The Mortal Nuts (9 page)

Sophie interrupted. “I need two tacos and a side of beans. I've been busy as hell.”

Carmen shrugged and said to Kirsten, “She show you anything yet?”

“I just got here.”

“My name's Carmen.”

“Kirsten Lund.”

Carmen looked down at Kirsten's hands. “That polish ain't gonna last long around here.”

“I don't mind,” said Kirsten.

“Okay, here's how you build a taco. By tomorrow you're gonna be so good at this you can do it dead drunk.”

“Really?” Kirsten had never been drunk.

“Really. It'll be like you never did anything else. First off, you get your taco shell. Here.”

Chapter 12

The old man was right. You couldn't miss it. But getting in was another story. All the parking lots—the biggest parking lots he had ever seen—were full. Dean finally had to pay some lady in a pink sweatshirt five dollars to park his car on her front lawn. Then he had to walk a mile just to get to the fairground gates. Then stand in line behind the Fat family, Mom and Pop and three towheaded, pear-shaped kids, hulking through the revolving wooden turnstiles like hogs going to slaughter. He should've just eaten breakfast at Denny's.

Inside, the landscape teemed with pale, light-haired Minnesotans, all of them eating. The Fat family melted into the crowd, merging with their own kind. Everyone he looked at had a face full of something, even the skinny ones. And if they weren't eating, they were crowding in front of some rickety-looking shack or trailer or tent, buying something: corn dogs or minidonuts or zucchini-on-a-stick or sno-cones or foot-longs or whatever—some of the stuff they were eating didn't even look like food. People walking and eating at the same time. Dean tried to remember when he had last eaten. A bag of dill-pickle-flavored potato chips he'd bought in Iowa. Unless you counted all the beer he'd drunk last night.

He'd been on the fairgrounds only a few minutes when he lost his bearings completely. The number of people milling about was staggering—like a rock festival, only without the stage to provide direction and focus. He had never seen so many people, especially so many chunked-out people, all in motion at the same time. Where the hell was he? The crowd moved in and out of itself, groups of pedestrians twining together and separating like a confluence of molasses and oil; Dean was drawn along in the wake of passing bodies, unable to stop. Where were they all going?

They were going nowhere and everywhere. The sounds of people talking, chewing, shuffling and dragging their feet over the streets and sidewalks, some sort of aerial cable car clattering overhead, vendors shouting, an engine revving in the distance, music coming from every direction, all different times. It was insane. Dean had been to carnivals and fairs before, but nothing on this scale.

How was he going to find the taco place? A man carrying a five-foot-tall purple dinosaur nearly ran him down. Dean stepped aside, bumping into a pair of big-shouldered farm kids, both of them wearing caps that read MoorMan Feeds. One kid grinned at him and said, “Nice day, huh?”

Nice day? That was what the old man had said. He looked up at the clear blue sky, then back at the kid, whose red hat was the only part of him still visible as the crowd on the street closed. He had a bad thought then, out of nowhere. What if Carmen didn't really like him? How did he know Carmen hadn't been faking it, just using him to get her weed and her Valiums? The notion rolled uncomfortably in his gut. He forced his mind to engage the problem. Suppose she didn't like him? When he thought of her that way, she didn't seem so interesting. If she didn't like him, then she wasn't who he thought she was, and if that's what she was, then it didn't really bother him. The concepts clicked neatly into place. If she didn't really like him, that wouldn't change anything, as long as she continued to fake it. They could still go to Puerto Penasco.

Another bad thought hit him then. What if she'd lied about liking him and lied about the coffee cans full of money too? What if she'd made that up, just to get him to like her? He veered to the sidewalk, grabbed hold of a light post, and breathed slowly, filtering the greasy-smelling air through undersize nostrils. He really had to get something in his stomach.

He spotted a sign ahead,
INFORMATION
, and angled toward it. A smiling, cockeyed older man wearing a Great Minnesota Get-Together mesh cap stood in a small kiosk, scanning the crowd. Dean approached him, was about to ask him where he could find the taco place, when the man said, “Nice day, huh?”

Dean turned, thinking the man was talking to someone behind him, but no one seemed to be looking his way.

“Low eighties this afternoon,” the man said. Apparently this was the type of information booth where you didn't have to ask questions. You simply passed within earshot, and information was delivered. The man continued: “They're saying we might get rained on some this weekend, but we sure did get a good one today!”

Dean regarded the man curiously, waiting for the next weather report.

“There something I can help you with, son?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I'm looking for this Mexican restaurant.”

The man raised his gray eyebrows. “You mean like tacos and stuff?”

“That's it.” What the hell did he think he meant?

“Well, there's lots of little taco stands around, only I don't know that you'd call 'em restaurants. There's one over on Judson Avenue, back the way you were coming from. And then there's a couple of them, I believe, up by the Food Building.”

“I'm looking for one owned by a guy named Axel.”

