Some Like It Shot

by Elise Sax

  Eddie took a step toward me, put his arm around my shoulders, and pulled me in next to Chris, pointing me directly at the cameras.

  “This is Agatha Bright. She is the owner of this soup shop and bookstore,” Eddie told the reporters. “She has dedicated her shop today to the taco-eating contest, because Agatha believes just like all of us, that it’s important to rebuild the lifeguard tower. Isn’t that right, Agatha?” Eddie asked.

  The cameras turned their lenses on me, and the reporters pushed the microphones under my chin. I felt my lungs stop working, and I wasn’t taking in any air. “Uh…” I stammered.

  “So free soup for the volunteers. Isn’t that right?” Eddie continued.

  “Free soup?” I asked. “I thought they were eating tacos.”

  Chris and Eddie laughed. “Agatha is being coy with us. Of course, it’s free soup. Not that we need any because we’re going to be eating our weight in tacos,” Eddie said

  “It sure smells good in here,” Chris said right into the cameras. “If I weren’t fasting to prepare for this taco-eating contest, I would be chugging down at least five bowls of Agatha’s chicken soup.”

  “Today’s soups are tomato, creamy leek, Tuscan white bean, and Irish stew,” I said.

  “What do you think of tacos?” one of the reporters asked me with her microphone in my face.

  “Uh…” I said. I wasn’t used to attention. In fact, the Bright family actively tried to prevent any attention. I was a deer in the headlights. I didn’t know what to say or how to act with the Fourth Estate in my face.

  The door opened and another man came in. He didn’t look like a reporter. He was wearing blue board shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt with Let Me Eat You written on it. He had a large potbelly, but the rest of him was average-sized. He needed a good shave, and his hair was light brown and scraggly. He waved at Eddie, and Eddie seemed delighted to see him.

  “Look at this,” Eddie said. It’s Danny Avocado, the world champion taco eater.”

  “I’m so confused,” Irving said to Doris at a table next to me. “You can become a champion in taco-eating? What’s next? Awards for tying your shoes?”

  “Shut up,” Doris said. “I think Chris is going to talk again.”

  Chris shook Danny’s hand. “Nice to meet you. I hope you’re hungry. I’m planning on giving you a run for your money today. I’m going to eat a lot of tacos.”

  “That’s cool, man,” Danny Avocado said. “But there are no stuntmen here for you, Chris. I have a finely trained stomach. I could eat a hundred tacos without blinking. But good luck to you, man.” Danny slapped Chris’s back, hard, and Chris flinched. “So where are the tacos? When do we start this shindig?”

  The door opened and two men walked in. Danny looked at them, and I was sure that there was fear on his face. “That’s Shlomo Fineman,” Eddie told me. “He’s the best hotdog eater in the world. I heard that Danny is going to try and go after his record after the tacos.”

  “Aren’t all eating competitions the same?” I asked. “Tacos or hotdogs, what’s the difference?”

  Danny heard me and he shook his head. “They’re totally different techniques, dude,” Danny told me dismissively.

  Shlomo, the best hotdog eater, greeted Chris and Eddie, but he wouldn’t shake Danny’s hand. Danny went around him and shook the other man’s hand who had walked in. “Bob Hayashi,” the other man announced with his hands up. “Second best taco eater.”

  Bob and Danny hugged, and Danny laughed a little. I guessed that Danny wasn’t concerned about the number two, but the number one scared him.

  “Don’t worry, Bob,” Danny said, smiling. “Every understudy gets a chance at Broadway sooner or later. But today’s not your day.”

  “Hotdogs, tacos, what the hell is going on?” Irving complained. “You get an award for eating crap? This shop used to be a nice place to hang out. I just want some peace and quiet in my life. Is that too much to ask?”

  Doris fluffed her hair and elbowed her husband in the side. “Shut up, Irving. If Chris wants to eat a taco, let him. If he wants to eat a hotdog, let him. The minute you have an eight-pack, you can decide who eats what. For now, it’s all Chris.”

