Mermelada

By Pete KJ

A trans taco waitress.
A man painted in silver.
A Haitian priest.
An old lady who dances.

What's their connection in the streets of Mexico City?

MERMELADA: "a mixed jam of fruity characters"

"...through their stories the city comes alive."--Hilary Shepherd, author of Albi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pete KJ
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386838166

Book preview

Chapter 1

THE LITTLE TACO RESTAURANT sat hidden beneath a bend in the road: an off-ramp actually, curving away from the elevated traffic circle called Insurgentes. It wasn’t as bad of a spot for a taco restaurant as you might think. For one thing, the traffic circle ringed a metro station. Let’s say that you left the train and came up into the round plaza. You took a passageway beneath the curved viaduct, merged onto a sidewalk, and found yourself passing by the rolled-up metal door of the little taco restaurant. You stopped. You peeked inside. You spied yellow checkered tablecloths and morning sun splashing off deep blue textured walls. You heard radio music playing, soothing pop numbers mixing with the muted traffic noises above and behind you. Of course you smelled the food: intoxicating aromas of warm corn tortillas and grilling meat. Then came a scraping sound and you spotted the old lady standing behind the grill with her spatulas in hand, next to a signboard listing cheap prices. By this point you might have realized you had an appetite, and that you weren’t in such a hurry after all. So you stepped inside.

Good morning sir! said the waitress to one such customer. What can we get for you today? We have tacos with beef steak, chicken, or pork chop meat. We also have tacos with tripe, and they are delicious! She stood by the grill and pointed her manicured fingernail down at the simmering piles of meat which the old lady shoved around with her spatulas.

The waitress was quite tall, and dressed in a bright red sweater with matching tights that extended down to the middle of her rather muscular calves. Reddish highlights glimmered from her brown hair which she kept neatly tied back in a ponytail. What little makeup she wore was tastefully applied, and accentuated her pleasantly arched eyebrows. Peach-colored lipstick adorned her grinning mouth, which was further complemented by her soft round chin.

Um, I’ll take three with beef steak please, said the customer, and sat down.

You want onion with that? Tomato? Cilantro? asked the waitress, coming closer.

With everything, please.

Okay with everything! The waitress turned to head to the grill but immediately spun back around. Oh! And how about a whole little onion, fried on the grill by my mom? She grinned wider and raised her index finger and drew a circle in the air.

Sure, said the customer.

The gentle radio music continued to mix with traffic sounds, fresh December morning air, and blue walls to create a calm and peaceful environment right in the middle of Mexico City. The customer was the sole patron in the restaurant, but did not remain so for very long. Soon two other people arrived, a man and a woman, and headed to a table farther back. The waitress nodded to them from the grill and then stayed there, calling to them from across the room while extending her fingers to confirm the numbers and types of tacos they wanted.

After relaying the information to her mother, the waitress turned her gaze out to the sidewalk. Placing a hand on a hip, she alternated her weight from one tennis-shoed foot to the other and appeared to be deep in thought.

***

Which was exactly what she was.

The waitress, whose name was Julia, smiled.

The night before, down at the club, while she was up on the stage dancing with her friends, she’d spotted a certain interesting looking man standing at the bar. He wore a suit: a blue business suit of all things. Kind of a strange thing to wear in that kind of place, but nevertheless it had looked quite good on him.

The man stood there for most of the night in his blue suit with his elbow on the bar and watched Julia dance, and their eyes met a couple of times, and each time she quickly looked away and kept on shimmying in her silver cocktail dress and high-heeled boots, shaking her mane of hair to hide her shyness. The more she thought about it, the more she wished she’d let their eyes lock for a calculated moment.

Well what the hell, she thought. Maybe she’d see him again on Friday. If she did, she’d talk to him. She’d think up something to say, some joke or other flippant remark, and say it to him as she breezed past him on her way from the dressing room to the stage.

Julia closed her eyes and pictured herself coming out of the dressing room. Making her entrance.

Then she opened her eyes and gazed at the sun pattern on the sidewalk. She needed to buy a new pair of shoes before Friday. And also refill her foundation powder. Maybe try a new shade.

A plate clattered on the counter behind her: three steak tacos ready to go, with not one but two whole little grilled onions. She delivered them to the customer, told him to enjoy his meal, and went around to check each table to make sure the little clay bowls of brown and green sauces were full and tidy. Soon the other table’s taco plates were ready and she served them. Then she returned her gaze to the street.

Please, waitress, came a voice. It was the first customer.

Yes? She turned to see that his plate was already empty.

I’ll try some of the tripe tacos now, please. Two.

Ooooh pajarito! Julia said, grinning. You are ready to test my tripe! Very good choice. No problem, dear. With everything, yes? And also with a whole little onion fried by my mom!

She drew the circle in the air, and spun around to her mother and the grill.

Chapter 2

QUITE A CROWD HAD GATHERED that afternoon in Chapultepec Park to watch the clown, who stood in the middle of a large open area ringed by tall trees next to the lakeshore at the base of the hill. The clown had long adopted this as his personal performance space. He stood there like he did on most days, in front of speakers with a microphone in hand, shouting jokes and taunts at passersby. As usual, the critical mass of people had stopped to find out why the other people had stopped, and as such the crowd had fed on itself and grown into a large half circle around him.

By this point the clown had pulled about a dozen people out of the crowd, a mixture of adults and children, whom he’d forced to stand side by side in a line. As he walked along inspecting his victims, he asked for their names and other information, poked fun at them, blew fart noises into the microphone, and generally harassed each person to the roaring approval of the crowd. Then he signaled to his assistant to get the music ready because there was going to be a paired dance contest.

Come! he said to the black man he’d forced to join the line, reaching for his hand. And you too, come! he said, motioning to another man farther down the line.

No, said the black man, leaning forward to speak clearly into the microphone. That is a cultural illegality for us.

Oh Joséf! said the clown in a mocking French-Creole accent. Don’t worry. It is only a game. It isn’t a big thing for us in our culture here, for two men to dance together. Not like in Haiti!

The crowd laughed.

That may be, said the black man, "But in truth it is a great thing for us. It is difficult to adapt oneself to another