If your Spanish was better

you'd be even crazier

That’s what the Carne Cart guy told me yesterday. If you really knew what people were talking about, you’d know what a criminal sect this was. Part Oracle, Part Paranoid I take his visions with a grain of salt. He shows me who’s laundering money in a tienda more successful than his. Shows me how the Doritos guy is squeezing him out of the snack kingdom by not swapping out his expired Taki Chips blue blasters.

I’m mostly surprised that those snacks even expire.

He doesn’t really know how good or bad my Spanish is because he’s partially deaf and needs a hearing aid. When his wife isn’t there being shrill and repeating everything like a tiny little minah bird, he misses about 38%. I don’t say much, but Spanish or Mandarin I see what’s going on here. The inventory the competitor has is not funded by him alone, anyone knows that, but it takes money to make money amiright? All of a sudden he’s stocking fancy olive oil and carrying the good sausages and the amish cheese. I know who the “investor” is too because he’s always standing around in there not buying anything but looking over the stock and gives me the ick.

The carne cart guy may be telling me facts but also his store doesn’t do well because it sucks and so do their tacos, but you can’t tell him that.

“I’ve been here 40 years!”

That feels like the last time the canned corn was dusted on the rusty shelves. No credit/debit cards, no delivery, no online ordering, no WhatsApp promos, no menu even! only one kind of taco and open only after 8pm after all the new pipeline workers and young people are off drinking or in bed. I feel sorry for him, sorta, but it’s his own fault.

Whether or not he plays the game and pays the mafia “floor tax” or is getting the squeeze by the other familias is a mystery. He holds a corner and a rear retail space that prohibits his competitors from expanding and owning the block. So his store sits empty, a rear store sits boarded up for decades, and their house is in the middle behind a courtyard full of cats and dust bunnies. The din of telenovellas from a small bedroom tv and his constant sports on a flat screen over his butcher counter that sells no meats, has a long haired cat sitting on the meat scale cleaning it’s rectum. Boxes of tomatoes and B-grade chiles sit on the floor.

I get out of eating there because they open too late and I’m known for going to bed around 9, but the truth is, the food is not great and I know too much about their prep areas. I like the stories though and if I can endure the fluorescent tube lights fucking up my circadian rhythm, it’s a good people watching spot. I’m not social here mostly because I don’t want to stand in the street and drink canned beer and say verga every 3 words, but I do like to see faces from time to time.

It’s where all the dogs hang out too and whatever faults he has, the taquero likes dogs and gives them all rib bones and tortillas with lard and meat scraps off the grill all night. Denies it, but I see. Dog migration doesn’t lie. I sit on the front stoop and listen and watch traffic and pet the strays and wonder why it never occurs to anyone in this town to put out a bench or a chair. For all the zocalos I’ve passed time in all over Mexico, this place has all the appeal of a central Florida rest area, minus the grass and trash pick up.

Sometimes to make nice nice I’ll order some meat para llevar and pass it out to the dogs on my corner after I’m out of sight. If I do feel like tacos which at this point is VERY rare, I’ll go down to the dude on the road out of town who does al pastor, but cut over on side streets to go unseen because I don’t want to hear the stories about how he’s selling human head or dog meat or whatever else that old guy will tell me.

Mostly I don’t want to hurt their feelings so I endure the stale muffins she hauled back from Costco three hours from here a week ago. They sit on the counter pouting and turning to dust but she’ll sell them until their gone. Like most baked goods in Mexico, if you didn’t get to it when it’s fresh that’s your fault.

There’s a pile of Snickers that melted halfway here on the bus and an open bag of popcorn she’s eating at the cash register the size of a bed pillow while he tells me about how retail is all politics and stares out the window.