Enchilada Ed

5

"Whatcha reading there?" Yessica set a blueberry pop tart into the toaster.

"I don't know." The truth was Ed hadn't been reading. He had been simply staring at his English homework, and trying to get the smell of cilantro out of his nostrils. A toddler at one the tables Ed had been serving at El Gringo's had somehow splattered salsa verde onto Ed's face, and he must have inhaled a chunk of tomatillo. He had been working all morning, through the lunch rush, and well into the afternoon. It was now Sunday evening, and Ed would have school tomorrow. When he got home, he straight away decided to begin his homework. But rather than sit behind his desk in his room upstairs, Ed thought it would be better to work at the kitchen table. He would have easy access to the refrigerator that way. Plus, Ed's dad had a dinner with one of his colleagues, and so Yessica had agreed to pick Ed's baby brother, Noah, up from his karate class, bring him home, and watch him until Ed's dad returned. Noah objected, of course, because he had just turned eleven and was, at least in his own mind, a "pre-teen" who didn't need a babysitter. Ed didn't understand why Noah didn't want Yessica around. Ed would love to have her as a babysitter. She provided him with the most delicious of contraband: pop-tarts, Captain Crunch, and Rice Krispy treats, the sort of sugary junk food Ed's dad didn't allow around the place. Ed figured his dad's prohibition on anything delicious was borne either out of a persistent fear of an early death (as had happened to Ed's paternal grandfather) or out of a complete lack of interest in tasty food. It was more likely the latter, Ed thought. For all his dad's lectures on heart-health, he didn't seem to have much concern for his liver.

"That bad, huh?" Yessica slid into a chair across the table from Ed, "Let's take a look at it."

"I'm not sure it's in your wheelhouse," Ed said, even though he was grateful that Yessica would offer to help him, "It's English, not Calc."

"You're gonna typecast me as a math lady, now?" Yessica pulled Ed's homework away from him, "Yessica the actuary who can only do boring left brain stuff? I resent that."

"It's poetry. I don't think anybody can understand other people's poetry," Ed watched the pop-tart shoot up from its toaster tray, "do you have some more of those with ya?"

Without looking up from Ed's notebook, Yessica retrieved a box of pop-tarts from the hobo-bag resting on her lap, waggled it in the air, then tossed it at him, "All yours cowboy."

Ed grinned as he caught the box and started toward the toaster.

"Sooo, Ed," Yessica struggled to suppress a giggle, "who's Audra?"

"What do you know about Audra?" Ed's eyes jolted back to Yessica.

"Oh, nothing," A toothy smile busted out between her bow-shaped lips, "you just scribbled her name all over this handout."

"Gosh darn it." Ed took a foil-wrapped pop tart out of its box.

"GEEEE WHIIIZZ!" a familiar voice echoed from across the kitchen. Mike had arrived and now mocked Ed, "GOSH DARN, GOLLY GEE."

"So you did get my text?" Yessica frowned.

"You're baby-sitting Noah, I should come to dad's house, yada, yada, yada," Mike said. Just before he sat down in Ed's chair, he leaned across the kitchen table and gave Yessica a peck near her lips.

"Would it have hurt to text back?" Yessica chewed on her cheek.

"I got hung up at Randy's. See, the news came on," Mike continued, "and apparently SeaWorld is gonna get rid of the orcas."

"I heard that," Yessica said.

"Randy and I got into an argument about it. My position is that it's discriminatory," Mike narrowed his blue eyes. "These asshole 'animal rights activists' think that all orcas want be out in the wilderness, survival of the fittest type shit, right? How do they know that the wild orcas don't wanna live in a tank?"

"Would you want to live in a tank?" Yessica asked.

"Duhhhh," Mike said. "The water is climate controlled, you've got hundreds of admirers visiting you every day, there's regular meals of already-dead fish, and digestive belly massages."

"They give the killer whales belly massages?" Yessica was incredulous.

"I think it's ignorant to assume that all the orcas want to be slumming it in the North Pacific. See, this is the problem with socialism," Mike concluded, "you get this cult of mediocracy. Oh, so most whales live frustrated lives fraught with peril and uncertainty. You're a whale, so you must want that too. No luxury for anybody."

"I don't think the tanks at Sea World count as luxury," Ed pinched the top corners of Yessica's piping-hot pop tart, gingerly lifted it out of the toaster, and dropped it on a plate, "If you read what the marine biologists say-"

"It's just plain un-American," Mike decided, "That's what I'm going to vote on. What's gonna be done about the civil rights of tank-potato orcas?"

"You're going to be a single issue voter?" Yessica took her pop-tart from Ed.

"Hell yeah," Mike pulled his iPhone out from one of his sweatpants' back pockets, "I need to tweet about this."

"That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Ed now set his own pop tart in the toaster tray and pressed down the lever.

"Like you're so smart," Mike scoffed at Ed before something across the kitchen table caught his attention. "Little seventeen year old, so smart, huh? What's this?" he grabbed Ed's English notebook, "Oh look, homework. Oh look, Audra again. Audra, Audra, Audra!"

"Shut up!" Ed flushed.

"Leave him alone," Yessica glared at Mike.

"I'm just teasing-" Mike read Yessica's face, and set the homework back onto the tabletop. "Fine. Sorry, kid."

"You should be." Yessica bit into her pop tart. "You're so insensitive."

Ed wondered how Mike, of all the idiots in the world, got to be happily coupled at fifteen. That didn't hardly seem fair, when Ed considered the sheer number of decent singletons. But if Mike could convince Yessica to stay with him for an entire decade, he had to have been on to something. Maybe Mike knew what he was talking about when he told Ed just to ask Audra out, cold. Why bother being "careful," like their dad insisted? Mike was the one in a relationship, and their dad was twice divorced. Ed started to think about balloons and places where he could find helium tanks. Didn't Yessica have one? Ed thought he remembered Mike asking to inhale some for a chipmunk-voice sample he wanted to use in a track he had been working on. There was also Party City, maybe? Ed considered the added expense of a helium tank to his total prom expenditures. Dear lord, he was becoming a money-cruncher, like his dad. But what could he do? He needed a grand romantic gesture, and grand romantic gestures required money. Oh, what Ed would do if he had money.

"I'm very sensitive." Mike said, a little like a wounded animal. "My mom says I was an indigo child."

"I have no idea what that's supposed to mean," Yessica said.

"He's being stupid, that's all I'm saying." Mike pouted.

"So what if he is? Let him be." Yessica set her brown hand on Mike's pink one. "Remember seventeen? And the jeep you totaled?"

"Maybe you got a point," Mike smiled at the floor, "It's just hard not to get caught up in the pop nihilism and the terrorism and the angry politics and the uh-"

"precarious situation of tank-potato orcas, I know." Yessica finished Mike's sentence.

A steaming blueberry pop tart jumped above the toaster tray and startled Ed from his daydream.

"Gah!" Ed jerked backwards. He cringed. Mike would have a field day with that. Afraid of the toaster, Ed? Ed could just hear it now. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable onslaught of ridicule.

Annd... silence.

Ed opened his eyes. Mike and Yessica whispered to each other, completely oblivious to Ed's squirrelly reflexes, and maybe the world itself.

***