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Taco

"Hey, tell me, this look like Jesus to you?"

I come to Tito's Tacos for a lot of reasons. The freeway overpass ambience, the way the old men in the kitchen wrap the burritos tighter than Cuban cigars, the shiny Kennedy 50-cent pieces you always get as part of your change. A lot of reasons. But conversation isn't among them. Nonetheless, I dutifully look up from my lunch to see what the guy at the next table over is talking about.

He holds up a tortilla chip for me to inspect. It's a Tito's chip, which means it's roughly the thickness of a roofing shingle. "It looks like Jesus, don't it?"

I shrug. "Kinda? I guess?"

He squints at me. He squints at his chip. "I swear on my grandmother's soul, I am looking into the face of Christ, Our Lord and Savior, and He's looking right back at me."

I reach for his chip and he pulls it away, cradling it to his chest.

"Listen, you asked me what I thought, and I say it looks more like Charles Manson. Or a sheepdog. What you're experiencing is false pattern recognition. Our brains aren't always good at separating signal from noise, and that's because we're evolved to look for pattern, even when there's nothing but static. There's no difference between seeing the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich and Fonzie in a cumulus cloud."

"Okay," he says. "But the important thing is, do you think I could sell it on eBay?"

"I'll give you five bucks for it right now if you let me finish my lunch in peace."

"You're not very friendly," he says as he trades me the chip for four singles and two 50-cent pieces.

"No," I agree, using the chip to scoop up taco meat and a bit of cheese. It's a Tito's chip, so I nearly break my teeth on it.

After he's gone I get on my cell phone and dial a basement office downtown, rented by the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

"Yeah?" says the voice that picks up.

"Face is scrubbed," I say, followed by a set of map coordinates.

"Got it," says the voice before hanging up.

My message will be relayed to a dozen other basement offices across the world. The last one is located in a dank cave below the Vatican. I've been there a few times. The pipes drip, leaving a mildew pattern on the wall that I don't look at too closely.