Revenant Rising by M. M. Mayle Page A

pass time.
    Finding a place to leave the Jimmy won’t be a problem because the market isn’t open yet and won’t be for another thirty minutes, according to the money-taker at the gate to a large near-empty parking lot. Waiting won’t be a problem either, because he can use the half hour to work some of the worst cricks out of his legs with a few trips around the lot.
    By the time his legs start feeling better and the vendors start uncovering their wares and firing up their grills, he’s famished.
    Nothing could have readied him for what’s inside the market. As far as the eye can see in any direction are produce stands, flower stalls, bakeries, butcher shops, fishmongers, seafood sellers, candy stores, and places to buy jewelry, fancy clothing, arty treasures, and souvenirs. And there are pizza makers, doughnut makers, sandwich counters, hamburger specialists, and foreign-type restaurants mixed in with the all-American kind that advertise things like BLTs, hot dogs, and pancakes. Even the ice cream stores have more flavors than he’s ever heard of.
    His stomach’s growling now as more and more cooking smells reach him. There are things in this market he can’t even name, so the safe and easy choice is to go with a food he knows—like French toast—and yet it seems a terrible waste to have come all this way for something he could eat at home.
    He’s drawn to a walk-up style restaurant that’s doing a good business. Going by the name and by the appearance of the counter help, he guesses it to be Mexican. The customer ahead of him points to an entry on the menu board and mumbles something when it’s his turn to order. When it’s Hoop’s turn to order he does the same thing, points at the same selection—the one that’s spelled “huevos rancheros”—but doesn’t say anything. The mumbled part must have been important, though, because now the counterman is asking him a question in a language he guesses is Spanish. Hoop shrugs the standard response for not understanding and the counterman replies in heavy-accented English: “I thought ya was one a us. I asked if ya wanted fries with that.”
    Hoop goes for the fries and when his order is up, takes it to one of the tables out in the open, where he shrugs off being taken for a Mexican. All that’s on his mind is how good the food is and how deserving of it he is after nearly four straight days of living on bologna, saltines and peanut butter. He finishes off what he’s figured out was mainly eggs, giant corn chips, mashed beans, chili sauce, and cheese, then hesitates about one second before he goes back and orders another serving, this time with a beer on the side.
    The table he had before is now occupied, so he goes to another that hasn’t been cleared off. There he finds a newspaper someone left behind and leafs through it after he finishes eating. Nothing catches his eye till he reaches the entertainment section that’s full of reports about who the front-runners are in tonight’s Icon race.
    “Tonight’s?” he says under his breath, then checks the date on the paper to see if it agrees with the information he got from the car radio earlier. It agrees: Monday, March 30, 1987 it says, so it’s not an old issue.
    At first, he’s hard on himself for being unaware tonight is the night. Doesn’t he still have the clipping in his wallet that gives the date of the awards ceremony along with the list of nominees—the clipping that brought his mission back to life? And doesn’t he also have in his possession a newer clipping, picked up along the way—one that supposes Colin Elliot to be a sour-grapes no-show because he wasn’t invited to perform at the ceremony? After a while and a couple of long tugs on the foreign-type beer they sold him, he convinces himself this fresh information has no more importance than being mistaken for a wetback.
    With still another hour to kill, Hoop chances another of the Corona beers he’s fast developing a taste for.