Aaron and I headed out early that night to get something to eat before the band started. We were going to Rancho Nicasio, this little bar in the middle of nowhere. There was a dusty town square with a baseball diamond, a church, a flagpole, a one-room post office. It was like a stage set from an old western. Sometimes people rode horses there and tied them up at a hitching post, mostly for show. Real cowboys don’t eat brunch.

We ordered burgers. We were both hungry and we scarfed everything down. Aaron didn’t have the daintiest table manners sometimes but that’s part of him being so goofy, a big kid in spite of his smarts. “You should get a cowboy hat,” I told him. Some of the men in this place wore them, it being horse country. But then, they might have driven over from Berkeley for all I knew.

Aaron ran a hand over his shaved head. “You think? I can’t imagine they fit right with no hair.”

“Tie a bandana underneath.”

“So what are you going to wear?”

“Prom dress with cowboy boots.”

“Totally hot.”

I started to fill out the details of our new looks, but instead I clamped my mouth shut and got busy with my plate of food. “What?” Aaron said.

I shook my head, a warning. It was no good. He’d seen me.

“Garden girl!” He was standing over our table, grinning down at me.

“Hello,” I said. I wasn’t on a job. I didn’t have to be nice to him. Without looking up I could feel Aaron paying attention, trying on answers. “A jerk from work,” I said, not making much effort to keep my voice down.

He was Oscar, I remembered. I don’t think he heard me. The room was filling up and getting louder. The band was wandering around the stage and making their electric squawking noises as they tuned. Oscar was wearing a coat and tie, which was the only kind of getup that stood out here. His shirt was red and the tie was lavender with a sheen to it. The coat was black corduroy and he’d been wearing it long enough to bake permanent wrinkles into the elbows. His hair was pulled back in a little ponytail.
Nice touch.

Nobody had invited him to sit down, but then, we hadn’t told him not to. He pulled up a chair and stuck a hand in front of Aaron. “Oscar Branco.”

Aaron had a look on his face like, what’s an Oscar Branco? But he’s polite. He shook hands and said his name. We were both wondering, Now what?