While Laura and Monty were enjoying their evening at the Cow Palace, not everyone in San Francisco was having such a good time.
Ranny had finally finished his day shift, and seen his last wheelbarrow load of horse manure for that day, but he knew that there would be lots more of the same to face tomorrow. He felt tired from the day's labor. He was drained by the emotional turmoil caused by his run-in with that blond bitch in the horse show stables, and the tongue-lashing she'd given him. As he drove out of the parking lot, he thought again bitterly of how she'd cut him off that morning when she swung her expensive truck and trailer in front of him, just because she thought she should go in front of any workman in an older car. But he had to smile as he thought of the humiliation she must have felt when she stomped into that moist horse turd he'd dropped into her expensive riding boot.
When he got back to his little rented room, he put a couple of frozen burritos and a frozen chicken dinner into the microwave and popped the top on a beer from the refrigerator. He finished the first beer while the oven was preparing his dinner. The microwave's bell called him to dinner just as he'd started to slowly turn the pages of the magazine he'd found discarded behind one of the cow barns that afternoon. It was of the genre referred to by his peers as "tits 'n clits." He set the magazine aside so that he could more thoroughly enjoy it later, fetched another beer, and sat down to his dinner.
When he finally went to bed, his last thoughts were of the boring, tiring day he'd face again tomorrow.
He had no way of knowing that circumstances tomorrow would conspire to make it far from boring, for him and for everyone in the Cow Palace.