The slowly spinning dwarf holds aloft an enormous taco. A shift of the neon outlining his hips makes his ample rump wiggle, and his mouth grins so lip-stretchingly wide it seems impossible for anyone to find such ecstasy in a folded tortilla. But if you have eaten at the Taco Gnome restaurant, you understand the spell that enchants him. Famously embittered food critic Ethel Bowser, who closes restaurants by greedily withholding a ratings point, wrote a one-line review of the place, "I will never eat this well again," and retired. A good scalper can score you a reservation as early as three years from Sunday, provided your paperwork goes through with the bank.

But the menu is only half the draw at the Taco Gnome. There is a show that plays every night at one minute past eleven. This show is not quite four minutes long, difficult to see, harder to hear. But regardless, when it is finished, the blinking audience members wipe the sweat from the backs of their necks and shift in their seats to accommodate the aroused tinglings in their laps. Naughty or astonished looks are exchanged with their table mates, then the eating continues. Before the show, the food was simply delicious. Now it is stunning.

It is the saddest thing I have ever experienced, and it makes me sick.

I was eighteen when I began my career at the Taco Gnome, which at the time was nothing but a paint-peeling Mexican food stand where prostitutes convened and hoarsely argued their case for free drink refills. I had never thought of myself as the "food service" type, since I went to Albuquerque with the high-minded goal of attending college. But when I found an apartment right behind the Gnome for one seventy-five a month plus utilities, I typed up a resume in which "food service" appeared to be a romantic ideal. My efforts were wasted as I was hired on the spot. Later I would find my resume folded in eighths and wedged under the leg of an uneven table.

My job description was "everything everyone else hated doing." I chopped tomatoes so rancid they often slid apart in my hands, and mixed Pepsi you could see through. I pulled tough, palm-shredding weeds that grew at the curb, and drizzled an acidic slop called "Heave-Ho!" on vomit stains in the parking lot. These duties could have been parceled out to full-time individuals, but it was less expensive to pay a hungry college boy. And José Gudmundsdottir knew how to pinch a penny until it yelped.

José was the owner of the Taco Gnome, and possibly the inspiration as well. A half-Hispanic, half-Somewhere-In-Northern-European man who never failed to have a string of snot in one nostril, he insisted he knew what people wanted: "Value!!!" The only way to get Value!!!, he informed us, was to keep costs low. This included hiring the college boy and keeping the rest of the staff down to two cooks (himself and his cousin Sancho -- anyone else would waste hot sauce) and two cashiers (one for the day, Millicent, and one for the evening, Maya). It also meant that we bypassed the usual distributors of plastic and paperware, and went with a local guy by the name of Doug Messer.

At first, Doug was a study in routine. Every time he would show up to check our cup levels, the conversation would go like this:

"Hey Doug!"

"Hey College! How's the girl situation?"

"Still workin' on it, I'm afraid."

"Click to pick, College. Know what I'm sayin'?"

"Oh, I know."

I did not know. I never knew. But taking it in context, it probably had something to do with women.

And apparently, Doug Messer knew women.

Now Doug was no catch by Mademoiselle standards -- a balding, mustachioed lump given man-form by a gray blazer with pushed up sleeves. But for reasons that defy reason he was fancied by the night cashier, Maya Avilar. She never said word one to me about it -- our conversations were superficial, usually about movies. She had a habit of falling asleep during them, so she only ever knew what happened in the first hour. To her, "My Fair Lady" was about a dirty flower-seller who never finds love. I filled her in on some endings as best I could remember, or invented ones I liked more. Her favorite movie was "Flipper," because it had a big, silly dolphin, and you didn't need to see the ending to know that dolphin just made everybody's life fun.

But Maya startled me once with an insight to herself that violated our unspoken "no deep issues" clause.

"Hey College."

"Hey Maya. Just cleanin' the grease bin here."

"Yeah." Big, soul-draining sigh. Discussion was not invited, it was demanded.

"What's up? Something wrong?"

"I dunno. Sometimes you just wonder what's wrong, you know?"

"Uh..."

"Sometimes you wonder just how alone you can really get. Sometimes it's like, `Okay, there's no one else in this room with me, so I'm alone.' But then other times, it's like, `I'm in this theater, with all these other people sitting around me, and we're all watching this movie with all these other people in it, and so there's all these people everywhere, right, and I'm completely alone.'"

