chapter 4

Marcus paced between the sheets of water that spilt over the gutters of the viaduct. He puffed a tiny hand rolled smoke, sending invisible plumes away in the breeze, taking in the waterfront. Islanders waited in line, eating fast food and trying to keep their belongings dry in the steady rain. Behemoth freighters, marked in Korean and Cantonese, slid by behind them, silent for their size. They cut the waterline with a red stripe and black hull on which the primary-colored patchwork of their containers faded into the white of Seattle’s notoriously low sky. Marcus tensed at every car that crept by him on the street below the overpass. He whipped his eyes at the driver just long enough to see their face before pretending to be busy with a cell phone he kept half sticking out of his pocket.

Behind him, from the row of tiny brick warehouses, a rusted green door creaked open below the faded sign of the fur trader that once owned operated there. A portly old man in an earth toned sweater and humorously small corduroys waddled down the steps and towards Marcus. Two girls, locking the door behind him, followed slower making small talk, seemingly less intent on talking. They looked lean, plain. Durable.

A red Audi from the mid eighties splashed down the street. Marcus waited for it to disappear before acknowledging the old man.

“You’re back!” the old man said.

“Been back for a little while” he said.

“Oh is that right?”

“Yeah, long enough for that old familiar feeling of self termination to return” Marcus said. He kept looking over the old, making eye contact difficult.

“You alright?” the old man asked. “You need a happy lamp? Listen, I have an extra bulb”

“No” Marcus answered, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll just wait for the real sun. There’s no substitute for the real thing, you know?” The two girls reached the conversation. Smiling side by side the old man. He pulled a folder from beneath his baggy sweater and handed it to Marcus. He turned it in his grasp as if handed some foreign object, but his brow looked concerned and informed.

“Don’t open…” the old man began.

“I know, I know” he said, finally looking him in the eye. “But this is different”

“Are you?” the old man asked. The two girls began to shy away from the conversation, treading lightly.

“No, sir, I am not.” He said slowly.
“Then pupil, there is nothing more to discuss. This is necessary. And things that are necessary tend to be difficult, and difficult things, Marcus, are the ones most worth doing” He smiled behind a faded gray and white beard. His eyes, locked with Marcus, seemed to shine in the dullness of a rainy day. For a moment, Marcus thought of the struggle of those two sensations, those wide bright eyes in a dull powdery afternoon. One, breaking free of the other, screamed in belief or desperation. But which, Marcus could not tell. The dark haired girl walked away, across the street towards the salty green Puget Sound. The rain began to fade and the sheets of water pouring from the viaduct ran thin into strings of beads.

“Amelia found him in Paris” the old man proudly said. One of the girls, with light, looked at Marcus, insinuating in a symbiotic blank stare the acknowledgement that cogs had begun to turn. Reservations were useless.

“Sara will go with you” the old man said.

The other girl kept her distance. Marcus tucked the folder under his arm and turned back to the waterfront to look for Sara. She had disappeared in the background of islanders and patrons deciding to brave the rain for good seafood. It’s impossible to tell people apart when everyone is hiding from the rain behind bright colors and plastic.

Then there she was; pulling her hood down, letting the retreating downpour touch her skin and wet her hair slick like a jaguar.

Black sails on the horizon