Al Pastor
The moment he saw her, he knew he was in trouble. Mrs. Dawson had told him that she was an actress. She certainly looked the part. Horatio half-expected a flock of flash-bulb popping paparazzi to emerge from the slow-moving traffic and descend upon her. Her hair was straight and dark, but still managed a sort of shampoo commercial sassiness. She was tall, but not too tall, athletic, lean, but not so lean that her appearance screamed “Hey dude, I have an eating disorder, this dinner will be my first real meal of the week.” She was genuinely attractive. He was in trouble.
Horatio felt his heart rise in his chest while at the same time his stomach dropped downward, squeezing out a pitiful pinch of a fart, a one-note butt trumpet solo that should have sounded the retreat. Instead, as if on cue, she turned towards him. She smiled and smoothed her hair back, eyeing him with a curious look that either said, “Are you my blind date?” or “Did you just crop-dust the streetlamp?” She stepped closer, heels clicking on concrete. He was in trouble.
“Horatio?” she asked.
“That’s me,” he said.
“Hi, I’m Edie.”
He offered a friendly handshake, but she instead pulled him in for a hug. Her hair smelled like autumn and fabric softener. Horatio felt a nervous, derpy grin cross his face. He also felt the remnants of an Al Pastor burrito attempt a forward Double Pike dive with a three-quarter twist in his bowels, a movement so violent and awkward that he was afraid Edie could feel it as well. She pulled away and smiled warmly, seemingly unfazed. Horatio forced a chuckle. The Austrian judges gave it a 3.5.
“So,” she said. “Mrs. Dawson speaks highly of you.”
“Oh wow,” he replied. “Well, she almost has to. She’s like my second mom. Her son is one of my best friends.”
“Oh, I see. She goes to church with my parents.”
“Right…”
The pause was awkward, as they often are.
“Sorry,” he said. “I know this is… awkward. Sorry that you had to…”
An inner avalanche of refried beans cut him short. The situation had gone from code red to code salsa verde.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, reacting to the puzzled look on her face. “Do you mind if I pop in here real quick?”
He nodded towards the hipster café behind her.
“Uh… sure.”
“I had to come straight from the office,” he said. “My bladder is about to…”
“Yeah, of course.” she said. “I’ll wait out here.”
He rushed past, yanked open the door, and ran straight into a long line of people cuing for overpriced lattes. He bobbed and weaved his way through, hoping he didn’t crap his pants in the process. Finally, he found a long hallway. A door at the back had a symbol of a person on it that wasn’t wearing a skirt. He speed-walked through the home stretch and grabbed the handle. It was locked. Underneath the handle was a keypad.
“Oh, come on…”
Horatio was running out of time, and a mudslide of feisty frijoles was on the verge of running out of his sphincter. He turned back toward the way he had come in, towards the line of impatient patrons snaking toward the street where Edie was waiting. Why was this happening? Why couldn’t they just have a normal restroom with a few stalls? Why was Edie actually attractive? Why had he let Lucas talk him into lunch at Los Vaqueros? Why had he gone for the triple flame salsa when he knew he had digestive issues? Why today of all days?
He put a fist against the wall and leaned into it, readying himself for what was to come, hoping his stomach could muster the strength to contain the Al Pastor nuclear meltdown for another minute while he endured rude glances and jumped the line to ask for the number to the restroom. He would have to swallow his pride, but there was no room in his stomach for pride. It was full of burrito shrapnel.
Horatio heard a metallic clank. The door to the restroom opened. A tall, lanky guy emerged, holding the door open behind him. He glanced at Horatio, who finally realized that the man was waiting for him.
“Thanks,” he said, still shell-shocked from this miraculous turn of events.
He went in and locked the door, double checking to make sure it was actually locked before he dropped trou and rested his cheeks on the chilly oval of the blessed porcelain throne. As he went about his business, still a bit flustered and overwhelmed by the war raging within his digestive track, he remembered the crass joke that he heard in high school from someone on the swim team.
“How do you spell relief?”
“S-H-I-…”
She smiled and stood with confidence, glancing at her phone as if it was telling her good news. She was good at acting the part, but deep down, she knew she was in trouble. Her heels were just a tad too tight, putting just enough discomfort in her feet to remind her that she didn’t deserve to be here. She was parading around like a professional, pretending to be successful, eating a dinner she couldn’t afford. She knew she had enough money in the credit union to pay rent next week. After that, she would have exactly fifty-four dollars and seventy cents to live on. She was in trouble.