It sounded like a spontaneous comment. Something she'd been thinking about a long time. She shrugged a sad "What can you do?" Her wide nose was suddenly gorgeous.

"Uh, well, maybe after work we could... go to The Lobo and see what's playing..."

"You're sweet, College."

She left me with a smile and a handful of cold grease. I told myself I was beneath her in the workplace class system, and it hurt less.

If that was the case, then Doug Messer was landed gentry. Maya was always touching his shoulders, fetching him an iced tea (four sugars) and holding it when he wasn't drinking, laughing thunderously at his "humorous impressions" (cribbed from a Rich Little tape he kept in his van), and smiling, smiling, smiling. Doug arrived every Thursday, so Wednesday night Maya would use Nudit on her upper lip, which would gleam with perspiration while they chatted. During these encounters, Doug would stir uncomfortably from foot to foot, and it was difficult for me to guess what he was thinking.

Then one evening, I found out.

"Hey College."

"Oh, hey Doug. Just cleanin' the grease bin here."

"Yeah."

Doug was pretending to count napkin boxes, but he wasn't writing down totals. Our eyes met awkwardly.

"Something I can help you with, Doug? I moved the straws to the middle shelf since we go through those tiny boxes so fast." That was a dig at Doug's tiny boxes, but it sailed right past him.

"Yeah, um, do you know if Maya...has anybody?"

His tone was one of casual fear.

"Well, she's never mentioned anyone to me, Doug. I know she goes to the movies by herself, so if she had somebody, seems she'd go with them. Wouldn't you think?"

"Yeah, you'd think."

He paused and applied some ChapStick. Doug was forever applying ChapStick, twenty, thirty times a day. And when I say "ChapStick" I really mean this nameless, storebrand lip balm. He'd always offer me some, like he did just now, and I always politely declined.

"I think she likes you, Doug, if that's what you're wondering. Sure. After you leave, she's always singing along to the radio."

"I know. I like her too. Very much." But he was not ready to burst into song. He looked ashamed, examining the fryer's temperature controls with blank eyes. "You know you're lucky, College."

"Me?"

"You can do whatever you want. You could quit this job tomorrow and buy a boat ticket to Fiji."

"Heh, not on what José pays me!"

"But this business was my dad's. This life was my dad's. I've got...responsibilities. You know?"

A thought entered my head, and Doug must have seen it pass behind my eyes, like a truckstop sign through the windows of a bus, because he gave a tiny nod. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold ring, which he rolled in his stubby digits. The slim line of depressed flesh encircling his left third finger, which I now noticed for the first time, would have accommodated this ring snugly.

My next words were a brilliant bit of deduction: "You're married."

He shook his head slightly. "It's not like it was. I think it's over."

"Oh yeah?"

"JC, my wife, she went to take this big Chrysler to Vegas for her rental car place, an' she took this guy from work named Fez. I've talked to him on the phone before, real bright guy, didn't know if there was a per-mile charge after thirty days. I mean real sharp, you know? Anyway, they got there on Monday, an' here it's Thursday an' she ain't called me."

"Boy. She okay, you think?"

"Oh, she's okay, College, she's great. I mean like she's doin' great, you know? It's me ain't so hot."

"Boy."

"Yeah." Pause. "And then to have somebody else who thinks you're a real cut-up, tells you you got a good job, notices your tie, always touches you on the arms..."

We were both quiet for a long minute. Doug pursed his lips, trying to hold back words that were on their way out, words that would pour onto the floor and no amount of "Heave-Ho!" would clean up.

"I gotta do something about my life, College. Maybe I'll start today."

He put the ring back in his pocket.

~

It was ten-thirty at night, and I was ready to leave. For the last two hours Doug had been out front at the cashier's station chatting up Maya, and snippets of their flirty conversation and nasally laughs were beginning to wear on me. Complete sentences were not necessary to know their evening was going well. After every burst of sound from the front, Sancho, who was slicing and wrapping beef for most of the evening, would look up at me, curl his tongue into an "o" shape, and nod sagely. This was one of maybe four expressions in Sancho's limited repertoire, but he didn't need more. I knew what he meant. I grinned at him mirthlessly as I grated a wedge of cheddar.

