I have been reading Jason A. Adams’s stories for a few years now in various locations, and even bought some for this magazine along the way.

I think this wonderful original story might start with the best first line in a short story I have seen in a long time. And the voice and humor goes from there.

For more about Jason’s crazy work, go to https://www.jasonadams.info/

So anyways, there I was. Ass-deep in hummus.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like hummus. Some of my favorite meals involve a bucket of garlicky garbanzo dip and a spoon. Goes great with bad seventies drive-in movies on the satellite.

But there’s something about lemon juice and chunks of raw Allium sativum that really chaps my nethers sometimes, know what I mean?

Besides, there’s no way to gracefully scoop a fine sesame cracker twixt the cheeks. Not that I’ve ever found.

Anyway, about the hummus.

Tuesday nights are usually easier than that one turned out to be. I work the graveyard shift at Shitrit’s Mediterranean Grocery (Have a Halva for Happiness!), taking in the midnight deliveries. I’m not a Shitrit myself, I’m a plain old Johnson. Fred Johnson.

The job’s great. Just me and the delivery drivers, and usually just me. Driving pallet jacks loaded with yumminess from the dock to the proper shelves. Sneaking nibbles of this and that. Gotta test the wares, don’t ya know?

And chasing away the occasional varmint. Don’t let anyone fool you. We all do our best to keep a clean shop, but any time there’s a storeroom full of food and few people around, there’s going to be rodents looking for a freebie.

The back of the shop was a typical storeroom, all gray concrete floors, cinder block walls, and steel posts supporting triangled trusses, all holding up a plain corrugated steel roof.

And between those posts? Row after row of heavy-duty wire rack shelves. The shelves aren’t much to look at. Just more industrial gray-enameled metal. But on those shelves rest a million and one colorful packages of Arabian Nights flavor.

The aromas of za’atar, sumac, cardamom, and coriander compete with a thousand other spices I still can’t name. Sometimes at home, I huff my work clothes like a glue freak, until my eyes water and I can taste tagine.

Bags of rainbow pearl couscous. Lentils in a dozen different colors. Bottles, jugs, and metal cans holding olive oils from ten different countries. Jars of olives, from shiny black to purple to bright green.

Nut-filled nougats. Honey cakes. Turkish Delight that made me realize just why Edmond threw in his lot with the wicked queen in the first Narnia book.

And the halva, of course. My favorite dessert of all. Dense blocks of grain or nut or seed base, with add-ins of every sort. Sesame halva, semolina halva, wheat flour halva. Halva with raisins. Halva with pistachio. Rose water halva. Plain old tahini halva like mémé used to make.

If you’ve never had real halva, go find some and put it in your food hole. Right now.

My trips to the dentist have gone from every six months to quarterly.

I gotta tell ya, I love my job. I moved to the ATL a few years ago, after I decided me and college weren’t exactly simpatico. I’m a reader, have been all my life, so I figured I’d breeze through an English Lit degree and take up teaching somewhere. Only my professors and I disagreed rather heavily on what constitutes good literature.

And so here I was, schlepping boxes and bags of food I couldn’t spell, let alone pronounce half the time. Doing the Blue Collar Boogie while I decided what I want to be if I ever grow up.

Hummus. Right. Ass.

Aziz and Nouhaila Shitrit are wonderful people. As warm and loving as most people aren’t. Anyone who thinks badly of Muslims in general should have dinner with them one night. Change their minds in a hurry, no doubt.

They took me in and gave me this job. The pay’s not bad, and I get all the halva and baklava I can eat.

And all the hummus, not that I get through much of it these days.

Nouhaila makes it herself, in a giant stainless steel contraption they got from some microbrewery that went out of business. Turns out the tubs used for cooking mash work just fine for cooking garbanzo beans. She makes hummus by the truckload, and we sell it in sizes from a few ounces to warn-the-neighbors.

And the hummus always got good reviews in the papers and on the Yelps. But none of us could ever have imagined how much better those reviews would get.