Maybe that’s why she didn’t fight her parents this time around when they insisted she go to dinner with yet another random, semi-successful young man. He came highly recommended, no doubt, from a deacon at their church. As best as Edie could tell, the deacons at her parents’ church were tasked with three responsibilities: collecting offerings, constructing guilt trips, and finding potential partners for single women who showed signs of fertility, so as to produce grandchildren for the aging members of the congregation.
Edie had managed to disappoint her parents in almost every aspect of her life, but perhaps if she showed some willingness to be the dutiful daughter, they would cut her some slack. If she swooned over the phone as they described their next hand-chosen husband type, would their disappointment be less severe when she inevitably asked them for money? That future conversation hovered over her head like a pigeon with irritable bowels, a pigeon that was going to make a mess of her life eventually. It felt predetermined, and, like all good Presbyterian girls, Edie believed in predestination.
For now, all she could do was play the part. She was an actress after all. She would put on her makeup and one of her few decent dresses and carry her clutch as if it actually had something in it. She knew how to laugh like the bourgeoisie. She had gone to enough auditions and paraded around in front of enough sexist troll turds to know how to exude self-confidence, even when she was nervous.
A catcall caught her attention. It came from the pack of denim douchebags passing on the sidewalk. She ignored it, but the sound stung, somehow making her feel cheap, as if she was whoring herself out for a decent meal. Was that the role she was playing tonight, the hooker with the heart of gold? Even that didn’t fit. She had no innocent child to take care of, no lofty goal to justify her actions, just a pinching pair of high-heeled shoes and a struggling acting career that was such a train wreck that to use the word “career” was laughable. Also, she was in the Flatiron District as opposed to 19th Century France. It was common knowledge that France was the only place where the truly reputable hookers flaunted their goods. Edie was just a pretender. She was in trouble.
Horatio re-emerged from the café, looking only slightly less awkward than he had ten minutes ago. He offered a slight, apologetic smile.
“Shall we?” asked Edie.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s right over here.”
He led the way down the sidewalk. He certainly wasn’t unattractive. He looked like he had just gotten a haircut earlier in the day. It was the typical style of the times: too short on the sides, slightly too long on the top, way too much product all around. His button-down looked like it was custom tailored, or maybe it wasn’t made to fit him so much as he was made to fit it. Maybe his time in the gym had been spent building the proper proportions to ensure a snug fit of the collar and just the right shoulder width to fill out the sleeves.
He held the door for her as she stepped into a modernist restaurant with wide windows and high ceilings accented by wooden frames. They waited for the stewardess behind a trio of women that smelled like the Stock Market.
“Oh my God,” said Edie with genuine wonder. “This place looks amazing. What kind of restaurant is this again?”
“It’s Lebanese.”
“Interesting, I don’t know if I’ve had Lebanese food before…”
“I think it’s like Greek or Mediterranean basically, if you like that.”
“I do.”
In truth, Mediterranean wasn’t her favorite, but so many of her besties had made it their seasonal quasi-healthy go-to that she seemed to eat it often. The stewardess sat them at a table tucked between an older couple and a pair of guys in suits. The menu was a bit on the pricey side. Edie swallowed a lump of nervous guilt and wondered if the prices mirrored the taste of the food or the taste of the modern décor.
He asked her questions about her family and the acting life. She told him about her golden boy brother, now a computer engineer in San Francisco, the one that could do no wrong in the eyes of mom and dad. She described the ironic epiphany she had in third grade when she was chosen to play the part of the doctor in the school play.
“I guess that’s when it all started,” she explained. “My parents saw how excited I was. They assumed I wanted to be a doctor, and they did everything in their power to make sure I got good grades and put me on the fast track to college and medical school and all that. They wanted me to be a doctor. Maybe for a while that’s what I thought I wanted as well. Eventually, it became pretty clear that I wanted something else. I was too nervous to tell them, at least at first. The real reckoning didn’t happen until my first year of college…”
Her clutch began to vibrate violently. For a phone that was on “mute” it managed to make an obnoxious amount of noise.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling the guilty device out of hiding. It was an old, scratched up flip phone on a discount carrier plan. The caller might as well have been 1997, asking for it’s cell phone back.