“Ah!” The man thrust a forefinger into the air. “Then you'd be looking for Axel's Taco Shop.”

“Yeah, that's it.”

“I can tell you just how to get there. But tell me something, son—how come you got those rings in your head?”

“How come you got one eye pointing the wrong way?”

“On account of I was in the war, son.”

“You gonna tell me how to get where I'm going?”

“Seems to me a fellow can't help but get where he's going, but if you want to get to Axel's, you just go straight up the street here to the Food Building. Axel's is right across the mall from it.”

“Thanks,” Dean said.

“You betcha,” the man called after him.

Dean imagined the Food Building as being this huge shrine surrounded by a sea of obesity. Maybe it was made out of food, like a gingerbread house. Or made out of corn dogs and bomb pops. He walked right past it and finally had to ask a guy who was selling plastic cowboy hats and Mylar balloons and yardstick canes where the hell was the Food Building. The guy pointed him back the way he'd come. When Dean started walking away, the guy said, “Hey, aren't you gonna buy something?” So Dean paid him three dollars for a heavy green yardstick cane with a leather loop on the end.

The Food Building turned out to be a squat, ugly, cinder- block structure, painted white, covering half a city block, surrounded by and filled with food vendors. Dean walked into the building, letting himself be pushed and jostled past the Navaho fry bread, caramel apple sundaes, giant Vietnamese egg rolls, strawberry cream puffs, deep-fried cheese curds … deep-fried what? He had to get out of there. The cacophony of smells was making his eyes water, exciting both his appetite and a desire to vomit. He pushed through the crowd, past the fried elephant ears and mini-Reubens and Soups-of-the-World, emerging at last onto a wide, grassy mall covered with picnic tables and surrounded by more food concessions. Frozfruit bars, Orange Treet, Black Walnut Taffy, Rainbow Cones, chocolate-chip cookies, fried chicken, sno-cones, Pronto Pups, French-Fried Ice Cream, Tiny Tot Donuts … Where was the Mexican restaurant? This had to be the place. When he finally spotted Axel's Taco Shop, the bright red-and-green sign jumping out at him, he felt as if his Mexican dinner had turned into a taco chip.

Dean stood staring at Axel's Taco Shop. This was no restaurant. This was a little wooden shack. A crummy little shack, no larger than most living rooms, about the size of three cells at Lincoln, if that, with the front wide open like a big window and a sign up above, a picture of a taco and a guy in a sombrero.

The lower part of the stand was also covered with signs. Dean squinted but couldn't read them. Probably menus. A blond woman stood at the counter. Behind her, he spotted Carmen. At least he was in the right place.

A man wearing overalls stopped and ordered something. The blond woman took his money and handed him what looked like a burrito. The man walked away, pushing the paper-wrapped burrito into his mouth. Dean thought, Another—what—dollar fifty? Great. He tried to imagine that burrito multiplying into a coffee can fortune. He shook his head. This was bullshit. No way this guy was rich, selling burritos to farmers in overalls and baseball caps. He was going to have to have a talk with Carmen. All the way from Omaha for burrito money.

Chapter 13

Sophie was used to seeing a lot of strange people at the fair, so when the bald kid with the rings in his eyebrow approached, she thought nothing of it. In fact, she would likely have forgotten him within seconds if he had not drawn attention to himself by demanding a free taco.

“Excuse me?” she said.

The kid smiled. He had small, neat teeth, very white. He looked past her.

“Hey, Carmen!” he said in a loud voice.

Carmen approached the counter. “Dean?”

“I can't have you giving away food to your friends,” Sophie said. “It'll come out of your pay.” It was best to put a stop to it now, before it got out of hand.

“Do I look like I'm giving away food?” Carmen said.

Sophie set her jaw. “I'm just saying.”

“I can't believe you actually came out here. I mean to the fair,” Carmen said.

A couple wearing matching black cowboy hats and Garth Brooks T-shirts stopped a few feet away from the stand and read the menu signs.

Sophie said, “You want to step to the side, uh, Gene. I have some customers here.”

“His name's
Dean
,” Carmen said.

“Yeah, and I'm a customer too. I talked to your boss, Axel, and he told me to stop by for a free taco. So here I am.

“You talked to
Axel?
” Carmen said.

Sophie said, “Look, let's not tie up the counter here, okay?”

Carmen motioned with her head. “Come on around the back.”

Dean circled the stand. Carmen handed him a taco through the back door. “You talked to Axel?” she repeated in a low voice.

Dean nodded, biting into the taco. He chewed as he spoke. “Saw him at the motel. In the parking lot.”

Carmen stepped out the door. “What was he doing there?”

Dean shrugged. “He had a garbage bag full of something.”

“You tell him you knew me?”

“Hey, do I look stupid?” he asked, his mouth full of taco. A glob of salsa dropped onto Carmen's orange Bugs Bunny T-shirt.

