Delicious Tacos - Finally, Some Good News

Wait how do you even know about the Pepperidge Farm guy–

It’s on Family Guy . You must be old enough to know the originals–

They’re a client.

A client of what? What is it you do exactly, anyway?

It’s complicated. It has to do with marketing.

Like what

We gather information to help… brand elevation. Purchase intent– for brands, like, Verizon–

What does that even mean, said Fritz.

We provide data driven solutions for market leading brands– and suddenly Fritz was laughing.

What?

That’s fucked, said Fritz.

Abdullah fell in love with Xochitl Sanchez who was fifteen years old and the sister of the 13 shot caller. The Somalis and the Salvadorans went to war. It was, Fritz said, exactly like Romeo and Juliet. Julio the 13 shot caller ultimately told Xochitl: stay away from that fuckin Captain Phillips lookin ass nigga. At some point she obeyed. It broke Abdullah’s heart. He made peace with the 13s, which was how Fritz came to do business with him. But inside he’d gone nuts. Got into some hard shit, said Fritz. Organized shit. Do you know what Al Shabaab is?

No–

The guys you’re down with, Abu Sayyaf, it’s the African version.

I’m not down with them.

They work together. The Somalis are down with dudes in Pakistan. They got guys in the ports, they work with Filipinos on the ships. Which must answer a question you had.

Is this ISIS?

Kind of. ISIS doesn’t mean anything. Mostly it’s a bunch of commercial operations. Abdullah said it’s just a name for the believers to work under–

… a brand.

I guess, said Fritz. How’d you get into this shit anyway?

Into what?

Blowing up the world.

I’m just giving information.

But you know what they’re gonna do with it, right?

I assume get money. They have some utopian project–

They want nukes man. Your company has credit card records of every big general. Every other government big shot– they’re gonna find a couple who fuck kids like the guy from Subway. It’ll probably be the first two they look at. They’re gonna get the targeting system. The codes. Data driven solutions for the market leading brand.

No way–

Yes way man. These guys know how it works. Abdullah was in the Air Force. He was an officer in the Missile Command.

They gotta be bullshitting you–

Nah man. These guys are on bath salts all day. It reminds of them of this leaf they chew back home. They got loose lips.

The phone made a sound. Then the computer. Fritz was typing suddenly. It worked, he said.

OK–

I’m gonna get fifty grand for this. Go down to Venezuela. Stay out of the cities man, they’re only gonna hit where the “abominations” live. What are you getting–

Not fifty grand.

A girl huh.

… yeah

Must be some good pussy–

Hey man, are you serious about this shit?

Fritz stood up. Slid a giant rough hand on his shoulder. The ring finger stump hot on his clavicle. Don’t feel bad man, he said. This is coming one way or another.

Jesus Christ. Why did you tell me?

You can’t stop it now, said Fritz. And if you could, you wouldn’t anyway. I mean do you look at this fucking place and think: how could I leave this behind?

He felt his heart going. A sweat coming on like he had a parasite. Are we done, he said.

Yeah man. Good luck. Hope they deliver on the girl. I don’t think they’ll kill you at least. These Africans on the other hand–I gotta split so they don’t machete me.

Then he was twenty feet from the Winnie. Walking fast googling “FBI phone number”. The phone showed five bars but he had no signal.

The missile bunker was black inside. It smelled like the high school athletic cage where the assistant coach who didn’t molest kids, and thus hated his job, handed out jock straps. Kent following him down on the steel ladder made sounds like a xylophone that pinged around the walls. The graffiti said Fuck Cunt Pussy . Kent had a mattress. It looked too big to fit in the hatch. He must have folded it. Big plastic barrels of drinking water. Boxes of flour, rice; store display racks worth of Jack Links beef jerky in Sweet & Hot, Teriyaki and Original.

Jack Links was not a client. They’d had adequate success building a campaign with in-house demographic data. Diverse 18-34’s antagonized a bigfoot with summer camp style pranks, and were then dismembered. Bumpers on WWE’s Friday Night Raw showed the cryptid driving industrial vehicles such as backhoes in a demolition derby setting. I think we got our demo locked, the National Branding Director told Larry, Vice President, Global Sales, on a conference call he’d listened to on mute. This in spite of the two Wisconsinites’ rapport. The National Branding Director was perfectly polite. The women could be mean but the men had sales backgrounds. Respected taking your shot on a cold call. I don’t have the genny up yet but it’s a matter of time, said Kent, shining a pocket size Mag Light on food stores and first aid kits and housewares. Figuring out the air filtration. Gotta ventilate the fumes or we’ll smoke ourselves before Ivan does.

You’ve been a busy man, Kent.

Actually I had most of this stuff in my house. Getting it here was the bitch.

Did you have family?

I might still, said Kent. Two ex wives. His hands found something in the blackness. A black rifle from the box cover of a video game.

Is that a Bushmaster?

It is, said Kent. Would prefer the original given the circumstances, but this is what I had. Thank the great state of California. The pinging sound echoing again as Marcy came down. Were you two– married, said Kent. Marcy said no. We used to work together.

Kent had a camp stove and had opened two cans of Dinty Moore beef stew with his Leatherman. Neither a client. The meat chunks steaming and smoldering made his guts crawl over themselves. Light from white votive candles with no ornamental casing and the blue sterno flame made their shadows stutter on the Fuck Cunt Pussy walls. You know what I miss the most, said Kent.

What’s that.

Not steak. Not lobster. Not hot showers. I miss Chicken McNuggets. Quarter Pounders. And he laughed. Like he’d just told his grandson a knock knock joke.

That’s what I miss the least– you know, I used to work there.

Oh really, said Kent, with what seemed like unnatural interest.

Yeah, I was a “senior grill crew” member– I made the Quarter Pounders.

Yes, and you trained the junior crew–

That’s right, how did you know– a grill wizard yourself?

Well I was an entrepreneur after the service, you know. Aerospace. And when it came time to hire that was the first thing I looked for. Advancement in a tightly-managed environment. Someone I could mentor to succeed.

Yeah I could flip a burger, he said. Remembering like he was doing it now that the burgers were not flipped. That McDonald’s patented clamshell grill technology simultaneously seared each side to perfection. He’d once slipped on mop water and perfectly seared his hand on it. The manager scotch taped a bandage on and made him work through lunch rush. That day someone left a log long as a young Burmese python lolling over the lip of the women’s toilet that it was his job to clean, to perfection. You’d get one every few months.

Did you know that only ten per cent of store staff attain the “senior” designation? They spent millions developing the metrics– performance. Speed. Accuracy. They would have given you an MMPI; honesty, trustworthiness–

Is that what they teach at Hamburger University–