Enchilada Ed

8.

The happiest Monday morning Ed had ever experienced snuck up on him just after first period English, as he started out the classroom door.

"Wait, Ed!" Audra had called out behind him, as she slipped on her book bag, "I missed you at the laser game Friday."

Ed was visibly shocked. For the shortest moment, he felt as if his entire body was just on the brink of a complete collapse; his palms moistened, his tongue felt thick and dry, and his abdomen wrenched with a happy kind of nervousness. He soon realized that he had to say something. He had been quiet for too long. A half a second, maybe, but in the space of the conversation, such a pause could be suspicious.

"Sorry, what was that?" Great, Ed thought, now it seems like I wasn't paying attention.

Audra lifted one of her pretty hands to her throat.

"Is it not what the term is? The laser game?"

Ed feared he made her self-conscious about her English. That was definitely worse than not paying attention.

"Oh right, I understand you," Ed nodded. "My ear's been kind of congested with the spring allergies. Ear wax build up."

Audra's eyes fell onto the hallway floor.

Great. Ed ran his fingers through his hair. She's expressing some kind of interest in you, and the best you can do is come up a stupid story about earwax to pretend you didn't hear her, he chastised himself. Earwax build up. Allergies. Real sexy, Ed.

"I just said," Audra stood up on her tip-toes and leaned very close to his left ear, "I missed you at the laser game last Friday."

Ed could feel her breath on his neck. On instinct he tilted his head toward hers and lowered his eyelids. Almost immediately after she stepped back down onto her heels, Ed realized how silly he might have looked, and snapped himself awake. Wonderful, he thought, I probably looked like a brain trauma patient. Small wonder I didn't start drooling.

"You heard that?" Audra walked backwards in front of Ed.

"Loud and clear." Ed rubbed his neck. "I'm pretty upset about missing laser tag myself."

"Tag! That was the word, laser tag. I knew that!" Audra laughed. "I suppose it sounds a bit vague, laser game. It's what we call it in France."

"I knew what you meant." Ed said.

"Nonetheless," Audra turned herself around so that she could walk beside Ed, "I understand how you feel about working. My dad owns a café- perhaps the most stereotypical of French occupations- and I very often worked there after school. You work at a café?"

"Not a café, exactly. More like something between a Mexican restaurant and a taco shack." Ed certainly wasn't a marketer. He wasn't even an anti-marketer. Piruz would not be proud of him.

"But you wait tables?"

"Mostly bus them, sweep the floor, man the cash register. And I water the cactuses. Or, er, is it cacti?" Ed glanced at the ceiling and thought about his SAT vocab flashcards. He could speak just fine until one of those irregular, Latinate nouns came up. They were his one greatest weakness. Well, them and Audra.

"There are cacti?" Audra clapped, "wonderful!"

"You like cacti?"

"I have a ton of them back in Arles! My sun room looks like a movie set for a Spaghetti Western!"

"Spaghetti Western?" Ed had visions of meatballs and linguine and gun-slingers in ponchos?

"You don't know?" Audra lifted her eyebrows, "Surely you've heard of Sergio Leone?" Audra's voice rose in excitement. "The Dollar Trilogy?"