chapter 1

I met Marcus outside a Thai restaurant in the gray blue hours of spring. I had been wandering over the cobble of Chelsea, ignoring street signs to SoHo when I realized I was hungry and that he was there. Not that I saw him- I smelled him. He was smoking my brand, and I, barely able to quell my urge to join him, made a terribly cliché remark about my most recent attempt to quit. I was winning, and he was glad for me - although he added that quitting just wasn’t his style. Other than his cigarette nothing about him stood out. He was a plain-faced boy in a town of the extravagantly cultured. If anything he looked like he was in over his head, at least to me. The island of Manhattan must be the rawest of all the worlds’ islands and he looked as though he’d stepped off the subway from a suburb in Denver, a basic and burly American frame wrapped in the most functional solid and inoffensive colors Eddie Bauer could find. He appeared…too sure-footed, as if he didn’t know he should be ashamed and that made him look all the more out of place. He kept exhaling his cigarette up into the awning, leaning just right of the door with one foot flat against the wall like a rock star looking nonchalant in a black and white Rolling Stone cover. Yes, if he had looked more self-conscious then I wouldn’t have noticed him, but he was the kind of guy that let the wind comb his hair.

And he was smiling. From that moment on, whenever I would hear the name Marcus, I would immediately think of the Greek theatre. I saw that face in their masks; deliberate, bright, and porcelain against the grays of modernity. He looked a fool.

So I took a pity of convenience, carrying on a conversation that allowed me to enjoy the smell of his cigarette while satisfying his need to talk. My opinion, however, changed when his phone rang. He kept his cigarette in his mouth and pulled a sleek little piece of plastic from his pocket, it made mine look like a brick. When he flipped that little computer open an exhausted frustration took form of a brightening ember on the black cigarette. He was ahead of the curve with a trendy piece of plastic, so perhaps my opinions of him had been misled. Perhaps he was a smiley-faced fool for some other reasons.

“She just canceled, (it was important it was a she) Do you like Thai?” he asked. These were the kind of questions I hated. I was standing in front of a Thai restaurant for heaven’s sake. I just wanted to tell him no, hit him flat faced with a cream pie or with the brunt of a large fish. But, fighting against the craving of nicotine I had to turn, as I often did, to the decadence of curry and peanut sauce. Any excuse is excuse enough for Thai food.

He said he hadn’t been to New York since he was a child and that he was a traveling with someone but she couldn’t make it.

“I can’t stand to eat at a restaurant alone. That’s a waste of a good conversation. You might learn something, I always say”

He offered to pay, I told him that was not necessary, and against my better judgment and normally shy disposition agreed to sit with him at the bar. I ran the fingertips of my left hand over the ambiance candle’s flame.

“Doesn’t hurt?” he asked.

“No, the fingers are callused from playing”

“Cool” he said. “The guitar? Cello?”

“Guitar” I said. “Yeah I’ve uh, been playing for a while I guess, nothing to spectacular” he kept nodding, but I didn’t have more to say until the water boy came.

“With lemon” I told the waiter as he obliged with a bow. It took him only a few seconds. Marcus and I sipped lemon water while sharing a conversation two passer-byers often do: a shaky explanation of where we’d been, and a terribly clear explanation of where we were going.

Marcus was from the West, he named the town, somewhere near the ocean in Washington State. I’d been to LA, and frankly all I saw was a better looking New Jersey with only a tiny bit more going on, vegetarianism and general idiocy that the glitziest New York socialite couldn’t hold a candle too. I had heard from a friend studying film there that adults watched MTV reality shows and discussed it at dinner. Honestly I had never thought what existed north of it. Some hills near San Francisco where hippies smoked dope, beatniks snapped fingers and “brilliant young minds” redefined the full stop.

When the chef behind the bar looked up at us I ordered without looking at a menu. Marcus had never touched his but I thought it was because I hadn’t either and it would have disrupted the flow of conversation that took a few attempts to get going.

“Phad Kee Mao, four stars” I said, holding up four fingers “and could you slice the tomatoes a little thicker?” The chef nodded with an englishless smile and looked to Marcus. He began to fumble with his words, he hadn’t opened the menu.

“um…” he curled his lips in contemplation as I expected an “I’ll have what he’s having.” Lots of my friends took my advice in thai cuisine.

“Pa yaen tai, mau kau dau ko” the chef nodded. “tom gum gai ko katsu taa” the chef nodded again. “Pan koa” they both laughed.

What the fuck? “You speak Thai?” I asked.

“Not a word” he said. I looked down at the strands of lemon swirling in my ice water waiting for the pie to blindside with cream. Whoops.

“What did you order?” I asked.

“nothing too fancy” he said. “Phad Thai, and I told him to really spice it, four stars in English isn’t four stars, and I need my noodles hot”

Had Leah been there that would have triggered some synapse in her brain to examine him and, if she did, then this whole thing would have never happened.

She did that. Ruined things with three fourths of a BA in Psychology. All of a sudden you can’t open your mouth around her without telling her that you definitely want to bang your mother or your sister or your brother or something ridiculous. I guess she had nicer, more amicable words for it. But nice words are useless when the definitions are cruel.

But back to Marcus. I told him pretty much everything about me, which was kind of sad. Not because the dimmed red lighting was somewhat morose, but because I could explain my life story in the time it takes to shovel down a plate of Phad Kee Mao. He explained his life too, without saying a thing for sure except that, he’d gone to high school, engaged in the regular cliché story telling fodder, and while he was technically in college he was currently taking a little time off do a “bit of traveling.” The story sounded familiar, and I, the usually suspicious questioner felt satisfied at his explanation. This would make a great story for Leah. She always said I needed to be more social, talk to more people different than I, people who had a “better grip on reality” as if she had one. Honestly, I thought she said that just so I could go take a picture a picture to let her know what those people looked like.

And that they were real.

When the check came he reached for it first. I tried telling him “that’s not necessary” and that “I got mine” but I was distracted. What the hell was this? Peeping below the rather plain clothes of this traveler from the pacific northwest was a band of leather that tapered wide into the elegant rotund face a Rolex, a vintage Oyster Air Lion, at least fifty years old. Impossible to find.

“That’s a pretty nice watch” I said instinctively as he paid in cash. “I bet it has a story”

“I suppose the chopsticks we’re eating with have a story too man” he said. I let him pay the check as he informed me “I really have to get going.” Again he blamed she. He tossed the receipt at me, scribbled across it was a ten-digit phone number with an out of state area code.

“I’ll be in town for a while, we should definitely kick it again, I’ll tell you the story”

I guess it was kind of odd he left me sitting in the restaurant by myself. Pushing the left over noodles left and right on my plate. I thought of what I was going to tell Leah about my willingness to eat with a complete stranger. And that he had been genuinely nice for no reason at all. I thought I would make a good story to tell. I thought the story was done.