At a quarter to eleven, I was undoing my apron when the talk out front grew suspiciously quiet. Then Maya poked her head in the back.

"Hey College, can you watch it for a second?"

"Uh, sure."

Maya returned to the front, and as I removed my apron, Sancho gave me his biggest "o"-tongue and sagest nod of the evening.

I hated working the front. I was guaranteed to get in trouble with José over the hookers and their drink refills. All I had to do was look at their drooping eyelids or their spandex tops stretched tight over slouching shoulders to think, "Give these women caffeine." But I hated working the front that night more than any other, as I watched Doug lead Maya out the door. He turned and gave me a friendly smile, as if to say, "Click to pick, College!" But I couldn't give him the fraternal support he wanted. I think I might have winced. For reasons that in hindsight seem like prophecy, I was overtaken by a feeling of dread.

But I did not heed this feeling. I was frozen behind the register, gawking with my mouth open at the hand-written adhesive labels stuck to the buttons. "Burrito." "Pollo." "Chipotle."

"Chipotle." An upscale smoked pepper, which either nobody ever ordered or we didn't have, as the label was white and glossy. How was it pronounced? "Chip-pot-lay?" "Ship-pottle?"

I thought about that very hard.

A hot wave crept up the back of my neck and settled in my hair like a nesting rat. Outside, something bumped into the Dumpster behind the building.

There were no customers. The evening air was drenched in a haze so solemn that even the prostitutes had called it a night. At that moment, right then, the Taco Gnome seemed like the worst place on earth -- an area randomly selected by the Universe to be utterly joyless, useless, hopeless.

I almost stood there at work and cried. I couldn't say for what.

When the softly buzzing clock read a quarter past eleven, I heard a car door slam and Doug's gray van pulled out of the driveway, his slogan "We help your business do better business!" visible on the side in the streetlight.

Then Maya entered, stubbing out a half-smoked Merit in the doorway. Her upper lip shone like a chrome bumper.

"You can split now, College. Thanks."

She was singing to Steve Miller on the radio as I left.

~

"What went on here last night?"

This was how José greeted me the next afternoon. My stomach dropped and swam. Millicent, the daytime cashier, smiled hugely as she clipped her nails at the register right in front of José. I was getting in trouble and she was clipping her goddamn fingernails.

"Uh, what do you mean?" I said.

"What do I mean!" The strand in his left nostril trembled. "I mean this tostada! Taste it!"

He thrust the uneaten side of a tostada at me, and after flinching, I took a bite.

Now I'm no Ethel Bowser, so I have no ability to convey the sublime crispness of the tortilla, the creaminess of the beans, and the aggressive snap of the cheese. But I can say that, as I chewed, I felt like I was outside, in Autumn, sitting on a bale of hay, getting my first high school kiss from Mandy Prather. Mandy had been eating a popsicle, and when she unexpectedly gave me tongue, she was cold and warm, sweet and sticky.

It was the best tostada I had ever eaten, and my surprise was rude.

"Where'd you get that?"

"Where'd I get that? Here! I made it, just now! So what did you and Sancho do? Is this MSG?"

I told José we didn't do anything to the food that we don't do all the time. Then I asked if he would make me my own tostada. I had only eaten the food here once before, and it had given me the bending cramps, the kind that foretell intestinal doom. I vowed never to do it again.

But that was one great tostada. Better yet, it was cramp-free.

Business was brisk as the day wore on, and evening saw the appearance of customers beyond the typical Central Avenue rabble. Well-dressed people arrived from brokerage firms and insurance offices, who all had a co-worker that had eaten at the Gnome for lunch and wouldn't shut up about it. So now here they were, smiling self-consciously as they ordered from this seedy taco stand they had driven by a thousand times before. They stood in the parking lot eating alongside the prostitutes, who couldn't haggle for drink refills as their mouths were full of nachos.

The Taco Gnome on the sign spun leering into the night. As patrons streamed in steadily through to nine o'clock, then ten, the influx of cash and confidence started José blathering on about his plans for a drive-through window, outdoor seating, and "little cup things" he couldn't explain very well. Lofty fantasies were always entertained when business picked up. But tonight, they seemed less lofty.

