The Embarcadero is 27,000 feet of shopping heaven. In Spanish, "a place from which to embark,"it brings along every mysterious, wondrous, overwhelming feeling associated with a street fair chock full of exhibitors.
Luckily for Lucy, this carnival of consumerism contained air conditioning.
She smelled caramel apples.
Lucy and the Ballmans bobbed and weaved from booth to booth. Cowboy hats danced on poles. Scarves swayed in compressed breezes. Indian blankets buffered sounds from Swiffer booths, with skinny men on microphones squeezing mops over spaghetti sauce floors.
Lucy looked around, quietly.
Last year she finished an entire year without shopping.
Her nostrils seemed to fill with the acrid smell of smoke. Maybe her brain wanted her to believe shopping was an addiction, and this was a crack tent. Maybe her fashion girl heart wanted her to believe shopping was a soul-soother, and this was a mecca.
Either way, a bone-chilling scream erased her compulsion to purchase.
It was Elvis.
Perhaps it hasn't been mentioned yet, perhaps it's better left unsaid. Speech impediments, after all, are not something polite Texans like to discuss.
Instead they just quietly say, "bless your heart."
But this speech impediment just went public.
It was Elvis.
He spied a fire in the fried grilled cheese booth, and wanted to alert the authorities. He began to scream smoke in a way only a three year old blonde boy dressed as the King can.
His speech impediment eliminated any "s" conjuctions from his vocabulary. School became ool. Skunks became unks. And smoke became...
A four letter word, beginning with the letter F.
He shouted it to the rooftops.
Smoke.
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