Ella in Bloom Excerpt

From Ella in Bloom

When I was in school, it seemed a big, somewhat daring deal to eat at Cisco's and watch all the Anglo politicians who came to press the flesh of their Spanish-speaking compadres. On a Saturday or Sunday morning, we'd crowd at a table in the back room, pigging out on huevos rancheros, hot biscuits, chorizo, tortillas, sweet pastries. It had seemed almost like going across the border in Laredo.

Today, I passed by the neighborhood regulars in the front room and headed into the packed back room, tables jammed so close together you could hear half a dozen conversations at once. Although the female waiters still balanced those immense platters of the same wonderful food, the crowd had changed. They all looked a lot like Red: pencil pushers with short hair. Techno prols in shorts and faded T-shirts, most of them male, most of them half my age, most of them non-Anglo, most of them with cell-phones. What feet I could see -- making my way through the crunch to where Red sat at a table for two on the side wall -- wore Birkenstocks, Tevas, tennies. Not a politician in sight, though the same owner I remembered from a quart of a century ago still worked the room, shaking every hand. ...

Most of the buzz concerned breaking news about Dell, Compaq, smaller companies I didn't know. We heard this one loud guy in a logo-tee on a cell phone, standing in the corner, his back to the room, say, "Can I give you a credit card? Huh? I forgot to pay for the tune-up." And proceed to rattle off his name and his Amex number for anyone in the room have written down. No one even looked around.

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From Ella in Bloom, by Shelby Hearon, copyright © 2001 Shelby Hearon. Reprinted with permission of Alfred A. Knopf Inc.