  More competitors filed into the shop, and I was getting the picture that the taco-eating contest was a big deal. It wasn’t like the Punk Rock Knitting Championship from a couple weeks ago. This thing was the real deal.

  The volunteers were instructed to file out of the shop and complete the final touches on preparing for the contest outside. Meanwhile, the press began to interview the celebrities and the eating champions earnestly.

  They grouped together Eddie and Chris and the eating champions for a group photo, and there was a scuffle about who would be in the center of the photo. I was surprised to see that Danny was concerned about how his hair looked, and Bob Hayashi tucked his shirt into his pants. Chris emptied his pockets out onto the table so that he would have a slimmer silhouette in the photo. It was like a Kardashians Christmas card photoshoot, but with only men.

  “Come on over here,” Danny demanded jovially, after the photoshoot. He walked to the kitchen counter and nudged Mouse aside. “I’ll make drinks for the whole place,” Danny said. “I’m a bartender on the side, you know. I can make anything. What booze do you have?”

  “This is a soup shop,” I said. “The closest thing we have to booze is chicken stock.”

  Danny didn’t care. He found some juices and fruit, put them in the blender and went to work, making drinks for the press.

  Danny had a way of working a crowd, for sure. And I wondered if that was one of the reasons why he was the best taco eater in the world. With the volunteers gone, Chris was getting less attention. He gathered his keys, a cell phone, and a pager from the table and crammed them into the pockets of his skinny jeans. He peeled his tight T-shirt off his body and stretched. “Is it hot in here, or is it my imagination?” he asked, dramatically.

  The press turned from Danny’s bartending presentation to Chris’s chest. Doris had been right. Chris had an eight-pack, which I didn’t know was possible.

  Remington had washboard abs, and I had never counted how many packs he had because I was always too busy trying not to swallow my tongue when I saw him half-naked.

  Chris was good looking, and he had very little body fat, but I wasn’t attracted to him. Maybe movie stars were meant to be seen on the silver screen and nowhere else.

  “Here, man,” one of the marijuana dispensary customers said, handing Danny a small baggie of pot. “Put this into your drinks. It’ll make everyone happier.”

  Danny took the baggie from him, but he didn’t add the marijuana to the drinks, thankfully.

  Then, it was a free-for-all. Every competitor was trying to get the press’s attention before the actual competition began. I got a surge of nervousness for John. As Remington, he was going to be in charge of the security for the whole taco-eating contest. Before, I thought that would be an easy no-brainer. A simple taco-eating contest in a small sleepy town. But now it looked like it was the start of Live Aid. There was Mary Lee from Channel 8, Burke Sinclair from Channel 10, and an eighteen-year-old intern, Miguel Sanchez, from the Sea Breeze Voice.

  They were all going after the big story, like they were Woodward and Bernstein on the heels of Richard Nixon.

  The delivery tablets kept beeping, but Mouse was too distracted by Danny Avocado and the rest of the crowd, that she wasn’t filling orders. I was being pulled in every direction, asking for quotes about tacos and about Eddie Acid and Chris. I had nothing to say, and I was breaking out into a big sweat. Again, I was reminded that just a few weeks ago I was still a recluse and a lighthouse caretaker, and now I was running a soup shop and was seemingly the center of town.

  Not that I didn’t enjoy it to a certain level, but I really didn’t know how to handle it.

  Amy stood up in the center of the shop with her clipboard clutched to her chest. She took a whistle out of her pocket and blew it.
It rang out, loudly, and it effectively stopped the noise in the soup shop.

  “I am Amy Hawthorne, the volunteer captain of the taco-eating contest!” she hollered. I had never heard her voice so loud before. She was a cat walker, and usually her voice was geared towards cats, not towards bossing around celebrities and the press.

  “Remember, that this is for charity, people!” she continued, her voice bellowing. “Lifeguard tower, people. Lifeguard tower. Don’t forget that. Now, I’m in charge. So, we will all be listening to me. You got that? Me. Listening to me. We’re going to leave the shop in an orderly fashion,” she commanded, moving her arms like she was a flight attendant, giving out instructions in case of an emergency. “Let’s head on outside, towards the bandstand. That way the press can get their photos and we can continue on. And, of course we will need you, too,” she added, looking right at me.

