Bill Murray Ponders at Taco Bell

The booth is turquoise, the faux wood peeling up a bit along the edges where years of sliding thighs has worn the surface, loosened the glue. This booth: his thinking spot. Bill sits and contemplates. Usually Bill orders five crispy potato soft tacos and ponders while waiting the ten minutes for those thin cellophane-paper-wrappers to tray-slide across the counter, his number called—FORTY-TWO, or maybe THREE-THIRTY-SEVEN, indicating where he slots into the daily order stream. Bill likes to play a game of guessing which number will be his without looking at his receipt. And then when he hears the first number called, he’ll try to find the receipt, stuffing his hands into various corduroy jacket pockets where he might have tucked it, eventually crinkling it out and checking to see if he guessed correctly. He’s never nailed it, but Bill enjoys the thrill of the endeavor. Today, however, the cashier said, “There’s no potatoes,” and at first Bill hadn’t understood that this meant “No potatoes on the menu anymore,” not “We’re out of potatoes today only,” until the cashier explained the new menu rotation enacted by corporate. Unsure what to order, Bill said “Well surprise me then, I guess,” and handed over an Abe Lincoln. The absence of potatoes proved a hindrance to Bill’s booth-thinking, however, and Bill found himself unable to focus, distracted by the cars passing on the street, by the three people sitting on the bench across the street waiting for the bus, and by the three dogs laying on the concrete at their feet. A pitbull mix, a mutt, and a chihuahua, if he was guessing. Bill tried his mindfulness exercises, counting his breaths, but nothing worked to gather his focus, until his eyes alighted on the crinkle-plastic-wrapped spork sitting on the table pressed up against the wall. Several extra sauce packets too, next to the spork, and Bill picked one up, flipping it delicately like a sea shell. “DIABLO. REGRETS… WHO CARES?” Bill read, and this touched him deep. So true, Bill thought. So Bill flipped another packet. “(MILD) You so get me.” And Bill realized that indeed, he did. Never had he felt such deep connection. Such interdependence with the liquid contained behind the seal. Yet another: “HOT I won’t tell.” Here Bill considered the nature of secrets. The temptation to leak, to spill. The commitment to holding within. To staying sealed. One final flip: “FIRE! AND… THAT HAPPENED.” But before Bill could reflect, he heard “ORDER ONE TEN!”—and then Bill realized this had been one of the possible guesses he’d kicked around (that, or EIGHTY-SEVEN) as he’d approached the register to order, but he’d been so thrown by “No potatoes” that he’d never selected a number. Fumbling through his corduroy jacket pockets, Bill crinkled out the receipt and indeed “ONE TEN” was his order number. Feeling glum, Bill looked down at that last FIRE! sauce packet. That nearly had happened, but the more Bill thought about how he’d nearly won his receipt game, the more Bill found himself rejuvenated: for isn’t this proximity to greatness the whole purpose of the game? The possibility of prediction? The pursuit of propinquity? The near misses and the close calls? With this clarity in mind, Bill slid from his booth, circled the trashcan with the straw and sauce packet tubs on top, and found on his order tray his new favorite: a single Crunchwrap Supreme.

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Robbie Maakestad is a Senior Editor for The Rumpus and an Associate Professor of Writing in San Diego where he is the Program Director for an M.A. in Writing program. He is writing a biography of place about Jerusalem’s City of David archaeological site. He has been published or has forthcoming work in Gulf Coast, Boulevard, The Normal School, and The San Diego Union-Tribune, among others. Follow him @RobbieMaakestad.