Delicious Tacos - Finally, Some Good News

Her laugh was perfect. It didn’t quite accept his premise but didn’t make him feel stupid for trying. I don’t know about that, sir.

You would have many men fighting over you. Malibog , he almost said, but didn’t know what it meant in the Palawan dialect, or which Palawan dialect she spoke. In Tagalog it was “horny.” In Visayan “riled up”, which was what he meant. Many men, he said instead, which seemed worse. He was blushing.

Thank you sir, she said. If you need something I am Joy.

In his room white lizards looked back from the ceiling. He masturbated to Joy on their wedding night. Giving her their first child of many. Her eyes full of totally benevolent love. He was almost asleep when the lizards started screaming.

The next night, when he came back from the underground river tour, she was at the desk again. It was teak, modeled after a Polynesian ship. Do you like the river, she asked. Yes, he had; he had seen cave swallows. Some kind of wild jungle turkey digging a hollow for its nest. Unusual terns on the sheer black cliffs. No Palawan cockatoos but he’d startled a monitor lizard trying to snap a butterfly with his phone. It was bigger than him, lumbered off shaking its head. Its bite could kill a water buffalo. Its saliva evolved over eons to cultivate flesh eating bacteria. A horrible death. Yes, beautiful, many birds, he said. He was studying a pamphlet of hotel services. Her eyes were too gentle to look at.

You have in-room massages here?

Yes, she said. I give. He suddenly got nervous.

It is OK, she said. I have a license, I am training–

Oh no, it’s good that it’s you.

Maybe you are shy sir?

Yes, he said. I guess so. He felt if she touched him she’d become unclean. But can I get one?

Yes, when?

Now?

She laughed again. You take a shower, in 30 minutes I come.

When she put her palm on his neck to apply lavender he felt like he was dissolving. She’d changed into a white uniform. Like she’d just won a high school karate tournament. Her ponytail tickled his back as she worked. She hummed and murmured. You have big muscles, sir, she said.

Thank you.

Back home, sir, what do you do for work.

Suddenly he was awake. Motherfucker , he thought. Even in the jungle. I uh, work in an office.

What kind of office.

It’s… marketing.

Marketing sir?

Yes, people who want to sell… products, we give them data.

Data.

You know what this is? Data?

You have information.

Yes. We give information to people who want to sell things.

Good money, she said. Your wife is happy, sir. Her hands slipped down his spine and she began rolling back the top of his underwear. Her hair tickled his legs and he was at peace again. I don’t have a wife, he said.

No wife, no baby?

No baby. You?

No baby, she said. Not yet. Girlfriend?

No girlfriend.

Her palm on top of his ass crack made his blood change direction. What kind of information, she said.

We have every kind. We buy everything you put in your computer. Your phone, everything from your credit card. We know everything about people and we put it together so… you know what ads are?

Yes sir.

We put it together so people can make better ads.

Do you like it?

I hate it.

Then why do you do it?

I need money. Where I live everyone has to work.

Mmm… I am working until I find a husband.

California husband?

Maybe if I am very lucky. Please turn over, sir.

He was hard but she didn’t seem to panic. Her fingers moved over his chest and the lizards squeaked on the ceiling. They are called “toko,” she said. Later he read they were endangered. Her face got close as she plied his collarbones and her breath was cool on his neck. So do you know things about everyone sir, she said.

Yes, we look at everybody.

Even the powerful men? The government and the movie stars?

I guess so. But it doesn’t matter, we collect– we have everything on everybody but we have to give it to another place before we look at it. Make it anonymous. A credit bureau. Do you know this, credit bureau? Equifax?

No sir.

You’re lucky.

You can’t look because it is the law?

Yes.

And you don’t break the law sir? Just to find out?

I mean– who cares, I don’t… who cares what some guy buys with his credit card.

You really don’t like it, she said. But I think you are strong to work hard at something you don’t like. The men here are not like this, sir. I think you will be a good husband, good father. When you are ready.

She looked in his eyes. He put his palm on her cheek, moved it to bring her face close to kiss him. Slid his other hand on her knee where she crouched, moved it up her thigh, warm under the white fabric. She laughed. A laugh that didn’t make him feel like an asshole for trying. Shifted away from him and made wrinkles in the comforter. It is not that kind of massage, sir.

I’m sorry–

It is OK, sir. I like you too. But if you want to know me like this, sir, you will first come to meet my father.

Wait, really?

Yes, he is near here. He is a fisherman.

Is he going to kill me for touching you?

Oh no, she said. I think you will like him sir. He is always asking to bring him a man like you.

At night a burning star arced across the black sky to the north. Past the mountains. They were in what was once a back yard. Cinder block walls around the pool still half intact. Everything up high was gone but in the dips between the hills buildings still stood. Air mostly still and cold but once in a while a shrieking hot wind would spin the dead leaves, send them clattering against the concrete. It carried burned magazines. Excel printouts, emails marked HIGH IMPORTANCE. The pages spiraled around and hissed against the walls in the dark.

She’d been nervous about having a fire but there were still fires everywhere. The pool had a black sun cover; the water was clean and warm. They’d washed up and he’d looked away while she was naked. Checked the rashes on his arms. So far they hadn’t been sick. The star rose up fast and something else bright fell off it and twirled in a spiral; plummeted down somewhere to the east. They’re still launching, he said.

Why?

I don’t know, maybe the system just takes over.

Will they hit here again?

Maybe.

Can we eat something?

They had Activia. The fortune cookies. Half a case of Slim Jims and some Sunkist cans they’d found in the greasy black rubble of a Shell station. The charred cardboard Slim Jim case still had part of a sentence that ended: BRO CODE. He handed her three Original Flavors. Thought the words “Snap Into It” but didn’t say it. The pool furniture was burned so they sat Indian style on the concrete around the crackling palette wood. Flames so hot the nails were glowing. I can’t get the plastic off, she said.

Here– they make these fucking things–

The crenellated end of the Slim Jim plastic had a cut stamped in where you were supposed to tear it open. It had never worked once. He’d been eating Slim Jims for 35 years. He bit the ends off and handed the sticks back to her. Spitting out the plastic he could taste the grain the cattle ate. Salt warm around his tongue like the ocean. Oh my God it’s good, she said.

I know right?

She laughed. I hated these things before.

They’re a guy thing.

I wish we had a whole truck full of them now.

These might be the last ones there will ever be.

What he meant was the last time the cattle would hear their brothers screaming as they died. The last time a 20 year old out of Chiapas would walk out bleary eyed at sunrise after unpaid overtime. Five bucks an hour under whirling razor blades that made him deaf, hacking at bloody tendons twelve hours a night. Steam from boiling meat vats a mile wide burning his eyes, some convict up the line talking shit about stabbing him over a Spades game. Coming out at sunrise just as his wife left for her own shit job, swimming in reek down to his bones but used to it . The last machine that rolled the collected suffering of these living beings into a stiff brown stick that that made your breath stink. Popularized as a gas station impulse buy by Macho Man Randy Savage barking ART THOU BORED at children suffering existential ennui. Co-branded with the Tabasco line of sauces as part of a brand elevation campaign, along with Tabasco’s line of short sleeved button down shirts embodying the keyword zesty . XXXL the best seller– and you couldn’t even open the fucking package– he looked up and she was crying.