Originally written as a submission for Taco Bell Quarterly in 2023.
Four spritzes of colon cologne soured the entire Por Taco lobby. It was a grade-A beefer but there wasn’t a single patron who gave the offensive rectal perfume a second whiff. At the back end of the joint sat a down-in-the-dumps couple who weren’t quite enjoying their mealy corn and meat foodstuffs.
“Why is it called Por Taco?” the young man asked before biting into an unpleasantly wet chicken taco.
The entire shell of the young woman’s taco broke into a million stale shards when she picked it up. “Dammit,” she said dejectedly. “What did you say, Brody?”
“This place.” Brody went for a second bite, but upon seeing an off-white liquid oozing out of the paltry ‘poultry’, he thought better of it and put the taco back down. “Why is it called Por Taco?”
“I don’t know.” She molded her semi-congealed and recently massacred taco into a neat meat mound; it was more broken than her dad’s second family. “Because of taco.”
“What?”
She scooped up a palm full of food and bird-pecked it out of her hand. It didn’t improve the Por Taco dining experience but didn’t make it worse either. “That’s what it means in Spanish.”
“Because of taco? Leah, what the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Look around.” She turned at the waist with outstretched arms making a grand sweeping gesture. “Nothing in this place makes any sense.” She returned to her ruined taco cairn with little interest in the meaningless conversation.
With an errand peck, a corn-crafted trident mightier than Neptune’s stabbed Leah’s gum resulting in an unintelligible stream of profanity. Brody didn’t notice as he found himself engrossed in his surroundings.
Two Vietnamese workers milled around behind the counter beneath a flickering Por Taco menu. A smattering of disheveled patrons sat at various tables throughout the restaurant eating and talking in hushed tones. Numerous dragon stencils adorned the side wall—a holdover from when the place was a Chinese buffet—and inexplicably, there was a Jamaican flag stapled above the restroom sign on the opposite end of the counter. Even the table they were eating off of was a cultural mishmash with a sickly green cactus painted across one half and a Dickensian winter’s London night on the other.
“This is terrible,” Brody said under his breath.
Leah gave up on her taco, letting its remains rest in pieces on the burnt orange food tray. “What?”
Brody looked up. Salty dewdrops clung to his eyelashes. “What are we doing here?”
Taken aback by Brody’s out-of-character show of emotion, Leah stuttered, “You were craving tacos.”
“No.” A single tear broke free and streaked down his chubby, acne-touched cheek. “I mean, what are we doing here?” He raised his arms, palms up, and his XXL shirt rose exposing his pasty eggshell belly.
“I don’t…”
Leah saw the pain in his teary caramel eyes and understood. It wasn’t the sorry state of the taco joint that upset him so; it was the sorry state of their lives that had made them another out-of-place fixture in this wretched place.
“We’re in a funk, is all. Things will get better,” she said, not believing her own words. “They just have to.”
“Look at this place.” A twinge of anger overtook his despair. “It’s a fucking dump. It’s pathetic. We’re pathetic.” He sniffled and wiped his nose with a tree-bark-textured napkin. “Why did we come here?”
Leah fought to keep her voice from quavering. She was surprised and somewhat irritated by the sudden emotion that had welled up in her. “Taco Bell is on the other side of town and you said you didn’t want to drive that far.” It was her turn to feel the hot flush of anger. “I was fine with it. You’re the one who picked this shit hole.”
“Yeah.” Brody cast his head down. “Sorry.”
An uncomfortable silence fell upon the couple. Their anger dissipated like the steam from cooling fajitas. With no energy to fight, Brody stared at his leaky taco. Yellow mystery goo pooled around its base deforming the corn shell like a cardboard box soaking up a puddle of cat piss. Leah, even less inclined to argue than Brody, studied her reflection in the smudged window. Gone were her smooth skin and hair’s healthy sheen. As was the vitality of youth that used to be present in her now tired eyes. What had happened? What wrong turn had they taken?
Then she noticed her hand was pressed against her saggy-skinned belly; a habit she’d developed in the hospital three months earlier. Her stomach felt empty. The kind of empty no amount of stale tacos would ever fill. It wasn’t a wrong turn they’d taken. They’d crashed the car on the way to their destination and it wasn’t anyone’s fault—mechanical failure. The vehicle simply had one too many passengers for that particular trip. But that didn’t make Leah feel any better. After all, it was her car.
Since she’d gotten out of the hospital, Brody had seen that look on Leah’s face more times than he could count. It was the forlorn look of loss and regret. He’d often suspected he was the regret.
“You know,” he ventured, desperate to bring her back to life, “this might be the world’s worst taco spot.”
Leah glanced up but melancholy still lined the corners of her eyes and mouth. It was the same wounded expression she had when they’d first met and Brody had asked about her father. The no-good bastard had abandoned Leah and her mother to start a new family down in Florida. Last she’d heard, he’d taken a job as a bartender on a cruise ship, effectively abandoning his second family for ten months out of every year.
With cruise ships in mind, Brody figured theirs had been slowly sinking for months, and even though they were both aware of the rising water in their hull—or at least Brody was aware—neither had put any effort into fixing the leaks. Leah had detached from the living world while Brody had eaten his feelings to the sum of 34 lbs over three long months. If he didn’t do something now, he feared their ship was doomed for the ocean floor.
“I’m serious. I’ve seen hot dogshit in July that looked more appetizing than these tacos.” A slight upturn at the corners of Leah’s mouth encouraged Brody to continue. “Probably smelled better too.”
A faint smile crept onto her face accompanied by an oft-missing twinkle of life in her eyes. He’d brought her back. At least for the moment. He just had to keep her smiling. But like getting to the bathroom after a night of eating Por Taco, he had to be quick or he’d make a mess of things.
“I have an idea,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let’s blow this shit stand and get something edible.”
Leah perked up. “You mean—”
“Yep. We’re going to Taco Bell.”
“Okay!” She smiled in a way that seemed to erase the last three months. “What about our food here?”
Brody looked at his melting Dali tacos. Somehow, they were even worse than the broken mess on Leah’s tray.
“We spent like three bucks a piece, I say we just throw these miscarriages they call tacos away and—”
An anchor dropped in his gut pulling his mouth shut, but not fast enough. He hoped she hadn’t heard or would choose to ignore his stupidity, but he knew she’d heard and he knew she couldn’t ignore it. He knew that when he looked up, her smile would be gone. Brody had dulled that twinkle once and for all and their ship was now beyond repair. He’d made it all the way to the toilet but missed the bowl.
Caleb James K. 