American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 21
The Prophet of Taco Bell
Andrey Shamshurin
I kiss my wife, her eyes closed, my sperm stuck inside
her, “Just chilling,” as she says every night, spraying a
bottle of Febreze around me, repeating that it won’t work
while I watch her stomach, searching for any hint of a
curve, but today she doesn’t wake up and I just drive to
work, the prophet not yet there when I park around the
side, look for any sign of his cart, and walk into the store,
its walls caved in around the cars and the freeway, the
neon bell flashing across the street, lighting up a church,
lean and tall with manicured lawns and scripture signs,
but they are not neon and the church has no crunchwrap
drowned in double cheese and double beef, and even
though I sometimes watch the crosses in the headlights of
cars, I find myself glued to the floor tiles smeared in oil,
trying to scrub them clean while the other workers pass
tortillas and sprinkle cheese, and every night one of them
says, “I’m getting out of here soon,” but I never know
if they do—for the past ten years, their faces blending
together like their names, Jim, or John or June, stumbling
through the kitchen line, switching off with clones of
themselves who hide in the bathroom after the lobby
closes and one by one get high, standing on the toilet,
stretching up to the vent, then brushing off any traces of
their soles left on the seat, the same routine each day until
they are nothing but hats and nametags and belts with
buckles, little bells etched into the steel—but I know the
prophet’s face well, the hard edge of his nose, the long
beard, the sunglasses always shimmering with white light,
and when I see him in the parking lot, I let him into the
lobby, his tongue already flapping, ranting about the end
of the world and the fire coming any day now, the staff
laughing and covering their noses when he pushes his
cane forward, but to me his stench smells better than my
own, better than the fried-oil fumes coating the walls and
the dishes and even the sodas that have turned thick and
oily, crawling up the plastic straws of customers who sit
at the drive-through and wait for their food, which is not
what they ordered, so they drive around and wait again
and again, and I just keep cleaning, scrubbing the bleachsoaked brush across the floor, adding another layer to the
grease, but I don’t stop—and when my break comes, I
don’t check my phone, knowing the doctor has probably
left another voicemail, instead thinking about my wife,
who is sure she knows better, knows that the oil smell
has somehow seeped into my skin, that my sperm are
fried and drifting in the flood, that maybe we should just
stop trying—and every night I go to work and look for
the prophet, now stumbling from the bathroom, grinning
when I give him my Chalupa, which he shoves into his
mouth, then climbs onto my table, clicks his cane, and
proclaims the Chalupa shell the flesh of Jesse Christ, and
even though I don’t know Jesse, I nod my head and the
workers scream, “Amen” from the kitchen, the prophet’s
hands spinning around the orange walls and his voice
rising, stammering that God has ordained this building
a haven of the Lord, that when the ground opens up,
the sinners swallowed by the fire, I will be the shepherd
that spawns a generation of men from this blessed rock,
the prophet’s head tilted at the ceiling, his toes wiggling
from the holes of his shoes, and for a second, the kitchen
is full of faces and names, and a car actually drives out
of the parking lot and disappears behind the church, and
my wife’s face seems only a structure of bone and skin
that fattens and drips, and my break is almost over, the
prophet naming each of my twenty sons and daughters
when I kiss the sweet heels of his boots.
American River Review
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