The Misery in El Rábano

Luis grabbed the menu the waiter had placed in front of him. His week had been particularly hard and he had been looking forward to this dinner for a long time. He was at his favorite restaurant, El Rábano, the only place in Huntsville where he could get an authentic Mexican dish that wasn’t sold out of a truck or some woman’s apartment.

He didn’t get to come to El Rábano often; his wife, Taylor, was from a highly anglicized suburban neighborhood, and she had been raised to believe that Mexican food was the food of poverty. Luis had explained to her several times that El Rábano was a five-star restaurant, with some of the best chefs Mexico had to offer, but the chefs were still from Mexico. They were still from poverty, in her mind.

As Luis thought about his many fights with Taylor this week, he saw a man enter the restaurant. He was tall and slender, and he was wearing a tuxedo. Luis couldn’t help but wonder why someone would wear a tuxedo to El Rábano. It was a nice restaurant, but the rich scene in Huntsville lended itself more to suits with the jacket thrown over the back of a chair and the sleeves rolled up crisply.

Luis saw something fall out of the man’s pocket as he checked his coat. Luis stood and fetched the small scrap of paper, barely large enough to have a short note written on it that Luis was unable to read through the folds.

“Excuse me, sir,” Luis called, following the man towards his table.

The man turned around abruptly, startling Luis into dropping the paper himself. Luis bent to grab it to hand to the man, but the man beat him to it, almost knocking himself and Luis over in the process.

“Sorry,” the man said, straightening his tuxedo. “It’s the list of groceries the Mrs. wants me to bring home after dinner. You know how it is.” He gestured towards Luis’ wedding band.

“I do,” Luis replied, absentmindedly reaching for his ring. “I just wanted to return it to you. I’m glad you have it now. Good luck with your wife.”

The man nodded in response and Luis returned to his table. The waiter had brought him a water and poured him a glass of Oberon, his favorite Cabernet Sauvignon. Luis swirled the wine and inhaled its deep, rich aroma before taking a long sip. This place always made him feel better when he was having a tough week.

The waiter returned and Luis ordered the pozole; they made it almost like his mom had made it when he was growing up. The waiter hurried off to put in the order, leaving Luis alone again with his thoughts. His mind immediately returned to the fights he had been having with Taylor; they both wanted to have children, but she didn’t want his family around very often once they started their family.

“I just want them to fit in, Luis. They will already be different because of their last name and their skin color. I want their culture to be American at least,” she had told him during their latest argument that morning.

Luis tried to remember when he had met Taylor. Had she always been this hateful of his culture? He didn’t think so. He remembered taking her to the best taco trucks in town, and on the one chance they had to visit his aunts and uncles in Mexico, he had shown her the beauty of the culture and the richness of the food.

And now that he was recalling these memories, he remembered the tight-lipped smile she held on every occassion when his culture or his family was involved. He remembered his mama telling him that she loved and supported him no matter what, but that she thought he could do better than Taylor. He thought about how Taylor had always refused to enjoy holidays and traditions with his family; she was somehow always ill whenever the day would come.

Luis picked up his glass to take another drink of his wine, wondering how he had missed all of these signs for the three years they had dated before he proposed, when he almost dropped his glass. He had known something felt wrong when he had spoken to the man in the tuxedo earlier, but he didn’t realize why until now. The man had not been wearing a wedding band.

Luis realized that there could be many reasons a man might not wear his wedding band. He could be getting it resized. He could be having an affair and doesn’t want the woman he’s meeting here to know he’s married. He could’ve lost it. But the man was dining alone and Luis didn’t remember seeing a tan line where the wedding band should’ve been. The man was Caucasian, but well tanned, so a ring certainly would’ve left a tanline.

The waiter approached with his pozole and Luis pushed the thought from his mind. What did it matter to him if the man lied about a tiny piece of paper? He focused his attention on the pozole. Closing his eyes to properly take in the smell and the steam coming off of the dish. He almost felt like he was at home. Almost. He hadn’t been home in two years, not since he and Taylor had gotten married.

As Luis situated himself to begin eating, he noticed a commotion at the table of the man in the tuxedo. The man’s back was to Luis, so he couldn’t see what was going on but the waiter looked terrified. The man stood and the waiter led him into the kitchen. Was the man a health inspector and he found a roach in his meal?

At this point, Luis decided that he should trust the instinct of the hairs standing on end at the back of his neck. After all, he had ignored them for Taylor and look what happened there. He left his wine and his pozole and followed the two men into the kitchen. As he passed the man’s table, he noticed that the scrap of paper was resting gently under the man’s abandoned napkin. Luis grabbed the piece of paper, shoving it into his pocket, and kept heading for the kitchen.