Only it wasn’t 1997. It was the casting agent she had auditioned for on Monday, one of the few important phone numbers she had actually managed to add to her contacts. She froze, staring into the clamshell.
“You can take that if you need to,” said Horatio.
Edie looked up, like an animal in the headlights.
“Would you mind?” she asked, already pressing the button. “It’s a call back…”
“Of course not.”
She turned slightly, trying to cup out the din of dishware and droning conversations.
“Hello, this is Edie.”
“Hi Edie, it’s Angelica.”
“Hi Angelica.”
“Hi Edie. Sorry for calling so late…”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Well, we wanted to thank you again for coming in to read for us. David really liked your energy.”
“Oh, thank you so much.”
She saw a waitress’s apron hover in her periphery.
“Can I start you off with some wine this evening?”
Edie looked up and the waitress quickly made an apologetic gesture.
“Maybe just waters for now,” said Horatio, glancing at Edie who gave her a grateful nod.
“No problem.”
“Actually,” said Horatio as the waitress began to turn. “Could I also get a ginger ale?”
“Of course.”
“Edie?”
It was the casting agent talking through the muffled speaker of the ’97 lame phone.
“Yeah, I’m still here. Sorry.”
“So the director decided to give the role of the Oracle to another actress…”
Edie felt her heart sink under the table. She had lost the part, and yet she suddenly felt an Oracle’s gift of foresight manifesting in her real life. Her future looked dark, as dark as the interior of her two-door coupe parked next to an alley in Queens.
“But we actually really liked the read through you did with Kyle. So much so that we want to offer you the role of the Shepherdess.”
Did she hear that right? The sound quality on this phone was suspect at best.
“I’m sorry, Angelica. It’s a little loud in here. Could you say that again?”
Laughter came through the speaker.
“We’d like to offer you the role of the Shepherdess.”
“The Shepherdess…” her brain was spinning. The baba ganoush was making her dizzy. “But that’s…”
“I know it’s not the role you auditioned for, but it’s a lead. You’d be acting opposite Kyle, who is already confirmed. Do you think you’d be interested?”
“Oh my God, yes!”
“Great! That’s fantastic news. I’ll let David know.”
Edie’s fist pump came without warning. She bumped the table with her knee. Horatio saved a wine glass from tumbling. Edie mouthed the word “sorry” to him in silence, but her smile showed that she was anything but.
“The rehearsal schedule has been pushed back slightly,” continued Angelica. “So we’ll start on the 28th, which is a week from Thursday.
“The 28th. Got it.”
“Same location, but I’ll send you the details just so you have it.”
“That sounds great. Thank you so much.”
Edie wrapped up her conversation like a little girl on Christmas morning. She couldn’t stop from beaming as she tucked her high school dream phone into her stylish clutch. A glass of spring water magically materialized in front of her. The scent of wine and succulent lamb danced through the atmosphere. She was having the best day of her life.
Horatio offered a simple smile.
“I’m so sorry,” said Edie, turning back toward him. “That was a casting agent.”
“I take it she had good news?”
“The best news I’ve heard in months. I just got a lead role in a new play that’s opening in April.”
“That’s great. Congratulations! What’s the play about?”
“It’s… a little hard to explain. It’s very allegorical. It mostly takes place in and around this small town in an agricultural community. It’s really ambiguous in terms of whether it’s like Medieval Europe or the American Midwest or what.”
And that’s when it happened.
A sound emanated from Horatio, from somewhere deep beneath the tablecloth. It was unmistakable: loud and proud.
Horatio was anything but. He took a deep breath and looked down at his menu, hoping against hope that no one had heard. A slicked back guy in a suit at the next table shot him a look of disgust before turning back to laugh with his comrade. The woman at the table on the other side shifted uncomfortably. Edie picked up her menu to focus her eyes elsewhere, but not before she noticed the subtle way that Horatio’s body language collapsed inward.
“Part of the story is about a shepherdess and a black smith,” she said in an attempt to fill the silence. “They argue at first, but eventually they understand the other’s point of view… and they fall in love. Then changes come to the town and they find themselves on opposite ends of it.”
She pretended to carouse the menu, but words like fattoush and tahini never cut the mustard when someone has just cut the cheese. In spite of herself, she glanced over the menu at Horatio. One of the points of his collar was caving in. The stripes of his shirt were warped with a few wrinkles. His lean frame looked heavy and despondent. He was having the worst day of his life.