Millicent worked a double-shift that day with Maya, and in the rare interval when no customers were around, there was much furtive tittering. Once Millicent slowly slid a straw into a plastic lid and moaned "Oh Doug!" causing them both to lapse into hysterics. Through it all, Maya flushed bright red, but seemed truly happy. I grinned at them shyly as I pulled one of the garbage bags out of the can by the register, tied it off, and hauled it outside.

It was just before eleven as I rounded the corner of the building, and in the feeble glow of a high pole light, I saw a man urinating into one of our empty salt buckets. This was not unusual, since José "didn't believe in" public restrooms. But I never knew what to say to them ("Shoo?"), so I crept in a wide arc to the Dumpster, where I hoped the sound of the garbage would scare him off. When he looked up at me, I gazed firmly back, my jaw set in a grimace of impotent authority. His eyes went wide. I thought I had finally hit on a proper mix of domination and menace, until his face became illuminated with light shining from behind me. I turned, expecting to see José rounding the corner, high-beam flashlight in hand.

I saw something else entirely.

Two vague figures made of silver light were pressed against the building beside the Dumpster. The smaller of the two had its back to the wall, while the other faced it, a head taller at six feet. Shimmering ripples played across their surfaces, cascaded down their arms, and spun about their legs as they groped one another madly. Though their features were dim, as discernable as a grainy film projected onto a wall of smoke, it was quite clear what they were doing.

They were getting it on.

The larger, male-figure's head bobbed about the shorter one's neck and shoulders, biting and licking, its hands exploring hips and chest with clumsy excitement. Breasts on the smaller figure flared up brightly as fingers played over them, and silvery nipples, enthusiastically pinched, flashed like quarters catching the sun. Every foray into an erogenous zone created a luminous effect and a whispery moan, a metallic echo heard at the far end of a vast room. The female grasped the buttocks and back of the male, squeezing and scratching as light flew from her nails in waves and sparks.

Their position wobbled a few times, once bringing them into awkward contact with the Dumpster, though it made no sound. After several minutes of frenzied affection, the male figure made a weak peeping sound, fumbled at its crotch, and began thrusting its hips, sending surges of luminance pouring onto the woman, the parking lot asphalt, and the night sky. Smaller tides broke forth from the female, and both swirled up into their heads, causing them to grow brighter and brighter, until the man quickly climaxed in a burst that lit the area with a flood of tepid liquid radiance.

Then, abruptly, the man's body began to flicker and fade. Taking a step back, he reached down to his hip and produced something invisible, which he brought up to his mouth and seemed to apply evenly around his lips. He offered what he held to the woman, then vanished. The woman shook her head at the empty air, and seconds later, after adjusting unseen garments at her hips, evaporated as well.

When the show had finished playing out before me, I was surprised to learn I had a proudly stout erection. And so, I am sorry to say, did the unzipped fellow beside me.

~

I was branded a kook for exactly one day as I babbled, often incoherently, about what I saw. It seems only the finale of this fireworks display had been visible from the front of the restaurant, so I had to describe the rest myself -- in pitifully graphic detail, as everyone begged for specifics. My voyeur partner with the exposed member had fled even before he had zipped, no doubt to the delight of passersby, so there was no one to corroborate my pornographic tale. When I finished, they all laughed (Sancho cruelly flicked my ear), searched around behind the building to no avail, muttered scathing witticisms like "College needs to get laid," and dispersed.

All except one. As the crowd went back to their business, Maya was left standing before me, a look on her face somewhere between embarrassment and dread. She spoke to the Dumpster instead of me.

"Could you tell who the people were? I mean, like, did they look like anybody?"

"Well, they were sort of...the whole thing was...they had this...no."

Her expression told me how bad my lie was. For even though the smokey figures were dim and featureless, almost idealized abstractions of the male and female form, and even though I had no explanation, I had a good idea who they were.

Maya slowly let out a breath. Fatigue overwhelmed me, so I waved good-bye and walked towards my apartment.

When I reached the gate to my complex a hundred feet away, I looked back and saw Maya run her hand down the wall. Then she headed inside.

That was the last time I ever saw her, though I would continue to see her for the next fifteen years.

