<P>The defeat that rolls in your brain like bad whisky was not evident in his eyes. Fred smiled a somewhat wicked grin and said , "I say a lot of things. It's good to know you listen on occasion. One day you might actually learn something."
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<P>Maria was thinking. He looked up suddenly at Fred, a gleam of suspicion passing through his eye like the flame that lingers on the end of a cigarette lit by the Mexican elders who drink the sharp, clear Cartenza in the hot noonday sun.
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<P>"What? What means this, this "Woah"? Who is "Woah"?
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<P>"It is nothing. It is a word spoken by my people on the sands of California."
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<P>Maria had heard Fred talk before of California, of the men who stood upon the long wooden boards and rode the fierce, resisting sea, of the men who smoked the strange weed that makes them weak and langorous and filled with hungers, and their women with the strange breasts that were always firm, who came from this land.