I've found that Taco Bells in and of themselves have semi-mystical powers. Perhaps they sit upon convergent lines of force or some such. I know this, however, if you're driving in a typical suburban environment that you are unfamiliar with, the exact moment you go "where the fuck am I?" you will look up to see a Taco Bell.
This TB in particular seems to be some sort of eddy where the floatsam and jetsam collect. The TB is open pretty late, if not 24 hours, and features a stumble-up window. This is good thinking, as most the town is drunk at any given moment, drunks really like Taco Bell, and drunks probably shouldn't be motoring down there anyways. On any given night, especially the weekends, a goodly line forms outside the stumble-up. Given that, the chances that you'd run into someone you know from in town at the Taco Bell would be better than that of running into them on the street.
But this Taco Bell exhibited a greater draw; some sort of consistent statistical outlier. For some reason, there were people up there who I'd always run into at the Taco Bell. Considering everyone walks there, gets their food and repairs back to the party, one would think that this would be less of an happenstance. It was quite common for several groups of friends to mysteriously converge upon the joint from several locations.
At first, its easy to dismiss this as simple coincidence. After all, we all started drinking around the same time, all had dinner about the same time, and were all likely to get hungry about the same time. But it didn't matter. Even during the rare daytime trips, we were sure to run into people there. I began circulating the theory that this particular Taco Bell was the center of the universe.
The phenomenon grew: suddenly, people I knew from out of the area who happened to be in town the same time as I would show up--people whom I didn't know that they even had any contacts in Chico. I would run into long lost friends, people I'd gone to school with. In one case, even an ex-girlfriend of mine. People started believing with me that indeed this place was the center of the universe.
In time, my Chico friends graduated and left town. I don't go up there nearly as much, and when I'm passing through town, I stop someplace decent to eat, or at least Tacos Cortez. I always pass it off that its because now that I work, I try not to eat such crap. But maybe deep down I'm afraid that I'm right and that I'll walk in to order a couple chicken soft tacos to discover myself in some sort of Twilight Zone episode.