Or why.

I keep digressing, but dammit! This is embarrassing.

Bare-assing.

Fine, fine. It was Tuesday night, like I said. I’d just pulled a skid of canned harissa sardines back to the tinned meat shelves, which happen to be right beside the hummus vat, when I saw a fat gray possum (for all you Yankee folk, it’s possum. O’possum is only if they’re Irish) the size of a spaniel sniffing around the bulgur bins. Only in Atlanta would a possum be cruising the shop districts.

“G’wan! Scram!” I yelled, dropping the pallet jack’s handle and waving my arms like I thought it would do any good. “No tabbouleh for you!”

The possum turned his (I assume) pointy pink nose at me and hissed, showing a mouthful of sewing needles that would go right through my canvas gloves if I got too frisky.

I grabbed a push broom I’d left at the end of the row (I try to sweep after every few trips) and swung it toward the critter. Over his head. I didn’t want to hurt the little guy, he was just trying to make a living.

But it did the trick. Or a trick. Br’er Possum hissed again, then turned around, showed me his hairless tail, and trundled away as fast as his stubby legs and creepy little hand-feet could take him.

I waved the broom to his left side, trying to guide him toward the dock and his freedom, but the little shit took it on himself to run up the stepladder beside the hummus vat.

“Come on, come on down little fella.” I’d been reduced to begging a possum, and me a grown man.

The broom wouldn’t quite reach the top of the vat, and Br’er Possum jumped to the vat’s rim and scuttled along like a tightrope walker.

Yeah, I know. The vat’s round, and eventually he would have come back to where he started. But I’m a college man, like I said, and decided to have a Bright Idea.

Tucking the broom’s handle under my arm, I climbed the stepladder and tried to climb onto the rim like my little buddy.

And, naturally, because all Bright Ideas have consequences, I overbalanced and fell right in.

Br’er Possum was obviously done trying to make sense of some two-legged fruitcake and disappeared. Ran right around the rim to where he started and jumped back to the stepladder. Probably heading back to his sacks of parcooked wheat.

In the meantime I was, like I said, ass-deep in hummus. Luckily the batch had been cooling for a few hours, and so was only pleasantly warm, not bean-based magma. Smelled great, and tasted better. Just the right amount of sumac and tahini. Nouhaila had really outdone herself with this batch, not that I was in a position to properly appreciate my boss’s culinary savoir faire. Especially since I was busy coughing up chickpeas and trying to clear my nose enough to breathe.

Two things about hummus. It finds every nook and cranny, and it turns pants into a boat anchor.

Which I discovered on my fifth or so attempt to jump high enough to grab the vat’s lip.

No help for it. I kicked off my shoes. I unbuckled, dropped trou, discovered the true meaning of sensitive skin when the garlic and lemon juice hit my unguarded naughty bits, and tried again.

And again.

And again.

Three things about hummus. Jumping from a pool of it is like trying to jump out of a vacuum hose. Got some suction to it.

Fortunately, hummus gets stiffer as it cools. The good chunky kind, anyway. I’ve never been stuck in a vat of the pureed bean-butter nonsense.

After fifteen minutes of solo mud-, er, hummus-wrestling, I’d mostly cleared a me-sized tube near the wall of the vat. I splooged through the bean dip until I found my shoes and pants, made sure my keys were still hooked to the belt, and tossed the goopy mess over the side.

There’s no splat quite like the splat of Mediterranean-flavored chinos hitting polished cement.

With that taken care of, I squatted down. I tried not to imagine what I was doing to my Prep-H and lotion budget.

I gave it everything I got, jumping as hard and high as I could.

Made it! Just barely, but I made it.

My fingers wrapped over the vat’s smooth steel edge. Between tahini and olive oil, it was all I could do to not slip off, but I held. And pulled. And finally, with the sucking sound of a lollipop yanked from a greedy kid’s mouth, I got first my elbows, then my waist, and finally my legs up and over.