  I pointed at myself and raised my eyebrows. “Me? I’m not part of the taco-eating contest.”

  “Now you are,” Amy said.

  “What do you mean, you’re in charge?” Eddie demanded at Amy.

  Amy waved him off. “I’m a volunteer captain, remember? I’m in charge,” Amy insisted.

  The door opened and a new group of people walked in. There was a loud gasp in the shop, and someone pointed at a young woman in the crowd and whispered, starlet. Then another whispered that the big guy in the group was an action hero. Two more celebrities. Just what we needed. The press surged toward them to get more fodder for their articles.

  The action star looked around nervously. “Isn’t this where they have that killer shark?” he asked.

  Amy cleared us all out of the shop, leaving only Mouse to handle the actual soup business. Our large group walked across the street toward the bandstand where the taco-eating contest was going to happen.

  I stood on the sidewalk a second, watching them move across the street. They were separated into three groups. There were the celebrities, the competitive eating stars, and the simple townspeople.

  As I scanned the crowd, looking for John, a scooter almost ran me down. “Look out, lady!” the scooter rider yelled and honked at me.

  “You’re not allowed on the sidewalk with that thing!” I yelled at him, but he scooted off, still on the sidewalk.

  I looked to my right just as another scooter was about to mow me down, but Frances appeared out of nowhere holding a large delivery bag.

  “I got your back, Agatha!” she exclaimed.

  Like a linebacker in the Super Bowl, Frances ran at the scooter and rammed her shoulder into his side, making him fly out into the street. I watched as his body did a double forward roll, landing on the pavement. The scooter fared far worse. It fell off the sidewalk and broke into three pieces.

  I hoped the scooter driver wasn’t hurt, but I was thrilled to see the scooter die a horrible death.

  Frances doubled over with her hands resting on her knees and tried to catch her breath. “I’m through with warning them,” she panted. “I warned them enough. Now every time I see one on the sidewalk, I’m going to do some damage.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked her. “You look sort of worn out.”

  She looked more worn-out than just the normal worn-out of a woman who was knocking over scooter drivers. Her hair was mussed, her clothes were wet through with perspiration, and her face was bright red. She looked like she had just run a marathon and had been chased the whole way by Nazis.

  “What do you mean?” she asked me, defensively. “I’m fine. I’m the delivery champion. Did you know that I’ve almost broken the record of the number of deliveries made by a single person in twenty-four hours? I’ve got this, Agatha. I was born for this. Don’t say that it’s wearing me out. Don’t say I can’t handle it. Don’t say that I’m having trouble sleeping, that I can’t feel my left hand, and that there is a weird buzzing in my ears. Because if you say it, I’m just going to ignore you. I’m totally fine. I’m going to make this work. I’m going to make a living. And I’m not going to fail like I failed at real estate.”

  She stood, and as she said the last words, her voice hitched, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  I gave her a hug.

  “I wasn’t going to say any of that,” I whispered into her ear. “You’re doing great. You can do anything you set your mind to. Although, it might be a good idea to take a little break.”

  I gave her another little hug and pulled back. Frances dried her eyes and squinted, as she looked across the street. “Is that Chris Trist? Oh my God. I need to put on some makeup. Mine melted off three hours ago.” She pushed past me at a run, presumably to go put her makeup on before the star of the silver screen saw her with melted makeup.

  I walked up a hill and stood right outside the action. The press were still interviewing the celebrities, and Danny Avocado was standing with his hands up in the air.

  “That’s the pose he strikes when he wins one of his eating competitions,” I heard from behind me. I turned around to see Remington hovering over me. But of course, it wasn’t Remington. It was John. And it was all John right now. He stood with his back ramrod straight, and his hands clasped behind him. He gazed down at me, his eyes dark and serious.

  I realized I was holding my breath, and I sucked in air. “He does?” I asked, even though I didn’t care what Danny’s winning pose was or anything about eating competitions, for that matter.

  “How do you know about eating competitions?”

