Random Encounter

I sit at Café Flora distracting myself as much as possible from the task of writing. I’m wearing $9 Wal-Mart jeans, a Blue Man’s Group t-shirt I got in Vegas, and a vintage tan leather jacket I got from the back of my dad’s closet last xmas.

A guy walks by, styling, obviously fucked up from the squinting redness of his eyes. I can barely look at them without my own starting to water. His bleach-streaked banks fall down to his nose in opposing curves and shake with the constant twitch of his head. Every few seconds, he brushes them aside so I can see those eyes. Even still, he’s constantly on the move. He speaks with the refined, loopy pace of someone educated and articulate, with one foot on the other side of this reality. I saw him earlier and was grateful to escape his notice. But from across the room, he sees my little keyboard and saunters over.

“I love that jacket. 1972,” he says.

“Um. Thanks.”

“David Bowie wore these pants in 1978. You’re a writer?” He takes a seat across from me and puts his hand out for me to shake. I’m too nice to do anything but grin awkwardly and comply, wondering what that hand has been touching.

“What do you think of T—m-- -a—te?” I can’t quite hear above the din.

“I don’t know the name.” A look of shock. It clicks. “Oh. Truman Capote? Um.”

“He sucked my cock in New York from 1982 to 1985. He died in 1989. If you were in New York and could meet any writer, just sit across the table from him with a big fat jug of wine, who would it be?”

“Um.” For the life of me, I can’t think of a writer from New York.

“Come on, anybody.” He leans forward. A sly red-eye peaks through his streaked bangs. “You never know, I may just be able to make it happen.”

“Uh…well, Stephen King would be great. But he doesn’t live in New York.”

“Stephen King lives in Vermont,” he says with disgust. “I saw him in Kennenbunkport, getting drunk at the finest restaurants. He’s not very intelligent. Come on, give me a writer.”

I think some more. It occurs to me that I might be able to drive him away with my pedestrian taste. “Um…Anne Rice? But she lives in New Orleans.”

The look on his face says it’s working. “Anne Rice lives in Paris. That house in New Orleans? She hasn’t lived there in years. Come on, they’re not even writers. Anne Rice? Stephen King? They’re entertainers.”

“But that’s what writing’s all about. To entertain.”

Bulls-eye. He’s really disgusted now. Perhaps he’ll leave. “What about JD Salinger?” He shakes my hand at the mention of Salinger’s name. “Or F. Scott Fizgerald?”

“But he’s not around anymore.”

“Well…”

For a brief moment, I’m concerned about the implication that he can help me meet dead authors. “Dickens. I’d love to meet Dickens.”

It slipped out. I’d just been reading Oliver Twist and had fallen in love with Dickens. Evidently, it was the right thing to say. He appraises me as an equal and shakes my hand again. “Now there’s a genius. Miss Havisham? Who can forget that scene in Great Expectations when he first meets Miss Havisham. The rats scurrying across the table. The old lace wedding gown. ‘Is that cobweb she wears?’ You can see the camera rising.” He makes the director’s square with his fingers to show an image on screen, rising up from the floor. “It’s cinematic. Before anything in the 20th—what is this—the 21st century?”

“Yeah.”

“Before any technology, he made movies. You can see them in your head. Or Anna Kerinina. Leo Tolstoy. When the train hits her in the head. Bam!” He smacks his hand against his head. Bangs fly. I notice the gap in his front teeth as he grins.

“She throws herself from the train and it hits her in the head. Bam! Then again, Bam! And she says, ‘But I have made a mistake. I want to live.’ And it hits her a third time, Bam!” He’s into it now. I’m worried about him. “He gives us three times. Three. To realize the truth.” He stands to leave. “That’s brilliant.”

He shakes my hand again. Not knowing what else to say, I lift my latte and call out “Cheers” as he walks away in his David Bowie pants. And I’m left sitting at my keyboard, with its blinking cursor, thinking “What the hell was that about?”