Would you believe me if I said I didn’t just let myself flobble down the stepladder like a sludged-up fish? Okay, let’s go with that.

I gasped on the floor for a while, trying to get my wind back. All those lovely spices and herbs all around me, and all I could smell was fancy Middle Eastern bean dip. Oil oozed down my skin, carrying bits of chickpea, shreds of garlic, and dark red speckles of sumac down my hide and onto the no-longer-quite-so-smooth cement.

I finally managed to get on my feet. I peeled off my shirt, used it to wipe myself down as best I could. The hose we used for filling buckets and washing down the floors got most of the rest.

I was still pretty slippery, but at least the chunks and smears were gone. I could walk without sandpapering my cheeks.

I washed out my britches and shirt as best I could. My sneakers might survive, if I tossed them in a Speed Queen at the laundromat.

After hosing down and mopping the tawny streaks from the floor, washing off the side of Nouhaila’s baby and the stepladder steps, I’d about had it. I pulled on my soggy clothes (which still had that Polly-wanna-pita aroma to ’em) and headed home. Br’er Possum gave me a beady look as I passed the bulgur bins.

I rolled down all four windows in my vintage blue Yugo, and left them down the whole way to my place. When I got there, I took a skin-sizzling shower with a bottle of dish soap, scrubbing until the last traces of oil and aromatic faded. Then I collapsed in bed and stayed dead until my alarm went off for work that evening.

I drove back to the grocery, thinking I probably should have told the Shitrits to dump that batch of hummus. But when I got there, I saw they must have figured something was up. None of the usual tubs of golden garbanzo goodness sat in their regular spot in the cooler. Instead, a gaggle of people with glasses and notepads and recorders stood crowded around Aziz and Nouhaila.

“Ah, Freddie. How are you?” Aziz broke away and came bustling over, rubbing his hands and grinning like that cat-and-the-canary story.

“Uh, I’m good. What’s up, boss?” Something about the crowd and the grin made me nervous. I really didn’t want to sweat, since I wasn’t sure I’d washed everything off.

“The hummus, it is a sensation today,” Aziz said. “Something new in the flavor. My lovely wife will not say what it is, but we have sold out completely. She has already started the new batch, but it will not be ready until after we close.”

“Something new in the flavor?” I gulped, and felt a damn bead of sweat roll down my cheek.

He nodded. “Yes indeed. A subtle earthiness. I know spices, and I cannot put my finger on it. I only hope tomorrow’s batch is as fine as this, as we have six different food critics, plus that fiery man from the food shows, coming to taste and report.”

Aw, hell. Now I felt guilty as a nun at a Chippendales show.

I helped the Shitrits shoo everyone out at closing time, then started my usual duties. Swept and mopped the store and stockroom. Took in a truck’s worth of canned goods. Restocked any empty shelves out front.

Waited for the hummus to cool.

Repeated my performance of the night before. Only this time I remembered to lose my clothes before…ah…seasoning the hummus.

And the next day, the reporters and the “fiery guy” lapped up every last scrap. Glowing reviews hit the papers, the magazines, and the Internets. The food channel did a segment on the store, and raved about the hummus. “Unlike any other hummus I’ve ever tasted,” said the guy with the spiky frosted hair.

The store’s books leapt into solid black territory. Aziz surprised Nouhaila with a two-week trip back home to Tangier, and they left me in charge of things. Even gave me and the other employees a pretty nice bonus.

So that’s the story of how Fred-flavored hummus became a sensation, even though no one besides me every figured out what the secret ingredient is.

I’m still working the graveyard shift, still pulling pallet jacks and pushing brooms. I found a really nice moisturized lotion that keeps me from chapping too bad, and the smell of garlic doesn’t even register with me anymore.

The Shitrits are good people, and I’m glad to work for them. Which makes my life one hard decision after another.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my nightly dip. On your way out, get yourself a pint of hummus. On the house.

Just don’t ask what the ingredients are.