didn’t know as much about Mexico as I should, living just north of it, but I was certain they had some form of socialized medicine. Not for everyone, obviously. Like the bounty from the nanoforges we graciously allocated to them, I supposed: the people in the front of the line didn’t get there by lot.
Some of the beggars pointedly ignored me or even whispered racial epithets in a language they thought I didn’t understand. Things had changed so much. We’d visited Mexico when I was in grade school, and my father, who had grown up in the South, gloried in the color blindness here. Being treated like any other gringo. We blame the Ngumi for Mexico’s prejuicio, but it’s partly America’s fault. And example.
I came to an eight-lane divided avenue, clogged with slow traffic, and turned right. Not even one beggar per block here. After a mile or so of dusty and loud low-income housing, I came to a good-sized parking island over an underground mall. I went through a security check, which cost another five dollars for the knife, and took the slidewalk down to the main level.
There were three change booths, offering slightly different rates of exchange, all with different commission arrangements. I did the arithmetic in my head and was not surprised to find that, for everyday amounts, the one with the least favorable exchange rate actually gave the best deal.
Starving, I found a ceviche shop and had a bowl of octopus, little ones with inch-long legs, along with a couple of tortillas and a pot of tea. Then I went off in search of diversion.
There were a half-dozen jack shops in a row, offering slightly different adventures from their American counterparts. Be gored by a bull—no gracias. Perform or receive a sex-change operation, either way. Die in childbirth. Relive the agony of Christ. There was a line for that one; must have been a holy day. Maybe every day’s a holy day here.
There were also the usual girly-boy attractions, and with them one that offered an accelerated-time tour of “your own” digestive tract! Restrain me.
A confusing variety of shops and market stalls, like Portobello multiplied a hundred times. The everyday things that an American had delivered automatically had to be bought here—and not for a fixed price, either.
That part was familiar from walking around Portobello. Housewives, a few men, came to the mercado every morning to haggle over the day’s supplies. Still plenty here at two in the afternoon. To an outsider, it looks as if half the stalls are scenes of pretty violent argument, voices raised, arms waving. But it’s really just part of the social routine, for vendor and customer alike. “What do you mean, ten pesos for these worthless beans? Last week they were five pesos and excellent quality!” “Your memory is fading, old woman. Last week they were eight pesos and so shriveled I couldn’t give them away! These are beans among beans!” “I could give you six pesos. I need beans for supper, and my mother knows how to soften them with soda.” “Your mother? Send your mother down here and she’ll pay me nine pesos,” and so on. It was a way to pass the time; the real battle would be between seven and eight pesos.
The fish market was diverting. There was a much greater variety than you found in Texas stores—large cod and salmon that originally came from the cold north Atlantic and Pacific, exotic brightly colored reef fish, wriggling live eels, and tanks of huge Japanese shrimp—all of them produced in town, cloned and force-grown in vats. The few native fresh fish—whitebait from Lake Chapala, mostly—cost ten times as much as the most exotic.
I bought a small plate of those—minnows, sun-dried and marinated, served with lime and hot chile—which would have marked me as a tourist even if I weren’t black and dressed like an American.
Counted my pesos and started looking for a gift for Amelia. I’d already done jewelry, to help get us into this mess, and she wouldn’t wear ethnic clothing.
A horrible practical whisper told me to wait until after the operation. But I decided that buying the gift was more for me than for her, anyhow. A commercial kind of substitute for prayer.
There was a huge stall of old books, the paper kind and also the earlier versions of view-books—most of them, with formats and power supplies decades out of date, were for collectors of electronic curiosities, not readers.