He looked up from the menu and gazed at the window across the way as if looking for hope somewhere beyond the schwarma, wishing his gaze could carry him out to the cold of the street. He straightened his back and turned back, briefly glancing at Edie quickly before burying himself in the menu again.
Edie looked down as well, but in that brief moment, she felt she had come to understand something about Horatio. He wanted to be anywhere but here. He wanted to leave, but he wouldn’t. He wasn’t the type to leave. He was probably quite the opposite.
Horatio had probably studied finance in college to placate his parents, and because numbers were constant and dependable, unlike so many other things in life. He was probably the model student, the ideal co-worker, the guy that took on the tasks no one else was willing to do. He probably had money, but was miserable, so busy checking boxes that he no longer knew how to think outside of one. He was a “Yes Man” who no longer knew how to say “no,” just another lost soul in New York wandering and waiting for nothing in particular, trying to find his way, but not quite knowing where to go.
Horatio had probably excelled at everything Edie had failed at and avoided all the pitfalls that she had stumbled into, and yet she couldn’t help but sense that in his own way, he was in trouble as well.
Edie decided on a lentil dish that she couldn’t pronounce and pushed her menu off to the side. Horatio sipped on his soda in silence.
“Can I tell you something,” said Edie. “Something embarrassing?”
Horatio looked up dubiously.
“Sure,” he said.
“My parents have been setting me up on blind dates for the past three years. It’s always the son of some business partner or some connection through church. It doesn’t matter who it is, the date always ends the same. We go out to eat, and the bill comes, and the guy and I do this little song and dance where I offer to split the bill, but he insists that he should just pay it, and then eventually, after some back and forth, I let him because… ‘old school values’ or whatever.”
He watched her cautiously.
“I was going to do that tonight… a little bit, because I have my feminist pride and I never want anyone to feel obligated to spend money and all that, but it would be a lie. The truth is, I can’t really afford dinner at a place like this. Honestly, if I paid for dinner or even part of it, I might not be able to pay my rent next month, because… I’m legit broke as a joke.”
She smoothed back her hair as Horatio took another sip of ginger.
“I guess I’m telling you this because you deserve a little honesty, and because I hope you don’t mind paying for dinner. I realize that’s a little unfair and I don’t want to assume anything about you, so if that’s an issue, we can, you know, try to cancel our orders and just call it a night or whatever. There’s no shame in that.”
Horatio shifted a bit. He looked like he was about to say something, but she wouldn’t give him the chance.
“But,” she said. “If you are willing to pay for dinner tonight, I promise that I will pay the next time.”
Horatio raised an eyebrow.
“Next time?”
“Well, I mean… assuming there is a next time. That’s completely up to you, of course. No pressure.”
Horatio looked at her cautiously. He probably knew this was a bit of a pity play, but seemed grateful never the less. He took a sip of ginger ale.
“Of course,” continued Edie, “You can’t tell anyone that I’m on the verge of homelessness. That has to be our little secret, because, if you do tell anyone, and I mean anyone, I’m going to have to start calling you Horatio Hornblower.”
Horatio froze mid-sip, and stifled a laugh. He coughed with the straw still protruding from his mouth. He turned away to catch his breath.
“Sorry,” she said with a smile.
He coughed again and put a palm to his forehead. He shook his head with a forced smile and looked out toward the streets again in silence. He seemed to freeze in that position, almost statuesque as he stared at the world passing by outside. Finally, he turned and crossed his arms, the musculature of his forearms pushing against the stripes of his cuffs.
“Okay, Edie,” he said. “Edie the actress. I’ll let your broke ass take me out to dinner. I’ll let you drag me to whatever flea market or back alley dumpster you have in mind.”
He looked into her eyes. Edie felt a derpy grin cross her face.
“I’ll play ball with you,” he said. “Under one condition.”
“What’s that?” asked Edie.
“No spicy food.”
He paused for dramatic effect.
“Apparently me and spicy Al Pastor burritos just don’t get along… if you catch my drift. Well, I mean, hopefully you didn’t… catch my drift.”
She giggled in spite of herself and looked away, as if suddenly she was embarrassed. Perhaps she was. Horatio continued unfazed.
“Spicy conversation is probably fine… probably, but if we order spicy food.., well then, we’re all in trouble.”
*This story was inspired by a wonderful prompt from John Jihoon Chang.
