“Bring it tomorrow,” said Jipson sadly, not hearing what she’d said. “I’m gonna have the guy put the taco up anyways. He asked me about a ladder.”
Juan and Willy went home in Sonia’s truck and she said if she were as superstitious as Jipson she would shoot herself to put herself out of her misery. She just thought superstitious people were about the stupidest people in the whole world and it made her mad when the people in her family were superstitious. Poor people, especially in Arizona, she found were always superstitious. Her mother had been superstitious and it had landed her in jail for two years, which was a long story she wasn’t willing to share with them except that it involved the manufacture of a “desert product.” They thought she was talking about selling peyote buds and Willy tried to make a mental note to himself to try to score some of those from her sometime cuz he never got a chance to try buds and they sounded real interesting to try out sometime. Willy thought Sonia was way overboard by calling all superstitions dumb.