Free Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan by Rick Riordan

I’ll read the tea leaves for you."
    Actually I’d been drinking beer, but Mother was
never one to let technicalities stop her. She poured me a cup of tea,
drank it herself, then turned the cup over on a napkin. I could never
figure out whether she was playing a game for her own amusement, or
whether she really had a system for making sense of the sediment from
beverages, but she studied the little brown flecks intently, making
meaningful 'hmm' sounds.
    The basic trainees at the counter looked over briefly
while she was doing her divination. One made a joke under his breath.
Both laughed.
    “ Not good, my son," Mother said in her best
gypsy accent. "The leaves spell ‘Adversity.’ A troubled time
is ahead."
    “ Profound," I said. "And so unexpected?
    She tried to look offended. "Scoff if you must."
    "I must, I must."
    At the end of dinner Mother insisted on picking up
the tab. Since I was down to spare change and a few maxed—out
credit cards, I didn’t argue too hard. The two men at the counter
paid for their meal and walked out behind us.
    When you train long enough in tai
chi , you get to a point where your eyes and
ears start feeling like they wrap around you 360 degrees. You have to
develop this unless you want to get hit over the head from behind
while you’re protecting yourself in front, or turn a few inches too
far and run yourself through on your opponent’s sword. My senses
switched into that mode the minute we walked out of the restaurant,
but I wasn’t consciously worried until we got to the corner of
Queen Anne.
    Mother was talking about the sorry state of the arts
in San Antonio. The two men from the restaurant were coming up behind
us, but they seemed to be at ease, joking to themselves, not paying
us much attention. The neon lights from Broadway dropped into
darkness once we walked onto my street. The two men stopped talking,
but turned the corner with us. Without looking back, I could tell
they were quickening their pace. They were about twenty-five feet
behind us now. My apartment was at the end of the block.
    “ Mother," I said casually, "keep
walking."
    She had just been warming up on the subject of
limited downtown gallery space. She glanced up at me, puzzled, but I
didn’t give her time to say anything. Instead, I did an about-face
and went back to meet our new friends.
    They didn’t like their timing being messed up. When
they saw me coming toward them they stopped, momentarily off-balance.
Both were in their mid-twenties, with bland, square faces. They wore
jeans and untucked denim shirts. Both had crew cuts. Their upper body
development made it obvious they were bodybuilders.
    They were trying hard to be twins, but one was a
red-headed Anglo, the other a Hispanic with a tattoo on his
forearm—an eagle killing a snake.
    When I was five feet away they moved apart slightly,
waiting for me to act. Behind me I heard my mother call, more than a
little nervous: "Tres?"
    “ Tres?" the one with the tattoo mimicked. The
red-head grinned. `
    "Either you’re following us to get your tea
leaves read," I speculated, “or you’ve got something to say
to me. Which is it?"
    I let Tattoo come closer, putting his chest close to
my face. He was still grinning. Red moved around to my left.
    "Yeah sure," said Tattoo. "We heard
you’re one of those faggots from San Francisco. That true?"
    He was about six inches away.
    "You asking me to dance?" I blew him a
kiss.
    He almost decided that was worth punching me for, but
Red stopped him.
    Behind me I heard Mother call my name again. She was
trying to decide whether she should come back for me or not. I knew
she would eventually walk over and give these goons a piece of her
mind. Whatever went down, I needed to make it happen before she did
that.
    "How hard you want to make this, buddy?"
said Red. “I’d hate smashing a guy’s face in front of his own
mom. The message is simple: Get the fuck out of town. Nobody wants
you here."
    "And whom are these joyous