  John shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve been studying up. I don’t want to make Remington look bad. So, here’s the thing: Americans now have so much food that they compete to see how much they can eat in the shortest period of time. I don’t know if this is an advancement for the country or not, but I was given a free taco for the event, and I do have to say that tacos are a great improvement on American cuisine from the time when I was alive before.”

  He smiled at me, and I could swear that his eyes twinkled. The little impish Remington was definitely behind his eyes, definitely still in there somewhere. “Are you ready for this?” I asked him. “There might be trouble.”

  John laughed. “Trouble? You mean like someone might vomit? The town provided each competitor with their own trash can. You mean riots? Half of the town is high on marijuana, all pretty well sedated. So, I don’t think that there will be riots. Illegal parking? It turns out I don’t have to give parking tickets. I’m a detective, which mainly means I wait for something bad to happen and then I investigate. The rest of the time I just walk around and look professional.”

  That made me relieved, although I didn’t totally believe him.

  John touched my shoulder. “Why? Are you hoping that something happens, Aggie?”

  “Of course not.”

  John arched an eyebrow “Are you sure? I got the impression that you enjoy drama. A little mayhem and murder.”

  It was my turn to stand up ramrod straight. “Take that back. I do not enjoy mayhem and murder. I’m a nice person. I like a quiet time town. A quiet life.”

  “Get up every morning, open the soup shop, make Prudence’s soups, close the soup shop, go to sleep. Is that it, Aggie? Is that the life you want?” He took a step toward me, and I could smell Auntie Ida’s strawberry scones on his breath. My aunts must’ve visited him again. They were working hard on fixing the John/Remington problem. So was I, but for a totally different reason.

  John and I stood on the bluff overlooking the competition. We continued watching as Amy bossed everyone around. The press were interviewing the lifeguards, but Amy made them move away and stand in a designated area for reporters. There was a decent-sized crowd, half townspeople and half tourists. Most of the spectators were eating tacos as they stood, and there were a few lines of people waiting for more tacos at the three food trucks parked on the street.

  John stayed with me, which made me feel better. I was still worried that his hundreds-year-old self would be discovered the longer he played at being Remington. If he stayed with me, he wouldn
’t draw attention to himself.

  Amy started to speak into a microphone, and her voice bellowed through the loudspeakers. She introduced all of the competitors. There was the starlet, the action hero, the mega movie star Chris, Danny Avocado the number one taco eater in the world, Bob Hayashi, the number two taco-eating champion in the world, and Eddie Acid.

  Eddie and Chris sat on either side of Danny, with Danny right in the center of the competitors. Eddie and Chris were deep in conversation talking over Danny. It looked like Danny got tired of being spoken over, and he said something, which made Chris stand up and gestured to his seat.

  Chris and Danny exchanged seats so that Eddie and Chris could sit next to each other. They continued their conversation, as Amy continued to introduce the rules of the taco-eating contest over the loudspeaker.

  “Aren’t microphones wonderful?” John asked me. “And the sea breeze. Isn’t fresh, sea air the best thing in the world? Well, almost the best thing?”

  I smiled at him. His second chance at life had given him a childlike quality that was endearing. It made me want to kiss him. With tongue. I tried to push that thought aside, but suppressing my desires only served to make me crave a taco. There were tacos everywhere, and everyone seemed to be enjoying them.

  A platter of tacos was put on the table in front of each contestant. Amy counted down, and then a siren blasted, starting the taco-eating contest.

  My attention was drawn to Danny Avocado. He didn’t eat a taco like a normal person. He had figured out a way to stuff them in his mouth and swallow them in three bites. It was an amazing feat to witness.

  I noticed that Bob Hayashi was using a similar method to eat the tacos at a blinding speed. The two were neck and neck, and I wondered if Bob would topple the taco-eating champion.

  The rest of the contestants were eating quickly, but there was no way they could ever catch up to Bob and Danny. Even the starlet was trying her best, but where Danny had already eaten fifteen tacos, the starlet was on her second one.

  “Isn’t this something?” John asked me.