Crushed Biscuit
Terry poked her fork into a pillowy puff of a thing and stabbed it onto my plate. “This is a sopapilla,” she said. ‘Fry bread is essential to every culture.”
“Okay, professor,” I said. I pinched the little roll open and all its hot yeasty air escaped. It was glorious. I was glad we went to La Padron after all. I had so much to learn.
“You know who I always had a crush on?” Terry said. She pushed the honey bear across the table to me, gesturing that this was a must for the bread.
She lifted her arms like a big curtain drop: “John Scalzi.”
“Ouch!” It was hot. “Really? The author? He’s a mensch, alright. We were early bloggers before it became unbearable. How do you know each other?”
“Well, I sort of know him, right? I mean, I nodded at him; I nodded at him two times, like this” — Terry widened her eyes and stuck out her chin in the manner of a silent movie starlet. “And he nodded right back at me, and you know, this was a Nerd cruise, so every year I go and my Trek shirt was in my trunk—”
“Is that its name, The Nerd Boat?” I asked. I’d never been on a cruise. I really didn’t want the tamales or enchilada now, just more of these hot fried pillows of dough. “This little puff is like a New Mexican Southern Biscuit.”
“Order more! No, listen, It’s a real cruise, I go every year—one side of the boat is the stars and the pretty guests, and the other side is everyone who got beat up in grade school, and I love it, and John was so nice to me— he nodded back at me, both times, and . . . oh, I don’t know what I love about him so much; he’s just like the Straight Man that gives one hope.”
Terry was so luminescent when she blushed.
“Yeah, he’s like the Good Ship Ally-Pop” I said, getting the honey everywhere. The cap was loose. “He’s always shocking his MAGA fans who are a little slow on the uptake to realize he’s not a prick like them.” I licked my fingers.
“Well, I cried so hard at the end of Red Shirts — I mean, fuck it, don’t patronize me, I know you don’t understand, you never cared about my stories!” In her anguish, Ter reached for the last puffed piece in the basket, and I beat her to it.
“Babe, don’t eat when you’re sobbing! I do so know the Red Shirts story! Do you mean the story with the ending about the son getting a second chance, and the lost sister on the beach?”
Terry blew her nose on my napkin. I handed her the rest of my tequila as penance. Her face was bright red and I supposed the booze would just make the outside worse, but the inside a little better.
“John would be touched you feel this way about his book,” I said. “He’s sensitive too; that’s why he had to write a story about when people who get discarded and it’s not fair.”
“I’m going to tell him,” I vowed. “I’m going to find his address and tell him that Terry Marquez is at a sopapilla bar in ABQ crying her eyes out about John Scalzi. It’s going to make him cry, too.”
And dear Reader, it did. I sent this to John for Xmas.
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