~

The following morning I dreamt I was drowning in lard when José awoke me by banging on my window, imploring me to come to work for the breakfast crowd.

Breakfast crowd. The two words didn't make any sense together. I mumbled, "Breakfast crowd?"

José stepped aside so his girth no longer obstructed my view. A line of people snaked around the front of the Taco Gnome all the way down the block to the El Dorado Motel. I nearly slammed the window shut to keep out this madness, but José spoke four persuasive words: "Time-and-a-half!"

I ditched classes that day. And, unfortunately, for the rest of my life. From that day forward, as horrendously improbable as it sounds, the Taco Gnome became my career. I wish now that I was paying off a really huge student loan instead.

To make matters worse on that punishing day, Maya was not at home when José called her, and did not appear for her evening shift. In fact, only one person had even spoken with her since last night.

And for reasons unknown, I had become this person's confidant.

"Hey College."

"Uh, hey Doug." He was calling me at work, so I'm sure my voice was bewildered. But at the moment, I was trying to get twenty pounds of frozen ground beef to thaw with Millicent's hair dryer. That, and one of our two new cooks, hired from the growing queue outside, had already walked off the job, lifting a burrito on his way out. "Kinda busy here, actually, but I think José needs to talk to you about our lid levels..."

"I need to talk to you, College. I need your help."

His desperation cut through the clamor of the kitchen. I turned the hair dryer to low. "Okay, go ahead."

"God help me, College. I still love my wife!"

I switched ears. "Uh, okay. What about the Chrysler and Vegas?"

"She came back today! An' I was just so happy to see her, I don't even care what went on. I didn't even ask! I don't care!"

"Well that's, uh...great Doug." The other new guy -- whose name I didn't know -- removed the hair dryer from my hand, turned it off, shook his head sadly, and hauled the frozen meat off into a back room. "Um, what about, you know, uh..." I switched ears again and lowered my voice, "...what about Maya?"

"Well, we got a little cozy the other night, but afterwards I felt awful, like I regretted it right away, almost. So I called her this morning to tell her we shouldn't have done it and maybe we shouldn't see each other anymore. She wasn't so happy."

"Yeah, well, that'll be kinda hard not to see each other, seein' as you come here, you know, a lot."

"Yeah, well, I know."

Even though he sounded confused and worried, I was sort of mad at Doug Messer. It was a jealous anger, I'm ashamed to say, the kind that one person who isn't getting any sex feels towards someone who is getting more sex than they can deal with. "Have you heard from Maya today? We haven't been able to get ahold of her and we could sure use her."

"I talked to her this morning. I told her, just keep crying, because it might make her feel better, you know? Sometimes that makes you feel better."

"Well Doug, I...I hope you didn't get together with Maya just because you thought your wife was cheating."

"Oh no! That ain't it at all!" He seemed to be forming his thoughts on the other end of the line. "No, it was more like I needed some basis of comparison, you know, to make me appreciate what I had. Well, that sounds bad but I don't mean it that way..."

"Yeah, it does sound bad, Doug." I started to bang the receiver down then I hesitated. "You still there?"

"Yeah."

"You ever see the movie `Flipper'?"

"Uh...with that fish?"

"He's a dolphin!"

I banged the receiver down.

~

I mentioned I was labeled a kook for exactly one day following the spectral sex show. That's because twenty-four hours after the sighting, the whole thing happened again. The Gnome was still hopping at eleven o'clock that night, but I managed to fabricate a trip to the Dumpster. As a safety, I asked the new guy, whose name was Reginald, to help me carry some cardboard boxes I could have easily managed myself. When we finished tossing them, we were still too early, so I had to make absurdly forced small talk about a tattoo on his leg until the telltale swelling of light and sweaty, crackling air signaled the arrival of the phantom lovers. Reginald actually screamed in a sort of sissy voice, which brought a crush of diners, loiterers, and José himself to the rear of the restaurant.

The production played out exactly the same as the night before, down to the silent stumble into the Dumpster, the embarrassingly quick climax, and the female figure left alone to pull up her invisible underwear after her suitor had departed.

Though it was only my second viewing, and I would have thousands more, already an immunity to the arousal began to build in my system. It took the form of grief.