Carmen thought it best not to answer his question.

“You got my T-shirt on,” she said.

Dean said, “How about you take a break, show me around a little?”

Sophie appeared in the doorway, grabbed Carmen's apron strap. “No way, Jos6,” she said, dragging her daughter back into the stand.

Dean finished his taco, watching the women work. A few seconds later, Carmen poked her head out. “Stick around,” she whispered. “I'll be out of here in no time.”

“So what do you think?”

“I don't think your mom likes me.”

“I mean the cheese curds.”

Dean chewed the deep-fried cheese curd, searching for flavor. He examined the remaining batter-fried nodules in the paper tray. He brought the tray up to his face and sniffed, then picked out another curd, bit into it, chewed for a few moments, and swallowed. He looked at Carmen, bewildered.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

“I don't get it.”

“People love them. Axel told me they take in twenty thousand a day out of this one stand.”

“Dollars? What is it? It's got no taste. Needs salsa or mustard or something.”

“You know when they make cheese? What Axel says is, this is the stuff they used to just throw it away. You can deep-fry anything here and sell it. Deep-fried ice cream—they even got that.”

They were walking up the hill past a concession stand made in the shape of a giant baked potato. Dean shook his head and tossed the remaining cheese curds toward an overflowing trash can, missing it by three feet. “Do you take in twenty grand a day at the taco shop?”

“You kidding? We're lucky to break five on a good day.”

“That much?” It wasn't twenty grand a day, but he was impressed. Maybe there was something to those coffee cans after all. “I thought you told me this guy Axel had a restaurant.”

“Axel calls it a restaurant. He says if a building stays up all year, it's a restaurant. If you knock it down and move it after every fair, it's a stick joint. If you can pull it behind a car, it's a trailer.”

“I was expecting something bigger. You were telling me about all this money he makes, I thought there would at least be tables people could sit down at.”

“Axel says you don't want them to sit down. You want them to keep moving.”

“I gotta sit down. I had to park, I don't know where. I feel like I walked ten miles.” Dean veered off the sidewalk and sat down on an empty bench. Carmen stood in front of him and lit a cigarette.

Dean said, “So he makes, like—what—fifty thousand in twelve days?”

“I guess.”

“So he won't miss a few thousand, right?”

Carmen crossed her arms and looked away. “What do you mean?” she said.

“Well, it's just sitting there, isn't it? Sit down.” He patted the bench.

Carmen sat down beside him, puffing on her cigarette. The conversation was making her uncomfortable. She liked the idea of getting her hands on some of Axel's money, but Dean was moving too fast for her. She said, “Maybe we ought to think about it.”

“That's what I've been doing,” Dean said. He laid his yardstick on her thigh, rolled it back and forth. “All that money. What's he gonna do with it, anyways? He lives in a Motel 6, f'Chrissakes.”

Carmen stood up, knocking the yardstick aside. She needed time to think.

“Listen, you want to see a real money machine? Come here.” She turned her back and started walking. Dean watched until she was nearly out of sight, then got up and followed her across the street and back toward the mall. He caught up with her in front of a large, rickety concession, a bank of glass-fronted mechanisms surrounded by a crowd of people five deep. There were fourteen machines, each operating with relentless precision. A batter-filled hopper plopped tiny rings of sweet, sticky dough into a moat of bubbling oil. The rings floated single file around the oil- filled trough, were flipped by a clever metal arm at the halfway point, and finally fell into a basket to drain, briefly, before being rolled in sugar and scooped into wax-paper bags.

“Little donuts,” Dean said. “I've seen those before.”

“Check out the guy with the hat.”

Dean looked past the machines and saw a short, stocky man with a deeply tanned and wrinkled face sitting on an elevated stool. He wore an enormous black cowboy hat.

“That's Tommy. He owns Tiny Tot. He's a millionaire. Axel says he takes in more money in a day than we do the whole fair. Takes a bag of cash down to the bank two, three times a day. Axel says he's got the hottest concession at the fair, except for the Beer Garden. I bet Tommy's got ten times as much money as Axel, and he lives in a trailer!”

Dean squinted at the stocky little man. “He looks pissed.”

“He always looks like that. Me and Tommy are buddies.” She waved over the crowd, but Tommy didn't see her.

Dean shook his head slowly. “The guy is miniature. Like his donuts.”

Carmen grabbed his arm. “Shit! There's Axel He better not see us together.”

Dean looked but could not pick Axel out of the crowd. “What's the problem?”

“You don't know Axel. He gets really weird around my boyfriends. I'll see you later, okay?”

Dean said, “Wait a minute …” But she was already out of sight. Boyfriend? Was that what he was? He watched the donut machines for a few minutes, trying to think of himself as Carmen's boyfriend but soon becoming fascinated by the little guy in the cowboy hat. He couldn't get over how small the guy was, almost like a midget. A midget millionaire. It was something to think about.