When he got to the doorway, he realized that though the man was speaking quietly, there was an intense aggression in his voice. The man was panicked and in a hurry, that much was clear. Luis didn’t see any weapons in the man’s hand, but he was holding something. Why were the staff letting him berate them like this? And why was he doing it quietly and in the kitchen?

Luis pushed through the swinging doors and entered the kitchen, once again standing behind the man in the tuxedo. The man must have been too focused to hear the doors swinging open, because he didn’t turn to see who was interrupting him. Luis realized that the thing in the man’s hand was some kind of button. The waiter was staring at the man with eyes so wide that Luis thought they might pop out of his head.

“What’s going on?” Luis asked, when he decided he couldn’t determine what was going on.

The man in the tuxedo pulled the waiter towards him like a shield, as he turned to face Luis. He was sweating profusely. He was nervous. But why?

“You again? What are you doing in here?” the man growled.

“I could ask the same of you. Why are you berating the poor staff at this restaurant? If you don’t like the food, just go eat somewhere else,” Luis replied, sounding annoyed.

“He has a bomb!” the waiter yelled, before the man grabbed him by the throat.

Luis suddenly realized how serious the situation was and how absolutely unprepared he was. He had never been in any kind of situation with a bomb or hostages. He had just come for a nice bowl of pozole and some good wine. And now here he was, facing down a bomber. A bomber in a tuxedo. He briefly thought about how unpredictable the world truly was.

“Okay, calm down, sir. Please let the waiter and the rest of the staff leave the kitchen. You and I can figure this out. I know it,” Luis said, hoping that he sounded calmer than he felt and hoping that the man didn’t notice his hands trembling.

“I can’t do that,” the man responded flatly. He sounded defeated, like there was nothing left inside of him.

“Why not?”

“Because this is what I came to do. I want to die, but I don’t want to die alone. And I want the world to know why I did this and that I went out in a tuxedo, in a five-star restaurant.”

“You don’t have to die… What’s your name?” Luis was trying to buy time for the help that would never come, but as he spoke the staff that was behind the man were quietly sneaking out of the kitchen.

“My name is Noah. And I do have to die. I’m dying anyway and I want to die on my terms.”

The kitchen was now empty except for Luis, Noah, and the waiter, still in Noah’s grasp.

“Noah,” Luis pleaded. “Let the waiter go. Let everyone go. I’ll stay with you.”

Luis pulled the piece of paper from his pocket. “Is that what you want the world to know? The waiter can take it and give it to the news reporters when they show up.”

“Why do you have that?!” Noah yelled. “If that is in here when the bomb goes off, it’ll be lost.”

“Okay, so let the waiter go and he can take it out of the kitchen with him.”

Noah squeezed the waiter’s throat a little harder. “Try any funny business and I’ll make sure this bomb takes you, too.”

The waiter nodded as best he could with Noah’s hand nearly strangling him. Noah loosened his grip and the waiter hurried toward the door. Luis stopped him just long enough to give him the paper and then he was alone with Noah and the bomb.

“Do you have any last words you want to share?” Luis asked, hoping the waiter was quietly evacuating the restaurant.

“It’s all on that paper. I have nothing else to say.”

“Do you want to tell me why you’re dying? If I’m dying with you, I would like to know.”

“Not really. It won’t matter in a few moments anyway.”

“How long do we have?”

“Thirty-seven seconds.”

Luis didn’t think that had been enough time for the restaurant to evacuate, but he didn’t intend to die today. He bolted for the door, back towards the dining room. Noah screamed after him and pushed the button in his hand, detonating the bomb early. The explosion threw Luis into the dining room where he landed hard and covered in what remained of Noah. He tried to stand, but his ears were ringing and he felt light-headed. He lay down and gave into the darkness that was tugging at the corners of his eyes.

When he awoke, he was in a hospital room. There were wires connecting him to monitors that were beeping in a steady rhythm. He heard the sound of pages flipping nearby. He looked and saw Taylor. She was reading a magazine.

“Hey,” he said to her, his voice coming out hoarse and raspy.

“You’re awake,” she said as she closed the magazine. “The doctors said that you managed to make it away from the worst of the explosion. You have some burns and a pretty good concusion, but you will be fine.”

“Good. It was a weird night.”

“What happened?”

Luis sighed and turned his head so he could see his wife, really see her for the first time. She looked back at him confused and maybe, he thought, a little concerned. She certainly didn’t look as upset as he would’ve been had the roles been reversed.

“Did everyone make it out okay?”

“They said they found the remains of one man splattered all over the kitchen, but everyone else escaped with minor injuries. Yours were the worst.”

“Good,” Luis said again. He laid his head back and closed his eyes. “I want a divorce.”