LOS ANGELES — The fat, shortish paisano behind the counter did not sound like he was making a serious offer.
“You want cactus, quieres, se?or?” he muttered, brush moustache bristling.
A transparent plastic bag filled with greenish bits lay beside the rundown cash register.
“What do I do with cactus?” I asked.
“Para comida,” he replied.
“Cactus for eating?”
“Si, sure se?or, it’s very good like broccoli,” he explained smiling.
Good God. But how do you cook it?
“Simple, no hay problema, just boil it — healthy, tastes good.”
* * *
This exchange happened inside a small Mexican fresh food mart off very busy Santa Monica Boulevard, a couple of blocks from the Wild Card gym.
I shook my head, begged his pardon, picked up three potatoes and two stems of broccoli which, I told the curious seller, would later boil splendidly with a can of carne norte into a makeshift meat-veggie stew dinner.
That’s it. Cactus, we had been told before, goes great into the making of a splendid tequila — perfectly Mexican.
But there’s no way a hard-trying Mexican, well-meaning as he could be, would ram cactus down the throat of this straying Pinoy to whom the spiky plant remains a towering background for dear old Tonto and Lone Ranger as the immortal duo race down memory lane, through the dried-up wilds of happy, old, George Bush-free America.
Cactus? Sorry, better luck next time, se?or.
* * *
By the way, that food mart incident happened only Thursday, out here in hot, baking Los Angeles.
The other day at Wild Card, a middle-aged fixture, a leathery Mex with a drum of a beer belly, started mumbling something interesting about the Marco Antonio Barrera-Manny Pacquiao rematch.
“Just tell them it’s the trainer of Hector Velasquez who said it,” he declared with patriotic fervor.
The anxious fellow declared, matter-of-factly, that there would be a third Pacquiao-Barrera fight!
“It will be called the Moment of Truth, better believe me,” he said.
Well, I no longer bothered to ask his full name, he did not ask mine, although he obviously smelled I was a Pacquiao backer.
Pacquiao stopped Velasquez at the Staples Center here a little over two years ago in a tune-up for the Pacman’s second battle against Erik Morales, who saw action — and lost on points — in the same card.
* * *
To repeat: this Mex fixture at Wild Card sincerely felt a Barrera-Pacquiao Trilogy is in the works.
“Because there’s no other way they could make big money,” he stated without flinching.
“You know, we were winning, we were ahead on points after two rounds against Pacquiao, but Velasquez disobeyed, he slugged it out,” he said.
Anyway, as though he owned the exclusive formula on how to offset and upset Pacquiao, the trainer said Barrera should be expected to avoid an outright slug-out, dance, use the ring, do the rope-a-dope if possible.
In basketball, that would be equal to playing a half-court game, in order to avoid being swept under the swirl of the breathless fastbreak.
Not a bad proposal, although there was nothing new in it.
* * *
Meanwhile, there came reports Thursday that Team Barrera has decided to take in the undefeated one-punch mangler Edwin Valero, reigning WBA 130-lb. champ, to help hone up the Baby-Faced Assassin versus Pacquiao, a whirlwind of a slasher.
Good. But the Barrera camp must also be reminded they could be facing an even bigger problem here.
You see, it was Barrera himself who had admitted that, more than power, it was Pacquiao’s fabulous speed and quickness which ultimately plastered him in their first fight in November 2003.
The message here is for Barrera to go seek someone who could push him harder, and improve his speed.
“Valero? If he hits you today, he throws the next punch tomorrow,” one trainer, a tested Pacquiao deputy, quipped at the nearby Nat’s Thai Food Restaurant here.
Needless to say, Valero could be truly useful to Barrera only if a cactus stew finally tastes like perfect dinner for the homesick, adobo-happy Pinoy.
