chapter 3

I agreed to meet Marcus, and his She at Wasabi South, a little sushi bistro I could have once called home when I had developed a bit of an addiction to tempura. They were at a table that could fit four, but made even two feel intimate at tiny tables that demanded a bit of a dance to get under. Cramped, but after 8 the spider rolls cost only six dollars and could feed two people with drunken munchies. They could even tempura fry the whole thing for an extra dollar and believe you me you haven’t lived until you’ve stuffed your face with an entirely fried roll of sushi.

The two of them together, as he had with the city the first time we met, looked miss-matched. She was a round faced, earth toned girl who seemed too charming to waste her exoticness on plain Marcus.

They were just finishing up their rolls – apparently I was forty five minutes late; another bad habit of mine. I had been distracted by all the fliers I could find advertising on 8x11 and 10x14 pieces of urban confetti. Plastered over the walls around construction cites and around polls on the street corners, ambiguous imagery and depressed fonts beckoned for your time. It must be artistic to put

The Gulf Stream @ the PodCityLounge

burning, faded into the cusps of a woman’s neck being traced the outline of a strawberry on a razor. The woman is blindfolded to look like the statue of liberty, tears run from below the blindfold over her fragile Anglican cheeks>

Other things prolonged getting there as well. The portly Arab newspaper vendor at the bottom of NYU’s 3^rd North dorm tower was laying out the evening times when I past by. I usually don’t touch news papers, the black ink get all over my clothes and it’s an arm and a leg to keep getting things professionally cleaned, but something caught my attention. I don’t know, maybe it’s guilt or the small faculties of perversion that all men probably have (I hope) but I slowed down to clarify a headline. I thought it said “Drill Amelia.” Drill Amelia? I backtracked a step. “Drill Alaska” Now there’s a funny image.

I paid the vendor for the paper and moseyed down 3^rd. Next to the Alaska headline (which was in fact, near the bottom of the page), a grainy image of NY Senator Willingham looking pale and angry next sat above the caption “proponents of drilling for crude in Alaska claim the US is too dependent on Saudi oil.” I liked him much better in his campaign commercials, smiling with his beautiful wife while helping teach a black boy in the Bronx how to read Curious George.

I didn’t tell Marcus or Sara that though. I told them I had a family matter and offered to pay for his meal, as he had been so gracious to do for me- and they obliged. Sara said they had dessert at their place and I wanted to see where these people lived. Another bad habit of mine; raised by my mother on the floor of an interior design studio uptown. (Watch for paper cuts) I was six when I realized I was the only straight male on the premises.

We split a cab back to “their place.” Temporary, they kept reminding me, as they were travelers- and the place did not belong to them. Something he stressed probably because it was gorgeous and he did not want me to think something that was not true. Eastside townhouse. Old. Wow. When he had given the cabby directions I though for sure they were renting a room in one of these places. Nope. They had a whole one.

The dwelling, a Spartan three stories, had evidence of Marcus and Sara living there, but no one else. A tasteful collection of exotic woods and dark leathers dressed every room, but sparse.

I had to ask, “how did you get this place?”

“It was one of those opportunities I couldn’t pass up!” he answered from the kitchen. What that meant? I don’t know. Why do people say things to comfort themselves? Other people worth their salt never buy it.

It felt good to sitting in the big leather sofas in an old city house. There were no pictures on the coffee table, only paintings on the wall. Landscapes, but no photographic evidence of the owner. That made it easy to pretend it was mine.

Sara came down the stairs, creaking the old wooden planks before hopping over the back and landing in the accompanying love seat.

“One of my mentors owns it” she said. She said it into her chest as if she didn’t want Marcus to hear. “She’s letting us stay here”

“Mentor?” I asked. She tipped her head to the side and began playing an invisible violin, miming the bow slowly across her clavicle.

