"Go-or-or do," sung cinnamon skinned, pretty little Graciela up to Gordo through the sputtering smoke of his sizzling sausage cart.

"Por favor," said Gordo, squeezing onto his grill yet another floppy bacon wrapped sausage; "don' go calling me Gordo no more, I been rebajaing my weights."

"But I bring you flores," Graciella whispered in a tender, husky voice, through Gordo's popping sputters, holding her vase bouquet of yellow ranunculus, purple anemones, crimson poppies, blinking her jet black eyes.

"Para mi," he said, "you bring? for why?"

"Saying I love you, you silly Gordo," stamping her foot and moving her flowers out of the grease sputters.

"Love? Now? gotta sell salchiche this morning, if I don't sell. Are dey any no good manana?"

"What you are den yourself?" Graciella demanded, "(cough cough) una bestia, who don't got no eyes for seeing de mujer here que te quere?"

"Who dis womans who loves me?"

"¿Quien? Maldito, you know whom is whom love you." Graciela had been going to night school.

"Take a salchiche gratis," Gordo said scooping up one of his sputtering, bacon-wrapped specials covered with onions, dripping grease, up in a professional motion and sprinkling on little green capers and fresh cilantro.

"Sweet Gordo," she said, "don't pretend no ignorances to me, you know I don't come for no salchiche gratis."

A large flower van skareecked up, creak out its door came the driver, announcing, "I got no quarters, parking costes too much," pulling out a large long flower box, "I wonder do Gordo quarters have?"

"I got quarters, Jorge, cambio for sausage, everybody want de quarters, I am salchiche not bank."

"Muy bien, da me dos sausage—5 centavos, the parking minute eet cost now," then to Graciella, "and look quien esta, the most beautiful embra of the whole market more beautiful dan de flower demselfs," he smiled and winked at her, resting his large extracted gladiolus box on the edge of Gordo’s smoky sausage cart during jamming a large hand in his pocket excavating sausage dollars.

"Ten cuidado ispantoso," Graciela laughed, "please, Jorge, quickly tell to dis pinche Gordo some poem so he don’t be so escare of de love."

Jorge’s early morning spontaneous limericks were famous up and down the Wall Street flower district, but here was coming a flashing orange Parking Enforcement light just down the street. The city of Los Angeles was bankrupt and bleeding its citizens dry.

"Eeet weel find you Gordo," said Jorge, picking up one of Gordo sausages already slidden to him across the counter with his change; "ees esneaking up on you" first setting down his flower box on the sidewalk, grabbing the greasy parking meter quarters, rushing over while reciting,

"You have shut you heart,
Like shut a door,"

"To starve de loves inside, not trouble you no more.
But down Wall estreet here come de wet new wind of May,"

"Blow you flower smell from de Graciela's bouquet.
Now you love yell out in thee,
I strong, I break you hearts,
If you don’t set me efree."

Graciella clapped her hands, "Muy meravilloso, gracias," little tears in her eyes, "your poecia would make the estones fall in love."

"Take a salchiche gratis," said Gordo.