Gideon had been to the Downtown Farmers Market exactly once before, in 2023, before the park renovation, before the construction fencing, before any of the current reality, and he wanted me to know that this gave him an instinct for the place.
"Markets are basically emotional grids," he said, already walking in what I would later identify as the wrong direction. "Once you understand the logic of vendor flow, you can feel your way through any configuration."
It was nine-thirty in the morning. It was already eighty-three degrees. I had a rubber band around my wrist from a bunch of radishes I had successfully purchased before Gideon arrived, which I considered my one professional accomplishment of the day.
The new layout had funneled most of the market into a reorganized corridor along the west side of Pioneer Park, because of an ongoing revamp that had fenced off roughly a third of the usual space. There were signs. Multiple signs. Gideon walked past all of them with the focused expression of a man consulting an internal compass that had, unbeknownst to him, been demagnetized.
"We want the cheese vendors," he said. "Cheese vendors always anchor the northwest corner. It's a thermal thing."
I asked him what that meant. He said he'd explain later. We walked directly into a construction barrier.
"Okay," he said. "Rerouted. That's actually good information."
We backtracked. He chose a new corridor with great conviction and we ended up in a bottleneck behind a vendor's truck that was trying to exit and a woman with a double stroller who was trying to enter and a man carrying an entire flat of strawberries who had simply stopped moving and was looking at his phone. Gideon held up a hand like he was reading air currents. Someone's dog licked my ankle.
"The crowd pressure is pointing us left," he said.
I want to be honest: the crowd pressure was pointing us literally nowhere because we were in a cul-de-sac of commerce and body heat.
By ten-fifteen it was approaching ninety degrees, which in Salt Lake City has a particular quality — that flat Wasatch-front brightness that makes you feel you are being gently microwaved from above. I had already finished my water. Gideon had not brought water because he had been in what he called a "packing headspace" that prioritized his linen shirt, which I will admit looked very good on him, and zero other logistics.
"There," he said, spotting something. He led us toward it with new energy. It was a booth selling decorative gourds.
"You said cheese."
"This is a waypoint. All emotional grids have waypoints."
At this point I took out my phone, opened the market map that had been emailed to every single person who follows the Pioneer Park social accounts, and located the cheese vendors. They were forty feet away, directly behind us, clearly labeled, accessible via a path we had walked past three separate times.
Gideon looked at the map. He looked at the path. He looked back at the map.
"I was in a calibration phase," he said.
We got the cheese. It was very good cheese — a local sharp white cheddar, slightly sweaty from the heat, which honestly described both of us. Gideon ate his sample with the satisfied air of a man who had executed a plan. Nearby, someone had set up a small misting fan and a short line had formed in front of it like a pilgrimage.
We stood in that line together in companionable silence. Gideon's linen shirt had held up remarkably well, which felt cosmically unfair. I had a radish-rubber-band tan line forming on my wrist.
"Okay," he said, after the mist hit him. "I think the navigation could have been tighter."
"It could have started," I said.
He laughed, which is the thing about Gideon — he laughs at himself with his whole face, no reservation, no recovery spin, just genuine appreciation for his own ridiculousness. It is extremely difficult to remain a credible critic of a person who does that.
"Next time I'll read the map first," he said. "And then also ignore it, but at least I'll know what I'm ignoring."
I finished my cheese. He found us cold brew from a vendor he located, I noticed, by reading a sign.
The city was loud and half-built and crowded and bright. It was ninety-one degrees by the time we left. We had been there two and a half hours and covered approximately four hundred square feet.
It was, despite all available evidence, a very good morning.