“TV works” Marcus called from the kitchen. “Knock yourself out, 128 channels plus on demand, if you can figure it out, I’ve never tried”

The remote was on the coffee table, sitting next to an REI catalogue and National Geographic from which a painted face stared at me. Yellow, outlining green, with a piece of wood pierced through his lip. Only as I followed the forest behind the cover subject did I finally see the whole of the table. Spanning out from the gold frame of the magazine a vast collage of simple crescents and bars appeared in such intricate detail it looked as though the wood had fallen victim to some natural phenomenon. Too much water rubbing it away, or bugs.

But it wasn’t, the design, from what I could tell depicted a large beaked bird pulling something from the waterline.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Sara asked.

It was. It made no sense. But it was beautiful.

“Its pretty cool” I said. I had seen it before. Not that exact image, but something of the same collective movement. Hectic and natural, even nauseating. I made the mistake of trying to understand it all at once, and I lost it. Trying to fathom all the lines and the colors caused the image to become animate; moving in place as if bouncing on an atomic level. It had to go. It had struck some nerve and it needed to go. I put the National Geographic back into the center of the image, destroying its effect, and sat back. The sofa exhaled with me as I sank.

The cable started and deposited me at the cable company’s startup page. As it turned out this is always made with an offensively low budget. Advertisements with solid colored backgrounds selling Nissans or real estate do it yourself guides

Get rich developing New Jersey! No money down! Bada bing!

I turned past the twenty-four hour city news channel, past the Knick’s game and the political cartoons until I found something worth staring at. A tiny Japanese man, cracking live crabs in half with a huge knife in what appeared to be a stadium. Kind of dark I guess. I liked watching them squirm before they burst in half under his weight on the blade. Marcus came in from where the kitchen met the living room and stared at the TV.

“Wow” I said. “Jesus Christ these guys are cooking?” The little Asian man started tossing white onions into pot like someone had a gun to the back of his head.

“This is what you watch?”

“Well I am kind of hungry, I didn’t get to eat remember?”

He asked why, and I told him about the fliers. I spoke simply as if insisting the presence of death while escaping finality of it’s language. Like talking to a little kid, only purposefully. He listened to the whole explanation, while drying a mug he held to avert his eyes from my idea. Fight or flight. I didn’t mention the newspaper. I had forgotten.

“So then” he said. “You really watch the food channel?” Clearly. I was doing it right then. “You have access to the least regulated body of media perhaps in the world, something for which revolutions fight to achieve at huge costs, what is held on a pedestal where the wrong word can get you killed. And at your fingertips…you choose a vicarious method of enhancing your own gluttony” He said it in such a way I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh or take offense.

“I mean, yeah” I said. He had a point, but it’s not my fault he doesn’t understand cuisine. I could easily admit that whatever I had to say in defense of my media preferences could easily and logically be disassembled in three sentences. I’m not going to be ashamed of it though. Its better than discussing MTV at a dinner party.

Is he being sarcastic? He must be kidding.

“When was the last time you were out of the city?” he asked.

“What’s out of the city?”

Sara sat up on the loveseat, leaning on her shoulder like an Egyptian portrait. “That’s the answer” she said. “That’s all I need to hear” she laughed, sort of. Giggling on the inhale.
Marcus clanked his fork against the dish he had picked up. He took a bite and a little hint of joy crept into the corners of his mouth and brow.

“Is that cheesecake?” I asked, shooting a glance at both of them. Sara caught it.

“Yeah” she said. “It’s absolutely decadent, but there’s a catch” Marcus spoke but I couldn’t break eyes with her. Not quick enough. From the kitchen he said, “If you want a piece of cheesecake you have to agree to come with us this weekend”

She nodded to agree. Slowly. Her eyebrow stayed level. He couldn’t see.

“We’re leaving the city” he went on. “Its what you need man, trust me, I’ll pack your bag we’ve got tons of stuff”

Sara smiled quickly as she darted into the kitchen to fetch my cake. I watched her walk out of the room without an ounce of shame.

“Do you want berries on your cake” she asked, catching me in the act.

Oh, did I. She came back into the room with