~

Folks came from Maine, Milan, and Madagascar to see the lovers perform their nightly show, and to sample the tasty wares from the mysterious kitchen of José Gudmundsdottir. Since it is all utterly inexplicable, José fabricated a campfire tale about how the two were spirits, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish explorer and a Native American brave who meet to consummate the love that was forbidden by their families. The decisive clue, he insisted, is the motion the man makes around his mouth after their lovemaking, an Indian sign of "lasting devotion," which his Spanish mistress refuses, causing him to fade away in anguish.

I told José my version of the story, and though he laughed dismissively, he threatened to fire me if I went public with it. When I informed him this meant I would definitely go public with it, he gave me a promotion ("Operations Manager," nebulous in both title and duties) and a crassly impressive salary that has increased every year.

I promised to shut up, and signed a document to this effect. I fear no legal reprisal now, because I haven't named the ghosts that rendezvous every night at the Taco Gnome. They remain anonymous. Certainly any lawyer can see that.

I'm certain this will only make José more furious, and there will be many threats punctuated by name-dropping of powerful, dangerous friends. He has accumulated these as rapidly as his many lovers (whose birthday gifts to him always include a handkerchief), for the Taco Gnome is now a sprawling food/entertainment/hotel complex encompassing four city blocks on Albuquerque's historic Route 66. I was there when they tore down my apartment building to erect the spectacular bowl-shaped dinner theater -- ten tiers of deluxe dining, all gazing down on the small area where the Dumpster used to sit.

They had to keep the original kitchen exactly where it was, as food cooked in ones built later lacked the sensual zest of that prepared near where the lovers commingle. It is the same principle as when I once left a sandwich by an open container of bleach for eight hours. When I went to eat it, it tasted like bleach. A writer from "Unsolved Mysteries" borrowed that very comparison from me and called it her own. You may have heard it from Robert Stack, but it's mine.

Yes, José's lot was fame and fortune, as it was for many other players in this drama. Sancho sold one of his butcher knives at a Sotheby's auction for nearly a hundred thousand dollars (curling his tongue into a capital "O"), which he slowly doles out to a new generation of parking lot prostitutes. Fingernail-clipping Millicent became the Taco Gnome's CEO, where she is lax on employees accused of sexual harassment, but intolerant of those who are unhygienic. And Reginald, the last-minute chef, is the host of cable's only erotic cooking show, "Eat Me, Reginald!" I often wonder what became of the fellow José hired the same day as Reg -- I hope he truly relished that stolen burrito.

I do not need to wonder about the fate of Doug Messer. He confessed to his wife that he had a fling with an unnamed woman, and she sued him for divorce the next day. She wiped him out financially, and now lives with her new husband, Fez, in Las Vegas, where they run a Chrysler dealership. Doug moved to a trailer outside Flagstaff, which is a harsh climate for one with chronically chapped lips. He sells his cups and straws door-to-door. Sometimes he sells mops. Sometimes he cries. Once, at the end of his rope, he tried to cash in by claiming to be the male lover at the Taco Gnome. The ridicule he received was severe.

Maya Avilar, however, has proved elusive. A private investigator I hired has produced nothing in the intervening years. There have been many unidentified, charred, or mangled bodies from car wrecks and fires that match her physical specs, but I remain hopeful. She taps me on the shoulder whenever Steve Miller comes on the radio, but I don't look around, because it's too disappointing. Until I locate her, she is like a movie seen only halfway through, and I need someone to tell me how it ends.

Perhaps I will devote my life to finding Maya. It will give me something to do, now that I have tendered my long-overdue resignation at the Taco Gnome. I gave them an official letter, even signed it with my real name. The irony is no one will recognize it, since everyone calls me "College," and most do not know why.

If you've read all this and still haven't cancelled your table, then please allow me to recommend the chocolate chipotle (that's chE-pot'-leh) for dessert. I remember it as being quite good. If a guy on the street offers to watch your car for a dollar, pay him. Don't worry about the public restrooms, as José "believes in them" now. And when you witness the show at a minute past eleven, try not to think of the fear that clutched Doug Messer when he thought he might lose his wife. And definitely block from your mind the image of Maya Avilar sitting alone in a packed theater, worried that her life will always be spent in crowded isolation, waiting for someone to lend their shoulder so she can rest her sleepy head.

And enjoy your meal.

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